Stress Management and Other Things

Daze of Summer

2011-04-16T19:10:00.000-07:00

Her mentor is one of the most gentle people on the planet. He catches flies in his hands and sets them free outside his studio, and he flicks mosquitoes away rather than smashing them to death.

She often asked him why he is like this and he always said, "One day I will tell you."

One day she went to see him to show him her latest drawings and he said that he was busy and couldn't see them, but that he had some work he wanted her to do on the computer with some pictures she'd taken for him, that he'd set her up, he working on something next to her. As she went back to his "lair" he said, "Today might be a good day for you to understand what you have been asking so much about." She didn't really care one way or the other to hear the answer and for a moment she didn't remember the question, having assumed that he was a sensitive person who valued all things from birth, and her question was always asked in admiration. When he offered to tell her why he was so much the way he was, she misread him as being mischievous, expecting a funny story involving laughter and funny characters. He wanted her to read what he wanted her to know.

She sat down at his computer and he stood over her and muddled through various files until he found the story, "There," he smiled, "This should keep you busy for a while." He sat down behind her with his back to her while he worked on another project.

The story started off innocent and pleasant and took her to a place that existed a decade before her birth, when he was young. She could feel the hot, muggy air of the summer time, and smelled the grass and the flowers while she pictured him as a scrawny kid, much like her own kids, to a summer mixed with the ratio of 90% boredom and 10% excitement that her own summers had while growing up on the opposite coast much later.

Her mentor had never liked how she dressed as she covered herself in long skirts and hair covers, but she always blushed when he teased her and said that he always saw through her clothes and knew that she was beautiful, and when she asked him why he wrote a certain way, he explained that he wrote in a similar way to how she dressed-- when he wrote, he could reveal everything without describing, and that interested people would let their imaginations step in where he left off. His stories often left her breathless, but if one took the story apart, paragraph by paragraph, one could not say, "This is where he leads the reader on to the fascinating part." His work, both in words and in pictures, existed as a whole, interacting with the viewer's imagination and creating a newer work all together. Unlike how she dressed, his work had many more admirers, and people often came to him for advice on art, whereas few asked her for advice on dressing.

On that day, his story was not what she expected. As she met the people in his life from the time before she was born, she was jarred when he encountered his Abusers. As this was his story to tell, I will not tell you what had happened to him, other than to say that it was very horrible, and it was their threats and his forced silence for many years that got her the most. She wanted to pull him on to her lap and hug him, but as he was much older than her and quite tall, it would have been awkward had she tried. Unlike in his stories where the imagination of the reader filled in what he didn't say, he was graphic in what he described, and her imagination, which had only made his stories happier in times past, retreated, and she sat reading and rereading the horrible facts of the story without her imagination to help her.

She didn't know if he heard her gasp, and he kept typing as she absorbed what she had read. This wasn't about her, it was about him. She wondered why she was worried so much about her own reaction and how he'd perceive her. She had volunteered with Hospice and worked with victims of abuse in the past, but this wasn't something that he was sharing for her to comfort him or say anything wise. He was telling her as a friend about something terrible. After a deep breath, she asked him, "How do you heal from that?"

His voice was soft and he still wasn't looking at her, "You don't."

She tilted her head, and sharp pains circuited from her neck to her left shoulder and down her left arm and into her hands, coming back via her right arm and surrounding her shoulders and ribs and shooting back into her neck. She asked, "May I massage your neck?" He said she could, but asked why she wanted to massage his neck. She wanted to massage his neck because hers hurt, but she told him she just wanted to massage his neck, like it was normal for her to go around offering to massage people's necks. She often didn't make sense to him and this moment, in spite of its severity, still had her in it and she wasn't going to start making sense when she was brought into this part of his life. He let her massage his neck and he knew that she was putting all of her physical force into his muscles, but he hardly felt them because her hands were not strong hands.

She wondered if the abuse from 50 years ago was with him every day and every minute, but she didn't ask him that.

She wasn't ready to return to the cacophony of her own home, and she wasn't interested in editing the pictures that needed her attention. Regarding her work on the computer, he had been talking to her about retraining her eyes to see what is essential to the picture, to see and to represent the truth, while editing the picture's light and taking things out that didn't need to be there. Light had become a tangible entity to her and in the minutes following what she had read, she realized that there was more than just physical light to consider. There is a light in understanding, in knowing truths. Something can be ugly and still exist, but it doesn't have to take up the picture. She wasn't sure what she thought about the truth right then as she had cut out too much from pictures in an attempt to clean them up and therefore created idealized images, and realized that perhaps he was showing her something that was ugly, still managed to be part of someone she admired, and it didn't overshadow him. A few of her own demons were exorcised while she absorbed the lessons he was giving her: as much as the terrible event had hurt her mentor, he hadn't let it cripple him. She took out her omnipresent needlework while he worked on his project and they sat listening to Jackson Browne while drinking expensive tea from Styrofoam cups. She would go back the next week to discuss her work.

Where am I going?

2011-04-13T05:00:00.000-07:00

As of late, I have been trying to figure out what direction to take my blog. For anyone sticking with me, I am thankful.

When I started writing this, I was an isolated mother with lots of children and I was identified by the sheer number. I still have lots of children, but two are in their 20's now, and the youngest is about to start kindergarten. I have left my husband's church because I cannot handle the smell of incense and I have a couple of the kids at a different church that they love. (Cloud has become an organizer in the church for events for her group. This church isn't full of triger-happy survivalist types, thank goodness.) People don't normally know me as that mom with 9 kids now that many see me with just a couple of them. My seven left at home are in three different schools and while I volunteer, no one sees me with all of them.

A few weeks ago, a friend got on me for not working and for making my husband support us all. He jeered at me, "Why haven't you finished your degree? What do you tell people when they ask what you do?" Gosh, I tried to finish my degree-- when I started to tell him, he said that all I was offering him were excuses. When I told him that no one but him had an issue with me not working, he didn't seem to believe me. I was depressed for a while over it. (My husband started to talk to me about working. I was like, "That is fine, but you have to start cleaning." I used to work in the evenings and I also took some classes and I'd come home around 10pm and he'd be watching TV and dishes would still be on the table. Floors still need to be vacuumed, windows wiped off, they all have to happen, and if I am working in the evening, I am going to sleep at different hours. After more thinking on his part, he dropped it.) I think that as I am a housewife, I embarrassed my friend. He got into his head that I talked about him-- and when I thought we had a mutual friend, he told me to not talk about him to her and that it would be "a test." I guess housewives do nothing but jabber to other people about him in his world.

I've dealt with things that I have to write about months later because, while the kids don't see my blog, it is about privacy for them.

I am getting more involved with my art. My mentor found me, and he is making me think. Today he said to me, "Do not run from me. I am not your professor, I will not fail you. Just. . . think. Don't think tonight, think in a few days." Of course I am up at 3:30 thinking about what he said.

For years I have painted and drawn, and I had one fan for whom I produced many works given that we wrote snail mail. For my mentor I am starting to go back, not to the works that I did, but to what I am seeing, and creating. What have I seen that has moved me today? What catches my eye? Do it in pastel, now recreate it in water colors. Work fast, I haven't much time, I can usually go back.

I have an art show planned for September of 2012. I am finding themes in my work. Art is a language unto itself. I do envelope art and my art always says, "I love you, I have prayed for you, I thought good thoughts of you for however long it took me to make this." I do not know if the envelope art will make it into the show-- it is hard to create it just because I have a show coming up. "Oh cool! Art on an envelope!" Yes, it is nice, but for whom am I making it? Having an audience is important because I have direction. Now that I have a mentor, he is guiding me and ultimately, I can always create for him since so much of what we discuss manifests itself into my work.

I assisted at a friend's art show a couple of weeks ago. It was private and very elegant. I discovered that unplanned "fiascoes" are really opportunities in disguise. I went along to help set up easels (I think I was asked to help because I have a big vehicle!) on which to put up work, but given time constraints, I didn't have time to change from volunteering at the elementary school to where I had dressed almost like an elf in striped stockings, a mini skirt (not micro-- it was cute!) and bright colors. I arrived and was setting up when the people putting on the art show realized that they'd not booked the caterer to cater-- just to make food! They were having several guests come over and they asked me to stay to help serve. Since I was with my artist pal, I was there for him and was happy to do what I could. Their plans for the kids didn't work out because the kids got tired of watching a movie, so I had a container full of art supplies from the kids' school. I did an art project with the kids that the parents wanted to try, too! What had been planned to be an event from six to eight or nine lasted until eleven o'clock at night with fascinating stories and people bonding.

I get really embarrassed because I spend a lot of time at FaceBook. I don't spend too much time there, but on one of my accounts, I often access it from my phone. The particular group of people has my base of friends from 30 years ago, as well as close new friends. We post encouraging notes to each other-- it is like. . . . getting a dozen Hallmark cards every day! I recently posted something about my eldest daughter and how proud of her I am, and my friends who are also friends with said daughter were really wonderful because they know her, too. They told me that I had so much potential when I was younger, but that no amount of professional accolades and education could trump what they are becoming as people, and that the sacrifices that I have made are worth it. I am so blessed to be seeing it in my lifetime, and I hope that the younger ones will also be as wonderful for their sakes. (I think they already are!)

I am not ready for Starshine to enter school. We had a late snow the other day and she wanted to walk. I parked a few blocks away and she tramped through people's yards as I walked on the sidewalk. I asked my she was walking in the snow and she said it was so other people could follow her. At one point she paused and looked at her foot prints and said to me that her footprints are art. It was awesome. As we walked, I realized that it may be the last I walk with her to school in the snow. Next year, she will be an eager kindergartner. I may volunteer, but it won't be the same. I really want to have more babies. As she grows, I am also getting older. Sure, I am 43 and I am quite young looking, but age is a funny thing and you cannot escape it if you live. I hope to make the most of every year and be a wonderful role model on how to age well.

I suppose that like StarShine, I, too, am leaving footprints.

I have the most wonderful child-- unless she is up to something. . .

2011-03-06T22:49:00.000-08:00

With Esme's daughter in crises mode and quite scared about a pregnancy that no one is really worried about having happened, my own daughter has asked me about homeschooling next year so she can spend time doing what really matters to her. She doesn't want me teaching her anything, she has in fact looked online and wants to do a combination of math and science at her local school, and German, history, English, and whatever else she needs to do from home. She can use my help for German, but she says that she has been noting in class how much time is spent learning and actually doing anything and she said that she could get her day done in 2.5 hours if she was doing it alone, and then have more time to study what she wants. One of the things? She asked me to get with the mother's group at her church to find out about religious classes.

She is solidifying with the Catholic faith and told us this evening that she is hence forth crossing herself as a Catholic. Eastern Orthodox shouldn't mind, but they do, but I don't mind and I will lock pointy hats with any priest who wants to make an issue of it.

I played Devil's Advocate with her, and asked about abuses in the church. "Mom, I had nothing to do with those, and you are making a point with your ideas for abuse prevention. Besides, all I can do is to help prevent them from ever happening." She wants to learn more and I have to admit that I am happy for this. There are a few cradle Catholics who are her age who are baffled by her love for a faith they feel has been thrust upon them. (Of course Orthodox are stricter, so she probably feels like a rebel. Her godmother is Catholic and is really excited-- of course she has probably been behind this the whole time, praying for her conversion! There is a lovely church a town over that Esme loves that is a huge cathedral and she is planning her eventual wedding there!)

I know that with time that she will grow closer and then step back, then get closer still. For now I am enjoying her joy with it. This evening she asked what projects I will be doing with the kids for Lent. I was dumbfounded and she asked me, "How will you ever give us warm childhood memories of these holidays if you don't get it right and do them now?" I have always wanted to, but life has been swirling around us. I stammered out that we'll be making a salt dough Crown of Thorns and stick toothpicks in it and every time we do a good deed, we will break one off and throw it away? She liked that and suggested we put it on our Eastern Orthodox Pascha table at my husband's church.

My husband has sweetly agreed to let us do some events at the Catholic church over Lent-- his church isn't doing much as they don't have a priest.

Cloud proceeded to explain to her brothers and sisters what it means to give something up for Lent, and to take on a good new habit. She shouldn't have shared what she wanted to give up because Basil quickly goaded her and got her mad enough to yell at him, and he smirked. I made him put his nose on the wall and he was not that worried about his punishment and said he thought that I should perhaps give up punishing him for Lent!

Little curve balls in life

2011-03-05T22:52:00.000-08:00

No sooner had my daughter and I completed our mandatory, pointless class with the Catholic church on relationships and abuse (that turned into a cheesy lecture on not having intimate relations) and I wrote a rant, than my friend, Esme (not her real name, but you knew that) called me up. Her 14 year old daughter was getting really, really close. And she was getting stalked by a boy who she had turned down.

Esme was not hysterical, she had also been at the class at the church in the next town over. The class did not spur the discussion, but rather, her boyfriend getting death threats scared her daughter into sharing. Her daughter is in no way a floozy-- but Esme would be a ding-a-ling to leave her alone with a boy at this point. (I offered to state that my son, Mudd, is to be her paid companion and to join them on dates and she is really considering it. Hey! Mudd is a fun kid!) Esme handled it with humor and has not slept since. Of course she told her husband-- couples don't keep secrets like that from one another. (He, having been sick, took to his bed and to the Wii. For four days. Wii basketball-- the best thing for an ailing person. He decided to make Esme handle it alone and he'd work with what she shared with possibly doing and then he will either agree or not. Esme's daughter swears her father will "want to kill" her, but he didn't when he found out. He was surprised that it was happening 2 years before he had expected it.)

The threats came via her text messaging. I went with her to the police. At first they didn't want to take it, but I have a degree in human services and since I am a mandated reporter, I pointed out that the suicide threats were something that had to be acted on immediately. It sounds like the kids' parents were relieved-- apparently he was already in the system for infractions of which were not elaborated on and they had numbers. His parents were called while we were there, and within the next week, the kid was sent to a residential facility for observation.

The Catholic church was not interested in my views on fixing the problem with the classes being so bad. Basically, they ignored me. I told the moderator of the class why I thought it was cheesy and not enough, and explained that I knew she knew of patterns of abuse and that sharing these with the teens would be another voice when the voices of the parents were being drowned out. Parents who found her class informative probably had their heads in the sand and wouldn't talk to their kids about abuse because they would not think it could happen. No comment from her, or the two people at the church to whom I spoke. I was disappointed, but not surprised. I later had breakfast with a group of moms who feel as I do and I may see about working something through a parent's club at one of the schools. (My party will be cooler!)

As for Esme's daughter, Esme has decided that 16 is the youngest she can be to date. The young man is a sweetheart and I even met him. It's not that he is bad by any means. Does a 16 year old have a better understanding than an almost 15 year old on why it is better to hold off on intimacy? (Does a 25 year old understand it any better?) She asked me about symptoms of pregnancies and I knew that she would be psychologically bringing them on in her worries. I told her of nerve pain shooting up the leg from the right big toe, mental alertness, and a desire to clean her area, be it her room or the entire house. Esme called to report that her daughter indeed is acting as I had spoken. (I am so going to hell for this. LOL) I do not think that she wants to be pregnant, but like many women, the posibility of a pregnancy is the posibility of potential and the sweet girl has names picked out!

I brought Esme some chocolate and tea and we knitted for a bit. She is still confused, but at least she has chocolate and yarn.

A very lame class on abuse prevention

2011-02-27T22:41:00.000-08:00

Tonight I took my teenager to a Catholic Abuse Prevention class. I had thought that this would be great-- a chance for the Catholic church to prevent some of the abuses that have occurred in the past, that have blotted her history. It was lame. The teens talked about relatiooooonshiiiips and premarital sex and waiting. It was the same lame and stupid crap that my generation heard as kids and while we parents were required to sit through it, I got the impression that the kids were speaking for us. Statistically, how many of these kids will go to the altar as virgins? How many in that room were gay? I am not worried about priests or clergy making moves in this parish because we have a lot of safeguards, but if they do and if they succeed, I will blame it on the education.

They spoke of the acronym for LIFE (Love, Infatuation, Friendship, Exploitation.) We talked in our groups about what this meant. In mixed groups of parents and youth, we were asked to write down what we thought of these four definitions. Then the moderator of the session wanted them to be read to our groups and for us to guess who said it. I told her that I didn't think this was a great idea for her to spring this after we had written these down, so she quickly told us that if someone didn't like this, to just read them. Of course when the group chose their faves to share, the woman queried, "Who said that?" Knowing who said what did not matter to what she was teaching and I have no idea why she asked. My quote was read as the best from our group, as I said that infatuation is like salad dressing. . . a little goes a long way, but it is never the main course of the meal.

They spoke of waiting for sex until marriage, but they didn't talk about the hormonal effects of sex on the body and why this might be a good thing. While I do not know if it is true, I was told in a Crises Pregnancy volunteer class that sex produces happy hormones that make you feel attached to the person you are with, and that in a healthy relationship where there is love, it really builds your relationship up with your partner/spouse. I get that way. (I have had reason to think of it lately, bad experiences from my past, and indeed, good experiences, also, and the casual encounters, where my boyfriends didn't want to be called my boyfriends, who panicked at me calling the Sacred Act, "making love," I had to detach myself from them. One of my friends recently shared with me that if her husband is looking at his iPhone instead of paying attention to her when she is talking about her day, she feels like she did with her casual encounters when he makes moves on her later.)

I can handle that they didn't talk about abuse by clergy in the class, but they didn't talk about abuse by other people. I think that gay teens need to be warned about abuse happening just as much in their relationships and how to spot it-- and places to find out how to get out of the situations. (Of course gay youth don't exist in the Catholic church and if they squeeze their eyes shut tight enough, they can pray away the gay!) They also didn't really talk about abuse in interpersonal relationships.

The girls were wistful about what love is. It's so simple to them at this age. It was basically the crap about "True love waits!" The message of the evening was, "If it is infatuation, don't! If it is love, wait!" How simple! They didn't talk about how to get from point A (being single) to point J (being married.) Oh-- I am assigning letters to my variables. They touched very lightly on hormones which, while they are well and good, they did not over ride them. If I was 16 and making out with my boyfriend, I would not be thinking of the bookish hag that taught the class.

I think it is noble to wait until marriage to have sex-- you avoid a lot of problems, many that are too personal for me to go into here as I'd offer up my personal experiences. The issue, however, is not to wait, but how to wait. If you choose to not have sex before marriage, I think that dating is like saying that you don't want to drink, but you are going to go to a wine tasting. Don't put yourself into temptation's way! Why can't the Catholic church figure this out? They need a young adult group (not youth) director who provides outings for the singles to meet and go out just to have fun. Bowling, white water rafting, these things are all great ways to meet other singles in the group and to go out. One of my friends is an Orthodox Jew and her kids will not date and will instead be introduced to possible matches and they will not be left alone by choice, until they get married. I wanted to stand up and scream in that class, "Listen! Your bodies are made to want to have sex! Decide now what you want to do with this choice! If you don't want to have sex before you marry, going off to a party college is a bad, bad, bad idea! Involve your parents! Don't go out with your friends who like to date so they can troll!" I knitted and reserved my comments for Cloud when we got in the car. She said, "You should be teaching this class, Mom." I told her that I am the old lady who knits and covers her hair and who sits in the corner. She said that that is only believable until I start talking, and then I could be wearing a gorilla suit and no one would notice. That was sweet.

They did say that "friends with benefits" is a form of exploitation, which I thought was great. Adults need to be told this, too. Sadly, the woman giving the talk is not someone who I could see as ever having had to avoid a situation such as this. If she was pure when she married, I doubt that it was by choice. It is complicated to have kids take this advice from someone who does not seem to have ever had a life to enjoy, who was ever young and vibrant like they are.

Of course, choosing a life partner is something that one cannot cover in two hours, but this course was about abuse prevention, and I thought it did a bad job of covering abuse prevention.

The class should have been taught in a gender specific fashion. I sat in the back and watched the girls look back at the boys before they spoke, and the boys didn't talk much at all.

Overall, I felt cheated of my time. The people who put the class on felt good because they made parents and teens come together to talk. They didn't talk about anything that I wasn't discussing with my kids when they were younger.

The magic mitts

2011-02-27T15:18:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago, I surfed around on FaceBook visiting the pages of a few people who I didn't know-- like most everyone else, I have quite a few friends who I don't really know but we are friends because we have mutual friends who we do talk to on a regular basis. I do this on a regular basis just to touch bases and say hello. I clicked on a lady who happened to have her grandfather dying. She is in her mid-20's and her grandfather was dying of cancer. It was herself, her sister and her mother, and his live-in companion of the previous ten years who were his support. (Her grandmother was remarried and living a few states away.) They all lived in his city and her mother was his only child.

I sent her a supportive message and asked if, while we didn't know each other, if she'd mind if I checked in on her page and just said supportive words here and there and she didn't mind at all.

One of her grandfather's complaints was that he was cold. I had just finished knitting a pair of handwarmers in a washable wool (buckskin was their color) that I had intended for myself, but as the wool feels quite nice, I made another pair in baby alpaca and asked if I could send them to her for her grandfather via a mutual friend who was posting often on her page, and she consented and was quite happy when they arrived. He was happy and especially very much enamored with the baby alpaca mitts. I do not have a picture of them, but there were quite basic, what I'd make for myself, or for a man who I didn't know as they lack frou-frou frills. As he has been ill for a while, my small hand size fit him well. (They are very similar to what you can find in this picture.) He was really happy when he found out that a complete stranger happened upon his granddaughter's page and how we worked it out. (He loved that I was from Alaska-- he'd come up here in the 1970's, vowed to return, but never did.) Upon getting my mitts, his hands were no longer as cold as they'd been, and he loved that people cared enough about his grand daughter to worry for him.

I'd not heard from her in a couple of weeks, dropped by her page and saw that he'd died early last week. I sent my condolences and in the way that people say, "If there is anything I can do, let me know" I said this, not knowing what I could do and assuming, as people do when they say such things, that there is nothing that I could do. Of course I wouldn't be telling my readers this if nothing came of the offer!

She wrote me back and she seemed embarrassed, but there was something I could do. . . her grandfather had very little in worldly goods, and what he had, he understandably left to his girlfriend. There were tears over the gloved that I'd sent! His girlfriend was going to give them to my friend's mother in a few months, but she very much loved them as they were a link to a man who she loved. Of course his three biological descendants also loved him and they, too, wanted the gloves. She didn't tell me what she wanted, but simply said that she was sorry for asking and that she hoped I understood. Of course I did. I have extra hanks of the yarns and I quickly knit up two extra pair of mitts, identical to the ones that I had sent her, and told her to put one of each with his others, and I made so that my friend, her sister, mother and grandfather's girlfriend could each have a glove that he'd worn-- and a new one.

I just got a message from her. She had taken them to church this morning and his girlfriend was very happy and they went back to the home she had known for the last ten years and had cake and wine and they made the new pairs of mitts. His girlfriend had no children of her own and my new friend and her sister and their mother are bonded for, I hope, life, and this is in a good way.

I was so happy to have been involved from a distance in making her grandfather's death a little easier. My fingerless mitts are like puppies-- they are warm and soft, very tactile, but they don't have cold noses. At the ends of a person's hands, they are open so they can handle the blankets and have their hands held and have the touch of their loved ones. From my end, I like making them better than shawls because fingerless mitts can be complicated, but they don't take long to knit up, so it isn't like knitting a shawl or an afghan: what is 2 hours of tricky parts in a pattern when you only have one more to go? (Shawls take longer.) You also use less yarn which, considering that I love using nice yarn, this spreads to more people and I think they get more joy out of it!

She's got that personality. . . Meyers Briggs. . . INFP

2011-02-26T00:23:00.000-08:00

So this is what you do on Friday nights when you are married and taking this night off from your usual obsessions. You take a test that is similar to the Meyers-Briggs personality test. I got on here between cleaning the kitchen and folding laundry. It's nice having my three older boys out for a couple of nights as I can clean their room.

I am always either an ENFP or an INFP. Tonight I am an INFP. I always score close to 50-50 on the Introverted and Extroverted portion of the test. I hate that I feel and don't think as much, but then again, I score close to thinking, but never test into a "T." I feel (NOT THINK!!!) like the description fits me perfectly.

Tonight I bask in the personal comfort of sharing the same personality trait classification with A. A. Milne, J. R. R. Tolkien, Neil Diamond, and Laura Ingalls Wilder, to name a few. As we are all introverts and I am feeling introverted, we are only in the same classification, but probably not the same room as alone, we are working diligently on our own great things.

PS: I linked to Neil's song, "Forever in Blue Jeans." I used to hear that and think that he was singing, "Reverend Blue Jeans." It came out in the '70's and I pictured and itinerant minister who smoked plants and walked country roads with a guitar, preaching about Jesus and holding revivals. (The idea didn't appeal to me and I lean strongly toward Judaism.) The lyrics were not for me to judge and didn't bother me in the least, but I pictured him seducing (or being seduced) by farmer's daughters between revivals.

Bamboo mothering

2011-02-25T21:32:00.000-08:00

I am very excited. Today my son with special needs, the son who I hardly understand, came home with news of an airplane club at school. The application requires that students have a math and science background, and I called the school in tears. My son was speaking clearly when he gushed over the club and asked for permission to join it, but I didn't know how he could get in. The office sent me to the teacher who runs it and it sounded like he knows my son and he said that he will help him. He seemed happy over the sudden speech improvement and suggested that maybe he will adapt to the work if he loves the airplanes. I was so happy for this. I have no clue as to what Guy will do with his life, but he isn't that bad off. His delays are mild, but he is seriously behind in math and reading. He's never been a discipline problem and the instructor was happy for this!

This weekend I have my three older boys at a winter camp. What an exciting thing for them to be outdoors and sleeping out and living outside for two days and nights.

My husband is terribly sick with the crud that I am fighting and I fear a mid-week sleep-spell. I have to put off being sick for a few weeks as my life is picking up so fast with some trainings. I feel absolutely terrible because my work is only volunteer work. A former friend really bashed me over this a few days ago and I am having a hard time enjoying it. I cannot work and I have to be only a mom for now-- but what I do is terribly important. I am not lackluster with my volunteer work!

My eldest daughter called me (psychic power?) shortly after the money focused idiot and I got off the phone and she thanked me for making her do various classes in school even when it meant that I was in bad physical shape and drove her across town to another school twice a day. She recalled several things that I made her do that she balked and whined about that she is now grateful for me having forced because she is making some serious money and she loves her job. There were some things that she wanted to do that we couldn't afford, so I quit getting my nails done and she was thankful for those things, too. (I don't know that Mr. Money would put himself out of a trip to Las Vegas if it meant that his kids got a shot at private music lessons or if he even knows what it means-- can he just not imagine having to deny himself anything?) I still wish I could "have it all, all at once," though! I could have been happy without the blow, and I had to get nasty and yell at him and I hated having to defend myself to someone to whom I should not have to defend myself. I cannot be friends with someone who could be flat on his back and still be looking down his nose at me.

My ex husband (who I can never like for reasons that I won't elucidate on here and now) once told me that "the person who inspires ten strong men is stronger than any of them." OK, so I only have nine kids, but I feel like they are my most important work.

(If my kids were acting up due to what appeared to be a lack of parental supervision, Mr. Money would have a completely different opinion. And yes, I miss him because he had some nice characteristics, but for someone with a background in law and politics, he lacked diplomacy and was horribly mean. I'll get over it in a few days.)

Where to find inspiration

2011-02-24T13:17:00.000-08:00

A good friend told me today to find inspiration when the light is bright in my soul and I can see clearly-- and to hold on to it when I am sad. He says I do it backward, that a blow from someone I trust, is what I hold on to when I start looking up.

I did the training yesterday and I am really excited. I get to take Cloud with me for next week's session. While she is too young by 14 months, the trainer has a big group of teens for whom he wants to figure out how to mobilize and get volunteering so he can have them as adult volunteers either up here or somewhere else with our organization. I like his line of thinking. Cloud wants her boyfriend to come along and he's a nice guy-- we'll be happy to have him aboard if he wants to join us!

Starshine joined me yesterday and she was cute-- while she could have been a pill, especially since I was not feeling well, she would come in while I was watching videos and hold my hand and smile at me, giving me her googly eyes. How can you not laugh at that? She insisted that I have her orange juice that I'd bought her, so I'd feel better. I hate juice boxes, but who can refuse the ministrations of a five year old who loves her mommy? (I will so miss her when she goes to kindergarten next year!) She was good for three solid, boring hours! She was asked if she wanted to volunteer when she gets older and she said she will, but that she wants to be the boss. She's a delightful elf, not in the least bossy, but she does seem more like an eldest child when we are out and about like that!

Games People Play

2011-02-24T12:40:00.000-08:00

How I do not argue with someone who thinks he knows everything. . .

2011-02-22T23:17:00.000-08:00

I got worn out by a lawyer friend. We had a disagreement on a couple of situations. The man is a badger by nature and a lawyer by trade. I have two things in my life that I do not like to discuss and they have not come up here. I literally disassociate myself from him when he starts harping-- I do not do this intentionally, but my brain scrambles his words. I wonder if he thinks he won the argument and if he is proud of himself, but in truth, he is an ass. Somehow for him, me agreeing with him makes his world OK on matters that don't involve him. He chose to not back me and that was ok and I was never going to talk about them again nor was he to, but his constant bringing of the issues to conversations that are meant to be about other things makes me wonder if, on top of him seeming narcissistic, if he also has a neurosis. (I have brought them up a couple of times, but as a friend who does not support, you just be silent for your friend and let the comment pass: 'It is your life, I don't understand, but you hurt, so it is what it is for you.')

The friendship is probably non existent at this point because I'd told him not to bring them up, he agreed, and somehow me bringing up some other topic always brought him to the topics. He also informed me that I have wasted my last several years in not finishing my education. I told him of some of my hurdles and he said that I needed to work them out with my husband. He had spoken of so many very personal things, brought them up on his own, but found my hurdles for what he thought I should be doing as too much pesky detail.

A few days ago, he asked me, "What do you tell people in social situations when they ask what you do?" Somehow, saying that I am a housewife with seven kids still at home is supposed to hurt me, but I told him that when I say that I am a housewife with seven kids still home that people usually seem to have no problem. (My older two, who make it a total of nine children that I have birthed and raised, are in college, so I must be doing something right. I talk to them a couple of times a week and we get along well even though I have no wealth to share with them, so we must love each other, too.)

Tomorrow I have training with an organization that I care for. I am getting sick. I have two kids who are getting sick. I may have to not go in. I will be a failure to this so-called friend if he ever finds out why I missed it. He doesn't get it as he looks at me-- I am articulate and I have, in his opinion, wasted my life-- gee willikers, I could have done something with my life and I have all this great talent that I have wasted on my brats! He has four kids that he hardly knows and has managed to not figure out how child care and sick kids can impact a person's training and job prospects. (My articulation somehow should make everything great in my life so I can have it all, all at once! And he can go to a certain city 20 times in ten years, but not see his kids as much and with all his education, he is doing so much better than me. I felt like it was the 1980's all over again with the housewife debates. I am a lesser person because I am a home and we struggle money-wise.)

Anyway, I feel gross and sad and like I should have fought and it's not worth it. I feel like in his eyes I am a failure and this hurts. How does one argue with a biased judge in one's life? It's best to not try to defend yourself when everything sounds like a big, fat, lame excuse-- were I to do anything different, I'd be neglecting my responsibilities as a mother and he'd be the first to point that out. If he got it, he'd have to realize that he is dead wrong and only experience can teach you some things and I don't wish it on him-- he missed his experiences with his own kids and that revelation would be crushing if he figured it out.

All his successes in life matter little when through my magnifying glass, he missed years of the lives of his own children because his ex wives were smart enough to leave him. I can only imagine him at the births of his children, smiling and beaming with the mothers of his children, stealing their thunder of their labor stories with the presents he bought them that he wanted to show everyone who came to see his children. . . and asking his wives, "So, when are you planning to go back to work? You look great, you can go back in three weeks instead of six!"

He needs a sterile trophy wife and sterile trophy friends.
I have gone off course in this post.

(He does not read my blog.)

It wasn't Las Vegas, but we still had a great time!

2011-02-22T10:43:00.000-08:00

My husband sweetly took me out this past weekend. We had 22 hours to ourselves! (The above pic is of me, obviously putting on my earrings at the hotel.)

Of course we had Life going on and we couldn't start at hotel check-in time at 11am-- Cloud had a sacred music workshop going on, and there were numerous events happening all day for the kids before Tiger and her boyfriend got over to be with them for the night. We got out of the house at 3pm. We had planned to have dinner at 5pm at a restaurant, but we just didn't have time. I was wearing a black velvet gown, but I couldn't find various underthings that I swore I had-- they were casualties of the long-ago disaster, but I maintained that I'd seen them only the previous week. We had to run by a department store en route to the hotel to get these things, and of course everything in my life is dictated by costs and I felt bad for throwing them at my husband who was already spending a fortune (for us.)

I also didn't have my garment bags, so to cover my gown and an outfit for the next day, I had to use a Glad garbage bag to cover them. I fear that we must have looked like Valley Trash with them hanging on the hotel rack used to transport the luggage!

We canceled our restaurant reservations and had dinner in the hotel room. I had wild Alaskan salmon-- it was very, very good, and a glass of champagne. I cannot drink without breaking out, but I decided to have two glasses and suffer the what I knew would happen-- I had the cream, so they were minimized.

It was funny because the hotel asked what they could do to make us feel at home and I said, "Bang on our door at 6am and demand to use my husband's laptop and ask me to come downstairs and make French toast!"

We got to the PAC a full hour early. It was nice because we had some time to kill-- for a change, we were early! I had another glass of champagne. I got compliments on my outfit-- my gown was a tea length, strapless black velvet, form hugging dress with a bolero jacket. There is a slit up the center of it and when I walk, it shows off my legs-- nothing skanky, but in this gown you notice that I have nice legs! With it I wore my cheetah heels. In the bathroom, a lady complimented me and said that I was "sophistication with a grin." That made me feel like a million dollars-- with a grin! (I like to dress like that-- when I debated in high school I had a few really nice business suits and I would wear a Donald Duck watch to remind myself to have a good time.)

We were there to see the Duke Ellington Orchestra. They did not disappoint. My husband was funny afterward because he turned to me and asked, "How do they choose first chair for the brass?" All of the musicians got solos and I think I am still dancing to their big band sound!

We breakfasted in down town, but my husband likes "down home" type food and I am into lighter fare, so what I had was infused with a layer of grease-- not so good! But then he took me to Bell's Nursery, one of my favorite places on the planet. They have coffee and delicate, pretty things, like Wedgwood china, and Lennox. We didn't buy anything other than coffee there, but it was nice.

It was good to get out. My husband really tried hard to make a great night for me and he succeeded-- I only hope that we can do this more. I would have preferred to unspool with two or three nights of no kids (and uninterrupted, noisy romance!) but we take what we can together.

2011-02-08T17:43:00.001-08:00

I took a stupid quiz that is quite accurate!

Take the Quiz here!

Waiting on the marrow match. . .

2011-02-01T13:54:00.000-08:00

I had seven vials of blood drawn from me eight days ago and now I am waiting. They are testing for compatability and possible diseases and conditions that would be bad for my match and that might weaken my condition if they took anything from me.

They said that it may be two months. It's not hard to wait this out because I am so busy, but I must say that I frequently think of the kid who I may give to. Sometimes I see someone who looks like they might have cancer, or I see one of Cloud's guy friends who are around my match's age and mentally will the tests to go faster because I want him to be out doing the things that Cloud and all her friends do. If he went to the marrow match registery, he probably isn't out going to the movies with his friends like they are!

It's all good. I have been healthy and strong and I take good care of my body. It is in G-d's hands as to when or if I can help him, but it certainly will be an honor if I can be the one who helps him. This picture is my hand holding seven vials of blood. When I was pregnant after my second child, any finger prick had me furious that anything had to be done to me. (I think it was because everything was routine and I felt like I had no say, then I started saying no to everything, which probably had some of my doctors snickering behind my back! I really had great doctors, but it was the touchy-feely midwife-witch doctor who I still want to backhand.) This time, I may get to be a part of what is amazing about modern medicine so it's all kind of cool. The lady who took my blood had a friend who did this and she said that the doctors, nurses, and med techs tell the donors whatever they can about what they are doing and everyone is thinking about the patient who is being helped.

Giraffe is about to make his debut!

2011-01-31T23:33:00.000-08:00

Have I ever told you all how much I love giraffes? I do. I had set a personal date of February 1 to show my drawings off, but alas, I hesitate.

For now, I will show you a cute youtube clip of an adorable baby giraffe! Give me to the end of the week to work up the nerve. . .

From NPR: Queen as they never thought they'd be heard!

2011-01-26T23:33:00.000-08:00

I found this at NPR. It is Jake Shimabukuro on the ukelele playing Bohemian Rhapsody! This man may start a new trend in ukelele playing!

My involuntary invisibility cloak

2011-01-26T11:09:00.000-08:00

I was never invisible until I became a mother. This magic cloak is what I wear when I hear the kids watching a TV show that they oughtn't be watching (something with vulgarity or violence) and I slip off my shoes and walk down stairs and stand and listen to what they are watching before I enter the room and confiscate the remote control and pull cords from the TV and explain that it is time to play a board game. (This is how you get a 12 year old boy to cry like a toddler, "I-just-want-to-watch-TV!-Why-won't-you-just-let-me-watch-it,-Mom?-You-treat-me-like-I-don't-matter!" He goes on. And on. And on.)

Sometimes I see a mishap about to happen and the kids see me at one end of the room and when a disaster is about to strike, when, for example, a child is getting something out of a cupboard from the middle-to-bottom of a stack, I am suddenly there to protect my young child from a toppling mess and all the kids are dumbfounded as I seem like I suddenly appeared at the other end of the room. Is that invisibility? Maybe not. Maybe it is just super fast action, but it's cool!

At other times, I feel invisible and it isn't sneaky or cool and I can't take off my cloak. I suppose it is just part of parenting. This is where the kids do a half-arsed job at completing a task and I an not only invisible, but I am also put on mute. My husband is in on it with them. Why am I being so picky, they ask. I have a rule here that you don't put the large, stainless steal bowls into the dishwasher. These bowls, which range in size from a small measuring cup to a giant bowl in which I make a triple recipe of challah, in general take up a lot of space. Two big bowls can take up all the space on the lower level of the dishwasher, and a few of the smaller ones on top can leave little space for anything else. They get treated like pans and have to be hand washed is only to make room for the dishes, unless there are not that many dishes. Since my kids take the path of least resistance and throw all the bowls in and leave dishes in the sink, I have to say than NONE of the bowls go in to the dishwasher, ever. What can I say? Kids are lazy and I think that people in general are lazy. So, I have to tell them over and over to wash the bowls (and the big pans, and even rinse the plates off before putting them in the dishwasher) and they can't see or hear through my invisibility cloak.

Unfortunately my husband does not see why I have to do this and this makes it harder. He asks, "Why can't you just finish that up yourself if it is so important to you?" I explain that it's because the kids will not always have their mother around to do things and that they have to learn how to handle it in real life so when they live at an apartment and save up for a house that they won't be clogging up their dishwasher and have to give back all of their deposit when they move. Of course asking him to follow up on the kids doing this has gotten me nowhere, as my involuntary-invisibility cloak works on him best off all!

One of my good friends has a great son of 18 years who is the most responsible, reliable male on the planet. If he is not the most reliable male on the planet, he is in the Top 1000 Reliable Males on the Planet to have EVER Lived or Who Ever Will Live. Of course I met him when he was 16 and he really impressed me. What I didn't know was that only in the previous 6 months had he become normal. Before that, she was on him 24/7. For three months when he was 12, he had to do the dishes every day because he had been caught putting them into the dishwasher with food stuck to them and she'd had to pay someone over $200 to repair the dishwasher. She would watch him load up, but before he loaded up, he had to clean the debris trap in the dishwasher, first, this was a chore that he hated because it often stank. With him mom watching him, he gradually started washing off the plates and one day, he went to the food trap and it was clean. This happened several times in a row and he said to her, "It's clean all the time."

She said, "You have been RINSING." All the times that she had told him to rinse made no difference on him, so after three months, it dawned on him to rinse the plates. She still wears the involuntary invisibility cloak, but she says that experience is the teacher in her house. With her other kids, she sees the same mistakes being made and she has to walk them through the whole process each time. Now her eldest son is doing very well-- he is a Mr. Fix-It and he can fix almost anything in his house and he is pretty self-sufficient. While I have no worries for how this kid will be as a husband (he is also very level headed) and keeper of his home, I know it didn't happen on accident. (I hope whomever he marries sends his mom flowers on his birthday.) My friend produced this guy with her husband feeling as mine does.

So I forge onward, fighting my involuntary invisibility cloak and hopefully my children will come out OK and get it.

Thoughts on donating marrow

2011-01-20T15:16:00.000-08:00

I get tested next week for more blood-- the National Marrow Match Registery is sending a kit up to Alaska and I am going in to get "a few vials of blood drawn." Excuse me-- a few vials? If I do well, I get to go in for a physical. Noboady hates being touched like I do. This is no small task for me, but when I think of what this kid and his family are going through and have been through already, every time I get squeamish I think, "It is the least I can do. I would want this from someone if my own kid's life was on the line."

Oh-- I found out that the person who I may get to match is a 16 year old young man. I don't know what his goals are, but I am asking G-d to just get him to graduate-- with the caveat that He knows I will then plead for the kid to go to college, get married if he wants, have kids, etc. G-d knows how I work, He gives an inch and I want a mile, but He likes it that way. I hope that whatever time my possible match has left-- be it one year or 80 years, that he is a good kid who legally enjoys every moment and that he does good things.

Suddenly, everything that I am doing is taking on a higher form. I sat down to eat Irish oatmeal this morning and I thought, "This oatmeal may improve my marrow quality and make it strong to help my possible match!" We are very broke right now post Christmas and we are eating simple but hearty meals like we did during Advent. Is this part of a greater plan, that I will be able to give this guy better stem cells? When I was pregnant, my babies drained me and took what they needed. (I was 120 pre-pregnancy and got up to 160 at my biggest and delivered 8-10 pound babies. They were born as babies, not tiny infants!) I'd be left with scraps of what was left and it was how it was supposed to be, but my marrow? I can make it healthier. What this kid gets is what I put into it. I am trying to think sweet thoughts into it. Am I a giant nerd? Do I think too much? This is a lot like being pregnant!

I worry that I might be anemic, but if the match is good, there are ways to fix that, I am sure.

This morning we had bad roads and I got scared as I drove then realized that I might be saving someone's life in a couple of months. While I didn't get stupid, I did relax. They prefer live donations and I felt better.

If I donate, it will probably be in the spring as the weather is getting better and the days are getting longer. If I have problems, which I don't get what they are-- something about flu-like symptoms and possible collection site infections? happen in roughly 1% of the donors. They tend to not be fatal and I can't think of a better time to be recovering for me and my match, wherever he is.

Match, where ever you are, know that my prayers are with you and your family right now! I know what a terrible event/diagnoses can do to a family and I hope and pray for a full recovery so you can lead as normal of a life as possible, and that your family can be strong and happy. Cancer doctors know that you need to live life, so follow their diections exactly-- if they say to stay out of the sun, stay out of the sun. Take the pills, plan to do what they say. (I know of someone who died post marrow donation after she got a light sun burn.) I am doing all that I can to ensure that you get strong marrow from me if I get to share mine with you. Please plan to be strong.

Guns and pansies

2011-01-19T19:34:00.000-08:00

I do not agree with my husband's church. It's something going on post what they call the "Old" Testament, but that is beside the point. I was trying to get in with the women and to do their craft group with them and to teach-- I want that camaraderie in my life. I didn't get far. Earlier in the week, I went to the craft group and that went really well. I like probably all of the women. It was MLK Day and many of our husbands had our children so only a few kids were at the church with their moms. There were just enough that they were a manageable number and they were all good-- even the ones who misbehaved were good!

Today I went to a teacher training. I got my teenager out of school early so she could be in the training and I was looking forward to a fun afternoon of learning and mother-daughter time with people who I want to like.

The other ladies are wonderful people, but we have a slight disagreement on guns. When I grew up, I was taught to respect guns. A toy gun was still a representation of a tool. You didn't aim it at anyone, but you could aim it at things. The things had to have no one behind them. A lamp was OK, unless someone was on the other side or next to it. A wall was not OK because you had no idea of who, if anyone, was on the other side. (It was OK to throw darts if someone was on the other side because darts, real or fake, couldn't go through the wall. Duh!)

So at the training today, the leader was talking in her breathy voice about how to teach lessons when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a group of kids with fake semi-automatics and pretend guns circling the parish hall. (Fake semi's are plastic models that look like semi-automatics. Pretend guns look like sticks, pieces of toast, or PVC pipe.) They bothered me. Then the little brats came inside. I mumbled that they looked like a band of terrorists and a few of the moms giggled, "Boys will be boys!" Well, these kids were mixed and the boys included boys and girls and they were running. One of the moms didn't like the running and told them to run outside.

A little later, one of the daughters of a high ranking man of cloth said something snooty to Cloud when she told her to take the giant PVC pipe out. That was when I decided that I needed to go home and that I'd not be teaching there and I pretended to check my messages and made an abrupt getaway with Cloud and Starshine, who'd been pretty quiet and had played really nicely with another little girl.

As I was leaving, a small band of kids were running inside and one of them pointed his fake semi-automatic at me. I told him to point it at the ground and he sneered at me and pointed it at my head and yelled, "BLAM-BLAM-BLAM!" I pretended to ignore him and looked at him again when I was 20' away and he was smiling with his fake gun pointed at me. I realized that with such disrespect that I personally can't go back there and do much of anything.

I texted my husband and he said that boys would be boys and blew it all off and said I was over reacting. Somehow, I am not supposed to gather from this that he doesn't value me! Whatever-- but I was greatly annoyed. My husband is a member of the church board and I really wish (for the sake of me being able to do more than have dinner with him) that he had at least faked concern, "I can see how you would find that scary since you were raised to respect guns. I'll bring it up at the next church board meeting that we ask all parents to have their children leave their fake guns at home." (He said that if we were together that he'd have talked to the brat's father, but I seriously doubt that he would have done anything. I don't go there and I am not really a part of the group. If he thinks that I was over reacting in what I told him, he wouldn't have done anything. He claims that he has taken guns from kids, but I just don't believe it!)

Anyway, as quickly as I got involved, I decided to leave, as has Cloud and she won't teach there, either. It is sad because I would like to be a part of a religious learning group, but I do not belong there. I don't have an issue with people having guns and using them properly.

Several months ago, I FaceBook'd a quote that had to do with the Korean War and taking away guns and one of the mothers from that church got upset thinking that I wanted to take away her guns. I thought that bickering at my FB page was overreacting and a bit invassive, and since she had helped me a great deal in an emergency, I was wont to slam her about anything. I couldn't possibly bring up my concerns without being publically slammed by her and her friends with basically how my husband feels.

I may marrow someone!

2011-01-18T20:28:00.000-08:00

On Friday of last week, I got an email, and today a letter from TheMarrowMatch.com I signed up a few years ago when my neighbor, Kelly Marre had a donor drive. Her son, Logan, had died of childhood leukemia not long before that and I showed up more to support Kelly. I couldn't fathom the pain she was in, but there she was, being strong and bold in spite of the hurt that she felt at having her son taken from her at a young age. (I think he was 12 or so.)

I spoke to the marrow registry today and they need more blood from me. The proceedures were described in detail and I was asked if I still wanted to before we went on with making an appointment for blood collection and 15 minutes of questions. I know what it entails-- doctors and needles, but this patient has been through worse. I would hope and pray that anyone who could save my life or my child's life would do the same. I would do it even if it meant that I had to run across hot coals. I'd hesitate at donating a kidney because I might need my other one up the road, or perhaps my children might need it, but marrow regenerates. Less than 1% of the people who donate have problems, but the percentage of people who die if they don't get that donation is. . . a lot higher.

Anyhoo-- If our numbers are good, I will have a physical to make sure I can handle it. I hope and pray that this patient gets a donor and if I can be of help and get selected, that I am in the best shape possible.

I wrote the following on Saturday--
I got a message from a marrow donor program that I may be a match to someone! Wooooo! I am so excited! I called the number and they were happy that I was so excited because there is a lot they check for and I was already bumped up a tier before I called.

Please pray. I hate doctors and I can’t stand needles. I shared this on FB because my friends, many who are doctors and people who put their lives on the line all the time, inspire me and are pumped that I am doing this. I know that I will have to be seen if I have better number matches as I go through whatever medically neccessary "hoops" are needed to be able to help someone out. I need courage! Especially when people who know the details are saying how much they admire me, knowing what I am about to go through. (Gulp!) What I am about to go through? LOL

Marrow matching is last on the list-- you go to them when you are running out of time. I keep thinking, “What if it were my child needing this? Needles are nothing!” This person may be bargaining with God, pleading for life, just a few more years to see a grandchild, to see a child get married, or to get married him-or-herself! I know I will do whatever I can to help this unknown person-- giving marrow is easy in comparrison to sharing a liver or any other organ.

Please pray for the person who may need me, that they get help from whomever is chosen. Please pray for their health and their well being and for their family and friends who stand by them. Please pray for all the people on the list, and sign up to be a donor.

I am so thankful that I might get to help save someone’s life-- and God help me, that I am not the one needing it for myself or my family.

Please also pray for the surgeons and medical people involved. I initially wanted to know if I could meet the person who I am donating to a year after the proceedure if they are OK and they said that I might, but I kind of like the idea of something so huge of a help to go unacknowledged. I will share what I am doing and write about it because I want to promote marrow donation, and here-- prayers for all of the people involved, including potential matches, people running donor drives, people who could match up but who feel to busy to sign up, are needed for this to work for the patients. For my readers who pray or do vibes, please pray and do vibes for all the people on the list needing matches, and sign up to be a donor.

It sure is windy out in the Valley!

2011-01-15T01:25:00.000-08:00

We have really had some of the worst winds that we have ever had. Gusts have been well over 80 mph, and yet life goes on with no closures since the roads are dry. Still, grocery shopping is not fun. Twice this week, I have had my shopping cart yanked from my grasp and had to run to retrieve it. I got slammed to the ground the other day when I took the dogs out for a walk. Am I really not that strong?

I can’t sleep when it is like this and the latest has been happening since the day before my birthday. One of my friends had a house next door burn down. She said there was a knocking on her door and that the fire had engulfed it before the rigs got there. This is where a 12 minute fire like "mine" would take less than three minutes. Of course I read this on FaceBook and didn’t sleep for several days. There is nothing paranoid on my behalf for worrying. It’s like pregnancies where once you have a problem, others become more realistic. Our house shakes and I hear shingles breaking off the roof, wind comes in via the oven vent and the elctrical outlets, and I had wind blowing down my chimney as I sat next to the fire while I knitted. It has never been this bad. I actually relaxed to let myself sleep by thinking of things that are far worse and being thankful that I wasn’t dealing with them. I was not dealing with my ex husband in court. I wasn’t on the phone with my dad making mean jokes about my reproductive-ity and my “hobby.” These things normally annoy me if I think of them, but when I figured it out, knowing that only my house could trap me and burn down but that I wasn’t under a threat, I was OK.

The winds are not abating after a day or two—this is the fifth solid day. We have a few breaks and then more wind. We should call this season, “wind-er.” What is the etymology of winter? I keep imagining Ol World Russian families, Jewish and Christian alike, forced from their homes by Lenin’s goons, and making their way across the fields and the frozen rivers in weather like this. I imagine how desperate they were to get away where there was no safe place, so the 20 jog steps to my car are no real big deal and I try to not complain. I have been hit by my car door, though. Getting groceries in requires that I take the big canvas shopping bags to the store with me (they have more space and are sturdier) and I fill up my driver’s side back seat. I call the kids from my phone and they come out with jackets zipped and I hold open the car door while they step in front and grab bags.

If a person says, "I am just being honest. . ."

2011-01-08T01:45:00.000-08:00

run. Don't talk to them again, ever.

There was probably a diplomatic way to deal with whatever they wanted to do, but what do people with MPA's know of diplomacy or kindness?

Grrrr!

I made it into another new year!

2011-01-05T11:24:00.000-08:00

We got through New Year's Eve and on New Year's Day, I have my first group of people to my house since I lived in South Anchorage at my parent's ranch. For twelve years, our old house was full of CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome.) My husband's sister and her husband and family of five kids came over. It was really nice. My husband's sister is better than me in every way and she has intimidated the heck out of me since we met. In spite of a stroke, she is a pastor's wife and is on top of everything. Her kids are perfect. For her to not intimidate me, I am not sure of what she could do. Would she have to walk around swearing like a sailor and try to be more "earthy"? I have no idea. Her kids are all in their mid teens (she adopted a couple-- after a decade of more miscarriages than she could count, she always had sticky pregnancies when she adopted newborns!) All of her kids are super fantastic. One in particular makes you feel like you are the most important person in the world when he speaks to you. Another one played Pachelbel's Canon in D for me and I started to cry because it was so beautiful.

I realized that my sister-in-law's light does not make what I feel like is darkness on my part more dark, but more light. I do not trust people who are extremely complimentary-- I always wait to hear the, "but" that shakes me to my core and makes me realize that everything good that was said meant nothing. Not with her. I watched her with my kids and her exuberance and enthusiasm had them wanting to show her how amazing they are. Even when I knitted some dishcloths for her, she was so excited that I almost ran off to get the rest of my work to show her. (OMG! I want that talent that she has to bring out the very best in people! What a great super power to have-- to pull the very best from people! I so much wish I wasn't immune to her, as well as having been skeptical of her.)

When I say that my sister-in-law is a perfect person, this does not mean that she looks down on anyone. Quite contrary to this-- she is very accepting of everyone. She really looks at every person as a unique creation of her Christian god. She runs huge fundraisers and teaches and does everything very well. Yes, her light showed how chaotic my life was. I told her how amazing she is and how stupid I feel when I am around her and she said, "You've had no time for what I do! You are finally able to go to the bathroom by yourself! What do you know of what you can do? You are just starting to crawl out of the nursery!" She got a degree before she started having children, she had them later in life-- and by then she had mastered a lot of "advanced" jobs. She told me to always push the envelope and learn, but to be aware of my present limitations.

My brother-in-law is an amazing athlete as well as a pretty wise guy. He runs a huge congregation but used to be a counselor. He is always passing on some wisdom and while I won't quote what he said to me because I am not sure if he meant to say it, I will say that I think that I could not pass this guy on the street without him saying something profound. Every moment to this guy is a teaching or learning moment.

My eldest is studying in another state, but my second eldest came over to help me make lunch for everyone. I am amazed by how she knows me so well that we work without talking in the kitchen. We have a sixth sense with each other but while she isn't shocked by it, I completely am shocked when I turn to do something and she is already on it and in the same way I do it! She loved being over here and seeing everyone, too.

My 14 year old daughter was being a pill. I adore her, but she is in a stage where every time she is asked to do something, she slouches and rolls her head and eyes back. I make her do push-ups instead of other forms of punishment and she is getting huge biceps. Instead of this decision on my part curing her of smart-alec comments and her attitude, she has advanced to push-ups with clapping and she is getting good at them. She doesn't change her attitude, but she is getting into shape for her sports! I envision her doing really well at the varsity level and having to attribute her great conditioning to her cheekiness!

We got through Christmas break. This year was not terrible in the least, although I had braced myself for it. My kids are older now, which helps. . . and my mom bought them a Wii! I never wanted to be a mother who put her kids on the computer or games like that, but Wii is not a sedentary game system. We set them up in teams and the looser of a game looses his turn to someone on his or her team and the winner plays one game extra and if he or she wins again, they only play one extra game before handing the controls to someone else on their team. They cheer each other on and yell and get quite excited. Wii is not a typical electronic game. As for me and the Wii? I still don't know how to turn it on and the TV confuses me.

My eldest son turned 13 last night. This is the one who has Aspberger's Syndrome. He obsesses over how lawns are mowed and, in the winter, how snow is shoveled. As he has gotten older and begun to articulate himself better, I am liking what he has to say. His career will probably be in something to do with property maintenance. His Aspberger symptoms may turn out to be an asset, after all!

I have a couple of shawls on my needles at the moment. What I don't like about knitting is that I feel like I am painting by number with it. I know my stitches, but you have to work off patterns. A good knitter can look at something, squint their eyes and point out where you did a knit when you should have purled, or where you did a double increase instead of a triple increase and then explain how you did well to compensate, "because no one else will look this closely!" and this annoys me. Few look that closely and those comments on minor mistakes are more to show off, as in, "Look how much I know and can see a mistake!" than on the overall appearance of the piece. I do not do shoddy work, but some people are so into precision that they become machines when they knit. I like taking simple patterns and spicing them up with color and texture. This doesn't mean that everything that I do is bright-- there are lots of stunning, sensual neutral colors, especially in angora blends. I have met people who hold patterns in their heads. I don't have many in my head, but the local yarn store says the patterns are like math equations. I told her that I have not been able to do well and with confidence and certainty she said to me, "Knitting will make you able to remember math equations." She explained that knit patterns are physical manifestations of patterns, that once I can retain them, that I will be able to go into abstract ideas and that it will get easier, especially with the kids getting older.

Knitting is more expensive than drawing. As much as I spend on chalks, I spend more on yarns. Working with yarn takes up more time and of course, I like nice yarn, but I can also do some good work with not-so-good-yarn so it doesn't matter that it's not great.

New Year's Eve

2010-12-31T23:25:00.000-08:00

A New Year wish for someone I hold in high regard

As usual I am at my house with the kids and my husband, but we are in a new neighborhood. There are a few neighbors two streets over who take NYE seriously and to them I am grateful. A few minutes ago we were all up against the window, but I came over to my computer to write so the kids have more space. I love the laughter and the ooo's and ahhhh's as they watch them.

This has been a rebuilding year for us. I don't rememebr last NYE-- we were at the rental house and I don't rememebr very much. I don't think I cried, but I was sad quite a bit. This year when I unpacked the Christmas decorations, I remembered only buying the birds for the tree, but I know I bought all of it because I had joked with my husband that I'd saved an exorbitant amount of money at the store and he paused and asked me, "And how much did you have to spend to save so much?" This was the second year in the 14 that my husband and I have been married that I didn't have to put the tree into a play-pen.

Anyway, all is well at the Crumpet House.

I think that I have always been overwhelmed and the fire woke me up to the fact that I have been overwhelmed for the last 14 years (then it was 13 years) of my life. At the time, I thought it was the fire and surely the after the fire it was, but there are a lot of kids and I have had no family to depend on unless literally, someone in my family was dying or I was giving birth. I needed an extreme emergency for help!

The last 3 months have been about us settling. My kids are at different schools that I drive them to in the mornings. I have to fill up my SUV tank every forth day. How do I manage to put 65 miles on it every day, four days a week? The furthest I drive is 18 miles away, but times everything by at least 2 and they add up. I have realized with all the driving that I am always tired, always trying to catch up on more sleep and always running behind.

Today I realized that I wake up late and run out of the house late for everything. We are late to at least one of the kids' schools every day. I have asked my husband to please get to bed early, as in before 9:30 because he doesn't seem to need as much sleep as I do and I can't sleep until he gets to bed, but he doesn't like to. I am not sure how to handle it, but I would ultimately like to be up and dressed before the kids are so that they can wake up to a mom who is on top of things in 2011. I think that if I am on top of things (I feel like I've been body surfing through life-- and I am learning to go from dog paddle to hopefully a stead crawl stroke.)

Anyway, it has been a good year as far as rebuilding. I don't know if I can call it "good" because I am starting to get a sense that I can breathe now. The kids are getting older and while they need me with them more than ever (my sons' brotherly love is more "Cain and Able" than "Orville and Wilbur") I am really in a position to do more creatively.

My husband has been truly amazing. He has his faults-- but he has really done his best when not trying --with the kids-- to drive me out of my mind. He, not me, got us into the house we are now in. And he keeps us afloat. I realized a few days ago that my dream of doing something for pay and working around other adults will most likely not happen and he is the one who works, whether he likes ot or not. (He loves his job and he is quite fortunate.)

I think that what has helped me most through this year (besides the obvious, my husband) has been that I started making Shabbat dinners every Friday. I am not Jewish, but I have always leaned that way-- probably since I was 15. I may convert one day, but I fear that once what I like doing becomes an obligation, I may resent it. I don't want to resent it and I always want to enjoy it's beauty. About 2 years ago I decided to try getting my house as clean as I could and then have a nice dinner and except for dishes, relax for one day. Certainly there were places to take the kids, but I wouldn't bother with nagging at myself to get more done. There is always more to do, so when I gave myself permission to say, "It is done for now and like G-d, I, too, shall rest." I got more done when I resumed.

After the fire, I stopped for 10 months and resumed in July of this year. I started with just observing with tea and cookies! Within a month I was back baking challah bread and kosher grape juice. The baking of challah is spiritual for me because I feel like the making of the bread is like putting my family and friends together. At the rental house, I felt like my postage stamp kitchen was suddenly big enough for me. We have done things backward-- to my Jewish friends, the candles, wine and blessings are the biggest deal, but to me it has been the making of the nice dinner where we would all sit down to eat that has been the biggest issue. At that tiny rental house, the kitchen seemed just right as I cooked even though making burritos in the microwave for four people was usually too much!

I must add here that when I tried having a family night any other night of the week and tried to make it just any night, it was not the same. For me, Shabbat is only on Friday evening to Saturday at sundown. I am slowly starting to not knit of Friday nights and Saturdays. This is hard, but I need the break for my mind. More ideas come to me while I can't create. I'd not drawn for a while and as soon as I decided that I would not draw on Fridays, my mind flooded with ideas. (I did my first drawing in months of a golden lab puppy last Sunday-- she'd been in my mind for a month or two and I finally got her on paper!)

So we are looking forward to the new year. Starshine will be a whole half year into kindergarten, God willing that all goes as planned, and the kids will be a year older and I will be close to turning 43. I hope that I will have cherished this coming year!

Greetings and a Commitment

2010-12-24T00:05:00.000-08:00

As of late I have just been busy. Moving and raising children are hard work! I have been writing letters to a friend who has been away but he is returning and not needing me to keep writing and entertaining him, and I am coming back to my writing of my blog. It has been hard to write post inferno, but I am ready to resume.

About a year ago, probably a little over a year ago, I started knitting. When life has stressed me out, I have turned to it. What is it about fiber that is good for a person who is mourning? We couldn't afford presents but I was able to knit them and while I am late getting them out, they are bags in which I am putting Alaskan jams and jellies for friends and relatives. It is known that I will knit regardless and so people like my mom know that I have the yarn, and who can't use a good, roomy, farmer's market bag? Hemp is my favorite material for farmer's market bags, but I am making all kinds of things. I love that I can create something useful! My mother loves that she gets dishcloths from me on a regular basis-- and it is embarrassing, but she isn't framing my pictures and having to find space, so she either uses them or gives them to friends. In this picture here, I am finishing a little bag. I prefer pictures of my hands to my face.

I have returned to drawing. This past weekend, I was making time to draw when I got some terrible news and while no one had died, it kind of killed me. I tried to draw (which I hadn't done in almost a year) and my arms were numb. Most of this week I have been depressed over it and have decided that I want to draw regardless of my mood. So my husband came to bed early and he was greatly annoyed with me as I began sketching him. Specifically, his feet. He did not know that I was drawing his feet, but his feet are sensitive and as I drew he kept yelling, "Don't touch my feet!" I told him that I was drawing his shoulders. He got up and looked and I had, indeed, been drawing his feet. Am I that good that he could feel my stylus on his toes? (I must be a Ninja Artist!) I was really drawing on the pad, probably six feet away from him, not drawing on his body.

Winter break is almost over. My kids are busy this time and it isn't overwhelming as it has been in the past. I hardly remember anything from last year. Last year we were at the rental house and my kids tried to play the World Series with Christmas wrapping paper tubes and ornaments. My husband yelled at me for refusing to put up the tree or decorations until break began, but I didn't feel like fetching fallen or pulled off ornaments. So far, so good, no problems with ornaments or decorations being misused. If they are good this year until January 1, I will put them up a week earlier next year. It wasn't the little kids who messed with the ornaments, it was my three middle sons who were then ages 11, 10 and 9. Does having them be a whole year older make any difference in maturity? (No. My husband actually got mad at them for why I'd not put up the ornaments and told them that he shops more when he has more decorations up and to not screw themselves next year! He shopped the same as always, but they seem to be getting a clue!)

I sometimes wish winter break was shorter, but I think of when I was fighting a custody battle with my ex husband and I don't want it shorter. My daughters wanted to be home as much as they were able to be, so I won't bug anyone on the school board about this.

I will soon start sharing pictures of what I draw. I am going to start drawing for at least ten minutes each evening and take pictures. I want to draw awesome hands and feet. I did massage therapy and I think that hands and feet are amazing. We often see what artists render and they will put anything in from of hands to hide them. Feet reside in shoes much of the time. Since we don't notice them as much, they are not as easily recognized or appreciated.

We are getting ready for Christmas and I am ready for it. As we started to do last year, I am making traditional meals. The kids like traditional now where before, turkey was not the norm and we'd have other things that we liked and at regularly.

The car game

2010-11-04T19:28:00.000-07:00

When my children were tiny, I used to play a game with myself when the day came to a close. I would carry them around the living room and sing to them or we would dance to fast mucic while counting cars. SURELY Daddy would be home within 100 cars! If he wasn't home within 100 cars, he'd SURELY be home within the next 100 cars! As soon as he came in, I'd either hand the babies off to him and go paint or draw, or I would talk his ear off. How we had nine kids, I do not know.

Now we have teenagers. When he is late, I have no baby to swing and dance with, but I have teens fighting with each other and evading chores and nothing getting done without threats to take things away.

I still play the car game.

My muses are starting to dance again

2010-11-04T14:06:00.000-07:00

For several years, drawing was to me like speaking. To better artists or people who just knew art, I probably "sounded" like a hill folk with my artwork, but drawing and painting was a form that I spoke in. I got shaken up and the place in my brain that draws and paints got cut off for a while.

I have hardly drawn 09-09. The only things that I cared about to rescue after the catastrophe were my paint brushes that my mom and dad gave me as a high school sophomore, some head scarves, and letters from a former friend. The scarves got tossed. The former friend was as shallow as a bird bath. But the paint brushes have been at my bedside from the rental house to the new house. My husband wanted a desk for our room and as I looked at them, I was drawn to a large wood table with drawers. When I say large, it is not a large table like the one that we having in our dining room that seats 14. But it is large for a desk, and is has drawers. It is plain but I started thinking about putting my water color blocks on it and setting my chalks out on it near my bedroom window that over looks a patio and a lovely yard. That was the first time that I felt like drawing again.

I have drawn since the fire, but it was forced. My drawing was OK, but it was like, "I think I will draw. . . a giraffe and a butterfly." So I got out my art supplies, put them around my bed, and, sitting on my bed, I forced a drawing. I had to get up many times and walk away from it and not let my husband sit on our bed for several hours. Something that is so intertwined with my emotions had me in an emotional tweak. I had no place to draw or paint, and thinking that I needed to because I hasn't done it in a while, I made myself execute them. (With as many issues as I have with my husband at times, he understands that I am connected to my work like this and he said he just wanted to watch TV, anyway.)

At our other house, I drew at the bar in my kitchen. I drew at that bar rather happily for as long as we lived there-- 10, 11 years? On those nights I would often dress up in a beautiful outfit and draw. I don't know what was with my fancy outfits, as I would take them off later and put on jeans and a t-shirt to finish them, but I had to get spiffy first. It was like my muses wanted some fun. (I blame my muses. While my husband isn't one to go to places, I wanted to go out and with so many young children, I couldn't. I was stimulated by nice things. Let's blame it on the muses because the muses are being muses and a mother of so many is being frivolous.)

In our rental, I had the supplies which I had asked my husband to get for me. The expense was great but I really needed to draw and paint. But I was never inspired. I did a couple of drawings, including one of a baby dragon and a Chinese princess, and I struggled to do them. It was like my muses were too crowded in there and found a corner to sleep and didn't want to get up. (Cranky muses are not nice.)

Here in our new place, it is almost like the house partially dictates where I will draw and paint. We have a much nicer island/bar for painting, but I took my supplies out and set things up and even had what I wanted to draw (more dragons!) and I couldn't do it. The muses had room to dance, yet they didn't come out. I worried that I couldn't draw again, then at the furniture store, the muses started getting excited.

I have also started knitting. Last year I started knitting and it gave me a sense of accomplishment, but while I could so it in closed spaces, it quickly became an art form and also shut off. I find that if I take a basic shape with something like say, a purse, the yarn tells me what it wants to do. As I work with yarn and I squeeze it and play with it, it gives me ideas. I don't get get an idea to say, bead it-- an idea comes to me on how to do it. I call my knitting teacher and describe what I am thinking and she comes up for the word. I look it up on YouTube and do it. I like how that works.

Fantasy vs. Reality

2010-11-04T11:56:00.000-07:00

I am finally settling.

So much of my life is spent in chaos and I am thinking, 'I will be happy when _____ happens.' Well, ______ happens and I then feel at peace, then I panic awaiting the next jolt. I read a lot of Jewish on line stories and inspiration. There are several rabbis who I think G-d appointed to write for me. One of them is Rabbi Shishler. He wrote a great piece that you can see I responded to here. Since reading that, I am doing my best to enjoy the present moment. Inevitably chaos will resume. It always does and let's face it, it is what I write about and it makes me laugh. After I yank out my hair.

Fortunately G-d doesn't care when I curse people and things. He just says, "Kaylee is ranting again." He sends me a fascinating article by some rockin' rabbi at Chabad.org and I am calm for a bit.

(I'm not presently Jewish but so many of the articles resonate with me.)

If my life went as I wanted it to, I would write like this:

"This morning I awoke to my dear husband bringing me my favorite loose-leaf tea. We talked for a few minutes, then he took a shower. I got up and made him his favorite coffee and had it waiting for him on the counter in the kitchen. I went around the house and woke up the children. They loved the stone ground oatmeal with the side of fresh fruit that I had prepared for them.

"While I dressed, the children made their beds and got dressed. My eldest of the elementary school kids had made school lunches the night before.

"We left for their schools on time and I paused and admired the flowers in the principal's office that his wife had sent to him.

"I got home and did my housework. I do the big things. My children are good about keeping up with their chores so I just vacuum, do the laundry, cook and keep the little kids' room organized.

"I really don't know why some women are so frazzled all the time."

Instead, I write my reality:

I awoke to my husband saying, "Oy! I don' feel so hot." I asked what was wrong and if I could get him something. I was seriously congested and had headache that I'd gotten an ice pack a few hours earlier and asked if I could get one. He kept muttering, "I don' feel so hot." After he said that nine or a million times I snapped at him, "Don'T drop your T's!"

He wanted some tea, I got up to make him some and realized that the kids assigned to kitchen duty had not put the honey away. It seemed like one of the younger kids got into it because it had been knocked over and the lid was loose. I zapped some water and heard yelling down stairs. My sons were arguing over who was going to walk the dogs. It was only 4AM so I told them to go back to sleep. As I was leaving their room, the older one tackled the next younger one on his bed. I flipped on the lights. "What did you do that for?"

"He flipped me off!"

The attacked one denied it.

I was incredulous. "It was pitch black in here! How could you even see it?" I made him do 10 push ups for me in the hall while he complained how it was a terrible way to start the day.

I went up stairs and made my husband some tea, cleaned the honey mess and took the tea up to my husband who was back asleep so I put the tea on his night stand.

I decided that I couldn't go back to sleep so I cleaned up the kitchen. When it was time for him to wake up, I came out and my husband was annoyed with me because the tea was not hot and he'd not realized the time lapse. It was time to wake up for him and his tea was luke-warm.

I went down to zap it again. I couldn't wake up the kids who are in high school so I announced that I was turning on their lights on the count of three. There was screaming, "Moooooom!" My husband wanted to know where his work badge was. It was next to the tea I'd made.

My husband and older kids got out the door with some yelling and snapping. I got the younger kids up. I went back into my room and the tea was not touched.

While I showered, I heard lots of yelling. Apparently the dogs hadn't been taken out and there was a mess on the floor. I came out in , assigned dogs to kids and cleaned the mess up. I got dressed and couldn't find matching stockings. I wear skirts and stockings with garters-- it is old fashioned but I love them. I went in to my eldest daughter's bedroom. She had borrowed them as well as some of my stilettos. "Why did cloud have THESE?" I said, to no one in particular. My grade schooler daughter was standing in the doorway and explained, "She and Heather were trying them on. They were dressing up like hookers."

I gasped at her language and then asked, "Do you know what a hooker is, sweetheart?"

She didn't.

I told her that hookers wear hip waders and fish and that hooking is illegal. I made a comparison to snagging. She said "Oh" and left the room. She really didn't care. I threw on some sweats. My preschooler was charminingly mismatched. The rest of the kids had changed and were ready for school.

Some how, we were still on time. I told the kids to grab their lunches and realized that none were made the night before. I quickly threw them together and they had a lot of candy.

Trying to get out of the house, I had one of the dogs who had been taken on a walk want to come with us, so I put her on a leash and I walked out the door and she pulled when I wasn't ready and I fell on the ice in my driveway and split open the back of my head. I was bleeding bad but I angled the mirror to check it out in my bathroom and I was OK, it was just a flesh wound and not that big of a gash. I didn't have any gauze but I had a box of panty liners which I did a fast operation on with scissors and tape and parted my hair and taped it to my head and put a scarf on over my head.

I got in the car a few minutes alter and school was ready to start for one set of kids. We drove to the school and I had to sign them in. The principal saw me, "Mrs. Crumpet? May I see you for a minute?"

I knew it, I was in trouble. Did I realize that I was running late again? I started to explain it and how my mornings go and how I tried-- I stopped. A wise man once said to me, "There is no try. There is only do. Or fail." I took the scarf off my head, "Sir, do you know what this is?" I ripped off my bandage and handed him the fraction of the panty liner. He started laughing. I told him about my morning and that I'd gotten up early. By the time I was done, he had tears of mirth in his eyes. While he is Catholic, he and his wife only had two kids and he didn't know how I did it. He had some pretty flowers in his office and I knocked over the vase with my purse as I stood up to leave. He laughed harder and told me to exhale and take my time getting to the next school and to be safe.

~~~~~~

Ahh! I think I am settling! I sure hope nothing comes up to throw my sense of calm out of order!

What I know as normal is probably not calm.

I have started getting all the kids to bed by nine o'clock in the last couple of days and I think I may move it back to 8 o'clock. One of my college friends had been a medic in the Vietnam war and he told me about helping a field nurse do an appendectomy on a soldier in the middle of a fight. There were bullets whizzing over their heads as they operated on the guy. It was a seemingly otherwise normal operation. . . this is how I sometimes feel!

Of course not all mornings are THIS crazy. When mornings like this happen, I get more into my chore charts and discussing how we treat each other and going to bed on time. I am happy thinking about this. On the calm days I brace myself for days like this. It makes no sense, does it?

And if I ever achieve calm, what will I write about?

Cleaning house, doing homework

2010-10-30T06:30:00.000-07:00

My job is not to be the friend or a coach to my kids. Coaches only have the kids for two hours and they send them home!

For years, I was constantly trying to stay on top of getting the house clean. It was something that eluded me. First because I had no mommy mentors to speak of-- my mom had four kids but my older sisters only had 2 and 3 each and are in their 50's and we have nothing in common. Second because people would give us things and I felt bad not using them even though they were just cast-offs. Sometimes people dropped stuff by in the middle of the night and my kids hauled the stuff in. I hated it then and I am not interested in it now!

The rental house was too small for us and again, we had a problem post fire that everyone wanted to give us stuff that we didn't need. I literally felt like I was drowning. I got good at turning people down by simply saying thank you, but that we didn't need anything but if they didn't need it, I'd be happy to help them get it over to the local thrift store.

In our new house, order is paramount to me. The former owners did a terrific job painting this house that we now own. (I think the former lady of the house was an interior designer.) I love having space and energy flows well.

The epiphany that I had the other day has really opened my eyes. I have a few kids struggling in school and I realized that if I can't knit simple lace or stay focused in knitting entrelac, they can't study. (Tea pauses for everyone to nod their approval, then she runs when they want to slap her for not figuring this out before.) But now it isn't about Mom make the miscreants behave so she can stay sane. This is far bigger than my sanity: the kids have to behave in a manner that doesn't take away from their siblings being able to learn, and they have to exhibit study skills that their younger siblings should emulate.

As I have shed junk I am also having the kids shed attitudes that I believe inhibbit their abilities to learn. I made the mistake of letting Cloud have a friend over a couple of weeks ago and she let her chores go saying as she was getting ready for her friend to come over that she couldn't do them and they didn't get done. Well, she had time to do them between coming home and her friend coming over. Another son went to a friends' house and again it was, "Sorry! I'm getting ready to go! I am going to Mike's house!" No, he still had to do his chores! So they have to give me six weeks of chores and homework done consistently well so that they are habits before friends come over or they join friends. I am not being a jerk about this as much as they seem to think I am being one!

When my two eldest children were in high school, by the way they cried when my husband made them study chemistry and math, you'd think he was physically torturing them. I saw a clip on youtube of that mother with 8 kids on DWTS ans how she whined the whole time and my eldest daughters made her look tame by how they said that their step father was not thinking about how they learned-- my husband's brain is wired like theirs and knew how to teach them, it is part of his job to teach complete idiots how to operate their computers. I'd run out of my bedroom begging my husband to stop and to let them fail. Seriously, they had the whine down better than a new baby that legitimately needed Mommy. (My husband fortunately ignored me.) I should have stopped them in their tracks on the whining and said, "This is not how you are to respond to your step father or how you behave in this family. You may leave the table after you understand what you are learning."

We just had parent teacher conferences and found out more about what the kids are learning. PTC's are always informative. My kids are doing well, but they could do A work if they just put in a little more effort. Habits make people, so they have to learn now.

I believe that with a clean environment, you can focus on what you need to do with school work. My parents had a cleaning lady come over a few times a week, but I had to fold a load of laundry every day when I got home and I was making amazing dinners from the time I was 14 onwards. (OK, I didn't learn to vacuum till I was 18, but that's another story!) It is a headache to chase after kids with chores. I hate nagging. . . but it's not nagging; it is called parenting. I am having to make lists of what everyone does and I hate doing this. What I am realizing is that with one or two kids, you probably don't need lists. You know if the work is done or not and who with was assigned to. I need a list to keep me on track, and with seven independent variables, they need it just as bad as a group! I will be putting ours into a book with page protectors in th kitchen. Each kid will have a list and dates and then in the back of the binder will be room specific information.

On room specific information, it is almost funny why it is needed. I know that as a teenager, my mom had to ride me on what cleaning the bathroom meant. With my own kids, they are the same. If I tell Cloud that she is to clean the bathroom, she cleans the vanity, the mirror and the toilet seat (not the lid or the rim.) If I tell Guy to clean the bathroom, he put's Cloud's make-up in her room and he sometimes cleans the rim of the toilet. They ignore trash and toys on the floor and toys left by the younger kids that are in the tub, they don't change out the trash. If there is toothpaste in the sink, they don't even wipe it up. They are not lazy! These kids are happy to help neighbors with their fences and unload groceries for friends parents. They have to be taught and they have to be reminded.

My husband and I have fought over him staying up watching Power Rangers at 10:30 at night on a school night because the kids stay up. (I am winning.) By having a set time for bed and the kids seeing that I am strict with it, they are already managing their time better.

Last night my husband took the kids to a harvest festival and I stayed home to clean. I didn't mind it. I changed the little kids' sheets and today the older ones will have me standing in their rooms while they change sheets and pick up under their beds.

This will all come togther, but this isn't easy. The beauty of it is that it isn't supposed to be easy but that as parents, this is what we do.

My last 20 years represented on a dishcloth

2010-10-28T23:36:00.000-07:00

I am still talking about the fire, but I have realized that as I return to a base that I don’t want the old one that I had. For 15 years, I had wanted to finish college, I wanted to get out and do something, almost anything, just as long as I could get out. I think my biggest problem was that I did not have a consistent outing to go on. This was not my husband’s fault, but just our life circumstances. My friends had left state and all I had was church and my children, and a poor husband who was worn out but needed to pay attention to his bright but dimmed wife, begging for conversation and telling him of the ridiculous aspects of her day. Every time I was about to get my tubes tied, my dad stupidly called the day before and in a nasally passive aggressive way would try to be funny and ask when I was getting fixed. I’d tell him that I didn’t appreciate that and instruct him to f-off. I love all of my children and don’t want to send any back, but if I could so it over again, I’d finish college, then have kids.

Going back to normal is a concept I don’t understand. I suppose that when I was having children constantly and I was one of three stages, either post partum, pre-partum, or partum for 12 years, me returning to college was normal for me. But in college, I had two young children and we got around Anchorage by bus! I still miss college, but it’s a lot to do. Right now with having kids in college, high school, junior high, and elementary school, it is everything I can do to keep dog paddling and getting through my day. What is normal? It has never existed. Right now I want peace and quiet and order to my day. If I manage to get the kids out to school with no one having lost shoes, misplaced coats or missing the bus and the ones who need rides get to school with 10 minutes to spare, I am over the moon with happiness!

I have been knitting and it is knitting that has made me aware of certain things. I have failed many classes in college because I just couldn’t put the time in. I didn’t know why formulas for statistics just didn’t stay in my head. The other day I went to see my knitting teacher and I was doing well on a new method and then her son decided to turn on retard-TV. It was a really lame show about two rich white kids doing stupid stuff. At the time I didn’t see a link, but I was losing my counts. I came home and was doing fine until the kids ran up stairs and started to bicker. I had to frog an entire base for something that I had been making. I switched to a dishcloth because I need to make a bunch and the same thing happened. Sequences of stitches are easy to memorize and if you look at your work, you can decide what you need to do with just a little foresight. I was losing it all and getting upset until it hit me that this has been my entire life for the last 20 years! People have tried to tell me but I wasn’t listening. I may sound like a bad mommy, but the kids went to bed early that night. ALL of them were in bed by 9 and I took Cloud’s cell phone so she would have to do something else!

The fire shook me up. It erased everything that I knew, and put me and my family in a hotel, then into a rental house for just under a year. I didn’t really think of college for that year as it seemed so unimportant.

A few weeks ago, Eldest Child called me and asked if I could “cook a pig on a spit” for her and her friends when she came up in January. I was annoyed because I don’t eat pork and whatever I cooked in that manner would cost upwards for $400 and I wasn’t throwing a wedding. Later, I read her FaceBook page and realized that she must have found it funny to say that as she had posted it to her friends. To me, it was more work, more money to spend.

Earlier this evening she called me and asked about a strange theme to family photos, and family pictures are not on my agenda. She has been gone for six months and I just don’t want to plunk the cash down or get new outfits for this occasion. She is also up here two months earlier than planned for a friend who is getting married. She wants to borrow a spare vehicle with has some issues and I don’t want her driving it. I am worn out and don’t want her here during the week. Call me terrible, but her timing during autumn flu season is terrible and I don’t want her here mid-week. I was happy to have her here right after Christmas break because I’d be winding down. Now I am still settling in and her being here gets all the kids going 90 miles an hour and they turn into hyper brats. She is a typical eldest child and we have two chiefs here.

I feel like I am getting old, but I think that next year at this time, change won’t terrify me. I had changes in plans and unannounced visitors annoy me. I want to get to what I am happy doing and then invite people in as I can handle it. I think I am mentally making a foundation for myself.

It is not that this is hard, but it is not easy, either.

Blogging, cancer and knitting

2010-10-21T23:49:00.000-07:00

I have been found though a friend of a friend and I am doing some Hospice-type volunteering. Many years ago I did Hospice officially and I loved it. People wondered why I did it with six little kids and the truth was, I loved it because I would do things like laundry or make my clients dinner (sometimes feeding them) and it would get done and I could enjoy it being done. With my size family, it takes me two days to do our wash if I don't do it every day. It was nice, and my clients would THANK me and the warm feeling stayed with me for a whole week or until I would next see them. Moms are expected to do their work and it is how it is; I might get thanked, but it was (is) always while the person was (is) undoing what I just did and in spite of the compliment, I felt (feel) futile.

So, this friend of a friend knows that I will be blogging about her and is happy for what I can do. I am NOT raising money for her and she does not want me to raise money for her. You will never get her real name from my blog, She is a lady in her late 50's who has a stealthy cancer. She may have six months to live or she may have a year, depending on how she responds to palliative treatment. The doctors are not expecting to cure her. I am not serving her in an official capacity with a Hospice-- through the grapevine it was discovered that I knit and that I have told loving stories of death. Seriously, I am not scared of it and I have happy stories of the work I have done, unofficial as it has been.

I am making "Natasha" a shawl that she will wear to keep warm for one last season of winter, that she will give to her daughter to wear for her wedding and perhaps wrap her eventual grand baby in. Her daughter was going to move her wedding back, but Natasha didn't want that. She doesn't know how she will feel from day to day and her daughter always wanted a June wedding. Of course she also imagined her mother there which was more important, but Natasha has her own agenda. Things may change, but she wants a shawl to give her to wear, so this is my job.

Why am I, a busy mother of 7 still at home even considering this? Well, this time of a person's life is an honor to spend with them and it is nice, but this kind of work is altruistic and I don't feel guilty stepping out to hang out with this lady and do what I love best, to knit!

I'll be updating from time to time in choosing a pattern and yarns because it is fun.

Am I back? Yes, I think I am back.

2010-10-21T23:04:00.000-07:00

I don't know where to start. My life for the past year has been hectic, to say the least.

We are moved in to our new home. We will have candles to light on the dining room table because I want the kids to not be afraid of them and my husband will show the kids how to be safe with a gas grill which also terrifies me due to being at a party where there was a problem with one 15 years ago. Each time we go over safety. Do we have a stable table? (I always say, "Stable and table rhyme! Cool, huh?") Is there clutter around? Is there anything above the candle than can catch fire?

My house is a bit bigger and the mortgage is larger than the old one, but we are managing. The kitchen is huge-- on the kitchen level it is only the kitchen, dining room and living room. There are four levels where we are more spread out. Of course only a few days being here, I decided that I needed a second refrigerator and a second dishwasher! My husband was shocked, but what can one do? We have a huge family. He asked how I could say that when I did so well with the postage stamp kitchen we had and I could only laugh. I complained and whined every time I made dinner in that kitchen! It is nice to not be eating off paper plates any more-- we didn't have a dishwasher and for our size family, the time to wash by hand wasn't worth saving the environment most of the time. (I got good at making sandwiches!)

My husband was gone for a week and I felt lonely in spite of all the kids. I went to the pound to look for a friends' cat and walked out with a chow chow. She and our dawg who was in the fire with us barely get along. He urinated on the stairs after he tried to turn her into dinner, but now they are OK together. The other day they were curled up asleep and the chow woke up and was silent and then Wag woke up and growled at her and she barked and he had a mouthfull of hair that he was gagging up and she sauntered away.. He likes to lie places and growl whenever she tries to go past him, something that he did in the old house with the cat.

The chow needs her hair combed every day and I often wonder what I was thinking when I got her, but it is nice to sit and comb her. She is low key except for when we have our walking time and she wants to run. There is a dog who lives up the road from us and she has never met it, but when she goes past his house, she puts her paws on "his" lawn and he goes crazy at the window. When he comes here, he does the same thing past our place! Her former owner was leaving state and took her to the pound. I had no idea what a chow chow was like, and what I thought was odd is normal. They are truly unique animals; when the lady at the pound said that Pouf liked me, I had no idea how she could tell because she ignored me. Apparently if she didn't like me she would have growled and barked at me. Pouf was no weak dog who would love anyone, and she let people know if she didn't like them! My husband came home from his trip and was aghast by all her fur and thought she was bigger than she is. She looks like a giant cloud that looks like a lion! She is older, but if I were to say my dog breed, I would have to say I am a chow chow person. This being said, I will probably always adopt pound rescues and when I am ready for a new dog, the right one will be there at the animal shelter waiting for me.

My windows in this house are great! Through the dining room window-- there is an arch on top, you can see the mountains through the arched window. We live in a neighborhood in Mat-Su that looks like Anchorage and I always think I will pull out on Diamond when we get out, but we are, alas, in the middle of Wasilla!

Since the fire I am an organizational freak. About three months before the old house burned down, I started getting rid of junk. I had lots of it. Much had to be secretly tossed because the kids and my husband hated to see me throw things out. Most of the clutter was clothes that I had no idea how they got there. (What had been happening was probably that well-meaning people, perhaps neighbors and friends, dropped bags of stuff off in the middle of the night and after I got mad a few times, I think the kids took them in and put them in the laundry area to be washed. I have had a few friends start giving us stuff and I just take it to the thrift store rather than get mad or insulted.) This house is getting organized.

The kids have problems with me now. I hold the line and expect them to fold towels a certain way, and stairs have to be vacuumed, including the "crease" of the stairs where the next stair goes up. I have been told that I have gotten demanding and mean, as I also expect the older kids to put away their laundry! I check it every day and until they organize it reasonably well, I will check every day. While cleaning the rental home, I found almost new stuff under dressers and behind beds. We spend money on these things! Yes, I like them to be clean and organized and be able to know where their stuff is!

So life is happening again. I am worn out, but I feel like I am settling.

Moving moving moving!

2010-09-14T23:46:00.000-07:00

For the past several months, we have been up in the air. To rebuild or not to rebuild. We have gone back and forth and forth and back. For a while I didn't want to rebuild and I dragged my husband around to look at homes that were for sale and he wanted to rebuild. My former neighbor bothered me and I kind of didn't want to go back, especially after the fire where she was more needy for assurance than I was (with the house burning) while shock took over my senses. Every week over the summer, my husband told me that we were going to rebuild "next week!" He told me about me having my own space and about redesigning my own kitchen and I started to like the idea.

About six weeks ago, he came home and said we were buying a house. I cried and said unprintable words. After a few days, I got past it (but not over it!) and we looked for a house. One day I was looking through a neighborhood and an agent was having an open house for other agents to see his house. I made eye contact with him and he yelled, "Come on in and check it out!" My five kids in the car scrambled out and tripped over each other on the lawn as he laughed and said, "Welcome home, Mom! Don't worry, there is nothing here they can break!" My kids were like a heard of elephants running through. There was a house across the street that we went to go look at that we liked better-- it was painted inside various colors and it was more "me--" the colors made me happy and solved the problem that I had of wanting color on my walls. It was a little smaller but it had more storage space. Lots of green. Toile drapes on the French doors that went to a tiny balcony that is just big enough to hold a telescope and my husband who likes telescopes and small balaconies, a rec room, a huge kitchen open to the living room, nice bedrooms with closets with closet organizers.

I was still blue. It is hard to explain-- I don't know if I could have been happy. The anniversary of the fire was on Friday of last week and I was just glum. Don't get me wrong, I was not depressed-- just sad. Moving was a Hurculean task that I had to do with some family members being not so good about helping to get their things together and another one who plays on his computer when I ask for help in cleaning the garage to get boxes out.

Today my best friend from elementary school came out. She lives out of state but came up on business. In all honesty, I wanted to just pack, but she needed me to help with her ten year old daughter while she worked and her daughter is sweet and fun. The two of them met me at my new house where we have not signed and I got measurements for drapes. My best friend was running through the house with the agent when I got there late and bubbling over with excitement. She knows me-- she had IDEAS where I could put things if I still liked them. It was like my "sadness glasses" were replaced with hope and I had something to look forward to.

Then one of my other friends came over in the evening. He grew up across the street from me. Before we ate dinner, I showed him my old house foundation and we marveled that I had 11 people there. Then we went to my new house and he was excited about my yard and kept saying, "This is a blank slate! At your old house, you had a problem with wilderness encroaching on your doorstep, but this is a nice yard begging for you to plant it with grapes and apple trees! If my wife were here, she'd be tripping over herself!" Again, I was looking at it with new eyes. Then I took him to the botanical gardens and he asked me what I loved and told me to start planning because I could plant them next year!

It was a funny thing because the last thing I wanted was to visit with my friends-- I cannot tell you how ticked I'd be if my husband wanted to go see his pals so close to moving. Part if me was irritated that they were coming as I was moving, but what can you do with business for two people? You take what you can and if it meant I had extra on the weekend or the week, so be it. I'd not seen one friend in 16 years and other other in 7. Now I feel like G-d himself planned it so that I would see them so close to moving in. I needed to see them today when I am reasonably certain that we are signing on the house and to have them be happy for me so that I would pick up on it. My guy friend was telling me how the sun will be and where to plant things-- suddenly it makes sense. I won't be spending $500 every summer only to not get anything planted. I know what to do.

Even with a great landlord, we have had a hard time putting emotional energy into our rental property. We could plant things, but we didn't know how long we'd be here.

For the past few months, my husband and I have not been getting along. I have had nothing happy to say about him (nor would he have anything good to say about me were he asked, but he is nicer than me and probably wouldn't say anything.) The stability factor in my life had been shaken-- my old house, everything that I knew, that was all thrown up in the air and even a nice new house was more unfamiliarity for me. I feel like having two friends who were my foundation for years while I was growing up have helped me take my eyes off the tightrope I have been on for so long to see the good.

Starshine, my tiniest one, is in preschool and she is my helper. I look forward to planting with her next year.

Now we just have to get things worked out with the bank and we will be in by the end of the week!

School is about to resume! My life is about to resume!

2010-08-07T00:21:00.000-07:00

I used to hate mothers who gushed about school starting and how they couldn't wait to get their kids out of the house, but it is for the sakes of the mothers as well as the children. Summer is fun for a few weeks and then it gets old and the kids like to have things to do. (Three months is really too long for a break, but having been in a custody battle in the past, I know that when judges split it between parents, the six weeks can be a great break to egt away from a parent that the kids can't stand.) This summer has been wetter than usual so there has been a lot of time spent indoors. As this to me feeling stagnant and a bit depressed and yes, I want them back in school. I can't wait to resume normal life with a routine and no fighting. They don't fight much when they can come home and gush about school and everyone has things to talk about.

This past summer has been pretty boring with Basil getting a broken arm. He is gaining full use of it and doing well since he got his cast of a couple of weeks ago. I got him a physical therapist, with no thanks to his bone doctor. I was galled because I used to be in sports medicine wrapping injuries on the field and helping athletes and asked for my son to get a recomendation to see a PT. The doctor refused saying that my son would be fine. What I saw in my work had been that athletes of all levels would get injured when they were not fully healed because they didn't know how to get back into shape, so I pressed on and got another doctor to write a prescription for it. Keep in mind that this is for several visits for rehabilitation of his arm before school resumes, not a prescrition for Rx! He didn't hurt, but he was very weak with that arm. I tried showing him some exercises, but Mom telling him to do some hand exercises is not the same as the uber cool PT. His PT is also a fox-- one of those athletic chicks who perspires "I have it together" and he likes working with her. (She could demonstrate wearing moose antlers and it would look cool!)

Because of Basil's injury, we have done very little-- his cast went up far on his arm and he had a hard time staying clean.

My older kids are officially at their new high school and middle school. Just knowing that we are probably moving to the neighborhood has changed my perspective. I feel like I can engage in life now and start to leave the fire behind. This is no longer temporary since we are not moving back to our old property: Cloud will most likely graduate from her high school and so, probably will Guy. I assume that they rest of the kids will, also from this area. They are in charter schools across town though so this will be "fun."

So now I don't have to be sorry about writing about the fire! It will soon become part of my past. I so much didn't want it to define me, but where you live is a big deal and I found myself talking about why I wasn't where I should be quite often.

We've not heard back from a bid that we placed on a house last night, but we are hopeful. My husband bid a little lower, but not much. Cloud kept talking about the house in particular and crying, "When will Dad bid on it? Someone else might take it!!!" The anxiety in her voice was causing my blood pressure to shoot up as I could feel her worry as I have also felt like this. When we were talking to he academic adviser at school she suddenly got sad-- she didn't know if she'd graduate from there and got really sad because she was excited about some academic programs that they have at her new high school. I wound up telling her and she shot up straight into the air and screamed and started jumping up and down hearing that we really placed a bid on the house that she likes. I swore her to secrecy that she not tell her brothers because I don't want them all worrying and asking. She felt better and in fact she hugged her adviser telling her, "I can ride my bike to school in good weather! OMG, this is the best day of my LIFE so far!" Then she paused as she remembered that the fire took her bike and then she resumed her joy, "I can walk to school in a half an hour or less!" She was so happy that when we went outside, she saw her younger brother who has Aspberger's (high functioning, but clueless half the time and we don't know what his him being a guy and his condition!) and she ran up to him and hugged him. He screamed and thought she wanted to give him a noogie!

This new area is great-- Cloud also explained to me that from the house we want that we can walk to church which is something I had envied people at my husband's church who lived near by. We even do it from our present location.

In the 12 hours since I last wrote of my frustration I am feeling better. We were at my church today for a children's function and I found myself thinking who I wanted to be friends with now that I know we won't be changing churches if we move because we won't move.

I am scared of a fire in the new house even though it is extremely unlikely. We will be buying escape ladders and learning to use them, as well as fire extinguishers and talking to the kids about grease fires (smother them with baking soda or salt, not water) and other ways to avoid a fire.

I adore my real estate agent and have entertained ideas on becoming a real estate agent because I can think of nothing as vital as selling someone a home.

My husband is going to give me a little dog for my stress over the past 11 months. Our real estate lady has a cute, cold nosed dog and I carried it around our marathon house hunting and decided that I liked it. It is a toy dog and he says that if I take it for walks that I will be trolling for eagles! I really like bigger dogs, too, but we will probably get a rescue for a bigger dog. We have one who came with us from the fire and he is great, but we want a couple more as our house will be bigger and I like not being alone.

Going though my rental house is a headache. How have we amassed so much stuff? What is worth driving across the neighborhood and putting some place?

I just want to get into this house soon. I will be more happy when we move in. I am not happy. I have not spent the last year being wistful, but I have never felt stable. I have become pals with a local artist who has a shop and with an art store owner and this has been nice, but I would stay friends with them anyway. If we get this one house, we will have a TV room and a living room and rooms for the kids, areas for PC's and laptops so the kids can work on school work and we know they are not playing games. There is a bar in the kitchen that stands alone that I can put taco or burrito fixings on, or maybe have potato night and put things on it, then we can sit down in the ample dining room. We can have my husband's sister's big family over. My husband says he will make a room for me in the garage-- nothing permanent, but I will be able to have space for my art supplies.

I got my kids into knitting and now Cloud has signed up for an art class. I so much didn't like my kids doing "my" stuff with me-- I didn't know how to share it and a cringed when I let them try. My eldest two daughters love to draw and paint in spite of how I was over my things and they are both very good, but I was over protective which is sad. I am buying good tools for the kids to use and showing them how to take care of them. I think part of me being OK with them using my stuff is that I have had an artistic friend show them how to do some things and they listen to her on taking care of brushes and use of materials where they won't listen to me.

I was getting sad a few days ago and Mudd had been given some plastic animals at a birthday party and he wanted to play with me and he held an elephant and I held a mercat and he had his elephant tell me how much it made him sad to see the mercat cry. I think I am getting better.

The fire fall-out

2010-08-06T12:11:00.000-07:00

I am still tlaking about it. I am more sorry that anyone can imagine.

All summer we had planned to build. In May I got sick of waiting and got my husband to look at real estate with me. He insisted that we build but thinsg were not happening. Our housing market is glutted and the bank was making it easier to buy an existing structure rather than rebuild.

In a nutshell, two weeks ago today my husband came home and told me that we needed to buy or size down out house. I am not proud of the new swear words that came out of my mouth. I adjusted, put 300 miles on the SUV and found houses for sale-- lots of them!

A few days later I had calmed down and I called an agent and that day my husband came home and said we could build. I was seriously furious and I topped the previous spree.

Over the last two weeks he has gathered information and we went back and forth and forth and back. Three days ago we met with the bank and it was confimed that borrowing for an existing dwelling would have a lower interest than borrowing for the house of the same amount. We palced a bid last night.

I like the house-- it isn't as big as the one we wanted to build, but it's lay out is decent and clever. The people who own it have loved it and taken good care of it. The kids love it, too and they like the neighborhood. We parked a ways away from it and walked through it about a week ago and Basil knows everyone now-- he is such a young politician in that regard! The neighborhood is full of pretty houses. Tiny front yards and bigger back yards, but as a whole it is pretty to look at. Some of the houses are tastefully bright, many have elegant rock gardens. (I want a pretty rock garden with a wroght iron table and chair duo for mine. I will sit and drink tea and look elegant! LOL)

Of course we made the bid and my nightmares began again-- several bedrooms overlook the garage and are quite high. The local fire department is very happy to come over when I am ready and show me and the kids how to safely use an emergancy ladder to get out of a 2.5 story window and show us how to use fire extinguishers, although I worry that my three middle sons will turn into pyromaniacs trying to find an excuse to use the ladders and the fire extinguishers! The chief told me that few have emergency equipment and fewer still know how to use them.

It is not the fire-- it is the year of transition that we have had that has been hard on me, personally. The kids love the adventure so I am doing well with it for them, but it was different for my husband vs. me. I am glad that he wasn't the one to light the candle that got knocked over. I think I am more careful than he is and I would have been angry at him. The kids could have been hurt, but once I got Starshine out of harm's way, I think she and Dmitri would have been fine. I took some very stupid risks as I had no idea what I was up against when I went into that room to put it out. What scares me more than anything was how close I came to being hurt-- a person running into a room that is on fire is likely to get hurt. They could have seen their mother ignite and the only thing Dmitri could have done was get out and get help and he'd be shouldering the what-ifs. I know better now and I am very blessed.

Anyway, I have been told by a professional that I am stage-specific where I need to by and I can put this behind me once we settle. I really wish we'd moved before school resumed, but now it looks like we will be moving int he first few weeks and this is a mega drag as the kids are in advanced programs with lots of schoolwork that they cannot get behind on. Transition is never fun, but we will make it through this, too.

And things get better. . .

2010-07-26T18:49:00.000-07:00

Fortunately my sadness abated today as I took my 14 yo daughter out looking. By the end of the second hour, she was guessing prices accurately on houses and thier number of bedrooms and how big the acerage was. To say that I was impressesed is an understatement. At one point she said, "Four and three quarter acres. Lake view. Five bedrooms. $715,000. They will take $685,000." I split hairs-- what was 4 and 3/4 acres over 5? She said to me, "Look at the hill. It cuts off over there and I saw a lake on the other side."

She explained to me some other things that she saw at a glance, how other homes were being priced. She is turning into my mother with her eye for detail in the blink of an eye. I always thought my mom was psychic but her sixth sense probably has more to do with observation and mental figuring than anything else.

She was the same with places more in our price range and was calculating other factors. Could this girl become a real estate ace? I have to say that I'd not trade the day for anything, really-- my daughter showed a head for business. I will call my mom and tell her and she will be thrilled.

Basil got his cast off-- he broke his arm 6 weeks ago and he'd wanted to take it off on his own a few times (he is 11, my skateboarder.) He got it off today and felt terrible-- all those nerves that were quieted on his arm were not liking the new sensations. He asked the doctor for a brace (no way, he needed to start using it) and he came home and took a shower and got the dead skin off. Now he is pretty used to it. "Mom, may I go to the skateboard park?

"What would your doctor say?

"Never mind."

Lingering in Limbo

2010-07-26T05:15:00.000-07:00

I have a very frusterated post about building-- the house is not going up as we cannot afford it. I am shocked as I only suggested it in the beginning and after a summer of hearing how it will start "next week" and keeping me in the dark, I know it will not go up.

My original post was derogratory about my husband and while I mean it. I probably should wait a few days and think about it first. It was not written in anger.

I had hoped to be writing about rebuilding or finding a happy new house. I am not. Now I am sadder than I was right after the fire.

The irrational overcame the rational

2010-06-04T09:34:00.000-07:00

There were things about the house-fire that I don't know if I blocked or if the situation was so far moved from reality and traumatic that it took a similar weather day to bring them back. Today I went to voter registration to change my address and they said that I had changed it in September. I was blank-- I did? Later on in the day I would remember it, I'd gone down to vote early to make sure I voted for my friends in the election. I know Erick Cordero was in it for school board, but I forget who else.

It was like my rational side hid during the fire and my non-thinking, only reacting side took over. It's a good thing because had the rational side taken over, I'd have panicked. Whatever I did wrong, I did right by always keeping a clear path (no matter how small!) between me, the fire and an exit.

A few weeks after the fire, Mudd started getting hystrical in the suburban and not wanting to get out or leave me alone. I didn't know what to do and he demanded that I take him to the house and he led me by the hand pointing things out then he asked me, "Were you stupid to go back inside the burning house? Will you do it again?" He was cute, he wanted the assurance that Mom wasn't going to do anything stupid again. I promised him that yes, I was stupid and that I'd nver run back into a burning building. I say he was acting hysterical, but he wasn't. If my mom ran inside a burning building, I'd have issues!

(I told my husband about remembering the smoke over dinner and he countered with a story about work and his colleague who is a former jet fighter who is now bored out of his brilliant gourd and I was floored that he mentioned him when he did. I really don't chatter about this all the time!)

Anyway, I had a major problem that I didn't recall if the house was smoky when I went back in. The fire marshal said it was smoky and there was no reason for him to joke about that and said to me, "Trust me, it was smoky." OK, but I didn't think it was. (He said, "I'm right. You'll remember it later." He likes to be right which is good because well, he is right. Always.) All today I have been feeling just out of sorts and realized that the weather is similar to that day. That day is was overcast and a little sunny-- it was a perfect autumn day, really. Not warm, not cold. There was a breeze, but it was a nice breeze where you get the wind blowing through your house and it gets rid of the stale air. I have a window cracked most of the time-- so many people in a small house makes the moisture an issue, but I never thought about it until we moved into another small house that had fine ventilation before we came in!

So today I felt weird, then I called a few people who know about these things and they all said I was grieving. Maybe it is because I am home and not running around and I have time on my hands, or maybe it is because this is reminding me of the weeks before the fire in the old house that I have time to think contemplatively.

I let Cloud deal with the dinner and she was messing with her phone and let them start smoking and there was a haze and the fire alarm went off. I looked up and I just remembered the smoke. It was nothing bad or freaky at that point, I was just like, "There was smoke in there." Only the back bedroom beyond the dining room was on fire and I saw an orange glow emitting from it and there were flames coming out from the top of the door. There was lots of smoke in the dining room. I saw flames outside the sliding glass door on the other side of the dining room. I am surprised that I ran to get my computer which was not far from it. It would wind up being shot when I got it, but it worked for a few weeks off and on. I wouldn't have tried to leave from the sliding glass door if it was my only way out because it didn't work on it's good days.

I got my purse and looked at the vase that my bff from high school gave me and remembered that I had fallen earlier. I am glad that I did think to rescue it, but not glad at my logic in that I thought that it would be safer to have the firefighters rescue it than for me to risk falling with it! LOL (This is from the girl who had realized the bedroom was on fire while putting out the fire and knew that she had to leave the house, so she ran to the other room to blow out the other candle!)

I remember intense heat in the house. Think about how hot a fireplace is when you are standing 3' in front of it, then think of a 12' X 10' bedroom most likely all ablaze and how much heat that would send out! I knew it was hot in the room on Thanksgiving when I took out the turkey, but I forgot about the house.

Now I remember driving the kids in the rusty suburban up the road to where they didn't have to see the house burning. Starshine was in her underwear as she had been changing her clothes which started the whole thing and that surprised me momentarily and it reminded me why the house was burning-- she'd had clothes in the dresser, on top of which had sat the burning candle. I was confused because the fire had been across the room. Later I'd realize that the whole closet was on fire and I walked past it. In a long skirt. (I don't dress like that any more-- except on hot days. Long, light skirts are cool on hot days!)

I need to go back to where I was getting emotionally before the fire. Fridays meant the house had to be reasonably clean for the Shabbat candles to be lit (privately, by me.) I had been feeling a marked improvement every week. I was sneaking excess stuff out of the house and purging. I feel like it was for naught, but had the clutter been there, it could have had me killed as I’d have tripped over it trying to leave! Seriously-- the tiny hallway between bedrooms housed the washer/dryer but had been 3' deep with clothes. You could not walk through it and most of the stuff was from people knowing that we had a huge family and DUMPING stuff on our porch in the middle of the night. I'd sneak things out to the trashcans on Thursday mornings before trash collection or a bag in each one right after it was collected so my husband or kids wouldn't try to get it out. "Hey, this still has some use!" Bah!

I'm not Jewish, but knowing that my Jewish friends who are Orthodox were crazily cleaning house made me feel a part of it and I was in with them, even though it meant nothing to Jews world-wide. Mudd called challah bread, "bready-cake". I served it at sundown on Friday night and would have a small feast. The kids were like, "Late night snack! Woo-hoo!"

So, this is what has been going on. The only time it got surreal was when I was reflecting to my husband and he responded with something about this one guy from work and said we were having a conversation. It's like talking about school and your convo partner responding with something about the price of coffee. THIS IS MY CONSTANCY!!!

Anyway. . . I don't know if I will ever return to normal or what I knew as normal. Everyone is a year older. Three seasons have passed. I'm not keen on candles even though the investigator told me that I should light them just to show safety. Since he also said that if I don't, at least some may marry candle freaks or have roommates who are into candles and they need to be able to know what is safe and what isn't, I will do as he says.

More Ink for Tea!

2010-05-29T14:34:00.000-07:00

Probably nothing is wrong, but I just got a letter from the imaging center asking for previous images. Probably nothing is wrong. If there was something wrong, I'd have gotten a phone call that would be overly assuring and sugary sweet, assuring me that everything was OK, but that they wanted me to come in to talk, and to bring my husband. Of course I can't call the first place for my images today and we are at the start of a long weekend. (sigh)

The only reason I am worried is because I started having problems after the fire and then I saw my GYN's nurse at a restaurant which I feel were sigh-ns. Whenever I die (and it's probably not soon) and my guardian angel and I are able to communicate directly, if this is important to bring up, it will say, "Da--, Tea! I [insert things that I missed here], then I let your house burn down so you'd start having problems and take notice, then I had you run into that nurse-- geez, you were dense at times!"

I hate this waiting period. Dr. Seuss wrote about The Waiting Place in his book Oh, the Places You'll Go! If something is wrong, I am hooked up with the best organized church on the planet and I know that if I need help in getting to appointments that they may help arrange it. Since my husband's little church helped us post fire so much, I worry about overtaxing them. In the mean time, I volunteer and help out at the church I attend as much as I can and put in time to help.

Nothing is wrong, nothing is wrong. God, I hope nothing is wrong-- but if it is, it is probably early. The last scans were three years ago right before I went to see my dad when he died.

I told my husband and he was cool about it—his insurance is changing over for the coming year and this is just in time to get results back to see how much money we can ask to be taken from his paycheck and put into his medical account.

You of course know what this means, right? If something is wrong, I am getting a tattoo! If something isn’t wrong, I am getting a tattoo! Right quad, the strongest muscle in the body.

First week of school being out. . .

2010-05-25T21:24:00.000-07:00

I have been running children to the dentist since last week. How many trips does it take a mother with 7 at home to get their teeth fixed?

Eldest daughter is leaving for another state soon. I am sad and seeing her for the last time before she leaves this Thursday. She is 12 hours away from the ocean and said, "I am next door to the ocean!" She thinks she will go every weekend!

I had to get a mammogram today. I can't talk medical stuff face to face and I want to crawl on the floor and stay in a fetal position, but saying it in a blog is OK. The lady who did it was great-- I chose the place because it is not my local hospital that I dislike. I in fact drove past the local hospital en route to going there and blew a raspberry at it in my rear view mirror. That made getting it done pretty darned fun. I will go back because the woman who did the scan was nice. She also spells her mane like I do, T-E-A LOL I got through it.

I also took my Giraffe with me. My giraffe is my protector-- he came through the house fire with me. I like to say that I ran in for my purse because of him. (But it was really for my driver's license!)

I sat in the wait room for a short time and knitted a prayer shawl for a friend. It comforted me as much as the friend comforts me.

Shock is a funny thing. . .

2010-05-25T09:06:00.000-07:00

Since the fire, my shock with things has worn off, but ever so often, I go back into it. This is not a bad thing because I am still coherent and fully functional, I just slip into a partial reality where I deny that I lost everything. The other night it happened again.

I was looking for something and couldn't find it. Cloud asked what I was looking for and I said I needed a pair of shorts and a tank top-- I knew they were around here somewhere. She said, "They burned up."

I smiled at her, no I had seen them just the other day. I told her which pair of shorts they were. She laughed and asked if I knew where my red sandals were to go with them. Yes, they were in my closet. She knows better than to make gutteral noises or to make fun of me and just said, "I hope you find them!"

My husband said, "They burned up. Here's my card. Go to Fred Meyer and buy yourself a new outfit." So intent was I that they were in my room or downstairs that I shoo'd him off, they were here!

After 20 minutes of rumaging I came upstairs, "You know, I think they burned up! May I have your card so I can run up to Fred Meyer and pick up a couple of things?"

No one thinks anything of this. (I did the same with Christmas decorations.) Before the fire struck, I had boxed up my summer clothes in RubberMaid boxes and they of course melted, so with many of our new things in similar boxes, my association seemed recent. It was thought that I was in serious shock because I seldom turn down an offer to buy new clothes, but I really just wanted to get to my yard work (haha-- and that was another casualty of the fire!)

Middle school is a drag

2010-05-18T23:41:00.000-07:00

Today a young person came home from a dance, very much devastated. At an age when sports should be prevalant, her hormones are running. The boy she asked to dance with her told her that he didn't dance with other guys. At 16 a response of this nature will get blown off as the guy being immature, but today there was something wrong, in this person's mind, with herself. No one would slow dance with this attractive young woman; she wants to be held by one of the immature boys who seem so cool and so detatched and above it all. The young woman is not immature, but she is very smart and very sensitive.

Middle School dances are really a snake pit.

My own 14 year old will not be happy when I announce that no one under 16 gets to go out on dates or to dances, but I am backed up on this by my 21 and 20 year old daughters who always went to the movies or to friends houses instead of dances.

Building a house

2010-05-18T21:58:00.000-07:00

I been showing signs of PTSD. Nothing bad, but I feel like a study for psych students of minor PTSD symptoms.

So I wanted to just buy a house that already existed. The first one was a friends' house, but it was $100,000 more than we could afford. As time went on, I became more interested in smaller houses. Oh, it wouldn't be hard to add on! Finally a real estate agent told me that if I could get a loan to either buy or build a bigger house, that with four kids rappidly becoming adults, that I'd be nuts to not either buy or build what we need or at least get something bigger if we could afford it. Adding on is OK if you are stuck with something. We are not. I didn't know why I took a shower and cried for 45 minutes after she told me that.

It took a couple more weeks, but I realized that me wanting a house that was too small was me wanting to go back to what I knew. It was upsetting to realize that in some way, I was reaching backward to grab what I knew.

Latest Hobbies

2010-05-10T00:17:00.000-07:00

A month after the fire, I couldn't sleep, so I was surfing around aimlessly on the 'net and click n' paid for a knitting class. I stared at the computer. WTF was I thinking? In high school, dateless girls knitted on Friday nights and virgin aunts of old would while away their spinster years discussing their latest knitting projects. Knitting was for women who had too much time on their hands! Certainly knitting helped a group of women in Scandinavia earn money during the Depression, but this was 2010, not 1938! I emailed the instructor and told her that I'd paid for the class but didn't know why, explaining that my mind wasn't right, and could I please get a refund. She was very sweet and said I could, but if it wasn't a scheduling conflict, why wouldn't I try it out? If I still wanted my money back, given my circumstamces, she'd be happy to consider it.

Dare I joke about a needle addiction?

I went and discovered that I have no time left as it is all spent on knitting! Instead of me getting a refund, I gave her more money so I could learn to cable and do lace, and then there were so many patterns!Spinster aunts of old retained their spinsterhood so they could knit! I should have taken up the kntting gir;s invitation to join them on Fridy nights!

Right now I am working on a Tree shawl that my teacher is helping me modify. It's a prayer shawl for my mum in London (don't confuse her with my mom in Tombstone, both who are fabulous women!)

I am also taking yoga teacher training. It is three times a week. My awesome teacher informed me that I am not trying as hard as I can and I was told that I am not allowed to say anything negative about my form. I cannot say anything she doesn't know. I am not mad in the least-- you don't pay a good teacher to tell her what you think, so you take their words seriously.

Today on Mother's Day I have been hit with allergies. My husband gave me a gift card to a local yarn store which is burning up in my purse, but I am savoring it for when I can buy a really nice hank of yarn. I am working on several shawls, all prayer shawls, of the same pattern. I am working on both ends so I will, by the end of the week, have six pair of needles with work on them. I am slow at getting this and the pattern is complicated in places, so I learn a technique, come home, work it out on each set, and return to my teacher. While it is tedious, I am retaining it and I remind myself that I like to knit so it's not terrible. (I wish I had six bodies for yoga so my evil little woman of a teacher could kill me and kill me again of different nights! PAH!) Knitting has probably staved off a depression for me-- after the fire, I wanted niceness around me. I was hiding in bed and just touching the sheets or holding a soft, plush blanket that Starshine was given-- I was never bad because I gave myself limits, but with the knitting, I have something to do and hold! I spend about 2 hours a day with it on non-yoga days.

Just another Crumpet Clan outing!

2010-05-04T13:10:00.000-07:00

The other night I took the kids to Saturday evening Mass. My husband was was out of town on business. I’d wanted to try for Mass for Sunday morning but as chaos built up here, I realized that getting out the door the next morning would just not happen. I told Cloud to get the little girls ready and the boys to get ready. Cloud put the little girls into flip-flops and tank top dresses. The boys were in t-shirts, as in, undershirts. They wore hoodies over them. I wouldn’t notice Cloud or her sisters until it was too late and we were taking off in the car. . . or the boys until they were in church and simultaneously removing said hoodies. I am in no way a prude, but for church, my boys need to wear something more substantial than undershirts even if they are clean, and no one in my family should bare their shoulders in a church unless it is a bride or her bridesmaids. Sandals are OK, but I don’t like my kids in flip-flops at church; they are way too casual and they don't pay attention.

At church, I parked the car with a few minutes to spare and felt proud of myself. Other people were arriving. Do my kids do what I have tried to train them to do, the same that I was trained to do without my parents ever telling me, did they wait around the car while everyone got out so we could walk in together? If I am asking you this, you know that the answer is no. My automatic locks on my newer suburban don’t work. It was like a trap set up to slow Batman down when they all hopped out of the suburban and sprawled across the parking lot and I had to simultaneously yell at them to slow down and wait of me while leaning over to lock doors manually. Cloud was loudly scolding her brothers over going too fast, 12 year old Guy was elbowing Calamity Jane over something. Starshine and Mudd were racing each other for a Darwin Award* and proving why we must walk with parents or older siblings to cross driveways. Dmitri had taken a seat, fortunately in the back of the church, but I’d have to look for him.

Going inside I realized that the door to the church was open, with the seated people clearly able to hear the havoc that Clan Crumpet was causing. The priest and his retinue were waiting and he was smiling at me, “Which of your kids get Communion?” I assured him that I’d spoken to them—all of them would. He suppressed a laugh, I wasn’t fooling him, I could talk to my crew all I wanted but I don’t think he thought they’d listen and if he did think this, he was probably correct.

Calamity Jane would complain that the music was too Protestant, she didn’t like the hymns and they “are not Godly.” She sings Gregorian chant at the Orthodox church and wouldn’t sing with us, “But I will do everything else with your people.” Guy was singing but grunting, drawing attention to his special needs. Cloud, in addition to being casual, had chipped nails and toe nails and that bugged me—if you want nail polish, fine, but keep them polished. (I’d later ask her if she would tape scraps of clothing to herself. Even in high school, my nails were perfect-- it was the bargain I did with my mom if I grew my nails out and got to paint them red. My spearing of olives with them drove my dad nuts, but she laughed in private over that.) Joey made loud comparisons to his fathers’ church and to the Catholics. Bash didn’t want to be touched so he sat on the far side of Dmitri. Dmitri was Dmitri and cute and sweet as ever, rebuffed by his brothers as he tried to show them things in the hymnal. At one point Starshine blew a whistle that I would confiscate, and she occasionally screeched because I wouldn’t allow her to pull down the kneeler or get up and sit with different family members. They handled Communion OK—the Most Precious Blood wasn’t spilled, but I think Bash may have gulped it.

Upon leaving, my crew separated yet again, but Father did get out with his escorts before we did, inspite of Bash trying to take off. Guy wandered away and went out another door when we got into the foyer. Twice I passed Father and said, “Good morning!” (It was aer 6pm.) I came back in to look for Guy and one of the deacons told me to bring them all back again, assuring me that we were OK. What was I thinking in having so many independent variables?!?!?!

I am allergic to booze because God knows that I would drink it often and this is an act of God that I cannot drink it. We came home and I put in a movie for them and sat in my room and listened to Bach and drank tea and ate Almond Roca.

Next time we get into the car, we will go over how I expect them to act when they get out of the car. When I spoke to them in the car on Saturday, they blamed each other which drove me to the brink of quietly pulling out my hair. We will talk about how to act in church and what to do if someone bothers you. It's complicated. I stopped making ugly faces and I don't even get mad at the kids beyond a short lecture. Restriction, reading a chapter on manners, none of it works. Maybe talking before church next time will help and maybe it won't. My children will most likely have children of their own and they may be as I often am with them!

*I sound like I am joking here. I am not. Parking lots scare the sh-- out of me be I driving in them where there are people, kids or adults, running around, and they scare the sh-- out of me when it's my kids or hsuabnd running around in them. In theory, my children watch out for the little ones with me!

The accumulation of stuff

2010-04-22T08:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Own the Sidewalk talked of the accumulation of stuff and of her finacee, MLB, asking her to use up ten products before she buys more. Never has this weighed more heavily on me than as Darin and I wrap up our list for what we lost after the fire. Where was Maia as I was accumulating junk over the previous 13 years? Had we taken everything of my house and put it on the lawn, how much of it could we have put back in? What astounds me is how much I was cleaning out in the month before the fire since school had started and just how much junk was still in there.

I wonder if this will change my shopping habits in the future. Had the fire not taken all that junk and rendered it useless, I'd have purged it in the coming year as I cleaned and it would have wound up at a thrift store or at the dump.

~~~~~~~~

My human garbage disposals have eaten all the food that I'd bought for school lunches for the next week. We have our makeshift pantry in my bedroom which has a lock on it, but with time, they have been allowed to come in to get things to make school lunches and they left things as they come in, taking an extra energy bar that was meant for the younger ones, or other snacks, an extra juice packet. It adds up fast. I tried to accomodate them and buy several days worth of extras, but they seemed to have lifted even more, having seen an abundance. Next week they are going to budget time and take turns baking snacks. I'll save money and it's better for them in the long run.

My pantry at the old house had a lock on it, as did the freezer. I hated this because there have been a few big families who have been in the paper for abuse and who had padlocks on fridges and pantries-- I of course realized that this all had to do with worse problems. I am constantly amazed by how much even Calamity Jane eats and she is only 7 and eats more than I do, but is quite slender. (I didn't breast feed her, either.) Her brothers are the same. Where do they manage to put all of it?

Build-a-house. . . create-a-bear of a mother!

2010-04-18T20:40:00.000-07:00

I am doing the insurance list and it is a BEAR! Why wait seven months? I couldn't do it. It made me sad. Today some friends had rented a public venue and the whole family was invited, but I sat down after church with the list and started ploughing through it. I was laying things to rest. It was sad at first, but an hour into it and I was just getting it done.

I am floored that the demo crew tossed things like jewelry. A cross pendant was tossed. It couldn't be cleaned? Really? I am only a size larger than I was in high school and I still had coats, jackets and blazers that still fit and those were all gone. I saw them-- I think that at least a few of them could have been saved.

Building a house is a hassle. I was in over my head with redoing our bathroom before the blaze. My husband and I would argue over colors or whatever. Building a house is not easy when you WANT to and have all the money you can stand. When you HAVE to build a house and you are limitted on resources, it feels pretty futile. (Or feudal. I am a flipping SERF and my husband thinks he is a lord who, because his name is on the loan, can decide what will happen.) We have a little game that I don't want to play where my husband and the builder ask me what I want. I say that I have my kitchen and my office and I want for nothing. They insist for my input. I ask for a budget to which they say, "Just say what you want!" I pitch forth an idea. I get told that I must think we are rich, we cannot afford that. So. . . I go on the cheap and get blasted because they say I am not telling them what I really want.

So. . . I have started hitting up real estate agents. We have seen some houses that we like but in our price range, they are out beyond the boondocks. My husband said that we have to be near our original house or closer to a certain road. I agreed. . . and then a house went up for sale in our size a couple of minutes away. I really hope we like it and can get it. Meimploding is NOT pretty.

A couple of weeks ago I started belly dancing and doing yoga. We can't afford it, but I have to move my body. After the fire I should have kept up with the yoga and started dancing. Belly dancing is really shoulder dancing-- I love it. I am not sore, but my muscles are having a party and screaming, "We're ALIVE!" It's great. I cannot explain how good this feels. The only thing-- I can't wear the costumes. I need the more conservative costumes. A lot of women don't have an issue with it, but I can't be showing off cleavage. I have children. Even for a fun performance, I don't feel right about showing as much as Westernized belly dance performers show. I will probably wear a version of an Indian sari.

Stephen Crewes Wylder of the Slow Train blog normally doesn't like my music, but he has turned me on to his. I've started listening to folk music. I'd love to belly dance to it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAKhuIavxw0&feature=related

The kids are being kids. I am finding that aspects of parenting that I hate are just signs of the kids getting older and needing other responsibilities. Unfortunately, as their mother I have to make them master their chores at home first. The bigger they get, the more mess they make and I do not like getting served it!

PS: I know what homeowners insurance is. I am not complaining about it nor do I want links sent to me telling me about insurance companies. This is about building a house. I am not complaining about my insurance company.

True Stress Management Techniques

2010-04-11T12:27:00.000-07:00

When I first started writing about stress management, it was for a class onthe same subject, where I could decompress. Over the years I have been updating on the family and my fire and as of yesterday, I got back to what it was all about. My yoga teacher decided that I will start teacher training with her, period. So, in May I will begine the first 9 week course with her of practicing three times a week. I am really happy about this.

How can I do yoga three times a week while building a house and maintaining a busy household of 7 kids still at home? Since resuming yoga just once a week two weeks ago, I don't know why I didn't force myself to go right after the fire. Two classes have my body working on things and the time I spent away has my body hungry for more yoga and body work.

I am getting more body awareness. There comes moments of release with it to where I sink more in to it and get better. I was pigeon toed* as a little girl and they made me wear special shoes to bed. When I was in college taking dance classes, I told my teacher that I couldn't imagine my body past my knees as I went down in a mental exercise. I was the class klutz and a light went on in my teacher's eyes and she was so happy that I told her that-- I'd really been a hinderance to her class and drove her nuts! She sent me to a kinesiologist who asked if I wore braces on my legs as a child. I didn't, but the shoes were buckled together and I was not happy one bit with them. She said that that had a lot to do with how I related to my body. She massaged my who body and told me how connected everything was and that my legs were fine in the now that we were at, that I was strong and capable and that my body was an instrument to play with the music as I danced. After that, my dance picked up and I was invited to try out for the University of Utah's dance program in Provo two semesters later. I couldn't, but I was good!

Then there have been other things since, like the violent situation that happened to me, child birth, the fire, things that imprint on me that have been stored in my body. Yesterday I let a lot go. My instructor prays and had us have mantras that she may or may not realize came from the Old Church. We talk to our bodies as we do the yoga-- it is an odd thing, but I felt things leave me yesterday that I have carried for periods of time. My body and I are a "we"-- it serves me well and I take care of it. There is much work to be done in me yet, but yesterday was a huge purging. No one saw it, but it happened. As I worked, images came into my head. The fire stress has sat over my kidneys in my lower back and I realized this as I was doing some leg lifts on the floor-- why it sat there I don't know (because there was no room anyplace else?) and I told my body to release it, it was scary, but it took care of us and we were safe, it ws time to build more muscle. Toxins came out in my breath, I felt a snappy-sensation, and it was the same all over as I stretched and breathed and exhaled.

So now I am going back to the movement study which is critical to my very existence. I look foreward to passing what I will learn on to my own students.

*What was a problem 40 years ago is thankfully not a problem today. An orthopedist told me that they find that in most cases, the body compensates and this is unique to each person. In some cases there are problems. It's worth getting checked out.

The Heights by Peter Hedges (Spoiler Alert!)

2010-04-07T22:36:00.000-07:00

I read Peter Hedges’ book, “The Heights.” I was disappointed at the end. The story was worth the read, though, because Hedges makes the characters important. Their dialogue is real—I get the impression that Tim and Kate are based on real people who allowed him to be a fly on their wall. What makes a character important and a book successful (so far, in my mind) is that each character is someone who we know and if not, they play into a stereotype. Tim is my husband, refusing to dress for a black tie occasion and stealing Kate’s thunder when all eyes are on her and he tires of the small talk and says something very obscure and brilliant. Kate is a stay at home mom who is exhausted with her kids and takes a job so that Tim can stay at home (she is not like me in this regard, but she works for an agency that gives grants and pays three times better than she would normally get, which I would love to do, so I can relate to her) Tim has a student who is in love with him—I can relate to that student in spite of his unflattering depiction of her. Then there is Anna Brody and her husband, Mr. Ashworth. Anna is a poor girl who married up, who just wants to be like everyone else and. . . who happens to want to bag average Tim because he is average, but she uses him to get her husband to drop his girlfriends and leaves poor Tim waiting for her at a hotel room. Jeff Slade is in love with Kate and he is a former debate friend from high school who is now all fluff but Kate goes for him after he loads her up with copious amounts of booze, and then she sneaks his speech that he gave to a group of “Wish Upon a Star” (similar group) recipients and when Kate takes his notes where he has his speech, she realizes that he planned to ‘get choked up, pause. Look at Kate. Cry. Smile. Sit down.’ (My book is not right here with me so that isn’t a direct quote.) The speech is important because it contrasts with Tim giving a speech at his father’s retirement party where he was forced to retire because of a sporting sex scandal at his college where he planned to say something truthful about his father, but confetti got stuck in his throat and everyone went wild for his speech. I did not like that it kind of had a moral to it for the masses. “You poor people! Your dull lives are so good! Dull sex every six months is OK! It really is!”

I like how Tim becomes a stay at home dad who tries to blend in with the other parents and gives them all names like, “Mom with Moxie” and “Bearded Mom” and one dad who he simply calls “The Weasel.” (I do that in my head at my husband's church, but my husband gets mad about it when I tell him.) I wonder about the other moms in the story, how they would speak about Tim and their lives.

By reading stories like this, I find that I can relate to my own life better. I am isolated and don’t relate to other women or the pecking order, so reading about these characters that I can relate to helps me see myself better and understand the motivations of others. Like Kate, I have taken the kids outside to trudge through the snow only to realize that I forgot to zip up my jacket and get myself ready to be out in the cold. I can sadly see myself leaving a phone bill for my husband to “deal with this!” and to talk to him about our children taking their first poop in the toilet and not flushing until he gets home. Sadly, I can also relate to utter boredom that they both experience in their marriage.

Tim did what I have done—he blundered at a costume party. Only in Tim’s case, he forgot the costumes that Kate had made, and in my case, I forgot the costumes that I had made! Like me, Tim procrastinates. I know his professors who get impatient with him.

Is this story good? Yes. It was worth the $20.00 that I paid for the book. I underlined bunches of phrases that I have worked into my own work and FaceBook status reports. It’s great because for the most part, I personally can relate to most of the characters. Based on what I have read of Hedges, he knows people like the super rich who add flavor to the book, but he doesn’t develop them. Am I so far out of touch that I’d never be able to relate to them if he did? They don'tneed developed characters because the book was not really about them—they were supporting characters who threw in the temptations for Kate and Tim. They were predators and as it should be in a book like this, Tim and Kate were the prey. They fall, but they get back up.

Pascha, insurance issues

2010-04-04T13:22:00.000-07:00

Last night I was happy that I eventually got to the Pascha service. It started at 11. My husband wanted to leave at 10 since Basil was to serve. I told him to go with the the kids who were up-- I was literally growling at everyone. I had wanted to sleep, but the kids and he were coming in to my room, playing 20 questions. I think I finally fell asleep after 9PM.

Around 5-6PM we were having fun dyeing eggs. The house was loud. I prefer classical music, but Dmitri wanted country and our sound was delightfully loud, with yelling, laughing, squealing (the kids fight and cause each other to make horrid sounds while they argue!) and music coming out of our house. It was great. I marinated some steaks for today’s feast and made fried chicken for the fast-break.

As soon as my mood perked up post nap-attempt, with Cloud making me lavender tea, she and I hopped around the living room playing Easter Bunny and we were silly. Yes, she saw her presents first and I think she got into her new make-up, but we had fun.

We got to church and I saw several women wearing long skirts (most do) and all I could think of was how I was wearing those damned things seven months ago. I have to admit, my heart caught in my throat a few times as young children were holding candles that flirted with igniting their mother’s skirts. (One lady’s hair did ignite very briefly as she bent over a toddler.) I can’t believe I dressed like that. Were my jeans and running shoes better than the long skirts and mostly heels and hair covers that make them look like noses with bodies attached? I can’t say that, but I was really glad that I quit dressing like that. Most looked like blobs and the Old World Look belongs with our grandmothers. Great-great-great grandmothers.

We missed the promenading around the church, but we got there in time to stand. Communion was about 150 people long. I really wished that a fire marshal had been there to say that it was unsafe. It really was unsafe. My inner insurance agent (who sounds a lot like my mother!) was yelling at me to get out, if there was a fire or an earthquake, the chances of getting out to safely with all my children. . . were not good. I kept thinking of my early morning yoga class where my teacher said that we did mantras not so we’d sweat in her studio, but so that when we were in the kitchen and the kids were yelling, or in crowded places where we felt threatened, that we’d remember to exhale.

At the fast break, one woman with a very precocious child kept apologizing for her daughter’s hilarious antics. I really started to get ticked because her 4 year old daughter is smarter than my seven year old and her apologies seemed to draw attention to how smart she is. Don’t get me wrong, I like them both, but I found her mother annoying and her daughter would have been funny if she had let her be. (Mom was knit-picking and I won’t be shocked if said daughter turns to crime in rebellion.)

We had a nice Pascha basket. Ours is never fancy or as pretty as other people’s baskets. There are just too many of us and no matter how big the basket is, we are always filled to overflowing (a blessing!) I made lots of fried chicken, cookies, and added yogurts, beer, Baily’s, cheeses, sausages, eggs and fruit that wasn’t part of breaking the fest, but still good. I ate sliced pears and cheese and fried chicken.

Calamity Jane and I wrapped presents and took presents for a few friends. Those were fun, but I hate giving presents because the receivers’ first responses tend to be, “But I didn’t get you anything!” and they are genuinely upset. These presents were pretty wind chimes that I’d found on sale and had bought several for gardeners who I know. Cloud was standing nearby and said to one person who said she didn’t get me anything, “My mom saw this and thought of you. Go home and open it, you will understand why. If you see something that makes you think of her, get it for her, but there are no strings attached to this!” I was happy for that. I hate that I can't get people something because it makes me happy thinking of them and leave it at that.

We got home to the dawg having eaten the Easter eggs that were not stuffed in shoes. He was gassy and seems ok, just gassy. (No eggs for Dawg!) I ranted about the rabbit and the kids laughed. My antics were convincing enough to have one of the boys quietly take me aside and ask if I had hid the eggs or not! The kids liked their baskets-- I didn't buy baskets this year because they get crushed in moves, so I made lunch sack baskets with candy and presents on the outside.

My husband made me a really nice basket with chocolate and tea-- that was really sweet of him.

We have a feast later today at the church. We just constructed a parish hall and it’s done enough that we can eat in it. Builders resume in the morning.

Overall, we are having fun, but I don’t feel a part of this. Is it because I feel so detached from things right now? Our insurance just cut us off and I am appealing though the state department of insurance but we lost our rental furniture. They are coming for the beds at the end of the month. I feel very unsettled again and it's worse than the fire in some regards. Money that we'd saved for baseball was used on an extra month's rent of the beds.

"Motherhood in Bondage" A compilation of letters from the original desperate housewives and others. . .

2010-03-28T00:43:00.000-07:00

I am reading, "Motherhood in Bondage," a compilation of letters written to Margaret Sanger, the woman behind Planned Parenthood.
In my art studies, I have been intrigued by the work of the Second Industrial Revolution and the people who were activists during that time. I love Kathe Kollwitz, the wife who was an artist in Berlin, married to a doctor who treated patients in the slums. It is hard to imagine the depth of poverty in those days, coupled with the lives of the rich who often exploited them.

Today's women take for granted that we can discuss birth control in mixed company and make choices on when to have babies via many means. Margaret Sanger hated abortion, but she also hated to see women stuck in violent marriages where they couldn't leave lest they loose custody of the children they needed to protect, or just kept having them when they were being worn down, one after the other, or there they had to give the babies or children up to orphanges that were satilites of Hell. Margaret lived during the time when husbands could leave their wives with no one running after them with child support orders, and the mothers of their children had no means of support and children were sent at young ages to work to support their families. These letters portray women of the time. Doctors didn't know when women could get pregnant and the prevailing wisdom was that they got pregnant right before or right after their cycles, which got a lot of women pregnant when the doctors did advise them.

Contrary to modern opinions on her, Margaret was not for elimination via sterilization of people more likely to pass on poor genetics or of any race although it appears that she made alliances with people who did this so that she could promote her cause, but was for women making the right choices and being allowed to make the choice to not have children if they did not want to. She thought that we could eliminate poverty by making contraception available to all, rather than looking at a bigger picture of other factors, but in truth, limiting family size was something that each women could in theory do to help herself as much as possible.

She leaned conservative in her beliefs and I think she’d be appalled by how 13 year olds have access to birth control and how with the freedom we have enjoyed that as a society, we forgot about responsibility.

I have been facinated by Margaret's story because I have had a lot of educated women repeating stories about her, taking quotes out of context, and in general bashing her. Like anyone, Margaret Sanger was a complicated person and it is impossible to define her based on portions of what she has said or of her affiliations.

While she was an atheist, I believe that Margaret Sanger (who was open in her monogamous relationships) rejected God because she saw religion as a way of controlling women and removing their free will, justifying and tolerating their subjugation. Her being open was her making her own choices because she could. . . since she had her pills. I believe that in spite of her not so good qualities that God believed in Margaret Sanger. Maybe she isn’t one of His saints sitting close to Him in Heaven, but her heart was for educating women and helping them and for letting them rise to have other opportunities. A woman with her means and education could pretty much have done as she pleased.

How long has it been?

2010-03-12T22:49:00.000-08:00

I have passed the six month anniversary of the fire and I feel good. On that date, we got with the builder and it was confirmed that in out new house, I get to have my own area for doing art and writing. I want a small table in there with chairs so that I can also have a place to set a nice tea setting. My art room will be next to the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom and I may seldom leave that corner of the house! There will be few memories of the fire in this new house, other than that it happened. We are getting a new loan to expand it and while it won't be a showcase home, it will be bigger and more of what a family of my family's size needs. I really wish I still had my old house, small as it was, because I had my grandmother's dolls and some family heirlooms. There were nothing, but they were fragile roots to my past. Every time I cry, Cloud reminds me that the roots are severed for forever, but the artists live on through my hands every time I work with my papers and clays. I don't cry like I used to, but my eyes get teary.

A week ago, I got home from visiting my mom in Arizona. I spent a couple of days at a monastery in silence. The only problem was that the other visitors were all 55 and over, it being a snowbird community. I felt like I was 19 and they all seemed much, much older. We ate meals in silence and they all went back to their motor homes and I was a lone guest in a 12 room guest house. During the day, they all were mostly doing other things. The monks wouldn't talk to me and the woman at the reception area seemed only interested in discussing the schedule of the place. When I browsed the gift shop, I realized that she wasn't that bright and that I probably didn't want to get trapped in a conversation with her.

The three weeks with my mom were really, really nice. She is 70 years old. How long will she and my step dad be healthy? We drove all over southern Arizona, seeing Tucson, Bisbee, many wineries, and a place called San Xavier Mission. San Xavier was my religious place. Maybe it was the architecture. The mission was Moorish in design and while not as huge as the European cathedrals, when I touched it's walls, I felt energy and knew that the original builders knew that people would be in awe of it and worshipping there 300 years later. My mom knew that it was special to me and she bought me some books on it. I also bought some Rosaries and horse blankets (blankets made in China!) This is a photo of one of the statues of Mater Delorosa. From her, my drawing took off again. Look at her face. Why does a stature make a person want to cry? Mary of Sorrows was crying for her son. You can see the muscle structure. I knew it in my art classes, I saw it, but when I saw this statue, I felt it.

In the cemetary chapel, there was an older woman crying. She whispered soemthing to me and I knew she was Italian with the cadence of her words. I grabbed the Rosary that I would give to Cloud and prayed with her. Who was she praying for? A lost husband? A child? Her own mother? I did my Eastern Orthodox bowing and she was not able to. She would cross herself when I came up. After a short time, she hugged me.

A few hours later, my mom dragged me into a casino. I was completely overwhelmed by the sites and sounds and wanted to get the hell out. But my mom kept winning. She won a lot of money. I went to the bathroom and there was a woman in a wheel chair crying as her check was gone, spent at the casino. I am one to stop and help people, but I looked at her in silence and left the bathroom. Normally, I'd give someone like that money, but I had a feeling that she was going to spend it. The front desk had numbers to Gambler's Anonymous and I knew she wasn't going to be stuck at the casino for forever.

(One of my friends who loves these places says that I haven't had the right host-- my mom is a fun lady, but he says that I need to be prepared for it ahead of time, glitzed up and in pretty shoes and a stunning dress with what I plan to spend. At the time he says I have to go, there will be no pathetic creatures who've spent a months' entitlements on the slots. He says I will love playing tables. I may one day do this.)

While I was gone, my husband had one of my college daughters take care of the kids for the first week. My new suburban died on her as it has been dying on me. He, knowing that he was going to have to drive it, got it fixed after months of me being told it was something that it wasn't and having it pronounced fixed many times when it wasn't. While I don't like it dying on anyone, I was just happy that it was fixed!

He didn't clean while I was gone. No point in bringing things up to air here, but I was a bit upset when I got home and he said it was the fault of the kids. Women, be warned. If you go on a trip, hire a cleaning lady before you return.

The above picture was taken at an old fashioned picture place. I tried to dress up like a can can girl, but I looked unconvincing. The photographer told me to put this gown on and threw me the pretend rifle. It just seemed right!

My step dad and mom took me to a canyon called the Chiracahua Canyon. I didn't get any good pictures with my cell phone. I wish it had a neck strap. This is a place where Chief Cochise was buried and a lot of wars were fought. The land is beautiful and worth fighting over.

We seldom had a day of rest and my mom paid for everything given that finances always seem to be tight for me. A week later (yesterday) she called me up to let me knwo that the ranch has been sold and that she is moving to northern Arizona-- she had felt like she needed to get me down to see the place and to experience it before she moved!

I have to get out again next year on my own money. It is good to see my mom, but she thinks we need to meet for a writer's confernece. She has been sad that I hardly write any more and says that it worries her!

Is it just now sinking in?

2010-01-08T01:01:00.000-08:00

I can't believe that I am still going through stuff over the fire. Bear with me while I ramble ~~a bit~~.

I feel like I have had all the hair on my body waxed, like something has been forcefully taken from me.

The holidays were actually pretty decent. I went a little crazy at Joann Fabrics and saved $300 about two weeks before Christmas and decorated my upstairs. Our tree came from a neighbour who used to be an interior decorator who have a slender tree to give us. It was 6' high and worked in our limited space. She cast off hundreds of red and silver balls and I bought plastic swags of red and white flowers for the walls, and birds for the tree.

The day after Christmas, a couple of miscreants were batting an ornament with a wrapping paper tube, which was my sigh-n from the gods that it was time to take it down. The kids cried and I had to keep moving stuff off the walls and the tree. I was called a grinch by my husband, but he wasn't having to deal with what I was dealing with, so I had to forge ahead.

A couple of days after Christmas, something occured to me and I don't know why, but sensations have come back to me. Why it took almost four months is because of when I felt safe in letting it come down. Writing has been very, very hard. Thinking ahead, even a few weeks out, has been impossibly hard. I was asked to do something for school in February before the Christmas break and I came home and cried. Two months away was so hard to conceptualize! And I had a new phone on which I didn't know how to insert a date and it overwhelmed me! I feel like I'd been numb, but now my brain is running around feeling every sensation that it can. . . cold, hot, happy, sad, windy, etc. On Guy's birthday, I was carrying his cake with candles and the heat, not the fire on them, got to my FACE. It was almost unbearable, but I have never noticed heat coming from birthday candles! This is normal and I am not flipping out-- I am just letting them come and telling myself it is all OK. If I make good cookies, they are doubly good, if someone upsets me I am wounded for an hour but jet up and wipe my tears. Dealing with this for a few weeks is OK, but much longer will not be OK. (School resuming for the kids and getting me busy is a good thing.) I let a friend from church who knows about fires know what was going on and he let me just talk. What I was needing was validation over what was coming back. I remember seeing a room that was on fire, but not seeing smoke or feeling heat, but the room was smokey and it was hotter than. . . he just nodded. Of course this all came back as he and his wife were going on vaccation. Still, I can email him and tell him what is on my mind and he will read it when he returns.

I remember how it sounded, the fire, eating up letters that my dad sent to Cloud on her birthdays and the kids' toys and their pillows. I remember the fire alarm being on. Could not remember these things the day of the fire or, even a month ago.

My step dad joked with me, "So it was Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and Tea?" He said it gave him insight to what those guys dealt with when it was happening. He feels that God was protecting me, and I agree. It wasn't my time.

I feel like I am putting the trauma and grief classes to work. It is bothersome-- I was going to help other people, not have these things happen to me! Now I am thinking that it is good that I experienced this-- not that I want to again, but it is good to understand what it is like to not be able to gather all the information while looking at it and react only to what one is able to take in. Will I be understanding to someone else who is having some other trauma?

After the fire, the first thing I went in for was a friends' letters which were so chemically saturated that they were toxic, but at least I got them out-- it was like saving my friend even though I had to throw them away, but no one else saw his confidences. I saved my little giraffe that I love but now smells of chemicals and I will probably toss it out even though I love it. Heirlooms, dolls that my artist grandmother made, are gone. I grieved my stuff and the loss of the house and the stability that it offered me. I cried for the first time over stuff when I realized that a particular family picture was gone for forever.

Now I am dealing with the event itself. I am seeing what happened and I feel good that I did the best I could with the information that I was able to take in. I am more freaked out by what could have happened than what did. I am lucky and blessed and it just wasn't my time to go and my children have their mother.

During the Christmas break, I was upset and thought that I was losing my mind because I could swear that I was seeing fire flickering on the wall, then around the 4th, realized that it was coming from a computer game! (I canceled the shrink-- maybe in a month or two from now, but it's not at the point that I need someone!) There was realistic fire being depicted on the monitor!

The kids are fine, mostly due to me trudging ahead and talking about it all in a frank manner. They know that I hurt and that it's all right.

The restoration business really upset me. We stood in the ruins of my house and talked about the new plans with their builder. I live next door to an ugly house with a bus used as a storage shed. (That is the one that belongs to the neighbour that ran around with her kids at the fire.) We told them that we wanted a second story, but to not affect the foundation because it was too much money and to keep it to less than $250,000. They sent us plans that seemed big, but we didn't have the dimensions of the old house. I looked at their portfolio and told my husband to ditch them because they made half million dollar homes as their starter houses! My husband liked them, and it turned out that we were being shown a $400,000 house! You don't put a palace next to a slum! You will never get your money's worth! What were they thinking? We got a bill. I want to tell them that after they give someone a huge house like that that the people feel like sh-- because anything else feels like they are merely ending up with something, but my husband wants to pay it and TELL THEM OVER THE PHONE! Like they will care? They'll justify themselves and make him feel small, give him the $5,000 for the plans that they didn't even creat for us and leave them alone.

Such is life. Let it go.

When he decides on a builder, I just want to be allowed to work with them on the kitchen and my art room. I have to have a big kitchen and place for my art stuff. I speak through my hands be it with paints, inks or fibers.

When I've had friends suffer tragedies, I have given them copies of a poem by Emily Dickinson. I have felt this way before during court battles with my ex husband and niscarriages and a car wreck where by the grace of God, everyone was ok. This is the poem and I have had it in my head for years, but now I know it. After a huge tragedy of monumental proportions, we all react a certain way. I have not been stone faced for the last four months-- I have laughed and played with the kids, but dealing with the fire was something different. I know what it is to have a "quartz contentment"-- smiling brightly, unable to waver out of a workable, livable mental state. I have tried talking to friends and one dominates the whole discussion with stories from high school (she is going back to where she graduated from and is excited-- it is OK, but annoying when telling her something deep!) and another's eyes glaze over. Few comprehend except for those who have been through it. There are variations between people in how we handle things, but it is probably about the same.

After great pain a formal feeling comes--

The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;

The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?

And yesterday--or centuries before?

The feet, mechanical, go round

A wooden way

Of ground, or air, or ought,

Regardless grown,

A quartz contentment, like a stone.

This is the hour of lead

Remembered if outlived,

As freezing persons recollect the snow--

First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.

2009-11-30T01:16:00.000-08:00

After two stories of alleged child abuse appeared in the paper in two days, I was wondering what the alleged abusers in each case were thinking. Did a certain man from Mat-Su really think that slapping his baby girl would make her want to eat her oatmeal and peas? What was the logic of the then-25 year old in trying to make a 15 month old (whose mind is just developing) perform any task? If she had failure to thrive, why didn’t he know what food to give her that she might enjoy? What kind of psychology were the two Anchorage men applying to the five year old in an odd child care arrangement and entrusted to them by “trying to scare the sh—“ out of a little boy to “toughen” him up with a “redneck flamethrower”?

What these men did was terrible, but I want to ask about something that goes back further. Why were they not taught better? I am not interested in warehousing and wasting lives in prisons; with some heinous, ignorant crimes being committed, there comes a point where there seems to be a need for basic family education classes in addition to or perhaps instead of health and personal finance in high school. In the old days, it was called home economics, but now it is often renamed Family and Consumer Sciences and covers everything from clothing repair, hygiene, cooking and nutrition to budgeting, child and human development and working within the community.

When I was in high school, I laughed at a poster of a girl of an indeterminate teenaged age. She was holding a darling baby and looking all forlorn with a caption underneath her stating, “Parenthood is like being grounded for 18 years.” I don’t know of anyone who was persuaded to use birth control by the poster. Some of us just loved kids and enjoyed babysitting and didn’t see it as a problem. Sex has been around for a long time and teenagers having sex is not going to go away. Whether or not to have abortions or use birth control is a matter of what the family teaches, but how to successfully run a household is a science and the schools need to prepare students for it, whether or not they have children.

Supporting yourself is tough enough, but raising a family is a hundred times harder. Most people will engage in premarital relations and whether they do or not is immaterial because almost all of the kids leaving high school will have to support themselves or be responsible for someone else. Sex can cause babies. Choosing between an abortion and having a baby is like choosing between jumping off a cliff and doing an infinite decathlon. Like jumping off a cliff, the decision ends right there. For the decathlon, as with a child, you have responsibility for it as you push on with new choices and events being thrown at you every few hours even when it’s slow. By teaching students (preferably freshmen) about the basics of home economics, they can be better prepared to handle the decisions, be it about family planning and other life choices that they will have to make for the rest of their lives.

When I read of the parents who abuse their children or who have made choices on behalf of their children that are out of society’s range of comprehension, I wonder what kind of training they had to prepare them for parenthood and for managing their lives. Did they know what raising a child and family would entail?

I wonder how many obstetricians and midwives watch babies being born, all born with essentially the same “stuff,” go home and cry (or drink off the feeling) fearing that the parents will watch a bundle of potentialities be snuffed out by ignorance.

By mandating home economics classes, school districts can make a positive investment in the next generation and future of our children.

Building up. . .

2009-11-24T22:39:00.000-08:00

We got our insurance for our house today-- now we can look at building. My husband has an appointment with the bank on Friday, which will probably result in yet another appointment with them, given how they do things. We don't come out ahead-- we get to (God willing) get a bigger loan and build a bigger home. My husband is pretty much doing this and he asks me to look like he is asking me-- but this is really his project and there is nothing that I can do about it. He is considering letting me have an area where I can have a livingroom that doubles for yoga, which is nice, but he can dream all he wants until I ask if we can do something and he gets irritated with me and says something like, "Tea, we are really pushing it financially!"

Disasters are not good for fragile situations. He has the loan.

Unfriending People on Facebook

2009-11-23T19:09:00.000-08:00

Probably one of the oddest things I have had to do is unfriend people that I don't like. One of the events happened right before my house burned down. She was a lady from my church's sister church and she'd always been witty and funny so I had invited her to be my friend. What happened after that was a rediculous mess where I started hating FaceBook. Somehow, she turned every conversation in to something about her. At the age of 47, she thought she was still cute fir being under 4'10" and called herself "a real firecracker!" in a conversation that had nothing to do with her or her height. . . and managed to turn other conversations into all about her. I am old to say this, but I posted a status with something like, "OMFG! My laundry is done!" She asked what the F meant. . . since she is the daughter-in-law of a guy who is considered a great writer in our church, the comment was meant to be as catty and as passive aggressive as I took it. A comment on my page about my funny kids turned into her talking about her kids who are all a year ahead academically. (But are under psychological care for what I think is probably learned behavior from her." I unfriended her after just a few days because I started bracing myself for her to post.

A few days after my house fire, she, the co-owner of a business that is doing well, said that she wanted to help me out. I declined and declined and finally told her in a message, "I don't like you. You annoy me and you have made me hate Face Book with your comments. While I appreciate your offer to help me, my expression is not for sale."

Today, a friend that I had made a few months ago through another friend, a young man who lives overseas and who wants to study in the States, instant messaged me. He was asking me about social mores and customs and seemed to be dreaming about living in the States for a while and asked me a pretty detailed question about intimacies. I unfriended him, in spite of his apology. I wonder if he was just trying o figure out Americans, but he knows that I am twice his age (at least) and I was pretty offended. I realized thatI had know idea who he was and he had access to my life on my page.

I realized that I knew few on my page and it spooked me.

Mommy to Martha Graham

2009-11-21T23:58:00.000-08:00

We had a function with the school the other night and Starshine had to put a poncho over her head and dance with it. At one point she asked if she could get toilet paper out of the bathroom and run with it-- at least she asked. She thought it would be cool to have toilet paper flying overhead!

I have a thing for covering my hair but I don't do it very often now. Starshine was trying to get me to put a napkin over my head when this photo was taken. She was telling me how pretty I'd look and I was giving her a giant smile and asking, "Prettier than this?"

Bunches of these were taken by Darrin and I drew some charactures of myself based on them, all with heavey eyelids and gargantuan teeth! I have some with a "sweenky eye"expression that are hilarious. I never saw myself as I do now!

The event was a dinner at their school. We had a dessert auction and all the kids served. Several of them, including Basil, got to practice their auctioneering skills which got better as the evening wore on. As much as I love my children, I stress out in the crowds. There is another dinner coming up that Bash volunteered me to cook at and told everyone how good I am at it. Go I shall, as long as I am not sitting in the midst of a couple hundred children and adults!

At one point I looked around to find Calamity Jane and then I saw her off in a corner with a friend. They were in yoga tree position and holding still. Later I asked her why they were doing it for so long and she explained, "We wanted to see who could hold the position longer and quieter." This morning, a Saturday, my kids were up at 6AM (they'd sleep till noon every school day) and I suggested that they try competitive yoga and Calamity Jane said, "These are the wrong people!" OK, combat yoga is out!

And. . . she's in!

2009-11-16T19:19:00.000-08:00

Other than that the tester couldn't understand her, Starshine had taken over the test. After several silly questions that wouldn't stop, and a book that was many pages thick, my pre-school aged daughter took a deep breath, smiled and turned her book to the tester. "Show me orange!" she told her.

"Where is his elbow?"

The problem was. . . while I knew what she was saying, the Ph.D. with the speech degree was clueless, but very much amused. The purpose of my daughter being there was not to have her IQ tested, but to speak enough to be evaluated. They soon formed a detente where each one asked one and the test was soon over.

~~~

I am sad-- Starshine is going to pre-school soon. My last, 9 of 9, qualifies for special needs pre-school because of her speech. On one hand, I am thrilled because she has so badly been needing the interaction with other children, but on the other hand, I will miss her. We'd planned to send her to a yuppie-style children's play group once my other kids got settled, one that would do music or perhaps art. Thanks to the fire, we are having to take her to the public school, which is fine, but I'd wanted to indulge in this little treat for her, but really for my ego. You don't dream about having children and sending them to a public school special needs class. You imagine yourself going for lattes with other mommies for an hour or two while the children interact, then you imagine going back and hearing how well behaved your perfect child was.

Starshine won't care and this lasts longer and she will probably be more fun and I will have time to actually accomplish something creative with my 8-16 extra hours per week on my hands. Her school is close by and they have a huge playground.

As they grow older and move on, so must the mommies and daddies. With my eldest daughter, I was 25 when she was in kindergarten. I will be 42 when Starshine is in kindergarten. Children age their parents.

It's always nice to see the testers. I have known them for almost 12 years, they having met my eldest son when he was only a few months old. They said he had speech impairments and I was like, "You cannot tell this at 6 months!" As time went on, his problems became more pronounced. I got him help because I liked the teachers, but I really thought they were just looking for an easy case! (I was so delusional!) It was when Guy was 5 that his younger brother, Basil, showed up as average to advanced even in my eyes that it sunk in just how bad off Guy was. Guy is in junior high and still has delays.

They don't expect Starshine to have long lasting delays with her speech. The hope is to get her caught up by kindergarten, but sometimes they get worse as the kids develop. I will miss Starshine during the day when she is away at school, but I fully expect her to be herself and get into mischief when she is at home, just as her siblings manage to do! With her, I am happy for her to be going to pre-school, and I may go for lattes with the other moms, but I will laugh when I retrieve her and hear of how my littlest miscreant has pulled pranks and said goofy things and left people scratching their heads!

So my kids called 911. . .

2009-11-13T20:06:00.000-08:00

This was written on a day that nothing burned down and plenty of good things happened. I was within two miles of my gas running out and I filled up my tank, I got some knitting done before my class this weekend, got my kids to where they needed to be. But. . . I took a shower in the late afternoon and got a pounding on my door shortly after I got out, "Mom! Nine one one is on the phone!"

I stepped out, I'd been hollaring at a child to find a hair brush for me. "Yes?" Apparently one of my younger children had called them and I was asked for my information. I looked at the caller ID to make sure it was who they said and gave it to them. A police officer came over within 30 seconds (we practically live next door to them) and I started rambling about my house fire. I think that may be part of why they called 911, because I had told them that in an emergency to call them and that was why I started rambling as I recalled the fire. Oh-- I had to share, I knew he'd understand.

Over the years, several of my kids have called emergency services and I never know who did it. I am torn between putting the phone up too high for them to reach it (a four and a five year old) to just banking on them doing it only once per child and letting the matter rest.

The officer spoke to my kids and told them that it is OK to call 911 in an emergency. Of course no one admitted to calling, so it was the dreaded phantom who breaks into bags of chocolate chips, gets into cookies and then glues the ends of the packages shut, sneaks into preservative laden dips and puts them back into the cupboard instead of the 'fridge where they belong and risks giving us botulism, etc.

In 20 years when I am 60, will this be something that I will recall or care about with the raising of children? Will there be something besides 911 to call for emergencies?

I am grateful for the response, but my nerves. . .

Now. . . some music for inhaling. . .

Carrie Prejean is not my idol

2009-11-12T18:47:00.000-08:00

I normally don't write about current events in SM&OT because my life and my family occupy me enough. I do, however, get into pageants. Beauty pageants are just fun. Certainly there are women out there who do them who do them only because they are closet sociopaths who would otherwise be axe murderers if they didn't have pageants to do. What the public sees as a glow on their faces is actually a glower. What I have seen as a married contestant have been women who like to look great and who enjoy looking at the pageant criteria and applying it to themselves. Mrs. & Ms. beauty pageants are about a married woman or a woman past the Miss age, taking her talents and skills and applying them to her family and community. There are public speaking engagements, often singing and MC-ing, they pose as role models and spokeswomen for various groups. Aside from often keeping them busy in addition to raising families and volunteering, pageants offer women a chance to exercise talents that often go by the wayside once they become mothers and wives.

I have to say that Carrie Prejean makes me able to stand someone who I swore that I would never speak of, the notorious Paris Hilton, famed for her crotch shots and actions that only served to get her ink and clicks, although she did handle David Letterman's jibes with a lot of class.

I'm going to link over to Shannyn Moore's page because Shannyn writes about this better than I do, but go over and watch Prejean's performance with Larry King. Larry asks her several times about what made her decide to settle with the lawsuit that she had vowed to fight. Larry is a journalist and is supposed to ask these questions. He backed off after he asked a couple of times and Prejean called him inappropriate. When King switched over to a caller, a gay gentleman who asked her a question about her stance on gays, she removed her mic and acted very self righteous, repeating that he was being inappropriate. Larry, in my humble opinion, was not being inappropriate. He is a newsman, not her personal publicist.

I really hope that Carrie's actions cost her interviews with legitimate newspeople, and considering who she had declared as her hero before she quit the interview, her actions will get her a manicured-toe-hold with the people that the right has been exploiting for the last 25 years.

Thank you, CP, I am certain that the libertine (I say this with admiration) Ms. Hilton appreciates how you have made her look not only smart, but smart with an impressive, wide span of emotions while you look like you had your upper lip glued to your front teeth. I can stand Paris Hilton now!

A Crumpet Veteran's Day

2009-11-12T00:46:00.000-08:00

Veteran's Day (called Armistice Day by me because that is stuck in my brain becaue it was what my grandparents called it) was celebrated "quietly" in the Crumpet household. I keep wanting to get the kids out to honour the veterans, but for now, any event that has to do with my kids under 10, there are emergency trips to the bathroom, lost boots, traded gloves (and tears when one kid isn't aware of some "trade") and jackets that are either three sizes too small or too large. Couple this mess with services that start before 10AM and Tea may as well stay in bed. The kids would in theory be happy and I, in theory, would get a little extra sleep.

I discovered that my 11 and 13 year old children will gripe at anything. All was quiet and they ambled out of the TV room, "We've been watching TV for the last hour and a half!" Lord, have mercy! This was a problem? I would be glad for this if they were bored and wanted to go to the library or to some event scheduled for remembering the fallen soldiers and thanking them, but they thought it would be fun to do something like. . . the water park in Anchorage. I only wish we could afford that!

My husband brought home the makings for lasagna and sat down to help our sons who are in 4th and 5th grades get some homework done that they have been sloughing off at completing. They have to be ridden constantly to do their work properly and it is very, very frustrating. One is worse than the other, but they are both slacking in a major way.

I had to make lasagna at the same time I was making cookies. My kitchen is a tiny hallway and it was very frustrating. In 12 years of marriage, I have made lasagna once at it is just easier and less expensive to make it in a purchased, pre-made pan. The way I make it, I use ten kinds of cheese and it gets complicated. Just the basics makes me wonder why we live; it tastes bad to me. I brought Cloud in to help (she didn't mind) with the cookies and everything was just too crowded. (My rebuilt kitchen will be huge with two ovens and three sinks and lots of cupboard space.)

Starshine got into Cloud's lipstick but she got caught. (In the past I wasn't sure if it was lipstick or marker, but she got sloppy) and she actually got into trouble and had to applogize to her sister and scrub up the mess that she'd made, on her face and her clothes. She was so precious in her eyes welling up with tears and saying, "I'm sowwy. . ." Natually, she was more sowwy (sorry) for having gotten caught, but my husband raised his voice at her and her little heart could barely handle it! It is hard to not let them fall into your arms but she had to cry and see that no one was symathizing with her for having gotten into her sister's things. She cried to Mudd and he said, "I got into trouble for it last year!"

Poor baby!

Calamity Jane built a snow fort with some friends and went outside with her sibs for a bit.

We spoke at dinner about what Veteran's Day is about and why Mom still calls it Armistice Day.

Guy informed me that I get moody when he back talks me. The little brat gets full of himself, challenges me at every turn, and says I get moody. Gotta love it!

I want Magenta

2009-11-11T22:26:00.000-08:00

"Life is like a box of crayons. Most people are the 8-color boxes, but what you're really looking for are the 64-color boxes with the sharpeners on the back. I fancy myself to be a 64-color box, though I've got a few missing. It's ok though, because I've got some more vibrant colors like periwinkle at my disposal. I have a bit of a problem though in that I can only meet the 8-color boxes. Does anyone else have that problem? I mean there are so many different colors of life, of feeling, of articulation.. so when I meet someone who's an 8-color type.. I'm like, hey girl, magenta! and she's like, oh, you mean purple! and she goes off on her purple thing, and I'm like, no - I want magenta!"

John Mayer

My house has a soul . . .

2009-11-09T15:24:00.000-08:00

Today I was chatting up a very wise guy and I told him that I didn't like my house and he said, "And this is OK; this isn't yours and it doesn't feel like yours."

I told him that this house has a soul. He says he has felt it and asked me, "Does it like you?" I had never considered that. He told me that he feels a warm presence. He's been in when it is just cold and yet he feels warm. He suggested that I think about whether or not the soul of my rented home likes me and maybe we can warm up to each other.

I like it already.

My brain is letting go of things it was hiding from me.

2009-11-07T23:57:00.000-08:00

A poem came back to me today. Wordsworth's Phantom of Delight. I told you that after the fire, I forgot everything that I had learned. Phantom was a poem that a boyfriend in high school gave to me and after I was married to a jealous future ex for a few months, I bought a short anthology of poetry and artwork. (It was purchased from Nordstrom with a gift certificate from my mom. It smelled of roses.) The anthology had Phantom in it with a pretty lady depicted next to it. I memorized it. When I married my ex, he convinced me that I was too pretentious and should abandon my love of art and poetry and getting the book was a rebellion of sorts. Memorizing the poem was another rebellion since a former boyfriend had given me a copy of it and I'd had to throw it away when we got married. Since the fire, I have looked the poem up and it just wasn't resonating with me. It came today to my brain while I was listening to Pachelbel's Canon, another song that I loved back in the day. I was really happy and relieved. I was told that it would all come back, but I didn't know when. I hope it returns in droves! But where did it all go? When my snowglobe of a life was shaken, that box was completely emptied. Fortunately, it was emptied, but not burnt up. The debris is being put back into the boxes and rendered useful to me once more!

I wonder if people who suffer from memory loss feel in any way like I have. Knowing that something that I loved was lost was very hard on me. There are other things that are still gone and I know what they are, but I know that God willing that I have no problems that they will come back.

Emily is coming back, too. I folded laundry and wore my favourite quilt over my shoulders as her bird poems rustled in my head this afternoon. God gave a loaf to every bird, Hope is the thing with feathers-- but my favorite of hers speaks of the hour of lead. That also came back. The hour of lead-- that was how I felt as my house was burning and it lasted perhaps until a couple of weeks ago. Part of me woke up when my house was burning-- I felt like Sleeping Beauty as my sh-- burned and I re-processed my life.

Is it OK that I am coming out of the hour of lead only two months later? I have thought at times that I was shaking it, but having something so special come back to me tells me that I really am shaking the numbness, but at the same time, what I woke up to is still there, so I know it is real. I just really wish I didn't have to go through a fire to get to where I am in the process of going.

Couldn't my destiny have greeted me at my favorite store or bakery, instead, and without the sirens and flashing lights?

Would I have recognized it any other way? I hope that there is good for the Crumpets in this and that it is an easy good, not something like, something terrible is destined to happen so the fire will teach them a resiliency to make them tougher. I've stated before, however, that the good will not come from acquiring things-- the intangibles even now make me feel happy, but nothing will replace the photographs!

Thoughtful without meaning to be (Adorable child story)

2009-11-07T14:03:00.000-08:00

When we were staying at the hotel, 7 year old Calamity Jane was just learning to speak Spanish. She was saying, "Buenos dias!" to everyone and really trying hard to show off her new skill and practice it. At the restaurant, she tried to order something and the waitress smiled and said she didn't understand her and she turned to me and rolled her eyes and said, "She doesn't speak Spanish. I'll have to try it in English." She was very annoyed even though she really didn't speak it well enough to carry on a conversation, herself.

One day she was with me at the hotel and the cleaning lady came in and CJ greeted her. The cleaning lady was/is from Guatamala and she exclaimed something very excited in Spanish. Calamity was taken off balance and turned to me and said, "She must be very smart! She speaks 'Panish!"

The cleaning lady gave her a hug and taught her the words for the equivalent of sweetheart and precious little girl, words that escape me now and were not in my head two minutes after she would leave. CJ was beaming and followed her around our rooms asking her about her country and her children. Before she left, CJ told her, "You are the importantest person EVER!"

The cleaning lady said that she made her day. She made mine, too.

The Mundane

2009-11-06T18:10:00.000-08:00

I think that my life is mundane, but it is these common things that matter.

My landlord ordered a new stove for me. Thankfully, it is not from Sears. Sears takes their own sweet time in refunding you on orders that they cancel, and then they decide that instead of refunding you via credit card as they said they would, that they will mail you a check to be brought up by a comatose snail. It was mailed on the 20th... it should be here by now because I get things from all over the country in two or three days. I still don't have a portable dishwasher and it has been one month.

I don't know what is up with the stoves in my life. The one that I had had at my house had a burner knob that had come off (this happens with appliances that are more than 10 years old) and we had plans to replace the whole thing this PFD time. The one here had missing buttons. The neighbour who helps out the landlord said that the lady prior to the last tenant took off the buttons to clean it and accidentally threw them away. She said that I could use a computer game stylus to work it. I think the person who took of the buttons was the last tenant who was good friends with the lady who helps the landlord. I feel bad for the landlord because the stove was in otherwise decent shape and she doesn't need to spend extra $ on a house that she rents out. I really wish my house hadn't burned down and that I'd not lit that damned candle because I'd have just replaced my stove instead of having to rely on someone else for all these things. I liked where we were taking the house.

I hate that so many people who I don't know want to ask if we will rebuild the house to being bigger, always adding that our house was so small. It is annoying when people have looked at it after the fire and express with fluttering eyelashes how we could have fit the entire family in it. I am embarrassed over this and I wish they would shut up. Yes, we are making it bigger (I think we will be but that has to do with the banks) because it would be silly to not make it bigger. I don't like how it is happening and yes, we could have survived and the kids done well in life had we not expanded. I don't like that we may appear to be benefiting in any way from this. We are not really benefitting directly-- we are paying off one loan and using good credit to get a little more and entering another 20 year mortgage. I DO NOT reccommend that people light candles in their homes and hope that they will catch fire, like how a fire happened to us. We lost more than we will ever get back. I hate how people give me big smiles and say, "You get all new stuff!" I want to scream at them, "I LOST THINGS THAT I CAN NEVER REPLACE AND I WILL NEVER GET THE SMELL OF MY BURNING BELONGINGS OUT OF MY NOSE!" The things that I love most at this point are the things that people who I know have lovingly gifted to me. Retail therapy is overrated.

You take the good with the bad, but the good does not in anyway outweigh the bad in this case. I ran into a burning building to get my state ID because even in my crazy, irrational state of mind, I knew that getting a new ID from the DMV with no social security card or birth certificate would have been futile and rendered me non-existent for a period of time. I got injured and it hurts me to think that I could have died and been a body recovery for some firefighters and a dead mother to my kids, but it was worth it to have taken the risk, stupid as that may sound. I lost priceless photos of my children when they were still adorable and some evidence of something terrible that happened to someone. Yes-- I will enjoy a new kitchen (I get a new kitchen! woo-hoo!) and the new layout of the house, but it wasn't worth the loss. I did gain a couple of friendships out of this that I plan to treasure for the rest of my life-- bickering children in the past prevented at least one of them, and these friendships-- they may be what God intended and they make me smile when I think of them. Something that also makes it worthy for me is the help that has been offered in creative, imaginative ways from friends and friends of friends. I got a Lowes card. . . and a 10% off coupon for Lowes! One of my church friends bought everyone including my husband and I PJ's and toothbrushes and toothpaste. Another friend organized things. These are the things that helped me get through the first weeks. There was good and bad, but I have never wished nor would I ever wish this on anyone.

I will get past this, but if you ever know anyone who goes through this, let them bring up the bright side-- I am not walking around as a constant downer, needing a smile. This crap comes up when I am shopping or wandering around some place and it's like, "Oh! Tea-whose-house-burned-down." I am so diversified in my interests and before I met most of the people who say these things, we had things to talk about. Grrrrrr!

Two people that I don't know came up to me at the school today and asked if my family would like a Christmas basket. I politely declined, but I got a bad vibe from them for declining. I tell them that I appreciate them offering but that at this time we are doing all right, but to be sure to get the word out.

On a good note-- I still love my ultra short hair cut. I kid you not, it takes 20 pounds off my hips because it draws the attention up toward my face. It is more me than ever. I know you can't tell, but I am high energy and fun-- the long hair made me look like a spaniel. I kept having to resist the urge to point when I saw ducks in the Palmer Hay Flats. . . it interfered with my driving!

Why is he talking about me?

2009-11-04T13:24:00.000-08:00

I think that one of the most annoying people that I have to deal with is my ex husband. He's not annoying because he is my ex, he is annoying because of his DNA. I have too many ex boyfriends and fiancees to get annoyed with-- most relationships ended with something that was too big for us to deal with and we parted on good terms. My ex? Once he decided that he wanted out, when our bills got too high and my parents told him that he needed to stop drinking and pay attention to his wife and children, he left the say rent was due and we had no food but some dry cereal and juice and bought a pair of $700 cowboy boots and told me to ask my parents and "the welfare people" for help with the rent.

That was close to 20 years ago. I've given birth to seven more children, gotten a degree and married and have had no regrets. He came up when Tiger graduated and I avoided him. A couple of my kids saw him and told me in private that he seemed smarmy. I said, "I never gave him much thought."

Most recently, I got a tattoo that one of my friends bought for me after my house burned down. This is something that I love and am very proud of. It's a monumental tattoo that goes from my elbow to my shoulder, that commemeorates a huge event in my life. I have met the artist who will do my next tattoo (tribal, of a magpie, on my right thigh) and I just in general love them. (My mom said that I won't be 40 for forever and asked how I will want to look when I am 80. Hey, I worked in an assisted living residence. At least I won't have pasty white skin!) Anyway, Tiger told me that her dad knows about my pheonix. WTF? She said that he told her that he knows about it like it was something taboo, but I was bothered first that he told her that he knew, and second that she informed me.

His wife is nutty as in, seriously OCD. Yes, she has needed medication and various helps with her personality. (Serious mental issues.) When I was in a court battle with them over the kids, she was the epitome of hearing something small about me and making her lawyer tell my lawyer that they "knew" about it. These were things that were not even illegal or questionable, just an intimidation tactic. It would have been unnerving if they were not spending big bucks every time they sneezed in their lawyer's direction! Was finding out through a friend of a friend on Face Book that I have a tattoo a big deal to them that they had to tell our daughter?

I told my daughter that she needs to think about what she is being told and analyse why someone is telling her about it. I've heard personal things about my ex over the years and said nothing to the kids. I know no one who admits to keeping tabs on their exes after the kids are grown up, and when they did secretly stalk them, they didn't tip anyone off. I told my daughter to write down the date and content when he talks about me, but to not tell me unless it seems like my like, health or personal property are in danger.

So what if they are someone elses' memories!

2009-11-03T22:17:00.000-08:00

Gradually I am coming back to life. I keep thinking that I am OK, then I have a little tearfest and memories come back. I so seriously hate my rented apartment's kitchen, but one of my friends gave me some blue ware that I've always admired and since she is leaving State, she gave it to me and asked permission to put it away since I accepted but didn't seem enthused. She told me stories to go with it and one was about a rooster that she bought from a garage sale that is green glass. She said that everyone saw this amongst her blue ware and would bring her glass chickens, pottery chickens, needlepoint chickens and even a squawking chicken! I don't want other chickens, but this one is so cool! Then a good friend said that the Chinese see them as good luck and he thinks that I have to put him where he can watch me! (Knowing the nature of this person, he will set up a live chicken hatchery in my bathtub just to see how I react!)

Other friends have given me things to make it nice. My friend Jane gave me a cookbook from her church and I look in it for her recipes and cook with them.

These things matter a great deal. Cooking is heart breaking for me because there were so many things that had memories that I remembered but didn't actively think of at the same time. If someone else has a disaster like I did, if the person likes me, I will try to give them something personal with a cute story to go with it. I never cook alone! Maybe I will send a bottle of Joy dish soap along with it!

An item that I just purchased is a memory from high school-- my second mom, Sky, let her daughter (who was a close friend) bring a crepe maker to cooking class and I just bought the updated version of it. It's a crepe maker. No, it isn't the best, but it reminds me of Sky who died almost three years ago and I will probably make crepes until my entire family and all my friends are speaking English with really bad French accents. I also ordered a French Maid costume. If I put exercise shorts and a t-shirt under it with little boots, I will be fit to serve my friends with my kids present and I may do that just for the fun of it!

Is anyone up for a bad French accent? OK, I will spare you. But it will be funny in person and I promise that the crepes will be delicious!

Two of my kids are at an inner-city junior high school which they changed to after the fire. The teachers are really jumpy, confirmed by some other parents. Since the kids don't want me to talk to the teachers, I won't, but my husband says they are in a rougher environment. I'd hate to teach there-- from the sounds of it, the teachers are depressed and they sound like they are mere steps from committing mass suicide or taking antidepressants in vast quantities. As much as the kids complain, they don't want me to take them out and send them back to their old school.

My husband is doing all right. It's hard because while his world was shaken up as much as mine, I got an extra rattling with having lit the candle in the first place and been in the house while the fire was burning. The other day, Starshine was watching TV and something came on that caused orange light to reflect on her and the room. Major flashback-- I was suddenly in and laughing as it was just the TV. When I first saw the light of the fire reflecting into the hallway, I thought it was a lamp. . . now flickering candles must mean fire in my mind. I wonder if I will react differently if (Heaven forbid!) it happens again, but one of the investigators said that I probably won't because we are preprogrammed to react to situations and that another fire would be as foreign to my brain as the first one was.

I just had a neighbor drop over to give my family some clothes. It was 9:45 at night. No one answered as we were chilling out. The person kept knocking. My husband answered. "Hi! We've never met, but I heard that yours is the very large family who had a fire and I was getting rid of some clothing. . ." My husband thanked her but declined taking them, excitedly suggesting that they donate to the next family that has a disaster of this nature. I hope she wasn't offended, but I was very annoyed at the late visit and persistent rapping on my door.

My writing is scattered and I am not liking it. There are some classes being offered through a couple of accredited colleges that are on line. They are in writing for the web, basic writing in all genres (a creative writing course offered in many places) and nature writing. Of course I want them all but in reality, it is hard keeping up with my blog so one will have to work.

2 Nov. : This was the three year passing of my dad. "Dad, I can't wish you a 'God grant you many years,' but I love you and I thank you for whatever you did to keep me safe at the house fire with only minor injuries to me which were my fault!" I have a friend whose dad died on 6 December 22 years ago and we have spoken much of our dads. Funny, my dad is prevalent on my mind from October on, but this year it started at the fire. My friend says it will be like this possibly for forever. He knows of the colourful relationship we had and he said that people can't hate each other as much as we did without really loving one another. That made me feel good. But now that 2 November has passed, I am not thinking of him as much. (Granted, it is only the third!)

I wish I was. . . Homeward Bound (Written two weeks ago-- I'm not so blue now!)

2009-10-25T23:31:00.000-07:00

I have to resume writing. Bear with me, please. Things are settling, but I feel like the snow globe of my life has been shaken up and I am still bouncing against the walls of it.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman says, "A home is more than a house, it is a state of being. A home provides space and shelter not just for bodies, but for the human spirit." My spirit wants it's roots back.

I want to go back to my burnt down house before the fire and just keep doing what I was doing, fixing it up post babies and keep doing what I was doing with making progress that I liked. The insurance company has taken good care of us and I cannot complain, but where I want to rebuild, they are dickering over the price as they should be doing. I have a roof, so what do I have to complain about? Really, nothing. I just miss my old life and an investigator said that I will never be the same person I was 15 minutes before the fire. I thought he was so full of nonsense when he said that-- it was a dramatic event, it was traumatizing, but I was me and was nohting else!(The guy was told me this as he was guiding me around the house as I, on automatic pilot, focused on just keeping my balance and being polite to the annoying neighbor. He wasn't being cliche to me-- he was being truthful. I kept telling him that he had things wrong and he'd say, "Ok, then you will be the first in 30 years!" and I would say, "I'm quite exceptional, you know." I don't know if he found me funny or if he was humoring me in my attempts to be funny.)

I cannot tell you how many times I have gotten up to go scan pictures into my computer or complete a project that I'd planned on doing in the months before that stupid fire only to putter around aimlessly, wonder why things are out of place and why I can't find things, and realize that they are no more.

I am supposed to say that it was all just stuff, but it wasn't! That crap that I had was part of me, it was stuff that I loved. We had 12 years of memories in that house, and what we had dragged to it from before we moved in. I had my favorite stuffed animal (Lamb Chop) in a dresser, and I wish I'd thought to get her out before I left. Five kids were conceived in that house, six took their first steps in it, two grew into adulthood after moving in with us and one was in junior high when it all happened. We lost pictures and books, and a poetry book from which I read to each of my children since the first one when I was 19. Cloud (in junior high) had saved all of her birthday cards from my dad and all of her presents from my husband on her Gotcha Day and had pictures of the two of them dating back twelve years. The fire took that all in six minutes. My house was not impressive, but it was ours with lots of memories.

My temp house is almost organized. I am in a neighbourhood where we have sidewalks and the houses are old, like 1970's. Narrow steps on split levels, tiny kitchens. The hardest part of the day for me is meal time. I had my issues with my old house, but let me tell you, I, for the most part, loved my kitchen. I knew where everything was, I had decent counter space and I had a decent pantry next to it. My new house has tall, tall cabinets that only Yao Ming could navigate-- if he wasn't tripping over Starshine, who likes to crawl in the kitchen meowing and pretending to be a kitten, or barking and begging and pretending to be an extremely annoying puppy. (So I call her my baby wombat and she never knows how to act over that because she doesn't know what wombats do. They probably act like kittens and puppies!)

I used to stand and eat at the bar ready with a dishrag for the spills and drips, or a napkin or towel, after I served my family around a huge oak table. Now we squeeze around things to sit down. When we are done rebuilding, Starshine will be five years old and won't need me poised to get her things or be spilling her drinks. I may have grandbabies!

The sidewalks are nice. I finally walked this evening. We ate out because my husband was doing a huge project for the insurance company on the table and we left the project, but before the meal was through, I told him that I wanted to walk home. I am sick of eating out. The month in the hotel made me tired of menus. I wasn't hungry.

We don't have a dishwasher-- I ordered a portable one from Sears and they canceled the morning of the delivery and are making me wait while they send my money back to me via the bank. (I started sobbing in the store. A dishwasher is important to me.) As soon as I get my money back, I am going to Lowes for one, and I will buy everything for my built up house from Lowes and sent Sears a copy of my receipts and what I paid. This wasn't the first time Sears messed up an order on me. My NINE children will remember why I don't buy from Sears and they will not buy from them and I talked two friends out of buying washer-dryers from them. Ordering appliances from a place that has it's central odering based a long way away and you get what you get. I totally support places like Lowes to encourage competition with Sears. May they become become "Sears. . . where America shopped."

I had been covering my hair and wearing long skirts for the last three years and have stopped. I am trying some other hair covers that don't look religious. The long skirt that I was wearing on the day of the fire was denim, but I had almost wore a favorite other skirt of a lighter cotton that would have caught fire too easily. When I went back in to the house, I couldn't crawl and had to walk and this, too could have hurt me. (Although one of the firefighters DID laugh quite hard at the idea of me trying to crawl in a long skirt and I had a complex for twelve seconds.)

Since not wearing the things (long skirts and religious looking hair covers) people are back to asking me obnoxious questions about why I have such a huge family. With what I was wearing, I was stereotyped and invisible-- answers to their questions were right there, I didn't have a big family because I liked children and chose to expand, I had a big family because I was religious! (One day I knew someone was stereotyping me and asked me the names of my kids and I said, "Jedediah, Jeremiah, Ezrah, and the boys' names are. . ." I had so much fun as I went into a bad accent!) I love my jeans now and I am back to making myself look nice on purpose. Few people ever looked past the clothes and it was OK-- I was married and a mother. When I take the kids out to eat and I am alone, I've donned the clothes so I don't get bugged. Seriously, I get the 3rd degree on my kids and I don't like it, it's like I am a traveling exhibit. "Your kids are good, do you spank them?" "Do you leave the younger ones with the older ones?" "Who babysits?" I so badly want to ask to see their checkbooks and personal information, but in a long skirt, "My husband doesn't let me discuss that." shushes people.

The neighbors annoy me. One lady looks just like the one at my old house and she smokes on her lawn so the smoke won't go into her house and it comes into mine. She complained that my kids wrote in the dust on her car-- the annoying neighbour kid at my burned down house did that on my car and I never said anything lest I looked petty. So this neighbour complained to my house owner who relayed it to me so, I had to tell my kids to stay away from her. This is sad because I like her kids, but they will probably be just like her so it doesn't matter.

Another dropped by and knocked and knocked and I was busy and didn't feel like answering the door. When I finally did (she kept it up for five minutes and I called my husband first to have him on the line to deal with the kook) and she was like, "I saw your cars here so I knew you must be around!" She had a kid with a runny nose, she'd heard of my family, maybe we could trade baby sitting hours. . . I told her that I am an illustrator and that I don't have time to visit and that I was doing a technique that had required me to be with my art and couldn't answer the door earlier and to call next time before she dropped by. She asked for my number and I said that I didn't give it out.

One of my friends bought a tattoo for me. It's of a phoenix and goes from my elbow to my shoulder. I love it.

I chopped off my hair three weeks ago and I love it. It shows off my eyes and my smile. (I do smile often in spite of the tone of this entry!)

I am not who I was fifteen minutes before the fire. Sigh. I'm not that excpetional. . . ;)

Real estate agents. . .

2009-09-21T09:03:00.001-07:00

. . . can be real pieces of work. Your emergency is not theirs. You don't apply to an agency, get accepted and look for a place, you ave to find a place, then apply, then wait!

I'd rather submit applications with money and get accepted and have freedom to look. Then, they don't try to lease the house and tell you anything about it, they stand around without pointing out features. A few nights ago, my husband went to a place with two other couples and the renter seemed to have been abducted at the last second. Was the real estate agent apologetic? Nope! She shrugged her shoulders and said, "They were given 24 hours notice." I realize that she can't lose sleep over this, but she could have pretended to be embarrassed. This place is somewhere between Girdwood and Talkeetna.

When I started crying when I thought about a melted light switch in my house, another agent told my husband that he needed to get me some talk therapy-- I was telling her that I'd never light candles in the pretty house! Oh-- but she offered in a very condescending way that maybe we could get together and talk-- but she was being mean. What gives? I'm not crying much like I had been. . . now the doldrums have set in and I just wants a semi permanent roof!

My relationship with my junk

2009-09-21T07:27:00.000-07:00

OK, my life is not all about sadness right now. This past weekend I went out while my family was in church and I walked several miles and took lots of pictures that I posted to FaceBook which is presently down. Here is one of my dog-person. He came over to see the kids in our pet friendly hotel. Tiger said that he went back to her place and slept for 12 hours straight as the kids wore him out!

What is getting to me right now, and I have been told that much of this is mourning, is the junk that I had amassed in my house that all at once I miss but don't want to ever see again. I had rubber stamps, so many art kits. . . what do I actually have time for and what is worth taking up space?

I miss some of my designer clothes that my mom bought me in high school. I have some blazers from the Brass Plum back when it was classy, some J. Peterman outfits that my husband let me splurge on at the holidays, custom cowboy boots and figure skates, that seem impractical to replace. OK, the blazers, yes-- the high necked Victorian blouses that I loved, yes, because they are part of my personal style. My corsets for certain. But do I need custom cowboy boots, riding boots and $300 breeches or $900 figure skates with $300 blades? I didn't use the skates enough to justify the cost! I may as well cost those out. And the breeches-- I can buy less costly ones for my occasional rides-- I don't even own a horse any more!

Last weekend I went shopping and looking at how I will want my new kitchen. I started crying and had to leave. I slept on it and my husband said I was robbing everyone of the fun of this so I allowed myself to try to enjoy it and asked lots of questions of salespeople and customers alike and I brought no one down.

I like minimalist stuff; if we can afford it, I want wood interiors, a Scan-interior look. We may have the house partially unfinished so that I can learn to do things that are reasonable. (One of my friends does rock work and I am going to spend some time with her and see if it is reasonable that I can commit to doing inlays on our counter tops.) My husband says that our house should look more like it's lady. I am slender and attractive, not a lot of fussiness. Intelligent enough to be entertaining, but I am not think-tank smart. I had so many books-- argh! I don't even want them like I had them and if I do, I have to have discreet bookshelves! If I looked like my house did, I'd weigh 600 pounds and be clean, but wear gaudy jewelry. If was how the house got after ten years and I had been in the process of decluttering.

I've been crying over things. I >>know<<< that I shouldn't have run in to get my father's cowboy hats, but I find myself wishing that I had and thinking how I was already in and what trouble would it have been really. . . and of course my cowboy boots and my riding boots were right there. My grandmother's dolls are gone, and the needle point Christmas stockings from my mother are gone!

I had bunches of salt and pepper shakers, one pair that I used to play with as a little girl and I'd make them dance on the dining room table and get married (they were a king and queen) and gosh, they were within an arm's reach in the kitchen when I grabbed my purse!

The other day a friend wanted a book title so I ran between our hotel rooms, I had two copies on a dresser. . . I couldn't find it and it bugged me and then, "Oh. . . it was on my dresser."

I keep coming back to knowing that my family is safe and that we are safe and that we had the added bonus of the old pictures being lightly scorched but OK and that nothing else matters. I have been told that I will mourn the old stuff but find new stuff and ways to occupy my life and space.

I do have to laugh. . .

2009-09-18T21:45:00.000-07:00

This evening a dear friend offered to take us all out. This is no small thing to do since with nine people in my family, we are pretty expensive. Cloud wanted to get dressed up which we all did. We looked great!

The kids over the age of 8 got to order adult sized meals and the younger ones got to order chocolate milkshakes. We toasted success and the resiliency of the Crumpet clan. This friend told the kids each individually what they were doing right in what is going on, not just to make my husbands' and my life easier, but for them, too. He talked about what a great group we are. My husband toasted me, saying that the greatest day of his life was when he decided to forgo his doubts and marry a mom with three kids and he said that I made every moment an adventure. I toasted the man who has made everything possible, who has been wise and loving when things have been rough.

The kids were very well behaved, then Mudd started feeling sick and I thought it was the commotion of the day. . . then Calamity Jane "got sick" neatly in her child's portion basket. She didn't want to drive in the car, so we walked the short distance back to the hotel. She got sick a couple more times and as of this moment, feels better. Mudd isn't sure how he feels. This is NOT a good sign!

Seven kids, two hotel rooms, one mom with a can-do attitude! I got through a fire last week, but the thought of dealing with the flu after chocolate shakes and pizza for the little people has me feeling very insecure! LOL

We are closer to finding a house to lease!

2009-09-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

Finding a house is rough! I had no idea how hard it is to find a place to dwell. I think of "to dwell"-- to live, a permanent or at least semi permanent place to live, and I have always taken it for granted. I met a lady yesterday from Guatemala and she came to America the old fashioned way-- over the border 25 years ago. She is now legal, but while I am temporarily homeless, the desperation that drove her to leave her country was sickening. I am homeless, but she had been roofless. I don't feel happy thinking of people worse off than me, but I did whisper prayers of thanks for what we have and asked G-d to take care of those who struggle far worse than we have.

Today marks a week post burn. I was lucky to get out of my house as I did. On the day of the fire, I swore that I had never in any real danger, that there was never much smoke for me to breathe, that I got out with time to spare, etc. Memories are coming back. When I decided that the fire was too big for me to deal with, I left the room fast, went to my sons' room to put out a candle (I had thought that the fire would be contained to the one bedroom) and went to the living room to get the kids who were home out. I saw the bedroom that was on fire as I had to pass it again and it had spread the length of the bed and gone across the room. I must have gotten out right before it went "voomph" (my word for being taken over in flames without an explosion.) When I recollected this to my husband, he said that the fire investigator said that with the polyester covers and the stuff that mattresses are made of, that this would have happened.

I really hope that this doesn't become a focal point of my life-- what COULD have happened. Right now I am thinking about it a lot, but it was only last night that I realized how much danger I was actually in. The first few days after the fire, I was imagining my kids stuck in the house when 7 of the 9 were in school and college. They weren't in any real danger. I was less than a minute away from being seriously hurt. I was moving fast but not aware of how bad it could have been. I keep thanking G-d for the fire safety classes from elementary school so I knew to get out.

I went to bed and slept without valtrex last night, but my doctor wants me to keep a 3 day supply on hand lest I be kept awake with memories as they return. (He wanted me to have more but I am afraid of getting an addiction. I have my favourite pharmacy but it's not open on weekends and he wants me to have access.) When he said this to me a few days ago I was like, "I was never in danger, stop that!" He was a Navy firefighter and smiled at me and said, "Your house burned down in 20 minutes and you had to have been in there for at least five. You are not remembering things and you will be a little shaken up when they come to your mind. Right now you are assuring yourself of your safety." Am I freaked out? I don't know. It's scary for the close call, but there are KIDS in Afghanistan who are under fire every day, seeing their friends get hurt and getting closer calls than I am. People are in custody battles-- put me in the hands of AllState to an Alaskan judge any day! I had PTSD over my custody battle several years ago-- for over a year afterward, with the battle taking 3 years, I was calling my lawyer confirming things that I just missed!

The house-- one of the nights my husband went out to look at a place, he said it looked like the family had just disappeared, like evaporated from the face of the earth. (This was with Another Company, NOT Jack White/Prudential, who AllState suggested.) The leasing agent wasn't even embarrassed! She shrugged her shoulders, "The renters were given a 24 hour notice." The place stank and the dishwasher was open with yuck in it. I realize that the agent didn't have control over what the renters did, but she could have pretended that she was sorry for wasting my husband's time as well as that of the two other couples who were looking.

Why are the renters of that place so rude? I was a single mom and had just had a baby. The owner wanted to sell and there was no way I could get things cleaned up so he could show it, so I told him that I'd like to get out of my lease so he could sell the place and he was thankful for my consideration of him.

Jack White is established, but we had wanted to give a smaller, upstarting company a chance. Well, there is a reason that the bigger companies do better. Maybe if James and I amass a bunch of rentals, we can work with a fledgling firm and help them get off the ground, but we are a family of nine who needs a house three days ago. Jack White had several homes for us to look at and they have been excited to show us the homes. I'm all, "I want to cry! I lit the candle that burned my house down!" and they are saying, "What is done is done, it was an accident and you won't do it again. You have a chance to do a little better, try out a new nighbourhood, see if you like it! Allow yourself to enjoy this!" That is nice. They want us to have a nice experience.

Another rental company was contacted by friends. I didn't know (and don't mind) and I called and asked after a place. I mentioned that I needed a place ASAP as my house had burned down. The woman who had an annoying voice told me a bunch of info on me and when I finally told her to stop talking about me and that I wanted to see a house, she said it was too small. I asked if she had another one in what her first decided was my size. Well, no. . . I couldn't fathom why she gabbed so much at me and yelled at her for wasting my time. That was another small firm. Maybe she was bored?

We saw a house yesterday on Lake Luciele where we could see SP's float plane-- my mother and step dad were in ecstasy when I told them! They'd fly up just so they could be on the lake where she lives. (This can be sung!) I'm not crazy about the x-guv but what got to me about the house was that it has a white carpet. It's like a '70's show house with a cool staircase and very open, lots of wood. A gargantuan intercom which isn't needed in a house like that because it's so open.

Another house is really cute and is a tri-level that I loved, but it's in a neighbourhood that I think was built on a man-made hill. My mom used to be huge in insurance in Alaska and when I looked in the back yard and saw the cliff, then saw what appears to be a sink hole, I thought of what kinds of gymnastics she'd do if she saw it. Really, it was maybe 30' from a cliff and you could see that it just isn't safe. One slightly bad earthquake would send this cute house careening down the wooded yet almost vertical cliff! We could end up with the Crumpet Annual Disaster Relief Fund!

Cloud saw a house on the other side of the area that we live in. She'd have to change schools, but she said that two friends are moving over to the other school anyway and they are on her athletic team. She loves the house and I may go for it. She wants to choose from the donated furniture. . . I will get to design our new house, but I think for her, coping may be to design and do this interim place. She even pointed out the neighbourhood to me, "You can walk every night and we've been here at Christmas and everyone has pretty lights!" She's adorable!

One of my son's former teachers had a housefire a few years ago. Apparently she was talking to a fireman after a fire prevention class for her students and he got a call and had to go. A half hour later, her husband called the school and told her that she had to come home, that their house was on fire. She went and the fireman she'd been talking to was there with his crew.

Last night we went to a church family's house for dinner. They are so nice and sooooo smart. Very learned people. I started crying for my books when I saw theirs. I'd borrowed a book from "the wife" and started to cry more because of course I can't return it. I wanted to know what it was so I could get her another one and she wouldn't tell me so I can't buy her another one! My books. I have so many thank you notes and I looked in my new art supply area of the hotel and only one book survived that I took out after the fire, but it's not in great shape. [I do artwork on my envelopes and it's important to me and the books are gone. :( ] I miss them. If I didn't have kids, I might have died saving my books! I know that bibliophiles understand this.

I had just wanted to update on the rental and I said more. Did you stay with me? I am doing well. Memories are coming out that are bugging me and may shake me, but I have a life to live and lives to lead. I have a penpal who I normally write several times a week just because I normally come up with things to draw and I need to write to him today, and there are thank you notes that I am blessed to write. I am buying a charity box for our new place-- our pushke that we had got burnt up in the kitchen and I hope that some of the money can be washed and recovered and donated to an emergency fund-- it was getting heavy!

Because stopping isn't an option. we are dusting ourselves off. . .

2009-09-15T19:21:00.000-07:00

Today is good-- my voice is 1/2 back and I can stand listening to myself speak. My mom was really happy since I talk to her so much! LOL I am having adrenalin let-down. I don't think it's emotional so much as it's physical. It's like a hangover without a headache. My flexibility is crazy and if I did yoga, my teacher would be yelling at me and sending me home. I am almost disjointed, like how you get after you have a baby.)

Yesterday I was actively mad (pissed and I hate using that word) at my neighbour for having hovered and I still don't like her, but the anger is like, "I never have to speak to her again. Since she hovered near me and the freaking fire marshal during the fire, I am claiming a psychological aversion to her face and voice as a PTSD thang and to stay away from me for forever." This, my friends, is beautiful! (I feel bad for her because she is needy, but she is like a donkey who thinks it's a lap dog. I've tried to be friends with her in the past but she has MAJOR boundary issues.)

Church members have had us for dinner which has been nice because we don't sit down as a family in the hotel. I may buy a table cloth to toss over our bed though. . . that is why I prefer eating with friends and at IHOP, we sit down together. When I was growing up, no matter how late my brother's hockey practice went, my mother MADE SURE that we sat together and ate. I have ALWAYS appreciated this. With church friends we have great conversations.

I was really impressed with 13 yo Cloud yesterday. She said that one of her coaches asked why she wasn't looking sad since her house burned down and she was a little annoyed and said something like, "I can't spend my life thinking about that! I have other things to do while my house gets rebuilt!" He high fived her.

I have a life coach who used to be a psychologist, but she tired of the psychologists' regulations. She worked with my eldest daughters when we had a court battle when she was a psychologist and I liked her. She knows I don't need to analyze my relationship with my dog from when I was two and that I really need someone to bounce things off of for a few sessions to get a hold of things. One of the things that she said to me last night (I'm sharing because it is common sense and you all may use this with your own friends) was that while I told her how I felt about candles and oil lamps around my church was to remember that I use knives all the time and seldom cut myself, that I drive every day, etc. and that this was like anything else-- I was not playing roulette with the candle, I had lit them in my house hundreds of times, and that like driving after an accident, or geeze, even after slicing my finger, sh-- happens and I'll get past it.

My husband is a devout Orthodox and I know it's important to him to have an oil lamp in front of our icon wall and I told her that I don't want to make him suffer for my neurosis. Well, I can redesign my house with a great room concept so we see the icon wall and the candle/oil lamp. We can put the lamp a few feet out and high up with a higher ceiling-- do you all get the idea?

I think that my greatest fear is having this control me. I have dreams of candles all over the house and falling after they ignite a fire. I do have some control over my dreams and I do say things to myself like, "This is a dream because in real life I didn't panic and it wasn't like this."

The kids are great. Mudd is five and wants to sleep between his 4 year old sister and 6 year old sister. Normally he is a turkey but he hasn't been. He likes to know that Starshine is OK-- I think she was the one who knocked the candle off the counter top (unless it was Jack the Dawg.)

Guy, Basil and Dmitri all seem OK with things. More put off at the inconvenience than anything else. We had a big yard and their pals near by.

Yesterday I saw my cool neighbour, Andrea. OMG-- I had wondered if she was around but didn't want to call her, "Hey, my house is burning down! You wanna come over?" She was there but didn't want to bug me and seem like she was hanging out with the tragedy! The good people have their boundaries! She sent one of her kids up and told him to see if my kids were OK-- he's sixteen and said that he walked up, saw that my body language didn't seem like there was a death and told it was JUST the house burning. When I say JUST the house burning, I am not discrediting that we lost everything, but JUST the house burning and not a loss of one of the kids.

You know, before the fire trucks got there, my stupid neighbour had called the closest school who called the school where my kids were and before the fire trucks came, several mommies drove by and in soccer mommy voices exclaimed, "Oh, Tea! I HEARD! OH MY GAWD! Can I get you anything?" (Like. . . a latte?) I was ticked, "GET OUT OF F***ING ROAD! Fire trucks are coming!" I think I'm mentioned this already-- there goes my anger!

Tiger is here for an over nighter and this has affected her and Peaches, too. That was their home for the last 10 years.

Starshine is happy-- she always has me to herself even if I am lost on the computer. She runs in and kisses me! Cloud says that she could have bumped that counter when she ran out of the room-- for all we know, the dog did it.

My brother, came out the first couple of days and he was great just to have around. We grew up together being only a few years apart and his seriousness about the situation, then joking when I needed it was like a breath of fresh air.

My sisters came by yesterday and had done a Costco run and filled our fridge at the hotel. I am making a pot roast in the crock pot for dinner. Oh-- we have a dishwasher here! Yay!

I went to the house and cried on the lawn yesterday. The restoration people were there and the lady was so sweet-- now I want to work for them! She found some family pics and told me how she recognized all these different photographer studios but how we all looked happy and not uncomfortable or stiff and what a great mom she knew I was and what a sweet husband I have. Of course I told her our family history!

Yesterday Dmitri's friend Stormy's mom saw us in the 'hood and we spoke and she will have us all over to their place for dinner next week. They knew Dmitri when my husband got laid off and I was pregnant with #9, but I declined her offers of kindness because I didn't have anything nice to wear, we had so little, and MY HOUSE WAS A MESS. I'd met her a few weeks ago and really like her. She and her husband are young but have a huge house and really nice cars-- they are the kind of people that you smile for for having the early success that they enjoy. They deserve every bit of it and a lot more! Anyway, she told me that when my husband was laid off that every night, Stormy prayed for him to get a job.

Well, in the next day or two, I probably won't be dwelling on this fire much and instead biatching about finding a place to rent, and soon we will be ready for the donations of bunk beds and computer desks.

I want to tell you all that your prayers are working and to please keep them up. They are working. A few weeks ago I think I mentioned that I was sick sans my suburban and had to walk to my kids' charter school twice, once to get Calamity Jane and second to sign up for school clubs. What has happened to my family is worse than what I went through then, but we have insurance and we know that in a year, we will be having a "House Cooling Party/Weekend" for everyone to come visit and see pictures of the house that ~*~I~*~ design with our limited resources. I am not as uncomfortable as I was on the day that I had the flu and had to do all that walking. The custody battle with my ex husband was worse on me than this. (We're in better hands with AllState than the red tape of Alaskan judges who really don't give a sh--. I think insurance companies should hire judges because they'd be looking for judges who would make them not liable!) If we didn't have insurance, we'd be up a famous creek, but we will land on our feet. I will add though that the fact that I was the one who lit that candle will always weigh on me, but it won't keep me down.

If you got through this, I thank you!

So my house burned down the other day. . .

2009-09-12T13:39:00.000-07:00

I have nothing but good to say about what has happened. (OK, one neighbour seemed to be fascinated by the loss and I found myself tending to her when I really needed to focus on the fire marshal and my own thoughts. She called the school when I already had things squared away and she gave me bags of stuff as the house was smouldering and I was like, "WTF am I supposed to do with this?" but I smiled and said "Thank you." Her kid lectured me about my kids bugging his dogs while Mom smiled. Whatever!)

On the tenth, I had two kids home. Dmitri was sick and as always, Starshine was home because she is three years old. She'd shut down my slow lap top and I sent her to her room, having forgotten that I'd lit a candle in there. What follows here is nto my report, but parts that are relevant to me.

She came running out in a top and panties and went to the dryer. I glanced up from my computer and saw lights coming out of her room. I thought that Cloud, who loves all things retro, had bought a strobe light or disco ball and I went in to check stuff out. There was a fire on her bed. I grabbed Starshine and put her in the living room with her brother, told him that there was a fire and to not leave the room. (He was on the couch.)

I went into the bedroom and tried to smother the fire but it shot back up at me. I remembered my forth grade fire education classes like they were 'last week' and the fireman's voice was in my head, telling us that when the flames got too big for us to control or that we might catch fire ourselves, to get out. I remembered how he told us that they didn't want to fight fires, but that they were trained to fight them and liked to fight them, but that they really didn't want to rescue someone who could have escaped. (Or something like that.) I wear long skirts and looked down at mine and realized that it might catch fire. It was time to leave. I went to my sons' room and blew out the candle.

(Later, I'd remember that there was a fire by the closet in my daughters' room, but it was what I could handle at the time with the fire on the bed. I like that I didn't notice the fire by the closet because I may have panicked.)

I went to the living room and fell trying to run the kids out-- I slipped on the hardwood floor, perhaps on a piece of laundry since I had clean clothes on one of the couches. For some reason, I laugh when I think of that.

I got the kids out, called 9-11, then went back in. I am one of those people who will be holding my cell phone and ask where it is. I decided that I needed my purse because I wanted my cell phone even though I was holding the cell phone. Flames were quite visible in my daughters room and were spreading. I ran to my room, no purse, paused at some pictures that we'd been looking at the day before and I briefly thought about taking them, but knew if I took one box that I'd have to come back for the others. I was thinking about pictures of my dad that would be lost to the fire that was making a lot of noise and a lot of smoke and I have no doubt that he was there. (We didn't get along. . . Eternity will last a lot longer once I get there and I doubt he wants me to join him!) I imagine him saying to me, "Kel, get your purse and your laptop. I'll take care of these."

I got my purse and my laptop. As I was leaving I noticed that the flames were near the door of the bedroom and going toward the linen closet. Probably little more than two minutes had passes since the fire had started.

I got outside, ran to the end of my driveway where the kids were standing next to my suburban and moved it up the road. (The kids were rooted where they were. Smoke was coming out of their house, they were probably seeing fire in the house through the front window. It was surreal to me, I can only imagine what it was for a couple of kids who didn't understand what was happening.)

(My obnoxious neighbour who I am sure "only wanted to help" called the school who called my kids' charter school and even though I had made arrangements for the kids to be picked up, I got a call from my kids' school. I'm sorry-- this irritated me. I wish the particular woman just sat inside her house. There is a reason I seldom spoke to her before. She had a "need" to help. My house was burning down and she was talking about where she'd be bringing me bags of unwanted clothing. That was so far from my mind!)

I went back to the house. At various moments, I called my husband and my mom. One of my friends-- it's funny how people respond in emergencies. I had everyone who needed to be called, called, and I needed this friend to get my kids. I called her, "Listen to me, I'm fine, everyone is fine, but my house is burning down." She jumped on me, "Don't call me! Call 9-11! Call your husband!" Argh! I eventually got her to understand that I knew what I was doing and that if she could, I needed her help! LOL

When I waited for the fire trucks to arrive (it seemed like forever) and saw fire shooting through my attic vent on the other side of my house, I knew I was loosing the house.

The Red Cross was there while the firepeople were putting the flames out. Two well dressed ladies in suits came and they had vouchers for a hotel suite and personnel items. My husband went to talk to them because I was more, "Is this real?" and dazed.

One of the firefighters is a friend of my eldest. When she said hello to me I ran and hugged her, "I'm so happy you are here!" She knew my mental state and laughed something like, "Well I'm not! This really sucks because your house burned down!" We'd find out that several of the firefighters have kids who attend my kids' schools. I felt good knowing that they were people we kinda knew.

Friends from church have helped us immensely. They knew we'd be overwhelmed by donations and one of the ladies is sorting through clothing. They are all arranging meals for us. My brother who is about to leave state came to help us and brought my eldest daughter out. Tiger was funny-- when I told her where we are staying, she said, "Pool! Do the boys have-- haha! I'll buy you all swimming suits! Kohl's is having a sale!" So. . . she came out with swimwear for all of us! I can't swim right now since I am hacking. She took three days off from work to be with us!

It was peculiar as to what I remembered right after the event and what I remember now. The fire marshal explained that I was amped up on adrenalin and that when I came down, I'd remember things a little differently. I assured him that I was fine. I kept coughing and he kept asking me if I was sure I didn't inhale any smoke. Oh yes, I was sure. . . yesterday I went to the ER clinic because I was hacking a lot and my breathing was at 50%. It wans't a cold. They said it was caused by a combination of the cold Id not gotten over, possible allergies and yes, inhaling chemicals in the smoke. I was in the house too long to have not inhaled.

We found my treasured photos on the lawn. Many were singed, but they were intact. Peaches was thrilled as she'd been looking at them the day before the fire. She is restoring them for me and all the photos of my dad survived. (That's why I feel like he protected them.)

I do not know what the coming year has in store for us. The insurance company is really going out of their way to help us. I am in the mode of, "When we rebuild, I want TWO fire alarms in each room, we will have ZERO candles even for icons, I want firewalls between each room. . ." I am in overkill mode.

It was bugging me how Starshine started the fire because I put the candle in a place that she couldn't reach it. Over breakfast this morning, Cloud provided the missing piece of that puzzle. The cabinet in her room that I set the candle on was wobbly and I had no idea as I'd never used it personally. Cloud knew that it wobbled, but there was no reason to tell me. Sometimes Starshine got in to it. Cloud said that all she had to have done was open the cabinet door with a little force and it may have slid.

In retrospect, I could have saved the house had I shut the window as soon as I saw the fire. There was a breeze and it fed the fire, although once it went into the attic, it was spreading.

My room had major smoke damage and was pretty much destroyed. The smell is sickening. Everything is being gotten rid of.

I learned how heat rises. On the other side of the house, doors were singed for the top 18 inches and were just sooty below. The heat was bad on top.

It was strange looking at the chairs I'd just been sitting in a couple of hours before, charred.

We lost our cat who adopted us during a court battle with my ex husband. She just showed up on the day that I temporarily lost custody and stayed. She was in the boys' room asleep on the top bunk. I cried a great deal for her.

It may take up to a year to rebuild our house. My clan in an apartment is NOT appealing but at least we will be together. I hope to stay in the same area for the schools. My husband and I may become big in volunteering for the Red Cross or, if not major volunteers, in a year or two put in some time helping them with a project.

Even in the midst of the tragedy, there is life. The night of the fire, my brother in law observed that we had just survived one of the scariest events in our lives, but there was Tiger handing out swimwear to the kids, they were excited to be at a hotel with a swimming pool and they were like little electrons around her, laughing and talking. She smiled at me right then and said, "Mom, take the good with the bad!"

Today we had breakfast at IHOP. It was the first meal where were all sat down together since Wednesday night. The kids were noisy and funny, Mudd discovered that where he was sitting that he had to dive under the table or make everyone move if he had to use the bathroom, so he claimed to need to use the bathroom several times. Finally my husband said, "You are not going again." He made a crass potty joke. Cloud realized that she had one of my rhinestone necklaces in her purse (WTF?!! she gets in to my stuff!) but I was happy she had it. Basil was taking advantage of the bottomless orange juice. Starshine was like a puppy on Tiger's boyfriend's lap, insisting that he hold her and he didn't mind. I actually ate enough so the steroids for the smoke inhalation would not make me sick. It was refreshing.

We lost everything, but I also feel like good will happen. We keep looking up and looking ahead.

School has resumed!

2009-08-29T13:44:00.001-07:00

Has it really been almost a month since I last wrote? blogging is one of my most rewarding writing experiences and I have been bogged down with Life!

School has resumed. I was sad over not being able to sign up for classes myself, but now I am happy because my suburban died and my husband is in the middle of a huge project that he couldn't get a little time out to help me get to where I would need to be so I would have had to drop the classes.

My kids are in a language immersion school. We have no bus service. I had been walking them to school, then coming home and having to walk back since Mudd is in kindergarten and starts school late, then walking back in the afternoon. It was a mile in each direction which was no big deal, but another mom drives the morning kids to school and takes them all home and I only have to walk Mudd to school. I look forward to getting the 'burb back, but the walks are really nice. We leave much earlier than we have to so we can look at leaves and berries and inspect the creek that we pass on the way to school. I remember walks with my mom when I was 5 and I wonder if these two will have fond memories of us walking.

The older two have a greater struggle with the immersion program but we are making them stick with it. Calamity Jane is having a great time and comes home glowing about her teacher and all her new friends. Her disposition is so sunny that you can get a tan sitting next to her; everything "couldn't be BETTER! I am so lucky!"

Cloud is doing really well with her sports and music. Her coach is a lady who I was in college with, who won every award for position in her sport that she could and I think she was MVP 4 years in a row. She has recruited Cloud for what she coaches and her music teacher also likes her and has told her to start trying out for things. Her music teacher remembered me from several years before when he worked with Peaches. He was standing behind me when he stopped and said that he recognized my voice. He remembered my last name even though it was different from Peaches' and that was really shocking to me, but he said I am pretty distinct. I think it was me scolding an errant toddler that jogged is memory more so than my voice. I have a way of saying, "Uh-uh-uh!" to naughty 3 year olds that is pretty distinct!

There was a case of Guy getting into mischief at school last week. Ahhh! Junior high! I hate dealing with this stuff, but we resolved it. I know it is just the start even if he is good for the rest of school. (Without going into detail, he has impulse control issues: in real life, these things have to be curbed. Thank goodness he is the only one of my kids to have them!)

With some time to just me and 3 year old Starshine, I am having quite a time getting my house organized. It is suddenly easy. Starshine sits and reads books or plays quietly while when Mudd is home, they get into things. I am shedding CRAP by the garbage bag full. My husband is pretty much a packrat and if I throw stuff out with him here, it's, "What are you doing? There are some more uses to that!" Of course if he throws out my stuff, I am as bad. Right now I am looking at things and saying, "Throw away, give away or keep?" Most of it is being tossed out. Everything we uy eventually gets used up and thrown out and it's bothering me. Since Tuesday is the start of a new month, they accept bags of things so I as of Thursday (two days ago) I started saving things again to take down to them.

I feel like I am getting old and crotchety. I'm evaluating my time. I used to love-love-love helping out in various places that were not nice to go to. Hospice, the prisons, homes for really sick people. . . those were my hang outs. I really enjoyed spending my time in those places when I got out and now I am wondering if I really liked them. Did I like them or was I ale to get a change from home and justify it? "They need me." I am doing radio now and that gives me energy. I like interviewing people and playing with sounds. Just for fun (I deleted it after I showed a few people in my house!) I took an interview and made it sound like we were in a bar and took the man's answers and used my own voices and made it sound like he was getting hit on while I interviewed him. I was painting a scene with sound! Anyway-- the old nurturing gigs that I had don't appeal to me now.

Part of the nurturing that bugged me was getting thanked. I hate being thanked-- interviews, yes, thank me for making you sound good and for the hours I will put in to editing! If I spend three hours sitting with someone who is sick, it's an act of love. Thank me once, then tell me that I bring sunshine into your life or that you get a kick out of me telling you funny stories. I don't really need words and I prefer to keep them to a minimum. I don't know why words of thanks bother me so much, but they embarrass me. These things are not what I want in my life now.

I'm purging things from my life. It is sad in some ways because I am not Florence Nightengale and I used to admire people who did those kinds of things. I still admire them, but I don't want to be like them. I have so much time and I have to be selective and ask how much time I can really devote to things and what I am getting out of them for what I put in to them.

I think that radio and writing about what I do is my area. I love going out on a volunteer event, trying it and writing about it. I have been asked to go out on something because of my work at the Examiner and I can't wait to dive into it. I feel so flaky knowing that I will love it, wish I could stay, but if I do, I will soon tire of it. It isn't about the need for newness so much as it is simply not my calling.

I have been hanging out with some new friends, a certain class of women who obsess over their weight. (It has to do with publicity.) My family practices Eastern Orthodoxy. We have numerous fasts and we just stay away from those foods and if offered, we are supposed to accept a small serving so as not to draw attention to the fast. This particular demographic of women worry about their weight and make an issue of it. They work out a lot, but if they see the dessert cart, they make an issue that goes like this:

"Oooooh! I like that Tiger Mousse cake but I'll need to work out an extra half an hour!"

Then another says, "Oh Shiela! You aren't fat!"

Shiela looks astounded and says in a conspiratorial whisper, "I've put on 10 pounds since June!"

I got ticked at an event and took the plate of petite fours from them as they stood staring at it and talking about how much weight they had to lose. Did they really want that little frosted confection? They'd have to work out at least 20 minutes! I said to them, "Don't stand around talking sh--! Either eat the damned things or don't, but don't stand around calling yourselves fat when there are people starving three blocks away and living in tents!" (I happen to be good at publicity for them, and they are interesting. . . and this may turn into a paying job. This stays in my life.)

This is all for now. There is much more to share, but I have a closet to clean and a birthday party to take a child to, not to mention a dessert to eat!

The summer is slipping away. . .

2009-08-06T12:53:00.000-07:00

My life is about to tumble into chaos. What am I doing to myself? I have writers cramp from signing up six kids for school. You would think that the The Luddite School District would have us able to sign up online, but that is not the case. The Luddite School District has us doing everything on paper. I asked if they had string and cans set up at the middle school or if they were up to rotary dials yet and they were not impressed with my sense of humour.

I took Cloud in (8th grade) to sign up and one of the narcs was razzing her, “I see a young lady who wants classes in fashion?” Cloud said, “I can learn that on my own. What I want are some good math and science classes.”

He laughed and said he could get her some hard teachers and she blinked at him and said, “I just want someone who can teach science and math.”

Guy is going in to 6th grade. He’s quite happy about it. He has wanted to be an FBI agent but finally realized that with his speech impairments and reading problems that it won’t happen, so he is shifting gears toward being a mechanic or a carpenter. I told him that this is great, that he can build his own home and live happily. “Chicks dig a man who can fix a bathroom door!” He blushed! He is so cute.

I am getting Basil, Dmitri and Mudd into a language immersion school up the road from me. With Mudd in kindergarten and Calamity Jane at a different school that I am on the board at, I'll have four sets of times to get kids to school. I think we’ll be going to bed at 21:00. I don’t know when I will write for pay. The language immersion will be hard at first. The boys did not learn any of their language over the summer, and they are expected to be reading books that kids in a particular country read at their ages. It’s OK that they didn’t—none of the other kids were doing much, either. They will be doing study groups and working their asses off this year. In a way it is good that I don’t have a lot of money because all they will have time for is school anyway. It will be a challenge. Families have to put in time at the school, four hours each month. Cloud has been putting in the Crumpet hours there—she enjoys going in and helping with the work crews of parents and older siblings, even though she is too old to attend.

Starshine is hilarious. I love the age of 4. I loved the age of 4 with all my kids. (She'll will be 4 next month.) The other day after church I decided to go on a walk instead of going straight home after coffee hour. (Actually, Mudd and I had gone for a walk during church—The Lake beckoned next door! Mr. Crumpet glared at us after a long absence and we tried to sneak n’ slosh back in, both of us with wet shoes! Oops!) As we walked around the back roads in the area, we found the Alaskan equivalent of wild raspberries, watermelon berries, red currants. . . Starshine kept saying, “Look! Nature’s gifts!” Yes, she gets it from me. Then of course she is clingy-- they go through a few phases of clinging as they go from babyhood to 5 years (my mom says “babyhood to 30 years.”) At several points, I got too far away from her and she said, “Mother! You get over here this minute! I have a hand that is free and that needs to be held!” One hand was on her hip, the other hand and pointed index finger were making my wrist gesture of, “Get over here now!”

We were playing Go Fish last night and she is learning her numbers. She knows them, sorta. She has little cards with fish on them and on one, there is a zero. I asked her what number was there and she said, “Four.” We had been saying each number and counting the fish and I said, “Starshine! There are no fish in here! Where do you see four fish?” She explained to me that they were hiding and that she had a very silly story about the mommy fish wanting to make them eat dinner but how they wanted to play hide and seek outside for “just a half hour more!”

Oh-- with church. I don't go often. In the summer, my personal time alone to clean, write, paint, muse alone, is non existent so my husband takes the kids to church. I go more often in the winter, but I still need my down time. I went to make sure that I saw our priest before he leaves in two weeks for more school. I told him why i don't go. He got on me, "Oh, you mustn't take for granted the blood and body of Christ!" (Communion.) I don't even feel a connection to my church, I don't feel like I belong, and he said that? With seven kids still st home, he thinks that I take church for granted? Does he know how little time I have alone?!! So annoying. I felt more cut off from this church than ever when he said that. Mental note to self: claim that I am on my menstrual cycle all the time so I don't go, then he'll do the guy thing, "Oh! Mmmm. We miss ya." Some women don't go while on their cycles.

Basil was very funny last week. I tried a new tactic on getting the kids to clean their rooms and pick up after themselves. Some Ph.D. from Quebec said that parents need to make doing a job it’s own reward and to instill in the kids how good we feel when doing something like picking up clutter. I asked him to take care of the kitchen while I did something else and, following male role model's ways, he told a younger child to do it. I got upset with him and told him to do it. He didn’t as he got preoccupied with the laptop. I went in ten minutes later and he said, “Why should I deprive you of the satisfaction and good feeling this brings you?” He was cracking up then and apologized and did it!

2009-07-21T03:09:00.000-07:00

This is a post from trying out for a play that I may have written a while back.

~~~~

I am venting. I know that I shouldn't have taken it so personally but I have.

The try-outs were not good. Everyone at the try-outs knew each other. There was a stunning lady of a certain nationality who I expect will get a part. A woman past a certain age who had long hair and a top knot was there and she was very good who will probably get the part of the _____, and one of Peaches’s teachers from _____ High who was terrific for the lead will probably get the part that I was trying out for. This is not said with bitterness but rather a sense of defeat.

I did the first part of memorized dialogue pretty well, then it came to script reading. Four people went up and read. Then I went up, reading for the female lead. I was originally planning to stay knowing that the teacher would get the role, but they didn’t fill in all the people for MY reading so I was reading off the assistant director. Then she cut me off and called for the next people. She filled all of them (including the lady from the other country) and they read through to the end of the scene just as they did with the teacher.

I recognize writing on the wall and acted like I got an emergency text message and excused myself. As I was leaving, the director asked if I was coming back tomorrow. I said that I hoped so, only because if I was really in a rush I’d not get ticked like I was and say, “Why are you asking me that? So I can waste our time?”
Surely they know that everything the directors do is being read into. Do they like me? Am I good enough? They were expecting 30 people to show up, not the 6 that showed up.

It is not anyone's fault, but I really hate being asked to hang around just so I can be told that I am not what they are looking for.

Thinking out loud

2009-07-16T14:44:00.000-07:00

It has been a awhile since I wrote. Summers are long for me. I never wanted to be one of those parents who had the kids home over the summer then was counting the days until school resumed, but I am one. I am not short on imaginative ideas to keep the kids occupied, but I am short on cash. A lack of money combined with kids with short attention spans makes me not happy. Teachers are trained to work with kids and the kids of course have their pals at school.

The summer has been fun, however. I take the kids to the lake-- there is a little public dock near a local club that I take them to. I have three friends who belong to the club but they don't actually go. At some point I am hoping that one of them will sponsor me in so I can actually go there and volunteer and be active and by the way, enjoy their nice lawn! One of my friends has four children who are good friends with my children and I watch them for her (actually Cloud watches them for her at our house) and they have been fun. A lot of extra work, but never the less, fun.

I have covered two pageants. I was in a couple of pageants several years ago and enjoyed them. I like being on the other side of the camera. A dress store owner has been hinting to me that gravity has not been kind to my hips which I find irritating, but since she is happy that I am writing, I take the good with the bad!

Pageants are wonderful. More than an excuse to launch potential governors, they showcase women who are living and doing thing things in their communities. I have an issue with the swimsuits and have been appointed at large to be Ms. Alaska All American Woman for 2010. My goal is to bring this multi-level pageant to Alaska or at least help women who are in it representing Alaska to be able to go down. You don't have wrestlers competing in the same weight class, and marathon runners don't compete in the same age class. Who would pageant contestants compete in the same class? All American is like this. The two pageants who are up here are fabulous and very different, but they only choose one winner. The judges need to choose the contestant who is most likely to bring home the crown, but this means that a woman who is a size 20 does not really stand a chance against a women who is a size 6. If you look at the women who are winning the national crowns for the other pageants, they are in the 25-40 age range, size 4-8.

Raising money for this will be a challenge. I need to raise 3-5,000 for me to fly down to Florida. I do not have extra cash lying around. I have to raise it. While it seems like a lot to me, if I cannot raise this amount for me to go down, I will have a rough time raising more money to actually get with a talent agency to put this on and bring this pageant up.

My mom is getting married this weekend and I am officiating. It's a "God's eyes ceremony" where she is married but not officially. They have each other as powers of attorney should they get sick and they have everything lined up. Otherwise, if one gets sick, the other may go bankrupt trying to help the other. He's a really, really nice guy. My mopm thought he was shy. LOL After 48 years with my Yosemite Sam-John Wayne type father, he seems shy. He's respectful! But opinionated-- YIKES! Dyed in the wool Republican, and my mother is Progressive, but they get along well. I'm excited to get to officiate. It's a huge honour.

May I have some cheese with my whine, please?

2009-06-12T10:02:00.001-07:00

I'm ticked.

I covered the Mrs. Alaska United States Pageant and had a blast doing it. I used to make fun of pageants but after I did one on a lark when I was pregnant with Starshine, I got hooked. Pageants represent the present culture and the women who maintain those norms. Writing this, I see exactly how what has upset me represents this idea.

The winner was someone who really had her stuff together and who told me that her platform was instilling confidence in young women, starting with the mothers. Her real agenda is marriage as a one man, one woman thing and denying rights to others who are biologically inclined to their own sex. Never mind that gays have families and are like the rest of the population, good or bad, but not because of their orientation.

Forty-six hours after her win, she was on TV getting press, leading children and protesting the municipal ordinance that would grant equal rights to everyone.

The pageant organizer told me that "I was there to make sure that she represented her position without taking an anti-gay position. She was clear that her position was neither for or against homosexuals, but was against her right to vote on this issue." News footage suggests other things. This woman is a member of Prevo's church and what she had said her platform was is quite different from what she is saying now.

This is probably under the carpet now-- but I am not happy that a pageant winner would be so openly against equal rights and be wearing a tiara and sash to get press on it. Gays are huge in pageants. You don't bite the hand that feeds you. I regret that this may have temporarily sullied the Mrs. Alaska Pageant, which is not like this.

I'd publish her picture, but it would probably just inflate her ego. She had seemed so nice!

I am still here but not sure how to blog about life!

2009-06-04T11:08:00.000-07:00

Ropi just asked if I am being fine as I've not been blogging lately.

Where do I start? Life is downright busy! I don't know if I have ever been this busy or been having as much fun doing it!

I have started getting some shows together for a small public radio station. I knew that being a housewife and not really getting out had taken a toll on me, but one of my friends there, and I think we are friends, had to tell me to stop apologizing to the people I was interviewing. Things would go wrong with the equipment and I'd be like, "OMG! I'm so sorry!" He told me that I am a professional, stuff happens with equipment, people get stuck in traffic, etc. and to just flex with the problems and waste no time saying I was sorry and to get on with things. I have been grateful and fawning to some big names that have granted me interviews to which he said, "You are media. You do your job, they interview with you and get publicity and time spent on telling people their story. It's a symbiotic relationship. STOP KOWTOWING!"

I am learning about putting together an actual NEWS story versus wanting to make my people look good. I have been asked, "Are you doing news or propaganda?" He was not suggesting that I be destructive, but honest. I just had to delete some of what I observed in a taped phone interview and when I did my cut of the show, he asked why I left a certain interchange out. I said that it wasn't flattering; he said, "An image is being portrayed by ______ and this contradicts that. You are contributing to their image by taking it out. Is this your intent?" (If it is, maybe I should be directing infomercials.) There was a lot to think about. I can leave it in and let listeners observe it without me pointing to it. They knew they were being taped.

The manager let me play with his i-phone and now I am hooked. This got me into using the equipment, too. I don't know why I had an aversion to using it. All I needed was for someone to show me what to do and spend an hour or so sitting with me and giving me direction, then turning me loose while they stayed in the room and acted busy and I could ask them questions when I needed help.

After we did that, I came home and edited alone and for the most part, was just fine. He was always a phone call or email away if I needed direction. Like me, he is a parent and stays up late with his technology so literally at 2AM we were Instant Massaging about what I was having trouble on. Radio is a medium like painting or writing. Once you have the tools and can use them even in a rudimentary manner, you can take off with them. I don't like the touch of plastic-- has that affected me? Every day I am getting better.

My eldest daughter gave me a laptop for Mother's Day. (One of her friends was selling hers as she updates every May for some reason so I got her old one.) I was shocked by what she spent and she said to me, "This is your tool for radio and writing. It's my contribution to the arts for now." She is an angel. I have an idea of what she spent, but it's not that that impacts me so much as the thought, her knowing what I so much needed, and her finding a way to get me something so important.

I have been writing for a paid news listing. My coverage of thoughtful things was getting a decent amount of hits, then I covered a beauty pageant. What do people want to read? They want lite.

I have been invited to the opening party of a local wine bar and restaurant because of another article. I will be covering a beauty pageant because a pageant organizer liked what I wrote about someone elses' pageant. I am really happy about this.

The kids are doing well, but if they are not entertained 24/7, they make mischief. I would so much like to have more money to be able to get them all into camps for part of the summer. We visit the library and go on hikes, but it's me just trying to give them something to do. I have started to feel like a prison guard as they spend a lot of time trying to get out of doing chores. The day before yesterday they didn't do their age appropriate jobs and yesterday they asked if I'd take them to the park and Cloud was mad that I didn't wake her up to go to someplace that she'd wanted to go (after staying up wayyyy late.) I told them that they had to do their jobs so I'd do the things that they wanted that we fun. I said that I was not doing wear and tear on my car if they were not helping to take care of where we live.

Calamity Jane has found a love of recipes in a children's party book. She is 6 and has found a notebook and has carefully started to plan out every member of the family's birthday parties and what is needed, from cake mixes to streamers. She loves going to the grocery store to price things out. She is a planner.

Yesterday I had to see the doctor for a cut finger. Mudd kept going up to the receptionist and offering her a toy banana that he said was a phone. She kept telling him that she was busy with her job. FINALLY after 30 minutes while I was getting stitched up, he offered her the plastic banana and she accepted. She pretended to talk on it for a couple of minutes, then she gave it to him, "It's for you," she said. He took it from her and looked at everyone in the waiting room, "She doesn't know it's just a banana!"

(That is one of his favorite jokes.)

A Trail in Mat-Su

2009-05-26T01:08:00.000-07:00

One of the fun things that we enjoy while living in Mat-Su is hiking the local trails. With over 2,000, I feel like we are living in the Smithsonian of hiking trails! If we chose to hike a new trail each day, it would take us almost 6 years to start repeating them! Many places have pay-per-vehicle parking that today we couldn't afford, so to save money and going along with reccession thrift, we looked for a place that wouldn't cost us anything.

We decided to go to the Palmer Hay Flats. Anyone who commutes to Anchorage sees them every day, but how many go out to take a closer look? In almost 12 years of living here, and almost every time driving past them and thinking, “I really need to go out there,” we finally did!

We went on the Scoutridge Trail and Overlook at the Wasilla entry to the Hay Flats. The overlook is about 400 feet up the trail and is handicapped accessible. Of course between all of us with cameras, we all thought that someone else was getting a picture and no one did. There was an eagle who was perched in a tree and looking at us, and the kids were awed. (I couldn’t help but remember my first encounter with one at the Dutch Harbor dump, but I shut my mouth as the kids gave it adjectives like, “royal,” and “magnificent.” The kids are right; eagles are impressive.)

The trail was easy. If I had just had a baby, this is a trail that I would happily take a new baby on and carry in a baby carrier. We packed a light lunch, but unless you haven’t eaten, you don’t need to bring your lunch. (To the kids, it's a picnic! For what little trouble it is, do it! With kids over 8, they can help.) It’s just over a mile long and took us an hour only because we had to look at everything. Little Rose had to get a drink every three minutes, as did Mudd. She is 3 and he is 5; it’s their age. We expected it and just told them that it was good that they loved to drink water. The only problem was that we didn't see any outhouses. (Trying to teach a 3 year girl old to "use the bushes" is not easy, but once a 5 year old boy learns to use them, he could spray the whole trail. My husband says it's a male issue. I wish we'd told him to wait.)

The sun was warm and the air smelled wonderful. Alaska's flowers are starting to come out and attract the bees with their scent. I think I identified the flowers correctly—in the slide show, I am holding my hand next to a trailing bunch of flowers that I think are red currants. They make delicious wine or jelly in the late summer!

We walked up to an old gold panning area. We stepped over it with all of the older kids getting their feet wet. I held my husband’s hand to get across and (I wish I had taken pictures!) my husband stood with one leg on each side and picked up the smallest kids to hoist them over.

Cottonwood Creek’s bridge was out and while I went back with the small ones, my husband and the bigger kids walked down a muddy path to cross it. He said that it was worth it—they took the trail on the other side to look over the flats and see the arctic terns and eagles flying over the flats.

The Flats themselves are beautiful. At this time of the year they are still brown, but they are alive as new life pushes up through the grass and mud. We drove down a single lane hill to park and there are little puddles and ponds all over the place. My kids in crocs were not a great thing, but they were usually able to stay dry. Had it just rained, we’d have had some issues. We saw some falcons out, and I thought I saw a falconer in the distance. It’s hard to imagine that before the 1964 earthquake, that land had been rich farmland. Now it belongs to the arctic terns (who are gracing us with an appearance from their winter home on the other side of the world, Antarctica) and other birds that live there.

I have a slide show at the end of this article that you may like to see!

Mourning the aluminum foiled Ding-Dong of my lost youth

2009-05-02T11:22:00.000-07:00

Last week I was taking the kids to Wonderland Park and decided to buy a snack for us at 3 Bears. I don't buy pre-made snacking stuff very often because it's so expensive. I buy fresh fruit for a little extra, but the kids all really wanted Ding-Dongs. It had been over 10 years since I bought them. You may imagine my utter shock to find them wrapped in plastic instead of aluminum foil! I was p-ssed!

Anyway, we went to the park and ate them and the kids played, but I bought some more en route home and contemplated a poem about the loss of truth without aluminum foil of the Ding Dongs of my youth. I took a picture and my kids kept popping up! This one is of Mudd running in asking me, "Are you going to eat that?"

School bullies, uproar, angry Tea & resolution and life goes on

2009-04-27T16:04:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, Basil came home from school kind of worried.He told me that some friends of his who aren't really his friends were harassing Guy on the playground and calling him "gay" (not a reference to his name which is very different from what I call him here) and "retardo." Basil went to them to tell them to knock it off which resulted in all the boys except for Guy getting called to the office.

When he told me, I insanely told him to not worry, were it an issue, they'd have called me. It was around the anniversary of Columbine and then that 11 year old, Jaheen Herrera killed himself. Still no word from the school. I called Guy's teacher and we talked and I told her that maybe a general discussion with all the kids in that class was in order, you know, "It's the end of the year, discipline is down, let's remember the rules."

Pressure mounted, I was assured that all was fine in spite of what Basil was saying and then last Friday at 4:07, he came home crying because he was in trouble and had to go through an anti-bullying session this week and he thought he had to write papers on it about not bullying AND standing up for his brother, something that Guy's teacher was mentioning.

I called the principal. He said that he'd talked to the kids and that as far as he knew, they just talked to him because I'd told Guy's teacher that a talking to was fine since I knew the kids.

Basil maintained that he was really in trouble and that this had gone to the school psychologist so I sent his teacher a chirpy letter, "Hey! Basil's telling me something silly and there has to be a misunderstanding since I wasn't notified. . . "

She justified it and said they didn't want another Columbine in a few years. EXCUSE ME? Not calling me, the parent of one of the accused and the victim, in spite of my contact with the school, was somehow preventing a Columbine incident? Any time a problem is bad enough that my kid gets sent to the principal and the school psychologist is brought in on the matter, I had BETTER be notified!

Basil didn't want to go to school until the problem was resolved which I backed.

The principal went off to deal with it and says that Basil is cleared, but I am beyond words furious!

I looked at Basil's parent report and all it said was, "Playground incident." There was no explanation, and had Basil not wanted to tell me, he could have just laughed it off, "Oh-- kickball, I hurt a kid, he thought I meant to, I didn't" and I have probably wouldn't have asked further.

Guy was feeling terrible because he didn't want to get anyone into trouble, just to make them stop. He is NOT a potential vengeful person with weapons.

It is very irritating that they didn't call me in any of this and that my son was so upset that he was afraid to go to school. Had my husband and I not intervened, this allegedly bullying incident would have gone by and been on his record. They had well over a week to let us know what was happening while I spoke to them a few times.

Next year I am getting them into a charter school so I will be around all the time and hopefully I'll hear things before they get to such a level, but with all the policies, they couldn't tell me when exactly I would have been notified, which is rather disturbing. Where are parents in the equation? If they are worried about something to tragic, and since I have been called about Basil talking to his pals in class, wouldn't this have been something to have called me over?

Mail Art III

2009-04-27T01:59:00.000-07:00

I am learning to do pastels-- this is not easy but I love them. Painting rocks goes from "meditative" to "repetitious and boring" so this wasn't a wise choice. I still had fun.

Mail Art II

2009-04-27T01:56:00.001-07:00

In the earlier post, I showed two pieces of work. The giraffes are a prevalent theme because well, giraffes are just cool. The lady is me in Arizona and behind me is a Joshua tree.

Here are two others-- they are one of the same.I took the picture of the giraffe, but something was missing and Cloud said that it was the lips, so I made them bigger.