“yump.”

“when you had that dream about the baby, and he came out talking, what was he saying?”

“he wasn’t talking.  he was walking.”

“oh.

sorry.”  i mumble on something about getting confused, feeling like a schmuck for not remembering his Important Baby Dream correctly.

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“and in the dream i was kind of pissed that he had blonde hair.”

“really?”

“yump.  i wanted him to look like me.”

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“babe?”

“huhhhkyump.”

“we’re starting a family.”

“we’re already a family.”

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“we are?”
“yump.”

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first there’s the “ground zero mosque,” which is not at ground zero and is not a new mosque and oh by the way is not even the only one in the neighborhood.  accompanied by one “christian” church’s idea to have an international burn a koran day.  then there’s dr. laura, wanting her 1st amendment rights without concern or respect for others, but then complaining when others utilize their Own 1st amendment rights.  then there’s the egg recall, after months of illness-producing eggs from a farm with health and animal mistreatment issues for years, right after our city commissioners voted down the request to have a few healthy backyard chickens in the city.  and don’t forget the political candidate who is proposing we use old prisons as “training centers” for the poor. because they need “better hygiene,” among other “benefits” he cited.

the whole world’s gone mad, and sometimes i feel like there’s nothing i can do about Any of it.

the above crocheted cassette tape thread, by Nicole Vruwink, sums it up pretty beautifully.

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*please note, the above links do not necessarily echo my thoughts perfectly on any of these subjects, but i do respect their interesting takes on the issues and therefore find them much more thought-provoking and conversation-sparking than the boring basic media blasts.  just so you’re not assuming that i want to say exactly what others are saying, from exactly their perspective, to draw exactly the same conclusion.

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just sayin.

we are so very thankful for grassfields farm-the meermans in coopersville, who feel a responsibility to the land, to the animals, and to their community (i.e. their customers) to farm sustainably and ethically. and their eggs are the Tastiest and most Nuritious i’ve had.
know your farmer. support your local economy.

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i’m playing patti griffin and brandi carlisle and cat stevens and the indigo girls for you, loud, right where you can hear.  i want you to pay attention to the real instruments and the strong voices and more than just the kind of music i want you to listen to the honesty in the way they tell their own stories.

i want you to grow up to be honest like your momma and full of integrity like your pappa.  i pray you are stubborn, like both of us, in all the good ways that stubborn can be when it empowers and doesn’t make you stumble.

i want you to be close to the real dirt under our fingers and the real foods that come from that dirt, knowing what the land gives you and what you are capable of taking away from it.

i want you to know that candles are beautiful and soothing and i want you to know that just because we should learn a good boundary from something does not mean it is just dangerous.

i want you to learn to respect and love others and i want you to learn to truly enjoy the company of those who think and act differently than you, soaking in all you can learn from them while standing firm in who you are.

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i hope you will learn to be strong when it is needed and allow yourself to be weak when it is healthy.

i want to teach you about making stuff and growing stuff and reading too much and judging too little, just soaking it all in to analyze later.  i hope you will have a voracious appetite for learning, for new experiences and tastes and i hope you will know your own self better for knowing more about the big world around you.

and i want you to know that we are not perfect, and you are not perfect, and no one is perfect, especially when they get into large groups.  and that is okay because there is an infinite love that wraps us up in an embrace no matter what we do and somehow still makes it all worth the heartache and difficulties and pain.

i want you to know that even though it is hard and painful and full of heartache to be close to all of us imperfect people that even so, even with all the imperfection, we need each other.  we need community and family and friends not because of what they give us or who they are.  we need each other truly because of our weaknesses, and somehow out of all this mixture of weaknesses we become stronger together than we are as individuals.

i want to make sure you know that you are privileged beyond belief for the sole reason of being born in a free and bountiful country- i want you to know it so hard that you never take it for granted.

i want you to know that when life is hard, that does not mean something is wrong or bad.  sometimes life is just hard.  it’s what happens with so many imperfect people around.

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listen, son:  hard is not bad.  hard is just hard, and sometimes hard is the most rewarding path to where we need to be.

but i don’t need to teach you that last part, because after all you are the one that is already teaching me just that.

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this is what he did 4-5 days a week when we bought our old house.  worked all day, transformed an old house all night.  it sounds like a horrible plan to most people, but he’s damn good at it and gets a certain pleasure out of restoring beauty.  we quickly learned, while restoring our home, that our best teamwork happened when he worked on the house and i kept our home running.  laundry, bills, cleaning, and cooking all still had to happen, of course.  but the real reason it worked so well is that my dear husband’s love language is clearly food. and i can clearly make a mean dinner.

the most rewarding end to a night he could think of was coming home, the house smelling like onions and tomatoes, and sitting down to a good satisfying meal.

so this week, i get to take care of my husband again in this way.  i’ve missed it.  being pregnant, and not having an easy time of it, i have felt like he has definitely taken care of me more than i’ve been able to take care of him.  thankfully, this week i’ve gotten a little break in the clouds and am once again making sure a great meal is waiting when my talented, hardworking man gets home.  and i get such pleasure from it.  and he doesn’t expect it, but he sure does appreciate it.

(does that sound too 50s to make you comfortable?)

anyway, i just had to brag and revel for a minute.  this week, i get to make beautiful meals and my husband gets to restore beauty in a friend’s home.  it’s a good week.

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meh.

i missed that i could take a normal photo and then transform it. i missed that i could try different things on the photo and still retain the original. it drove me nuts how long i had to wait between taking pictures.

and i admit it, these little gadgetry trickery photo things are fun, and all-and i know there was a whole serious show in chicago last fall completely done with iPhoto photography-which i absolutely adored by the way-

but i used to use a “real” camera, with real film and a real developing room. and i still want to be able to treat photography with a modicum of respect-so i’d like to have the original, even if it *is* just for a little ol iPhone snap.

so i just tried lo-mob. and am greatly impressed. a few of the features that won me over (and far away from hipstamatic) were that:

1)i can just snap normal photos, then take them from my library to create lo-mob images.

2)i don’t have to pay more money for every little ol change in “film” or “effect.”

3)i can try out any image in many many kinds of ways, some of which even have different levels within them.

take, for example, this little beauty.

it started out like this:

handsome, right? but then i went back and chose it from my library and tried out just a few of the 39 “filters.”

until i finally settled on another version of the last filter.

i could have kept going for a long, long time.

i have a feeling on our road trips this is what i will be playing with. my apologies if my images here get a little cheeky for a while-i’m just playing and experimenting. i’m not taking myself too seriously, but it is fun to see what a mere $1.99 can get you these days.

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it has a lot to do with the fact that i’m not one of those women that does pregnancy well.  and all the things i’m not able to do or be because of that.  and how i then start to feel useless, weak, lame, boring, annoying, and the list goes on.

then i read katie’s proclamation and could breath a little easier.  and then i read rob‘s words, scrawled into an old journal, and breathed easier still.  and i realized i needed to re-focus, to take my eyes off who i am not (right now) long enough to be able to proclaim instead who i am.

i am a wife, of a husband who thinks i’m marvelous.

i am a mother, of a child who is being well cared for before he takes his first breath.

i am an artist, in my studio but also in my kitchen in my garden in my home in my relationships.

i am a damn hard worker, who is great at encouraging and  helping people, and analyzing and organizing and orchestrating.

i am a woman in transition, learning to do what is possible in today and let go of what is not.

i am not defined by who i am not.

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“The progressive meaning of the word is revealing, for the mother of our culture is agriculture; all other arts sprang from it.”

-Goat Song, Bred Kessler

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i don’t like it.  one bit.

what i like is to be busy, to have many balls in the air, to be coming up with more projects and making more stuff and generally going at a pace that has those around me asking how i do it all.  i like to make the “i don’t clean my house” joke as if that were enough to make up for the projects i’ve got running.

pregnancy, at the age of 38, has proven to stop me in my tracks.  or, at least, it wants to and i’m not listening well at all.  there have been several times where it has succeeded, at last, to get me to listen when i’ve not wanted to.  and you’d think i’d learn to slow down before being stopped in my tracks, because let me tell you, those times are not good ones.

this week was one of those weeks. my body finally got me to listen, stopped me in my tracks. wednesday i woke up to searing pain.  i rested.  it got worse.  my husband made me call my doctor.  they set an appointment for a few hours later. i rested.  it got worse.  i got scared.  i went in an hour early for my appointment.

my doctor set an appointment for me to have my appendix looked at, wrote a prescription for some serious pain medication, and was patient with me while i cried as she told me she was pretty certain it was nothing to worry about, just some ligaments refusing to give up but don’t worry the pain should subside in about a WEEK.

i am so, oh so very, tired of the “don’t worry this too is normal” response to everything uncomfortable and painful happening to my body.

the next morning, the ultrasound tech was annoyed i was pregnant.  ”it’s going to be hard for me to find your appendix, you know, since you’re pregnant.  things move around.”  i wanted so badly to tell her i was annoyed i was pregnant too, but i didn’t think she’d find this helpful.  she was right.  she couldn’t find the appendix.

my appendix has been eaten up by my baby, evidently.

meanwhile, the pain is ever so incrementally subsiding.  i don’t know if that’s due to pain medication or if those ligaments have stopped being so stubborn, or… what.  but i am no longer suffering from searing pain around my uterus and up my right side.  now it is just dull pain, with the occasional sharp note.

and so what i want to do is jump up out of bed and join my husband in the garden.  make a big mediterranean lunch for us to enjoy.  store away goodness from the garden so we can enjoy it all winter long.  start some bread.  and so on.

but i know that i’m still healing, and i’m still pregnant, and so i need to still take it easy.  and i wonder if i’ll ever learn to listen to that wisdom.

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sometimes i need a reminder, why we bought old run-down houses and why we turned the grass into garden and why we buy local free-range meat instead of grocery store unknown-origin…

and sometimes just a glance at the first thing that caught my eye as i walked into our home is all i need to remember why.

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