Alright, let’s just pretend that I didn’t get stuck in some kind of weird time warp where I didn’t post anything for 6 months….

Agreed? Okay! We will be friends again!

After years of writing here at MaeMaeDaily, one week early last summer, suddenly, [...]]]>

Alright, let’s just pretend that I didn’t get stuck in some kind of weird time warp where I didn’t post anything for 6 months….

Agreed? Okay! We will be friends again!

After years of writing here at MaeMaeDaily, one week early last summer, suddenly, I couldn’t bring myself to post anymore. I feel like I owe my friends/readers an explanation for my sudden disappearance from the blog-o-sphere—and I do have an explanation other than laziness. Granted, it took me 6 months to come up with this excuse so take it for what it is worth…

First, let me set the stage so that you can fully participate in my introspection.

It was an unusually warm evening at the Oregon coast where the girls and I had met up with Husband for the weekend to celebrate Fathers Day and to do some camping near the beach. We had just returned from a short but LONG walk (considering we had a 2 year old to coax down the path), to buy some firewood from the camp hosts. After having walked 200 feet in 30 min, and considering Husband had been gone for a few weeks and I had been left to take care of every single little request from two little girls, Husband makes the smart move of offering to put the girls to bed in the tent. It’s early summer, even at 9pm, the sun has yet to set and so I decide to take a walk by myself and find myself on the beach.

It’s surreal, surreal that I’m alone, and the beach itself is a surreal hideaway. There had been a wispy fog bank resting over the entire beach since we had arrived and set up camp earlier that day. We had not been able to see the crashing waves…just hear them. Earlier that afternoon Husband and the girls would walk into the fog to play wave tag or build a sandcastle and only 20 feet away my little family would disappear from view.

And so here I am at sunset and Mother Nature takes it up a notch. The air around me is ethereal, pink and bright. The sun has made it’s decent far enough that it can finally show its face for the first time since dawn, squeezing between the heavy Oregon clouds above and the fog bank surrounding me. As beams bounce off and through the water in the air, a magnified rosy glow is cast over everything for miles around. The whole thing is honestly, miraculous.

As I step off the beach trail, I see fellow beach wanders stop in place with their bare feet sinking farther into the sand. I notice the look of wonder and expectation on their faces as they stop to look into the abyss that seems to have swallowed the ocean and which the sun now lingers over. They know as well as I, that this nature’s miracle might change us all, right here, forever.

This phenomenal spectacle on the beach starts to sink in and I suddenly become unreasonably desperate for the perfect place to sit. It is now obvious to me that I am about to have some incredible life altering moment or inspiration and I should be alone and sitting down for it. Totally reasonable.

I sweep my gaze over the beach and find the perfect spot immediately. Not far off is a log resting on the edge of a fresh water stream that is carving its way out to the unseen ocean. No one has dared to cross this shallow path of water to reach the inviting log.

Suckers! *evil chuckle* 

I quickly cross over to it and triumphantly claim my log of solitude. I sit down and I say a quick prayer to acknowledge the greatness of the scene before me and my gratitude for the opportunity to witness it. Then I actively allow my mind to go as still as possible…….

“…”

“I should be thinking about something right now.”

“…”

“Don’t I have like a whole lot of stuff to contemplate right now? I am pretty grown up and wise and stuff.”

“…”

“Ideas for blog posts maybe? How am I going to potty train Lime? What do I want to do when I grow up? How should I prioritize this solitude log thinking agenda?”

“…”

“Crap, I forgot all my stuff. I finally have alone time and I forgot all my stuff!”

WOMAN PANICS BECAUSE SHE FORGOT HER MENTAL TO-THINK LIST WHILE SITTING ON A SOLITUDE LOG DURING A CRAZY OUTDOOR MIRACLE.

“Dang it, Magen. CHILL OUT. Why did you have to go and ruin the solitude with your to-do lists? This is exactly what I have been saying. You have got to cut this stuff out…it’s stressing you out and you can’t just enjoy life…and peaceful moments on the beach!”

Yes. This is me talking to myself. It’s hard to escape myself sometimes. I had taken on the summer goal of letting go and being a kid for this very purpose BUT I was finding that it was really hard to do when I had such large to-do lists! It’s just my nature. So, I’m sitting on the log and thinking…

“What if I just douched my life of everything that has been weighing on me to do or get done and started over?” I fill my life with projects  and goals all the time and I have very little time to just BE. To have a quiet mind is to find inspiration and grow…and that’s really what I needed.

Back on my lovely beach log, I’m watching seagulls dip in and out of the pink foggy abyss, listening to the unseen waves sucking out the daylight hours—and I’m overwhelmed. What should I do about this? Do I finish everything I’ve started and then take a break or do give up what I’ve been working on and plunge into new ideas and a more carefree summer but with the weight of old goals on my conscious?

I stood up before daylight completely disappeared somewhere out on the unseen horizon and walked back to the tent. I left my frustration and the weight of my self-inflicted stress on the beach. It wasn’t a conscious choice. It just happened. That rosy haze hypnotized me.

The rest of the summer I didn’t do anything but just be. I read a lot of books, I played with the girls, I didn’t have an internal battle when I had alone time, for a week straight I sat alone next to a canal during the morning light, played with a kitten and wrote in my journal and I was so entranced by this that hours slipped away from me. I simply forgot about all my projects and goals and the blog. I traveled all over the northwest. I only planned minute to minute according to my immediate needs and the girls needs. It was wonderful.

I have a little more peace and a lot of good memories.

Writing this does make me remember a great idea I had that weekend. To add to my future list of things to do– write a book on how to discern a great restaurant by their fish tacos. West Coast Tacos De Mar or something like that. Do you ever feel like that? Have a weekend where you just want to write a book about fish tacos? I sure do.

P.S. I love to write, but I hate whenever anything creative becomes stifling or an obligation (to others or myself).  I let the blog become just that. I will try not to make that mistake again. I do as I please here…my random creative space and so Mae Mae Daily can no longer be an obligation. Thank you, Thank you for putting up with me and continuing to check-in during my absence.

We made our [...]]]>
I have been a little absent from blogging. Usually writing is my escape from the day-to-day routine– but right now there is nothing more I want to do then PLAY! It feels re-juvenating to just let go of other responsibilities for now.

We made our own cherry picker and picked cherries in the yard for an entire afternoon, romped around a hidden graveyard we found in the woods (sounds creepy but it is beautiful), swam at the pool on the official first day of summer, met up with friends for lunch at the park, watched movies while summer rain pelted roof tops, finished a book together, took pictures and giggled at a acrobat squirrel nibbling on cherries in the tree tops, visited a local museum and this weekend we get to ride a TRAIN!

How am I ever going to revert back to being an adult again? For now, I’m not going to think about it.

How is everyones summers so far? 

A couple of months ago I went through our pants and set aside any that were starting to get  too worn out or would not fit the girls by next fall.

I just want to say, I HATE the thought of spending money on summer [...]]]>

A couple of months ago I went through our pants and set aside any that were starting to get  too worn out or would not fit the girls by next fall.

I just want to say, I HATE the thought of spending money on summer clothing. It just seems wasteful. All we are going to do is get dirty while romping, wear LESS clothing and we aren’t really going to care a whole lot about what we look like when we have no where official to be and no one to impress.

So to me, it makes much more sense to re-invent clothing we already have and pants are a great place to start. If you with me on this, here is a quick tutorial on how to create cute cut-off jeans:

1. With pants on or using another pair of shorts as your guide, measure the length you want for your cut offs. To this, add on seam allowance keeping in mind whether you want to flip up once, leaving the edge raw to fray a bit in the wash or flipping twice and having a folded edge.

2. Lay one pant leg straight and cut straight across the leg at the length measured.

3. Fold over onto the second leg to match and cut.

4. Fold up raw edge and eye how you want your hem to look.

5. Press your edges with an iron.

6. Hand stitch a thick stitch in one place at the side seams of each leg to hold in place.

7. To keep the hem in place, in the inside (wrong side) make large loose stitches catching only a tiny bit on the right side of the leg (invisible stitch). Doesn’t have to be pretty.

8. View in the inside when done.

Finish a project lately? Please share!

Check out this FSIS Project by Aimee at Crafty Bug:

Mother’s Day Foot Stool