through my yankee eyes

for my kids on Mother's Day, on the one-year anniversary of being us

2013-05-11T04:47:00.001-05:00

This Mother's Day, I only have the pure-of-heart homemade gifts that my kids made at school for me...and their love. Last year was the final holiday I shared with my husband, and at that point our relationship was sputtering to a close. I still have the card he gave me, written as if it was meant for a friend in a mom's support group instead of a wife. Mother's Day marked an irreversible turning point in all of our lives.

I've decided that instead of accepting gifts and giving hugs, I want to give my kids something special for Mother's Day in return, something they can cherish for the rest of their lives. They deserve to have a mom who is thoughtful, introspective, contemplates their days, and tries her best to figure out how to make them better, even it means breaking down the walls of my ego and looking at myself in an honest light.

My Mother's Day gift to you, little pumpkins, is to tell you what I want to do and what I'm going to try my hardest to do for you. If I say they're promises, then I run the risk of letting you down. As I am a human with faults, desires, worries, and dreams like you, I know that I can't possibly be the perfect person or mom. But if I put these things down on paper, there's a good chance I'll get a little closer. I've been working on this for 21 years now, but I don't think you can ever stop improving at it. I hope to be able to do this every Mother's Day. These will be my guidelines for the next year until then.

1. Sleep: The other day I was overtired and found myself overly short with you. I apologized as the night went on, and tried to explain how tired I was. Brandon, instead of getting angry with me, you asked me sweetly and with more maturity than your years if I thought I could work on getting more sleep. That simple request has echoed in my mind for the past few days. Sometimes I stay up later than I should to get some quiet time after you guys go to bed, but at the expense of my mood the next day. You deserve a mom who has patience, is slow to anger, and does not get upset over the insignificant things just because I'm tired.

2. Food: I'm getting better here. In the beginning of all this, you got frozen pasta and vegetables microwaved in the steamer bag, breakfast for dinner, pizza, and (God forbid!) McDonald's meat paste. I remember the first night we sat in the McDonald's playland...it had been just recently that we'd been there with your dad; in fact, I wrote about it on here. I didn't have it in me to cook at that point, and it was a last resort. I had brought a school book to read, but there was no getting around the fact that I now shared a silent camaraderie with the solitary dads watching their kids play, even if we didn't look at each other. I was getting so good at planning out our meals before, but that tanked when I couldn't find the energy to do it and I had to do everything on my own. I'm nearly back to where I was before, but I picked up some bad habits and, I'll admit it, became lazy. I realize that you enjoy the Friday mini corndogs at school, but I need to be much more purposeful when it comes to feeding you healthy foods and packing your lunches.

3. Friends: You want to have your friends over at the house more and not have to listen to me say that it's too messy and I'm embarrassed. I either need to stop worrying about what other parents think about my housekeeping skills, or actually spend more time cleaning the house (which I don't have much of, so we might have to go with option #1). Your friends truly don't care about my piles of laundry on the couch. They run right past it all in search of a cat to play with, or they try to jump in it because it's fun. Plus when you and your friends get together you seem to enjoy making more messes!

4. Structure: I let you guys scam out on a lot of chores because I haven't given you much structure lately. I ask you to do the work, but if you balk and I don't feel like arguing, then I often will just do it myself. I'm taking the easy way out, although at the time it feels like the hard way, when the hard way is standing my ground and teaching you about consistency with responsibilities. I'm not doing you any favors in the long run to do the work for you, so I'm going to ask you to do more around the house in order to earn the things you like to do. This probably seems like the worse Mother's Day gift ever, doesn't it? :)

5. Understanding: You know that I truly understand what you're going through right now, especially you, Brandon. I've been there, and I know how sad and scary it can be at times. I realize that it has changed all of you and I can see that, and I'm so sorry. I will always feel badly about that fact for the rest of my life. I need to bring the place of understanding to a deeper level though, because your experience is not my experience, and the two are not entirely comparable. I don't know it all, not by a long shot. One thing I do know though, is that through this experience you will become a more compassionate and caring person, having lived through hard times yourself, and maybe someday you will be able to help someone else who is struggling.

6. Faith: We pray at night, but do we discuss the deeper aspects of spirituality, like forgiveness, love, kindness, acceptance, and trust? I think that we do in passing and on occasion, but not as much as I'd like to. Spirituality is the foundation of how I try to interact with the world, and I don't want to lose out on this fleeting opportunity to share that with you while you're young. I don't always make myself a living example of those characteristics, and I need to look inside myself to find out how I can do that. I can't teach you if I'm not an example.

7. Communication: It goes without saying that whenever you want or need to talk to me about anything, I'll be here for you. But the greater gift is to listen to you without judgment, respecting that you are an individual with different opinions than mine, and also realizing that when we disagree it is an opportunity for both of us to learn compromise. The trick is to pick the battles wisely, and that task falls mostly on me. Also, when we do talk you deserve my total presence, not the mind-wandering that I tend to do during conversations. I need to turn off the phone, the radio, and stop what I'm doing to listen to you. Minimize distractions.

8: Kindness: This is my largest task. It is easy to be kind to those who are kind to you. Simple. But to those who are mean, taunting, belittling, and laugh when you fall down, it can feel nearly impossible, like there's no way it can be done. It can be, and when you succeed, you free yourself from anger and bitterness and become open to love...even to love the person who's hurting you. I believe that everyone and all creatures deserve kindness, because we are all children of God and blessed with life. It goes against my nature to feel hatred toward someone, and I don't like that side of myself. When you grow up, I want you to have good knowledge of what kindness means and to be able to treat people kindly...even when it seems like the most difficult thing in the world to do. I want you to do better than I have done. You're already schooling me, I'm ashamed to say. I see the disapproving looks when I get a certain tone with your dad, and that helps put me in my place and remember that I need to be kind to him because you love him.

Aubrey, Brandon and Claire, I love you with all my heart. You are my life, and I will always be here for you as long as I'm living. Happy Mother's Day!

Love,
Mom

I cared

2012-12-04T23:13:00.001-06:00

Translation: "I draw on my face and my mom does not care and it is awesome! It is awesome!"

Michelle in March

2012-11-26T23:13:00.001-06:00

I am losing my husband, and I am losing one of my best friends who lives across the street.

With her though, it's not really about what I am losing, but about what she is losing, and I feeling sorry for myself for it.

Back in March I wrote down some thoughts about her journey with metastatic breast cancer. One morning, I came home from a particularly rough night at work and met her outside at the end of our driveways to wait for the school bus.

I break down about my morning at shift change. She is interested and wants to hear. It’s a change from the usual topic of death. She says that even as a family member, when her son was 17 and dying in the hospital with cancer, she could see how badly some of the nurses treated one another. They are catty bitches, I say with enthusiasm. It’s good to be able to tell another woman this, because my husband can’t fully comprehend what I am talking about when I say those two words together, even though he has been on the receiving end. Before the words even finish leaving my mouth she is echoing them, grimaces, and says with a tone of feistiness “Do you need me to go down there?”

She is dressed up, wearing some of the layered necklaces that I admire her for, always looking put together despite being a mess inside. There’s a new wig, the second wig. I joke that she’s already losing hair from the wig too as I remove a long strand from her white shirt, and she laughs. I tell her it’s a nice style and looks good on her. What I don’t say is that I miss her old hair that spoke of vibrant health.

She sees her youngest son off to school, tells me that every day he says he is dropping out of kindergarten. There is an oncologist appointment this morning to discuss her pain. She gets through the day with church people and her close friend Stacy, and at night helps her kids with their homework, but in the very late hours that's when it gets bad. She has been up the past two nights laying on the floor in the bathroom. I assume it is from vomiting, but she says it is just that she feels like she has to grit her teeth together from the pain, all alone in there. She won’t take narcotics, not now, not this early on.

She senses my drunken sleepiness and tells me to go lay down. As I walk away, instead of feeling calm and contented with the camaraderie we just shared over mean women, I want to scream “Noooooooooooo! You can’t die. You are the closest thing to a best friend that I have right now! The only true Southerner who seems to get my sarcasm and is not offended by it!"

I don’t ever want her to see me cry during these moments. She would ask what was the matter, and I would have to lie. Would she forgive me if she knew that I was blurring the honesty line a little past where friends normally go?

driving the Natchez Trace

2012-10-27T02:54:00.001-05:00

I have so long neglected this blog that I don't even understand the new format anymore.

So, fuck it.

I am going to write whatever I want on here. This is my blog, after all.

I need to vent, and in order to do that I'm going to have to relieve myself of the pretend obligation that I need to be nice, educational, or accommodating to anyone who might be offended by my posts.

Frankly, I've been offending myself for not writing, because I am too caught up in trying to think of a name for a new blog.

I can't do that anymore, because here I sit, at work, in the quiet of the night at 2 a.m., crying.

This seems to be the only place where I break down. I don't have a typical nursing job. Patients actually sleep, and I often only work with one other person. There is lots of time to think. Too much time.

I'm looking forward to finishing my master's degree next year and getting a dayshift job in a busy clinic. I'll actually have other things to focus on then besides how sucky life can be...at least my life, as I'm sure some of my patients will have sadder stories to tell.

We used to be a family. The four of us. That's not something you just throw away. I feel like that is a precious thing. There are going to be problems, of course, but family is sacred.

I have never experienced what that means. My parents were divorced when I was 12, and I was shuffled around between them for awhile. There was nothing sacred there. My sister and I were the human pawns in their game of who could get out of paying child support. I represented a dollar sign and an inconvenience of time.

Then I married young, at 18, and that marriage was over within 2 years.

This marriage was my chance to get it right, but I'm obviously not good at this.

My kids will never be made to feel as if they're an inconvenience. Not from me. I can't control what their dad does, but I've been hurting for them lately. It's almost like I am 12 all over again, feeling their pain. I've promised myself that I won't let them feel what I felt. Ever.

Tonight, as I've done several other nights, I'm thinking about the outings we had together as a family. The four of us. The kids happy in the back of the van with DVD players. Dad driving as I read a book in the passenger seat. The kids running around on a hill while I take photos. Laughing at the silly things we find on the ground, at the irony of life.

I loved every minute of those outings, except for times like when Claire walked into a spider web on a forest hike and it took awhile to console her screaming, or one of us clumsily tripped and scraped a leg, or insects crawled onto our food during a picnic (well, Brandon liked that part).

Now that I think back, I don't believe my husband was enjoying himself much. He was faking. I was taking the photos, lost in the wonderment of what was around us, and I think he was just watching me do it, not an active participant himself, but simply going through the motions.

He told me once, toward the end, that he thought about taking photos too, but I was offended and told him to get his own hobby. I was a jerk for that, for being possessive of my interests. The thing was, I wanted him to have hobbies besides TV and video games, to find his own loves, and to share them with me and teach me something, not copy what I was doing. Not do another thing that I would have to be the expert at.

I didn't take any photos of the spider webs, but the memories are there.

We're still going to have those outings that I treasure, but it will only be the three of us now. We are sacred.

creative tension and thinking real hard

2012-08-13T22:48:00.007-05:00

There is never a day when I can sit down at a table with a pen and paper and say "I'm going to write something great." It just doesn't work out that way for me. Most of the time I can't even compose an interesting idea unless it's spontaneous. I try to keep myself from thinking that hard. Because I want to attempt to live a (on the surface) so-called "normal" life, I rarely allow myself the luxury to slip into deep rumination about subjects that are truly distressing to me. I think that's one of the main reasons why I can't always stick with counseling. There's too much thinking involved.

Every so often those thoughts slip through my internal defenses, and I allow myself to knead them around in my mind--but in the end I'm going to choose sanity over art, at least while I have kids to raise.

Inspired writing comes from a tension I feel inside between two conditions (the states of being mentally calm and quiet vs. searching for philosophical meaning and a reason for everything) that will never, and can never, coexist.

If you search for "creative tension," you will find lots of psychological mumbo-jumbo that talks about end points and visions of the future. My inspiration comes from the likely conclusion that I will never reach those end points. The writing doesn't resolve the tension, but merely seeks to explain it and bring it into a corporeal state:

Where I am and where I wish I was instead
The person I could've been versus who I am today

There is a benefit to being in a perpetual state of mild depression, in that there is an element of raw sadness to life that allows one to see more clearly, rather than through rose-colored glasses. More often than not, I put on the rose-colored glasses so that I can live a peaceful life. When I want to meditate on reality I take them off for just a few minutes.

"If man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman.”--Socrates

Someday I hope to have the time and energy to reach something near to perfection.

This was a post I wrote and put in draft on September 23, 2011. I'm pulling old shelved posts out of the dungeon and reviving them now. At the time when I wrote this, it didn't make a lot of sense to me. I mean, I didn't know what caused me to write it, kind-of like what the actual post talks about. Now almost a year later, I can see that there was something going on in the recesses of my mind that I didn't understand but that was important to the overall picture of my life. I've barely edited this post and I consider it unfinished, but I think it stands pretty well on its own.

upside down

2012-07-31T21:35:00.005-05:00

So...I am getting divorced, or being divorced from, whichever way you look at it.

This is the 5-year anniversary of this blog and of the date we moved to Tennessee from Illinois. I once said out loud on facebook "I give it 5 years." I was so unhappy here initially, but I've slowly grown to tolerate some of it, and love other parts of it. It's a bittersweet anniversary.

I didn't and don't want to write the details here though, because this is mostly my "fun" blog, and what part of divorce is fun (unless you are the divorcer, maybe)? That is why I've been so quiet lately.

Also, some of it might be offensive and depressing to my garden/insect/earthy readers, although I know that no matter what our hobbies are we all have very real and human problems, and sometimes it is our hobbies that keep us grounded and sane despite them.

Therefore, I am going to make a new blog only for the topic of the divorce. It will be one more way to help me get through. There will be many personal things on there, and since people I know in real life sometimes read this blog here, I have to "screen" the readers first. I am not so brave and trusting that I won't be horribly judged.

My solution to this is if you would like to read about this side of my life--if you care enough to try--drop me an email at moonflower317@yahoo.com, and I will send you the link. (Actually some of it might turn out to be a teensy bit humorous, only because my brain copes with this kind-of stuff by forcing myself to laugh at the sadness.)

To the rest of you, I will try to keep writing funny and/or informative things every 6 months or so like I've been doing ;-)

2012-07-17T22:43:00.000-05:00

Taken near Stockland, IL at sunrise

journey

2012-05-27T12:51:00.001-05:00

Why do we stay in places in our lives where we feel, sometimes with every ounce of our being, that we should not be there?

Because we fear the unknown.

As wrong, as lonely, as sad, as infuriating or as unfulfilled as we may be, we are comfortable in the KNOWN.

And even though what lies ahead and is unseen may open doors that we never thought possible, we still can't see that far, and that's scary.

I know that no matter what happens though, I need ME. I need to be the person that I was born to be; to not waste the talents I was given because I am in a melancholy funk. I'm still not sure who that is, and I imagine I'll be working it out until I can't remember where to put my fingers on the keyboard anymore.

I need to be a friend, in return for all the friends in my past and present who have given to me when I couldn't give in return.

I need to be a mom to my kids, to fill their world with the joys of life that it took me so long to find on my own. To give them the tools to be strong and to know that their greatest ally is themselves.

I have a feeling that this walk down a long unknown trail of many turns, through a forest I've never traveled in before, has already begun. I am surrounded by stands of tall trees, thick shrubs and May apples covering the ground, still believing that I'm in the parking lot, that I can go back home and life will resume with the known. I have yet to fully recognize the implications of where I am.

If I do finally figure it out--when I do--I expect poison ivy, thorns, ticks and spider webs on my face. I also know that there will be surprise blackberries, fields of wildflowers, the croaks of a family of bullfrogs, and a soft breeze that cools me in my weak and tired moments.

And it is those moments that I will wait and hope for, because I know they will eventually come. They always do.

2012-05-03T00:31:00.028-05:00

I've been in stalking mode and have gone for months now without blogging, but after all this time I'd like to write about:

McDonald's!

First, let me make the disclaimer (I am dripping with guilt as I sound like an organically-concerned poseur mother) that I don't remember the last time I've been to Mickey D's for anything other than coffee after seeing Food, Inc. Even so, that was a brave move, since I had once found beard hairs floating in my latte. But it was one of those running-around days--you know the type. One of the kids shouted it out along with "meat paste!", I made a justifying statement about why McDonald's might be okay just this one time, and there we were.

No fries with the Happy Meal--Claire asked for apples! She wanted the caramel dipping sauce though. What a way to negate the nutritional value, I thought, but hey, those apples are surely coated in every pesticide approved by the EPA, and who knows what they were soaked in to keep from turning brown, so....food values tossed to the side once again.

But wait! The cashier said they no longer carried the caramel dipping sauce at that location. We asked why and got a garbled response over the speaker that included "customer" and "lawsuit." We were intrigued and grilled the guy further when we got to the window.

Turns out our local McDonald's was sued over this harmless condiment!

The caramel had been on the warming tray, and supposedly exploded when opened in the car of the offendee. I am thinking that this person did not drive a '99 Buick as I do (or anything remotely similar).

I probably would have cursed out the package, considered going back for more, ruled that out from hunger, and then proceeded to dip the apples in whatever was gobbed up on a clean part of the seat and chocked it up as another "character stain." When I got home I might have let my dog hop in the car and lick up what she could since she is so much better at handling messes like that than I am.

I can't imagine taking time out of my life to sue a restaurant because my car got stained by their food. Eating in the car is not the best idea anyways, especially if you own one that would cause you to bring a lawsuit over a splatter of caramel.

It's like the frothy matcha latte I bought today that was foaming out of the cup and onto my pants as I walked through the grocery store. I appeared to have an episode of uncontrollable diarrhea, with dark green splotches running down the front that I couldn't hide with the groceries I was carrying. Hmmm...could that pass for emotional distress???

Detour

2011-11-08T08:47:00.001-06:00

I've been going through some major changes lately. (No, not that kind of change. Hopefully I have at least 10 more years before that hits.) It seems like life refuses to follow the plan that I have laid out. Such a stubborn beast life can be.

How is it possible to walk around in a daze yet still be full of new insights? That's how it has been for me this past month.

I'll talk more about all of this later. Right now I just wanted to say "Hi!" and "I'm still alive out there!" for those of you whose blogs I haven't visited or commented on in a long time.

When circumstances take a dramatic turn, I feel like the best way for me to get through it is to focus on something. Of course with the holidays coming that's a little more difficult to do. But anyways, whatever it is that I decide to throw myself into will be shared here because I miss writing.

Talk with you soon!

the thousand year stare

2011-09-27T04:43:00.018-05:00

The thousand year stare
scaffolds up a hundred transparent moments
my attention wanes
and sharpens abruptly.
I flirt with an emerald hummingbird
on the sun's side of the window
but he only sees his reflection, not the ghost
nods goodbye to sample a Gerber daisy
timid
peach-colored
proud
one of two on a stubborn plant.
I return to the kitchen.
Lines ingrained in pressed wood trace my finger
alphabet letters and preschool portraits
smiley faces
pencils tapping out songs leaving stars behind
the cadence of children making music around our table.
Window smudges.
Moss on the gate grows unchecked
the siding glows
this incessant heat
how long will it take to return after I scrub it away?
I remember something my mother wrote
words of tonic water when they finally went down
still undigested
does she resent me for not being her
or for being myself?
The books I ordered should have arrived
it has been nearly two weeks.
Piano lessons, nursery rhymes, the gingerbread man.
Dinner.
Milk?
High-pitched silverware slides
with plates like cymbals
piercing.
My family sings melodies of white noise in the background of my daydreams
I wish I could discern the tune
the fine points, the rough edges
find an intrinsic harmony.

garden haiku

2011-07-29T17:42:00.000-05:00

If you want to start writing poetry, the haiku is a user-friendly introduction to it. With a three-lined verse that contains the syllabic pattern of 5-7-5 and no requirement to rhyme, amateurs can make their foray into this Japanese art form without the emotional and time investment that other types of poetry require. Purists might argue that it's more complex than I let on, and I suppose it could be, but I don't want to scare any burgeoning poets away.

This morning I was inspired by a contest to write some haiku. I haven't written much poetry in the past few years because it takes a lot out of me emotionally, but this was simple and without that commitment. Haiku is like the one night stand of poetry.

garden wanderer
pauses to view robin nest
dive bombing ensues

night time insects cry
katy did, katy didn't
cacophony choir

Feel free to comment with your own haiku or link to your webpage or blog :-)

thoughts on May 21st rapturization

2011-05-21T16:52:00.002-05:00

Well, it looks like the day is finally here--the day that the end of the world begins. I'm still here.

My kids and I have been trying to get through the 3-hour-long Avatar movie. I've been wondering if the rapture will be like that, where your body will suddenly go limp and that'll be it.

If it is gonna happen today, I doubt it's gonna happen to me. My next-door neighbor is still around, and he has a lot going for him. He was named after the Apostle Paul, he told me that he never curses, he hosts the church youth group for a backyard get-together every so often, and he always has a piece of candy in his pocket and a smile for a stranger. I am nowhere near oaiopaslk;jgkl 908t 8gti nlkalhe480ah fgie

ATTENTION HUMANS: THIS IS THE ANGEL GABRIEL. I HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO COORDINATE RAPTURE ACTIVITIES. IF YOU HAVE BEEN LEFT BEHIND, YOU WILL STILL BE ABLE TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR RAPTURED FRIENDS. THEY ARE LEARNING A NEW OPERATING SYSTEM IN HEAVEN AND WILL BE BACK ONLINE IN A FEW DAYS SO THEY CAN GLOAT AT YOU.

YOU ARE FREE TO ROAM ABOUT THE PLANET. LOOTING AND PILLAGING ARE NO LONGER PROHIBITED SINCE THERE'S NOTHING GOOD YOU CAN DO THAT MATTERS ANYMORE. HAVE FUN!

sullen teenage mockingbird

2011-05-11T09:19:00.000-05:00

I won't do it. You can't make me leave this tree. Humph!

argiope aurantia, our charlotte

2011-05-06T18:45:00.009-05:00

This little girl was spotted in our front bushes in May, 2009. She took up residence there and remained for the entire summer. When I arrived home from work in the early morning I would check for her presence in the web. If she disappeared for a day, we would worry that something terrible had happened to her, but sure enough she returned soon after, sometimes in her old web, sometimes in a new one. I guess you could say that she had a high "web-site tenacity," which is the probability of how long spiders remain in their webs before they find another site. This term was described in 1973, long before the internet was around! She had a good food source there, but we think she just liked us. :-)

She ate flies and beetles that ventured unknowingly into her lethal web. After paralyzing them with venom, she wrapped them tightly in silk.

Her abdomen, which was usually flat, grew large and round and stayed that way for days after eating. We came to know when it was time for her next meal.

As time went on, she somehow carved for herself a little depression in the leaves so that she could expand the web out further. After all, she was getting larger, and needed to be able to catch prey that was worthy of her size.

In this photo she holds a large winged insect, perhaps a cicada. We did see a few of those last year.

My favorite photo of her. The yellow and black markings on her legs and abdomen are clear as she rested after a long meal.

Her home began to extend above the bushes.

When the lower bushes were too confining for the size of the web she wanted to build, she moved up and anchored onto the pillar of our front porch and the Euonymus Alatus, or "burning bush," growing next to the house.

One morning, after I did my usual check for her, she was gone again from the web. I searched the bricks and within the leaves. I finally found her on the soffit of the front of the house. I knew it was time to say goodbye. She was drifting away from where we could be close to her and watch the details of her life play out. The mornings were becoming chillier, and I knew that she couldn't hang around forever. It was time for her to build a nest in which to make her egg sac. After laying the eggs, she would grow weaker and eventually pass away.

We had adopted her as part of our extended family, and last summer I found her offspring on some of the bushes. I called them my natural mosquito-killers. This spring we should be seeing Charlotte's grandchildren. I will welcome them joyously into my garden too!

convention of the river spirits

2011-05-05T15:12:00.001-05:00

black coal river

2011-05-05T07:57:00.000-05:00

the strawberry saga continues

2011-04-20T13:40:00.008-05:00

Here we have an intact strawberry, full of hope and promise for a long ripening, and almost ready to give up its juicy sweetness to the humans who planted, watered, and cared for it:

This next one shows that I need to go into stealth mode with night vision goggles in order to witness the precise moment of ripening (before the birds wake-up and have a feast):

Finally, this last specimen has helped me to realize that maybe the farmer's market is a better option:

Hopefully I'll make it there early enough on Saturday before all the strawberries sell out.

pigeon--the other white meat

2011-04-12T09:05:00.001-05:00

According to the rule-out ADHD diet, fresh or frozen pigeon is okay to eat. What a relief!

the ambiguous path of humanity

2011-04-04T13:06:00.004-05:00

I think of the animals, who go about their daily lives in the prescribed patterns that suit them. They obtain their sustenance, reproduce, fight over mates, their food, and their territories. There is the alpha male whom the others respect and fear, but he is not (typically) a tyrant. The animals live how they live without question, with instinct. A bird does not decide that his society is not working for him and go off to build a new colony of birds based upon a new philosophy of living. He will leave the nest to start a family, but the methods of survival remain based upon the threads of instinct that have been woven through hundreds of past generations.

Despite all of the intelligence that humans (in general) possess, we haven’t yet found the optimal way to live; we still fight over the details that should have been worked out hundreds of years ago. Evolution has failed our brains in this way. Perhaps we did have a good idea about how to get it right once, but passed it by with our increasing knowledge and technology, and in gaining that we have lost much of the instinct that drives our survival. We’ve become hammered down by the details and have lost the view of the big picture.

With greater knowledge comes greater indecision about the "right" way to live. As humans, we try to find our guides in religious texts, but there are so many modern questions that these don’t answer unless one skews the interpretation to fit their comfortable point of view. The fact that there are hundreds of religions, sects and denominations shows that we are thoroughly confused. So many choices, so many cultures, so many tints through which to view the world.

Is there one perfect ideology for humans that will maximize our intelligence, needs, and wants, yet still perpetuate our species at a sustainable level while allowing us to respect all others that aren't human? No, there is not, when seen through the lens of time. As technology has grown, so have our wants, so what we think we want is a matter of the reality that we live in. Our reality of today is different from even ten years ago. We are now at the point in time when our needs and our wants have become reversed, with it easier to provide for our wants than our needs (it is easier to go to the store and buy a new cell phone than it is to grow food). I believe that this is a dire situation for us.

Because we are of a higher thinking order than animals, maybe it’s not possible to find that one true path of living that is good (or right) for all, but shouldn’t the one true philosophy, that will bring happiness for all and preserve the earth, transcend politics and opinion? How will we know when we have found it? Or will we only discover it in retrospect, when all is lost?

a side of guilt with mayo on top

2011-03-31T13:06:00.005-05:00

Dearest Kraft Mayo (and all other mayonnaises who are reading this),

I just wanted to reassure you that I value our relationship. What you do for my sandwich, my salad dressing, even my hamburger since I've moved to the South, and in essence, what you do for me as a person, can't be quantified or adequately described in words. My feeble attempts to relate my feelings to you would be a mere specter of the thoughts that swell my heart and make it want to burst in a fit of something other than a blown aneurysm.

My beloved Mayo, I find your ultimatum troubling. Wait! Do not despair! It's just that love, hate--all those superlatives--they seem to be quite too much, and if I didn't know any better I'd think you were trying to get into my pants.

Please don't take this personally. I didn't even say that I "hated" coffee back in the days when one plugged-nostril whiff of it made me nauseated. As far as the word "love" goes, well, I love me an ice cream sundae with caramel, real whipped cream and peanuts. You're just not there yet, but there's always room for growth.

What it comes down to, Mayo, is that I like you. That's all I can give you right now. Please do not return this reassurance with a gift of food poisoning. I promise not to let you go. I've become too much of a Southerner for that to happen.

train them up (or down, or sideways)

2011-03-15T20:33:00.005-05:00

"Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."-- Proverbs 22:6

I thought of this verse today while walking through my garden boxes and looking over the strawberries that I planted about a month ago. My fruits and vegetables are also my children, and even better because they don't talk back or try to sit on and flatten the cat. Although I'd never trade my real kids for an insect-free organic row of lettuce, I swear it.

Strawberries are unruly and don't like to do what they're told. They need to be trained, just like children, although I have a hunch that training strawberries is a slightly easier task.

We have tiny wild strawberries growing all over our yard. For the past couple of years I've fought with the ones that grow through my daylilies. Every couple of months I go out there and yank them up (guiltily), and before you know it they are back again as if nothing ever happened (they are very forgiving, to put it nicely). That's because strawberry plants grow from a bottom crown, and they send out long runners in all directions to make more little plants. When you pull them up, you have to get them at each crown section. Even then, there are always more lurking under the bushes just waiting to creep around the corner.

Those wild strawberries have been a good lesson for me on how to keep the "domesticated" ones under control. (Disclaimer: this advice cannot be applied to marriage.)

So here's what I did:

I made a corral for my berries by using the holes in concrete blocks (I got them for free on freecycle.org--I love that website!).

Three on one side, and three on the other:

I filled the middle of the box with some peat, compost, and top soil to help the drainage issue (when it rains it turns into a muddy pool, since our soil is mainly reddish-colored clay).

Here they are a month later, a little larger, the ground a little greener. I get so used to the brownness of winter that I don't think of it as dreary until I see a side-by-side comparison.

Some strawberry blossoms:

As they grow and send out runners, I plan to turn the strawberries in toward the center of the box to keep them from taking over my yard (although choking out the rampant unstoppable Bermuda grass and wild onions might be a benefit to letting them go crazy!).

I've read that it is best to lop off the flowers the first year so that the plants can spend their youth growing rather than reproducing (sounds like good advice). But I want fresh strawberries this year, if only a few! Call me greedy. And hopefully by next year I'll have a box full of yummy strawberries to pick in the spring and summer!

Chihuly Nights at Cheekwood botanical garden

2011-01-08T10:00:00.000-06:00

We have a membership to Cheekwood botanical garden in Nashville. In November, we went and saw some of the artwork of Dale Chihuly displayed throughout the grounds.

I've had this post in draft since then, but just thought to finish it up when my cousin in Seattle said on facebook that the powers that be are tearing down an old amusement park to build a Chihuly glass exhibit. I value art, and it does have a place in the education of children, but come on now. Where are the priorities???

happy rest of the year

2011-01-01T08:05:00.008-06:00

This was the first NYE that we let little Claire stay up with B, with lots of "joyful" playing and running around. I know that our pets were wondering what was going on as they tried to stay off to the side of the action and avoid a trampling.

I couldn't hear what Dick Clark was saying over all the yelling. The kids don't understand the significance of this man on New Year's Eve. Sadly, I don't think that any explanation I give could bring back the energy of years past when we stayed up late to celebrate along with his spirited voice and personality. Thank goodness we have a DVR, so I could rewind and play it back over and over again.

By the time I was able to partially hear it, we were 3 minutes behind in the program. New Year's was only 20 minutes or so away. The Backstreet Boys/NKOTB combo came on, and I was torn about whether or not to skip past or listen. I don't think my life would have been the less for it if we had fast forwarded, especially since my husband and I spent much of the time in a life-changing debate over the singing career of Marky Mark.

Anyways, today I want to give a shout out to January 2nd, the neglected younger brother of Queen New Year's Day. And as far as that goes, the rest of the year as well.

Here's to a productive, purposeful and peaceful 2011. Let's do this thing!

the after-Christmas before-January-4th void

2010-12-30T21:21:00.016-06:00

Santa has come and gone. Maybe you were lucky enough to get a quick shot of him climbing up the chimney for the kids who demanded "proof" this year:

The gifts have been opened and the torn wrapping paper cleaned out from underneath the couch.

Christmas dinner has been ingested and digested and flushed away, with a few cups of eggnog left in the fridge.

If you contributed to China's economy more than you really wanted to this holiday season and couldn't afford to take a vacation, you have now hit the void. The "Christmas break void" is one of the peaks of a parent's desperation throughout the year (not to rival summer break) to keep the kids busy so that they don't put ribbons and lipstick on the cats out of sheer boredom, but with no money to do anything.

I was able to dig up $20 from a dusty corner this afternoon to take the kids to an indoor family playroom. We did R/C car and helicopter racing, played fuss ball, pool and air hockey, and climbed through a treehouse.

The boy will be a pool shark by age 13 if I have my way
(after we positively ID the cue ball)

Because of poor planning, I wasn't wearing the right pants for the situation. They were jeans, but low riders that didn't allow for bending and crouching. It took a lot of coordinated movements and slick clothing readjustments in order to avoid flashing half the building from up in the air.

My kids spotted friends to play with, so I grabbed the nearest magazine and plopped down on a couch. Finally, a little me time while they were happy and occupied.

The magazine was La Vie Claire. I had never heard of it before, but it was full of gardening photos, so I couldn't put it down.

Lately I've been searching for worthwhile New Year's resolutions, not something thrown lazily together such as "exercise 3 times a week" or "shave my legs daily" (weekly maybe?).

One of the quotes in the magazine was "Do something creative every day." Am I sheltered or something, or do I just spend too much time reading the news? That quote had never passed my eyes before. But I am now making it my own. Resolution #1. Even if it's as simple as taking one photo, because I don't always have time to write.

When we finally returned home, my hands were shaking from a near-lethal cappuccino/Rice Krispie treat/Lucky Charms combination. Maybe that's why I decided to take this photo tonight:

I've been playing around and experimenting with the settings on my digital camera lately (forever an amateur), and I'm fascinated by how a slow shutter speed will make stationary lights gyrate and put them into motion, when in reality they are standing still.

I created this photo tonight, which I have named "Holiday Procession." The streaks are shaped like faces with torsos; the figures march forward two by two in both a somber and celebratory way. The context is yours to imagine.

The Christmas break void has turned out to be fruitful for me. I have gained a little direction for next year--to focus more on creating, rather than sitting for longer than I should as a passive participant of life behind my computer screen.

Now I just need to get up the will to pull out the Play Doh again so that my little ones can enjoy a bit of creativity too (perhaps I have a future fashion designer on my hands, since she has recently discovered that the mushy pink and blue glop adheres beautifully to her pants).