I made it into another new year!

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

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!

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

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!

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!

Un projet beau et tellement utile que l´on se doit d´accomplir.

A project so beautiful and useful it must be completed. . . this is the translation of the title of this post and I am writing about my short story that may turn into a book that I for certain want to get put into Women's Day or Home Journal. My main character has come to life and wants a gratuitous sex scene with his wife. I wrote one and I can't get it right. I am NOT inhibited. That is not my issue. Can these scenes be written intelligently?

I did something very stupid this morning. My friend Danille called. I said, "I was just thinking of you! I was out in this -30 weather and I thought about how much I miss watering and feeding my dad's horses in the early mornings before school. The cold air, the warm mash, getting the hay all over me as I flaked it off. . . "

She said, "REALLY?"

I recited some poetry thinking that I sounded wise and learned. (I'm giving my Frazier smile to you all as I reflect.) She said she had prayed about who to call (ruh-roh!) and was so glad she called me first. She has the flu that is going around that lasts three days and she, younger than me has arthritis flaring up in the bad weather. She'd talked to Tiger about coming back out tomorrow to stay with my kids while my husband returns to work on Friday-- could I possibly stay over the weekend? Her husband and kids are gone until Sunday. This woman is so nice that I can't refuse. Her arthritis debilitates her. She is a dedicated horse woman, the kind of person who should be cloned.

She wired me gas money (I'd not accept it if I wasn't so strapped after Christmas) and I went out immediately to feed and water the beasts. Guess what? I do not miss feeding my fathers' horses in -30 weather! I miss the memory of feeding and watering them in -30 weather! I took my portable massage table over to her place and set it up and gave her a 2 hour long massage. She was in tears-- she hurt like hell and the massage was pushing gunk out of her joints and muscles.

I'm leaving in a bit again and may stay. I don't like New Year's Eve because I would like to be celebrating with champagne and lobster. I love my children, but it's been so long since I got dressed up to the nines and looked beautiful in a skirt that shows off my long legs. My husband is happy with the kids and they will probably play Monopoly or Risk and the little kids will have some crafts. I'm grateful to go over there and pass the evening without fanfare and just study my texts and wake up early. She needs a special diet when she has the arthritis and HAS to eat even though she wants to curl into a ball and not wake up til it's over. I do not envy her.