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We are stuffed full of satisfied feelings. We tended 3 gardens (two flowerbeds and our veggie patch) and created a whole new flowerbed. Yard work was done. A gloriously hot day with sun, sun, sun. We wore ourselves right out yesterday.
Today we woke to a cold, windy, cold morning. A big morning.
2 5k runs (Sandra got 1st out of 15 in her age category and Tias got 2nd out of three!)
1 10 km run (I ran a personal best)
1 half-marathon (Rainer came in 5th overall!)
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By this afternoon, I was feeling all used up. Rainer headed off for a cycle with a triathlete buddy so I dragged a cushiony chair into the shade, brought tea and books, knitting and crocheting. I must have had a little juice left in me since I was motivated to learn to crochet in the round under a tree late Sunday afternoon. Perfect end to a very productive weekend. Productive relaxation.
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A yellow washcloth for Project Spectrum. Round like the sun for a touch of spring in the kitchen.
I fell in to a trap, eyes wide open. I am suddenly Rabbit instead of Pooh Bear.
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Simple:
Lesson from the flowers: simple is as simple doesn’t.
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The summer semester, which is supposed to be wide and open, with a feeling of spacious ease, is feeling a lot like the rest of the year. Instead of having wide swaths of time in which to focus on a few good things, there are many little tasks to check off the list. The trap is one I sprung on myself by going through all of our homeschooling books. An easy, understandable mistake. You see, I found so many cool things I’d forgotten about. OOoooh stickerbook addition, OOoooh grammar bingo, OOoooh chapter book! They are all fun, all promising, all playful. There are simply too many of them.
So it’s time to refocus. Yes, I don’t want them to forget their math. Yes, there are other things I want to touch on. But there needs to be a way to create space. Maybe by letting the mornings be about the important things and then having a few things in the afternoons. Maybe a weekly shift of one week maths/one week other extras while keeping the focus on the creative writing with Sandra and the reading with Tias.
“Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is go where they can find you.” Winnie The Pooh
Absolutely excellent reading on this topic: The One Thing Principle
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Space and clutter can’t coexist. Time for a little metaphorical weeding.
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While I was doing some silent reading and copying poetry today alongside the kids two quotes struck me as worthy of being copied into my commonplace book – a book of quotations and passages – and as I went about my tasks this afternoon I realized that they speak together. These two quotes converge and merge, dance and sing, work together to prod me forward. At least at this point in time and for the me that I am just now.
“There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.”
Mary Oliver, Why I Wake Early
“You need to trust yourself, especially on a first draft, where amid the anxiety and self-doubt, there should be a real sense of your imagination and your memories walking and wool-gathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don’t look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
Reaching. Isn’t that what it’s all about? Not grasping at. But a deep body movement, like the shoulders do in downward-facing dog during yoga, a settling in and yet expanding out.
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“You do not have to create joy; it is an innate quality already within you, like the capacity to walk or be kind.” James Baraz
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What can you do to let joy play its part in your day?
The Project Spectrum colour is yellow. A glorious colour. I don’t wear much, but we’ve painted most of our house yellow. The whole house was grey when we bought it. White with grey-blue trim outside, grey with grey carpet inside. While we were in our first showing I sat on a stiff couch with Tias, and the living room seemed to be asking for us to buy it and fill it with love and energy. Our first task was to warm up the house, cheering it up.
Outside the house is now a creamy yellow but there are patches of yellow in the yard as well. I had a photo scavenger hunt this weekend – our first warm weekend. While I was weeding the undesired green shoots from the good green shoots, I noticed bursts of sunny colour and took a stretch break to document them.
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Spring, like a lightening of gravity, arrives.
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Not just a brown haze of buds filling the skies with a darkening smear, waiting, waiting, waiting for the warmth and sun… green is finally spreading across the blue.
Every year at this time I wonder why we don’t live somewhere milder. Somewhere with more time to live outdoors. Somewhere gentler and more genteel.
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Watermelon Frosties
Puree in blender:
- 2.5 c cubed seedless watermelon
- 1/2 c light cran-raspberry juice
- 3 Tb seedless raspberry all-fruit spread
- 2 tsp lime juice
Add and pulse til desired consistency:
- 1 c ice cubes
2 servings, approx 100 cal each
I’ve decided I want to buy about 5 sweater’s worth of yarn in the next few months. I’ve got a birthday coming up and, even if I don’t get the yarn as a gift (and Rainer and the kids have a list of affordable options to choose from), I’ll know I’ll get money and have fun with that. I want to get different weights, different colours, and different fibres. A real mix.
It’s interesting since I’ve been exploring the yoga yamas and there is, at least on the surface, a direct conflict between the way that they resonate with all the gathered wisdom of my life and this deep and growing need to acquire. One of the yamas is simplicity and non-covetousness.
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I have a hard time spending money on myself. It’s a product of never having lived on my own, never having had an income before kids, never really having had disposable income. Rainer and I moved in together when we were young, combined bank accounts, and worked our asses off every summer to pay for university. Then kids came. Eventually he got a ‘real’ job and things freed up a little and we could do things like occasionally buy new pants or eat fancy vegetables. But my mental money mechanisms are set to ‘caution’.
I have gotten a little better in the past few years at being mad with my mad money. Did you have an Oma like mine? I would sometimes get a card from her with $5 in it and she would clearly let me know that it was Mad Money. She always capitalized it in her graceful cursive. I wasn’t to save it or use it for responsible things. I often ended up buying a new Nancy Drew book when we were next in the big city of Regina and perhaps a wee bit of 5 cent candy at the grocery store across the street from school. I was to play with it, indulge myself, go a little mad.
What I realized as I was trying to tease out the apparent contradiction between my years-long practice of simplicity and this decision to buy a lot of yarn was this: every time I want to knit a sweater I feel a Puritan harshness rising in me. Using the 3-4 sweater’s worth of yarn I do have on hand seems reckless and improvident. Wanting to knit a project in a colour or yarn weight I don’t have on hand seems rash and indulgent. Buying new yarn is a process fraught with emotional and psychological eddies.
In other words, as things currently stand my hobby, my deep seat of creative satisfaction, my process for clothing my family in warmth and comfort is a complicated dance of justification. I want it to be my dance. Period. I want it to be play. I am not purchasing for the sake of owning or collecting. I want to be able to have an urge to knit myself a grey tweed sweater, or Sandra a blue hoodie, or Rainer a glorious cabled sweater, or, or, or… and to just do it.
Make hay while the sun shines. Go mad with the mad money.
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They arrived on Friday. Painted Lady Butterflies ordered from Butterfly Wings n’ Wishes. We separated them and housed them with their gelatinous food in small containers.
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Some were strong and burly. Others tiny and wee.
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I pulled out a book full of information on butterflies and moths on Tuesday and immediately sensed it was the wrong choice. A week of purposeful time off and a long weekend with Papa meant we needed an on-ramp before we could accelerate.
I grabbed the book most likely to dazzle and entice: A Butterfly Alphabet. They boggled. They gasped. They debated.
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Today we opened up the lids one by one, reached in with a paintbrush, delicately removing them from their small worlds. A quick sweep with the brush to remove webbing and waste, a quick photo session to allow our eyes to linger on the small details.
We had read the beginnings of an incredible book this morning: Face to Face with Caterpillars. In the true National Geographic tradition, the book dazzles and informs. The photos entice and create an immediate sense of exploration. With this exciting and intimate background, our cleaning session took on an aura of wonder.
We did this once before, 5 years ago, when they were little. Our experience was memorable. This time their minds are so much more engaged with the process, wondering at the natural processes more than the showy magic of it all.
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Those that looked large and had a stripe along their backs were put back into their containers with an added layer of filter paper under the lids. When they’re ready, they’ll attach to it and form their chrysalis. We’ll gently remove the papers, hanging them in our empty aquarium. We’ll wait. We’ll wonder at the reshaping occurring within. We’ll greet the emerging forms with giddy excitement.
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Transformations: A mama who squints and looks for spiracles. A mama transfixed by the difference between the thoracic legs and the abdominal prolegs. Children who read about butterflies without assistance. Children growing up before my eyes just like the creeping creatures on the paper.
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“You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.” John Adams
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What poets are your friends?
“So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
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She saved up her money and then pounced on a great sale. An Acer Netbook. A tiny computer that lets you write and go online. The pared-down essentials.
And write she does. At 10 at night I go into her room and find her curled up with blankets and the Netbook in her lap and tell her to go to sleep. At 8:30 in the morning I go to call her for breakfast with a kiss and she’s writing at her desk. At 3 pm she pulls up a stool to the kitchen counter and types away for a while.
I envy her. The gadget. The time. The sense of beginning.
