~thankful thursday~ butterfly effect

Posted on November 29, 2019 by marybethrew

11/21/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 21

When the frost covering my windshield called for me to dig up my ice scraper this morning, Quinn said, “Ooh! Can I help?” And I felt so grateful sitting in the driver’s seat, sipping my coffee, while he did his detail-oriented scraping.

Riding on a school bus full of seventh graders headed East on Highway 20 this morning, I felt grateful (I realize that sounds far-fetched, but it’s true). Quinn and his friend played chopsticks, coconuts, and I Spy, requiring nothing more than their hands and voices to be entertained indefinitely. The tree-filtered sunlight projected the smiley faces drawn on the frosty bus windows across the gray seat backs, and they danced and smiled and stretched larger as we drove along.

A Newport grad gave us a campus tour, and then we watched the women’s basketball team be amazing. Quinn’s sound sensory overload in the basketball arena quickly dissipated when I distracted him with my Sudoku app. Watching his awesome teachers handle everything so capably, I felt very grateful. I feel especially grateful for teachers like the one who shared with Quinn her own story of growing up in two households, and how jazzed she was when she got to her college dorm and had all of her things in one place at long last. He is with others more and more, and with me less and less, so it makes me feel good that others care enough to relate to him on such a meaningful level. The boy, all the kids, the teachers, the grad, the team, all made me feel optimistic about the future.

After my day of chaperoning, I was grateful to check a very big item off the to-do list, and Quinn now has a passport application pending. A swim lesson and a karate class later (grateful for these instructors as well), and now we have eaten our nachos and are toasting with kitties by the wood stove. We have eaten nachos an undisclosed number of other times this week already, and I am grateful that my dudes never complain about having them no matter how November it gets around here.

11/22/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 22

One of the best things that ever happened to me happened during the cold, frosty, dark part of the year. I was a single mama having just debuted a schedule including two father-son overnights per week. One of those nights of the week featured a yoga class to which I signed up, and there was a handsome man in the yoga class, and we went on our first date on the shortest day of that year, seven years and eleven months ago.

Now his name pops up in my phone as “Rich husband person” with a picture of us being wind-whipped on Agate beach in our wedding attire, the day after we got married, two years and four months ago, and laughing our faces off.

This morning as we wished each other a happy dorkaversary (as we do on the 22^nd of any month) he teased that I had probably already run my background check on him by this point in the year, but as you may have noticed, I write things down. According to my documentation, my trusted background checker had not yet reported back on his worthiness as a crush. Soon, she would give me two thumbs up, and our yoga teacher (who would end up officiating our wedding) would pair us up as partners and start assigning us some partner poses that made it somewhat difficult to focus on the breath.

Recently we went on a date to the play Tiny Beautiful Things, an amazing performance we both thoroughly enjoyed, though I basically sobbed my way through it. The play (and the book it is based on) peer into the shadows, much the way I have spent this November, but ultimately the story shines such a warm light out to the world. As we settled into our seats before the show, the woman next to me joked, “I only brought enough tissues for myself.” I reassured her that I had brought some for me, then turned to Rich. “Honey, I hope you brought something.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a blue shop towel! Of course. Industrial strength.

I’m grateful for his steady, stable presence. So big and strong, yet very flexible – as evidenced by the way he is wrapped right around the pinkies of three granddaughters. We’re a great team, through thick and thin, and even internet swooning.

11/23/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 23

Because religious dogma and personified male deities are subjects I have grappled with in my life, I have taken a long time to embrace the application of the action verb to pray to my personal noun, but when I look at the way I relate to the spirit and energy in the universe, I find that there are a few one-word messages I say to it that are prayers.

Each day as Quinn leans towards me, letting me kiss the top of his head before he lugs his giant red backpack off to middle school, I inhale his cinnamon scalp, then exhale a prayer for his safety as I pull away from the curb. Please.

When I kiss my husband as he goes off to build metal fuel tanks out of fire aboard floating grease tubs: Please.

Each time I think of Mom awaiting the results of her most recent round of medical tests: Please.

I utter many prayers of Please. Prayers of Thanks? I think I spend November intentionally focusing on these, because the scale is usually tipped well over to the Please side of the balance the rest of the year.

My intriguing son. Thank you. My loving husband. Thank you. Mom, Dad, kitties, wood stove fires, library books, coffee, veggies, nachos. Thank you. The way my fairy dog is snuggled under the blanket on my lap, her soul string knotted securely to my heart. Thank you.

It doesn’t seem to matter that my prayers of Thanks are repetitive. Threading gratitude onto a string like popcorn and cranberries, I tend to alternate Rich, Quinn, Rich, Quinn, with some other nuts and berries and cinnamon sticks mixed in at intervals, This still results in a long, festive strand of gratitude garland with which to decorate my dark December interior. November is spent running my fingers over each of these nuggets, like rosary beads, breathing each one in, breathing out like a prayer. Thank you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

11/24/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 24

Today I am grateful for sleeping in, sunshine, and a breakfast date.

For dog snuggles, for making our home cleaner together, and for a nice chat with Mom.

Mom and I both feel like November has rushed by. When November begins, at least for the past four Novembers, I feel this daunting sense of “30 whole days?!” when I’m committing to doing this gratitude challenge. Then suddenly, it’s day 24! Blink, it’s December.

I told her I still feel like this gratitude thing is good for me, especially at this time of year. It has become my way of intentionally setting the tone for my hardest season, of dwelling on the good of the present moment. A small change in the initial conditions of my winter might be enough to determine a very different set of outcomes for me, by the time I make it to next spring.

I think someone has already called that the Butterfly Effect…

11/25/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 25

I am grateful for good news and good signs today.

I am grateful for natural beauty that makes me pull over the car and get out to look at it, with my mouth hanging open.

I am grateful for dinners leading up to thanksgiving that I like to think of as “gathering together ghetto”, in which parsnip fries and roasted kalettes are sides to… hot dogs! We’re not trying to create too many leftovers in the early part of this week, after all. Another gathering together ghetto dinner I like is to top Papa Murphy’s faves with fresh organic veggies from the farm! Now you see why I’m not a food blogger.

I am grateful for time to get my turkey and cranberry shopping done today.

I am grateful for karate kid movie nights with my rainbow love.

Popcorn and cranberries, repeat.

11/26/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 26

I am thankful for my brothers, one of whom is celebrating a birthday today. I feel particularly grateful for their positive role model position in my son’s life. They both take him under their wing for various areas of expertise when they get around him (one for chess and computer stuff, the other for drums). But it’s more that they are nice, caring men being themselves in his general vicinity that I really love. Neither one of them is afraid to be who they are, not afraid of hugs or babies or rolling out a pie crust. Both are wonderful fathers and the most excellent uncles.

None of these are very recent photos, but they are all special ones that I was looking through this evening, feeling the sibling gratitude.

11/27/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 27

Speaking of rolling out pie crust… I am thankful for a reliable family pie crust recipe. I am grateful for the threats from Rich to wake up in the middle of the night and start eating the chocolate bourbon pecan one that is cooling on the table. Luckily the threats are empty, because I would sleep right through that. I am also thankful I know what to make for dinner when I’ve been in the kitchen long enough for one evening already. It starts with the same letter as November.

I am very grateful that Quinn comes home tomorrow. There is a special kind of gratitude to be felt watching a boy who is growing at an obscenely fast rate eat plate after plate of food, so tomorrow will be the perfect homecoming during which I can heap abundance upon his growth spurt.

I’m not usually grateful for cold hands, but I certainly tend to have them this time of year, and I’ve heard they are useful in making pie. “Cold hands, warm heart,” the saying goes. Last night as I made grilled cheese (it’s still non-leftover meal week!) I thought of how my mom began a tradition of “putting the love in” the sandwiches when we were kids that my brothers and I do for our sons. I like to think of the food I feed to my guys as a love language, and foods like pie, where each molecule of buttery dough is held in my hands before being filled with sweetness, seem like especially good vehicles for conveying food love.

11/28/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 28

Happy Thanksgiving! It’s been a day full of abundance here at the dragon house. Abundant sleeping in, abundant good food, abundant wood heat, and abundant love.

Today I am feeling very grateful for our parents. Rich got to talk to his Oklahoma Mom and Dad today, and it is nice to hear their updates filtered through him, as well as hear his side of the conversation. He says such nice things about me when he talks to other people, and I really like that about him. I found out that Bob (of the legendary popcorn) has been ninja-reading my gratitude posts. We are very grateful to hear that they are both in good health.

I am also grateful for Rich’s Oregon Mom, to whom I refer as my outlaw-mother, who came and saved me from having to carve the turkey. She is our one local parent of our five parents, and we feel lucky and grateful to get to celebrate holidays with her. I particularly enjoyed watching Quinn sit side by side with her as they laughed hysterically at YouTube videos this evening.

One of the first things that I learned about Rich, even before our first date, was that he has two moms, and that he loves them both very much. I knew he was going to be a good one, from that moment. You want a guy who loves his Mom. And this guy loves both of his!

My Mom and Dad… well, I talk about them a lot already, but I’ll always be very grateful for them. My appreciation for them grows all the time. I don’t know why I was thinking of this today, maybe because Rich and I took a walk through the frosty back yard and walked right by the spot where we gave our wedding toast, but one of the main things Rich and I agreed on wanting to mention during that toast was our parents. For their love, their support, and the wonderful example they have set for us. I’d like to honor them by dedicating this Thanksgiving Day gratitude post to our five wonderful parents!

~two months in the life of a lifelong learner~ playing games, gaming plays

Posted on September 1, 2018 by marybethrew

quinn and i went to the pool several times this month, and he made some progress on learning to swim. the pool was almost empty and we had an hour each time to work on swimming skills. he is motivated to practice and a huge milestone was putting his ears in the water without plugs, a major sensory challenge overcome. he did back floats (he did brief ones with me letting go) and lots of bobs, i had him do bobs without holding his nose a couple times, and some tea parties sitting on the bottom. we also worked on kicks and stuff. it’s a lot to coordinate physically, but he needs this skill; it’s fine if he never rides a bike but i require him to swim for safety reasons living on the coast. he has come a long way just being willing to trust what i’m asking him to do, as not just his mama, but someone whose first summer job after babysitting and farm work was teaching swim lessons. each time he got water up his nose (3 or 4 times) he wasn’t too phased, and i’d use variations on his sifu’s line, “did you die?” “nope.” “see you didn’t even die” etc. he was still smiling each time, and he felt good about it when we were leaving.

venn diagram pancakes, following a viewing of a vi hart venn diagram pizza pie-a-gram video in which “fish make sense!” in quinn’s pancake venn diagram, there is overlap between fresh strawberry topping and maple syrup.

math boy got dropped off at my work one friday, and he chose, of all the sprinkles and frosting donuts in the box of leftover donuts, the “infinity donut” with just glaze, nothing fancy, but mathy. he decided he really liked how cute artemia are, when i showed them to him under a microscope, and wants to establish his own sea monkey colony at home.

he made a batch of thumbprint cookies on his own, and put together a wooden lobster sculpture.

grammy and grampy brought quinn with them when they came to visit the farmer’s market (and i worked just the set-up portion). then quinn and i got dropped off by grampy at the start of the summerfest parade, in which we were marching for karate. he was ambivalent about being in the parade leading up to the day, but afterwards he ran up to me and asked, “can i do the parade again next year?” he got to hold the banner (alternating with another of the bigger boys) and swing his chucks around.

q and i took grammy and grampy to the beach to go tidepooling. we looked at crabs and sea stars, and grampy and quinn had fun racing each other. quinn looked like he was studying the mathematical patterns of the waves coming up the sand.

grampy, quinn and i played parcheesi. quinn did some work on how to win and lose gracefully during the visit, given ample opportunities to practice his gaming social graces with grampy available as such a willing adversary. battleship, uno, war, pokemon, bone wars (the game of paleontology), and risk. i believe he even got grammy to play a round of simpson’s clue with him!

quinn used the typewriter to craft a letter to each of his cousins to send back with grammy and grampy, and included a spirograph design in each one, incorporating the favorite colors of mario, luigi, and schroeder.

quinn read many pages of life of fred to grammy, she of long patience for children reading. life of fred is quinn’s self-inflicted curriculum for the summer, and he has read through three life of fred texts so far: fractions, decimals and percents, and pre-algebra 0 with physics. the next two, pre-algebra 1 with biology and pre-algebra 2 with economics, are on deck. he’s excited to keep going through algebra and advanced algebra after that, because then he gets to do geometry. wau! this kid.

quinn got to ride in the back seat between grammy and grampy for our farm visit. i walked them all around, because i have taken the tour myself enough times now… and the crew was all over frantically harvesting for the next days’ markets, but we got to say hi to several of the people i know. mostly we just enjoyed the growing things and abundance and the beautiful day. and the boysenberry glazed potato donuts from the farm bakery. grammy took a rest in the flower garden gazebo while dad looked at machinery, and quinn followed around the bees looking for “bee butts” sticking out of flowers, especially the huge cardoon flowers. i took pictures of hummingbirds and flowers, and soon it was time for our lunch reservation in the farm restaurant. that place is so beautiful. we could eat grilled cheese in there and it would feel like an amazing meal because it is so beautiful with koi pond/fountain among blooming flowers just outside the big windows with light pouring in. flowers strewn everywhere around the tables made from giant slabs of trees, and over in the corner, a hand built clay oven where you can watch them cooking your pizza…

lunch was yummy. we got sandwiches and salads and quinn got a pizza and also wanted to try half a reuben sandwich… it sounded good to him when grampy ordered one. he didn’t end up loving it, because i think he didn’t care for the sauerkraut, but boy was it worth the price of half a sandwich for the sweetness of him wanting to order what grampy was having. then we all got ice cream for dessert. quinn and rich got blueberry cinnamon in waffle cones (the server said it tasted just like blueberry pie and quinn looked at me like “excuse me, why have i not had blueberry pie???” and we made a plan to make a blueberry pie back at home.) and mom and dad got boysenberry (such a pretty red violet color and so yummy) and i got cardamom rose. a perfect treat. “what’s a cardamom?” quinn wanted to know.

quinn and grampy played music together a bit (grampy playing guitar and quinn using his frog to play percussion) including renditions of country roads.

the whole family came to extract me from farmer’s market, and we got extra peaches so i could make peach salsa for sunday and grammy could make a peach cobbler. quinn was invited to aragorn’s birthday in the afternoon, so he made a card (a cool spirograph, for which he needed me to text aragorn’s mom and ask his favorite color; red) we stopped at the store to buy some yu-gi-oh and magic cards for aragorn on the way, which quinn wrapped in the back seat, and we took him over. by the time we left, quinn was helping mix up bubble solution, and barely registered us leaving.

we picked up quinn at 10 am. he had a blast. he was carrying a cup full of mini snickers from the pinata, and was eating bacon and cinnamon rolls when we showed up.

a lot of sunday was getting ready for our anniversary potluck. quinn and grammy rolled out pie crust i had made earlier in the morning for blueberry pie. quinn did much of the labor, under grammy’s helpful supervision. we had originally planned to do a campfire, which meant the menu was to have been hot dogs and smores, but two days beforehand, a complete fire ban was in effect, so we decided not to do a campfire, and changed the menu to nachos (kind of a no-brainer. the default food of our household!) the family of camp boss was in attendance, so quinn was absorbed into a pile of bouncing children on the trampoline.

grammy and grampy got to go to karate one night during their visit. this was a class both quinn and i could participate in together, so they got to see us both on the mat. sifu talked to them both while we were practicing stuff, and they really like him. no surprise there!

quinn and i took them on a beach driving tour. we stopped at a few awesome overlooks and drove the little tiny scenic loop along the cliff beside the ocean. at two of the stops we were able to see whales spouting. then we went to the lighthouse because we figured out that we could use grampy’s national park pass to get into any federal protected land, such as the lighthouse. they had made good use of their pass in yellowstone and the tetons, and then also the grand canyon on their trip home. but we didn’t stay long at the lighthouse because it was very crowded and extremely windy and cold!

we then made the required stop at the grocery store (grammy and grampy love going to fred’s), got an oil change for their car, and then we stopped at the toledo farmer’s market.

family boating!!! after he went back to his dad’s he even got his dad to take him, for which i want to award some points to quinn, in advocating for his interests and extra-curricular activities!

grampy remembered a sloth song, and sang it, then we had a fun time teaching him how to “ok google,” and ask things like “who wrote the sloth song” or “what will the weather be in grand canyon on monday?”

more uno was played. a 3 way game with grampy quinn and i. then i took q to his dad at 3. when presented with the idea of staying until grammy and grampy left, quinn said he’d rather not be here when g and g left, and just stick with the routine.

we had a few dinners where grampy would kind of explain some facet of his ideas and research on the electoral college so that was really cool for quinn to absorb, in terms of the discipline and lifelong learning going on.

quinn was away for a week, during which he spent his days at theatre camp, and then back home to the dragon house for week two of it.

we tested out a spell quinn read about in his d and d player’s handbook called “prismatic spray” which has a different effect depending on which color the opponent is exposed to; you roll a d8 to find out…yep, a rainbow spell, which for some reason, he knew i’d love. red for fire, orange for, acid, yellow for lightning etc. prismatic wall is a similarly color-coordinated spell, and depending on your distance from your attackers and so on, you may strategically choose one spell over the other. another morning before theatre camp (he would actually wake up early to make sure we had time to spend together doing this), we ran simulations on prismatic wall as well, while sharing seaweed snacks.

i listened to his story dictation incorporating these new spells. his story was about a pack of orcs being slain by a mage using prismatic magical spells, culminating in a very exciting ending in which the head orc “erupted in a towering column of flame!” language arts.

i encouraged quinn to write down his amazing prismatic attack scene into a blog post on the blog we have been establishing for him. (he has it set to private right now, so no link yet, but i’m very excited about the design of his blog and the initial writing he ended up doing! it was brief, but he appears to have a whole novel taking shape in his mind in which the prismatic attack on orcs scene is just one chapter. the book seems to begin with a very dramatic opening!

another activity we squeezed in during this week was to play with anagrams at the breakfast table. words we anagrammed included, canteloupe, prismatic wall, peppercorns (scorn, copper, person), spirograph (pi, gosh, hippos!), pancakes (snack, pen cap, ack!), and clipper ship (peril, perish, relish, pipers!).

in spite of having read 3 (and counting) math textbooks this summer, i still wanted to honor his teacher’s request that he continue working in khan academy to complete the 6th grade curriculum therein. based on his learning style, however, we decided he did not need as much repetition as khan automatically supplies. instead, we made an analog version of the progress chart in khan and filled in stoplight colors for him to color in as he familiarized with each concept in the curriculum (with green signifiying confidence that he understands the concept), rather than striving to achieve the virtual percentage points by repeating questions where he already grasped the concept.

gratuitous photos of playing with the family of camp boss whenever we could squeeze in some time!

theater camp flew right on by. on the final thursday, i went and saw his 2:00 performance and rich and i went together to the 6:00 performance. the theme this year was board games, and his group did the game of life. he was a blue peg! he had a distinctively stiff walk and monotone speech, and did a great job of staying in character.

a peg only has a few simple purposes in life. repopulation, occupation, education, and dedication… as a peg, quinn had to repeat these four purposes after his peg teacher. the plot involved action surrounding pegs obtaining living assignments, job assignments, and the “start a family” task. they were told that, “compliance is key. your job as a peg is to adhere to the rules, and the giant fleshy creatures that often come down from above to sculpt and shape our malleable space-time.”

the female protagonist is told one morning, “you’ve landed on the marriage square. please report to the marriage office sometime today.”

she makes a decision to go ahead and accept her task, and approaches quinn’s character to marry her. he replies, “oh! i would like that very much! i hope we are lucky enough to land on the children square! i heard if you’re lucky they’ll send you triplets. right through the mail, three pink and blue little pegs. i once saw a peg with 50 peg children.”

as soon as she requests that he meet her at a certain time at the marriage office, he launches into the exact same “i hope we are lucky enough…” monologue once more.

some of the clever turns of phrase by the student writers (these plays are all written by camp participants and their counselors) remind me to have hope for the future. these young people are wide awake and paying attention!

that goes for the camp leaders, two dedicated people who were once campers and counselors themselves. their improvisational fill-in segments between each of the 5 kids’ group plays also made me smile at their wit. each time they’d pull a game box out of the drawer, there was discussion of the merits of the game and whether or not to play it. of risk one of them said, “it’s just trying to make imperialism look cool.” and of the pink and blue pegs of life, they both agreed such a color scheme was outdated, that game pieces should be gender non-specific.

it was fun to congratulate my young thespian with a bouquet of dahlias from the garden, and watch him interacting with his camp friends after the show.

q brought his life of fred book along as we drove out to the farm for tomatoes, then once it was too dark to read, fell asleep in the jump seat of the truck.

after his last day of theatre camp (a half day), he spent a few hours at work with me: “i’m going to make a painting app,” he decided, and worked on that in the khan academy javascript module. it’s only a matter of time before he is creating programs that are truly useful to humanity.

he spent the following two weeks at his dad’s house, mysteriously building “something that gets wet” in their back yard (stay tuned next month!). i went to the middle school on his behalf to get him registered for school, and looked forward to having one more week of summer to spend together before the school year begins!

~thankful thursday~ the essentials: love, water, light, nachos

Posted on November 26, 2016 by marybethrew

11-18-16 day 18

i know we’re all feeling thankful for joe biden right about now, so i am not saying anything original here. i, however, am reminded of why i am actually thankful for his public service, even more than i am for imagining him leaving his gameboy in the oval office, removing the t’s from the keyboards, ordering 500 pizzas delivered to the white house on january 21^st, and changing the wifi password. the guy is a master of going off script, and was consistently among the least wealthy members of congress. his life story is heartbreaking and it makes you appreciate his big smile all the more. there’s so much to love. but i personally want to thank him for the violence against women act of 1994 that made it so the restraining order i filed 14 years later could actually be upheld and enforced; that made it so stalking is a crime; that made it so rape victims didn’t have to pay for their own exams; that provided resources to underserved (native americans, immigrants, and lgbtq) victims of domestic violence; that established a domestic violence hotline… you get the idea.

these stats are available on the white house fact sheet about the vawa:

“between 1993 to 2010, the rate of intimate partner violence declined 67%;

between 1993 to 2007, the rate of intimate partner homicides of females decreased 35% and the rate of intimate partner homicides of males decreased 46%.”

i also want to thank him for his letter to the stanford rape survivor, which is not new news, but is still powerful and shows his empathy for victims of violence is still alive and well.

11-19-16 day 19

today i am thankful for some outside time on a saturday afternoon without rain, to work on my terrace garden; kittens; playing board games with friends; soup and pie; my grandma, whose pie crust recipe is the best in the world; the way children whisper towards each other’s faces instead of towards their ears; the rain coming down now that it’s dark and i’m snug in my fuzzy owl blanket from my mother-outlaw listening to the lulling sound; the farmer’s market; my thanksgiving grocery shopping checked off the list; and a warm bed to fall into momentarily.

11-20-16 day 20

it was such a relief when my first therapist told me, “you don’t need to get an A in therapy.” today i am thankful that i don’t need to get an A in the 30-day gratitude challenge.

some days, words fail, and it makes me thankful for my other hobby of photography. when i can’t come up with 1000 words of my own, i can let the photos write the story.

(ha. i just realized, it’s a story about light.)

11-21-16 day 21

today i am thankful for love notes of every kind. i love seeing love notes posted around my friend’s kitchen from her husband. i love seeing friends’ photos of love notes their kids have written them. i love the sidewalk chalk love notes left by the neighbors of a mosque in virginia, telling their islamic brothers and sisters they are with them, they love them, they are here for them.

and of course, i love the love letters i receive from my love. lately they come in the form of facebook stickers on the posts i have been writing and he has been faithfully reading; songs he thinks i will like that he now knows how to send me via messenger, like “emmylou” by first aid kit, to which he added, “i’ll be your gram and your johnny too”; articles he knows i’ll appreciate, such as one about a scultpture depicting two adults with backs turned, whose inner children can be seen inside them, reaching towards each other for connection. he made sure i realized he wasn’t suggesting we were fighting or had our backs turned, he just thought i’d like it given all my connectome words lately. i said, “honey, i know my memory is bad, but even i can remember that we don’t fight”; on the note i asked him to write of an album he’d like me to buy (he doesn’t buy anything online… yet! he’s still breaking in stickers) he dotted all the i’s with hearts; he left an article about a couple in yachats celebrating their 75^th anniversary (happy anniversary, clare and earl!) on the bed for me to read. he has done this many times with the “northwest love stories” printed periodically in the oregonian – swoon; and also with the sports page, when it’s about some athlete proposing to his girlfriend in some romantic way. even i can be a football fan when it’s filtered like that for me. huck it, chuck it, football!

11-22-16 day 22

today i am thankful for nachos.

i’m also thankful for dorkaversaries (happy almost our five year-a-versary in one month, honey!) and a certain foster nephew having a birthday, and a 2 hour and 46 minute phone chat with my mom this morning, and a nice long in person chat with one friend yesterday, complete with little fingers holding scissors and glue sticks, and a nice long in person chat with another friend today, complete with gangly people playing games. and watching my kid march out of the library with all the books he couldn’t help but check out, and read while eating dinner (at a table full of clutter! keepin it real!).

yes, nachos. thankful for nachos.

11-23-16 day 23

refer to days 1-22! still thankful for wood stove fires, music, friends, family, things that are bigger than my little circumstances and help me have perspective, kitties, playing games with my kid, nachos, books, and my fiance.

11-24-16 day 24

happy thanksgiving! it’s gratitude day!

i’m thankful today for water. i am listening to a lot of water pelting the metal roof of our house, and overflowing the gutters. the driveway pond is now a thing. i am thankful for the bayou that is filling up with all this fresh rain. (part of our 1.2 acres is swamp land, and we refer to our little section of bog affectionately as the bayou. we take walks there, where rich has cleared and maintained some nice trails through our forest. we’ve seen tons of birds and other wildlife there and all three of us find it to be a source of rejuvenation and peace.)

i’m thankful that nobody is trying to install a pipeline through the middle of my water table. i’m thankful that i can sit here comfortably in my house, knowing that my well is being recharged with all of this wonderful pacific northwest rain forest water, this november sunshine. it’s pretty essential stuff. coming out of our faucets, it is clear and cold, and leaves no trace of residue on our sinks. no colors or odors. no chlorine, no fluoride. it’s probably my number one favorite thing about this particular piece of property, although i do love the house and yard and forest and bayou very much. partly i am able to appreciate it because at our previous house, the spring would dry up for a few months each summer, and just in time for all my garden plants to shrivel and die, i couldn’t afford to spare any of our household water to quench their thirst. the water here is plentiful, clean, and i can fill up a bathtub whenever the spirit moves me, and soak my troubles away in the hot water, which has always been highest on my list of self care tasks. i look forward to lavishing water upon my terraced flower beds next summer, that i am currently trying to build, in between rain storms.

metaphors about water cling to me. the river of life which barbara kingsolver would say, as writers we try to pin to its banks using our words, realizing all the while of course the futility of trying to stop it in its tracks. utah phillips said, “time is an enormous, long river, and i’m standing in it, just as you’re standing in it. my elders are the tributaries, and everything they thought and every struggle they went through and everything they gave their lives to, and every song they created, and every poem that they laid down flows down to me – and if i take the time to ask, and if i take the time to see, and if i take the time to reach out, i can build that bridge between my world and theirs. i can reach down into that river and take out what i need to get through this world.”

for a writing assignment one time, i sprinkled water imagery throughout a character sketch of my son, who at the time was 5. you can read it here:

character sketch

i hope you are all enjoying some lovely time with family and friends, and that you can also count among your blessings an abundance of clean running water.

learning how to love

Posted on March 12, 2013 by marybethrew

rich and i take turns leaving each other “reading assignments” from the newspaper. we both follow along with a recent series in the oregonian of “northwest love stories”. the most recent story i happened to catch first, and leave for him, but more often than not i am the one receiving these reading assignments, as he is much more thorough about reading the paper daily. i always tease him when he leaves mushy stories for me to read, or chooses romantic comedy movies for us to watch. he has a thick skin and is impervious to teasing, luckily.

anyway, ambrose and martha, the subjects of the most recent love story article, have been married for 73 years and are both turning 100 this year. they claim their secret to bliss (ambrose “ham” claims it, and martha affirms with smiles and a thumbs-up, as she is nonverbal at this point in her life) is “good eating and good sex.” i think it goes without saying that humor must weigh in as well. from the interview: “both are in wheelchairs. yet during our introductions, ham called martha ‘lover’ and complimented her hair.”

i’m still holding out for us to spend 98 years together, so it gives me hope when i read of couples like martha and ham.

***

how did you learn how to love someone? was it by following someone’s example? your parents? other couples you were close to? was it by trial and error? did you, like me, have a disproportionate amount of error in spite of having really good role models, and feel like you were never going to get there? do you feel like you are now “there”?

***

there’s so much we need to learn in life. i will be curious what the future will hold in store for quinn in the love department. i know all parents think of this. i spent several years going over and over with myself the guilt trip of “i didn’t manage to keep it together with his father” and how that is such an omen of doom for his future love life. but i have laid that to rest, and i know for sure that witnessing a working relationship like mine with rich (and like my parents, and my brothers and sisters-in-law, and other important couples in his life) will be much more beneficial to quinn than was the ill-fated relationship between his two parents.

i wonder what his quirks will look like as a teen, a young adult? it’s so hard to picture, as rachel put very eloquently in her recent post. will his future partner someday have to resort to telling him it’s time for the ewoks to jump in the speeder in order for him to put down what he is doing and get in the car to go someplace? will he still need to be persuaded to change clothes by imagining he is dressing in his hogwarts robes? will he talk their ear off at bedtime about the next lego set he wants to get, completely unaware they are falling asleep and want him to stop listing each individual piece, what each minifigure will be wearing, and what color light-sabre they will carry? when they go for a walk will he cover his ears with his hands and shrink away whenever a dog approaches? when they eat dinner will he insist on hot dogs, mac and cheese, or “skinnies” (his name for thinly sliced quesadillas)? will he, with his own children, assume inaccurately that his child is doing it “on purpose” when they knock something down or bump into him?

this is the stuff that is all so ambiguous and vague that it could all be “normal kids’ stuff” or “age appropriate” and yet, it could also indicate asperger’s, or something else. i am still on the fence whether it matters what we call it. we call him quinn, and these are things we (or at least i) know about him. i am still unsure whether i think his brain is wired differently and we need to approach things differently than one would with a neurotypical child. yet, i already know for damn sure we need to approach things differently with quinn on many occasions; because he is quinn, and there are things about him that just aren’t a factor with other children, wiring aside. but then, this can probably be said for each and every child, can it not?

i’m never sure how severe what we deal with is, compared to other families. i get glimpses, but then i wonder if i am just overthinking things, as i tend to do. and comparison is rarely helpful anyway. yet sometimes i fantasize about this being another situation like the one where my midwife had to sit me down and tell me that no, in fact, i hadn’t been a complainer, “no mary beth, you had an unusual amount of pain.” i fantasize that somebody somewhere will acknowledge and validate that figuring all this out can sometimes be really friggin hard.

one conclusion i’ve come to, given what research i’ve done and what i know of quinn, is that there is definitely some knowledge to be gleaned from the asperger’s literature that does benefit quinn and is well worth delving into, regardless of whether he fits any of the scads of subtypes. there are strategies i am reading that either echo exactly what i already do that works, or are suggestions i am taking very seriously because i think they will also work. he may be simply a quirky, bright individual with sensitivity to loud sounds and anxiety about transition times, who struggles with things getting thrown or given away, who is off in his own head quite often when pragmatic life occurrences come along, who is insistent about being in charge of himself, who is more comfortable at home, whose word of the week is technically, who is a bit of a perfectionist and doesn’t do things until he knows he can do them well, who prefers having a heads up about what is coming next, who doesn’t really get all the jokes and can’t tell one to save his life, who runs a little crooked, who doesn’t seem to realize it stings when he tells me “store waffles taste better than homemade ones,” and who might not always interpret another person’s reactions accurately. or that unique collection of characteristics might be a subtype of asperger’s. does it matter? that unique collection of characteristics is definitely quinn.

to me it seems that what matters is that by the time he thinks about having a partner, he somehow has learned (in whatever way works for him) that even if you think the store waffles are better, when someone you love is making you something homemade, you keep that thought tucked away in your head.

my current read is parenting your asperger child; individualized solutions for teaching your child practical skills by alan sohn and cathy grayson. i liked the title, and consistent with their title, they have already made quite a few mentions in the early chapters of the way in which each and every asperger child will have some traits and not others, and that every child is, bottom line, an individual. no one is classic, everyone is a subtype.

parts of what i’ve read in this book resonate with me, others are making me cringe, but my hunch is that is mostly due to semantic clumsiness. i like their term “defender of reality” as one of the parent’s roles, but one of my things about parenting has always been to question the assumption that the parent is always right and the kid is always wrong. i do not assume i know better than he does in all circumstances (sure there are some…), and i shy away from the idea that i need to make him out to be wrong when his ideas don’t match up to the rest of society’s ideas. i do think it’s important for me to introduce him to what society thinks (that a couple means two and a few means three, instead of the other way around), point out where his ideas depart from those of society, and let him know how to navigate in that society, but i also think that can be done while preserving his self-knowledge. one thing about being a defender of reality, is that i’m aware of the subjectiveness of each of our realities (did i have an unusual amount of pain?), and it is hard to think that my own version of reality should trump his.

aside from the individualized approach, another thing that i find validating in this book is the idea that anticipation of problems is going to help immensely in someone with these traits. “too often, people wait until something goes wrong and then try to do something about it. this is a completely backward approach for an asperger individual. prevention is the key. anticipate problems, plan for them, and implement your plan before a problem arises.” this is where i think we could go very astray by abruptly tossing quinn into another school on his own, without a lot more thought and effort and guidance invested into it. the book emphasizes the anxiety that these kids can feel, and anxiety is a real one for my guy.

last night as he was finding it impossible, yet again, to fall asleep, and i was listening to his long speech about the star wars lego set that has his favorite monster (“which is made from not very many pieces, with two tentacles that you have to put together, and two brown pieces that look like they could be covers to cockpits, except they are just brown and not glowing, which you put together for the monster’s beak…..”) after the puppy relaxation story with backrub, after more hugs and one more trip downstairs to the bathroom and to say goodnight to rich, after more lego talk and after i finally received a stroke of inspiration and told him he needed to take his magic wand and draw all the thoughts out of his head and put them into his pensieve like dumbledore so that he could get some rest… after all of that, he looked at me and said, with such earnestness, “i love you as big as the sky, as big as the ocean, all the way to the moon and back again, um, like, three, to six, to twenty, to fifty, to one hundred, to five hundred years! and that many months! and that many weeks! and that many days! and that many hours! and that many minutes! and that many seconds!!!” at the end of the day, i think he has the love thing figured out already.

***
after i was back downstairs, rich was having some pie and with the big pie-eating grin on his face he told me he had saved his first piece (the one i had packed in his lunch) for right before his play rehearsal that evening. he let me know that store-bought pie has nothing on my homemade pie. (which he also happened to mention is how he feels about waffles.)

maybe all three of us are getting this love thing figured out.

pumpkin pie and party hats

Posted on February 26, 2013 by marybethrew

the birthday prince.

yoda and the ewoks keeping watch over the pumpkin pie.

traditional birthday balloons, he is now old enough for a full rainbow of six colors!

he got busy right away with his lego presents.

without any help, he whizzed through building the new star wars lego sets. it was strangely quiet for a birthday afternoon…

until my sweetie popped in from taming the salmonberry jungle, and brought me these two lovelies- the first daffodils of the season.

i wish i had captured him closing his eyes to make his wish- precious. may all your wishes come true, my sweet six year old son!

quinn’s thirty-fourth month ~ in which quinn picks up a dandy

Posted on December 23, 2009 by marybethrew

11-25-09 (added 8-26-20 from found notebook)

“there’s a picture of somebody sitting on a Q!” said Quinn about the painted lines on the parking lot at the coop designating a handicap parking space.

“i want to get in your belly and have milk.” (as we were leaving gymnastics.)

11-26-09 (added 8-26-20 from found notebook)

thanksgiving at lee and kate’s. Q helped bake apple pie in AM. napped on the drive over, then again on my lap after diner. got to meet and play with zethan (age 8) who just lost his first tooth. got to see the barn and sing this land and itsy bitsy spider plugged in. “someday i will have a motorcycle,” Quinn informed me.

11-27-09 (added 8-26-20 from found notebook)

rumpus with coho salmon (10 miles up n beaver creek road.)

11-28-09 (added 8-26-20 from found notebook)

amy’s house – played with “all my kids” and had a blast.

evening: “soon dada and you will go to the store and buy me my rocking chair and we’ll all rock in our rocking chairs!”

11-30-09

thanksgiving was great. with some great hippies out in the woods. it was very cool. mellow, low stress (i had to bake one pie, easy as that!) keeping my turkey in the freezer for christmas…. just nice. quinn forking the pie before we baked it, thursday morning. i got GREAT compliments, it was super yummy pie. one of my better ones.

we spent more time than usual with dada, and it went well. we seem to be able to be friends lately, and that is nice. it only works that way, i know, because we spend so little time normally, but at least then holidays can be pleasant. on black friday we drove up a river to watch coho salmon migrating upstream (saw about 20 of them, mere feet away. breathtaking! but then i work on coho salmon for a living…

the best opposite-of-shopping-mall experience i could have come up with.

quinn in his grundens on salmon day (might make it a yearly thanksgiving tradition….)

on saturday quinn and i spent time with new friends

and had tons of fun. they are homeschool/unschool types, and i think i told you, there are a lot of kids. 6 to be exact. quinn started calling them “my kids” when i told him it was time to leave: “i want to stay here with my kids.” lately he is normally down and playing with whoever we meet up with, but this was different- he was venturing into other rooms on other floors of the house without me! that is a big first for him/us. at one point he wandered upstairs with three of them, and then about 15 minutes later came to check in- a big deal. it was nice to see him feel so comfortable, and i realized that also means that i get to have a new friend i feel comfortable with too (actually noticing quinn’s comfort level clued me in that my own must be pretty high! otherwise i am so unsure with new people, but he is my vibe-o-meter.) and, they decided to give me a laptop, no strings attached. keepers for sure.

there he is with 5 of the 6 of “his” kids and their mama. just to give you the idea of the peacefulness. you can see the ocean from those windows…..

yesterday we took another hike with coparent, this time to hunt mushrooms. we gathered a bunch of chanterelles. i don’t even like to eat mushrooms (texture) but so much free food just sitting on the ground is too hard for me to pass up. i will find a way to use them. we also saw a mountain lion!!!!! none of us had ever seen one before in person in the wild. it was a good ways off, though, which i prefer when it comes to big cats.

i think i may have mentioned this, but i LOVE it here.

oh, and dada and quinn have been building and tending bird feeders. quinn is having a blast with it.

they are building and placing them strategically so there is cover and escape routes and the neighborhood cats can’t really get good access. we have had TONS of birds already, and quinn will just sit and flip through the field guide.

quinn with kitty

kitty with her mini-me (i just love it so. he brought over his pirates’ baby kitty.)

newt! we saw 3 or 4, and each time quinn wanted to “make a house for him!” this was from the mushroom hike. quinn spent most of it in the sling, strangely. he refused to wear his coat, and only would be up on me. not sure what that was all about. he also has been having lots of trouble sleeping lately… last night i fell asleep before him again, and periodically i’d wake up and he was still awake, just rolling around the bed (sometimes right over my head) and i’d hand him his sippy cup and doze off again…. etc. i am not sure what he is up to. one night over the weekend friday night i think, he didn’t fall asleep at all, and needed to get up and play at 1 in the morning, we were up until 2… not sure what developmental leap is about to occur but i’m sure it is something!

12-3-09

yesterday was…. intense. quinn was AWESOME for the fish cutting party. he sat for an hour or more, screwing little caps onto little empty tubes, filling up cups full of them, and sorting them out into racks and boxes by color of cap… he was a champ. i actually got to be fairly productive for about 3.5 hours, then he crashed and burned. major meltdown, and that was right around when i could leave and had planned on leaving so it was just a matter of getting him to calm down so i COULD gather my stuff and leave. poor kiddo. he was great. he played in the car for an hour when we got home (he loves to “drive”) and i chopped firewood nearby. very productive day. then he napped and i sewed him new diapers and worked on designs, and then he went to dada’s and i got to go have a beer (actually a cider) with my lab peeps, for birthdays and andrew finishing his masters. then home for bath, to the store to buy cat food and to pick up quinn. a good day.

12-4-09

this is now on the blog, for posterity.

last night quinn was helping me bake pitas, (for tonight’s dinner) and he was trying to get the spoon from me so he could stir and yelling “my turn, no!” then he continued on the rant “fuck-a-muther!” doh!

it is nice to be able to be like, ok there is no food, but i have all the ingredients i need to make basically anything. (on a good day. then there are days i’m like fuck i’m missing one ingredient of each thing i could think of making! luckily i know how to fudge things a bit too.) pitas turned out to be so completely easy, they are easier time-wise to get done in an evening than regular bread since you only rise the dough once, and they only bake for like 5 minutes at a high temp. whereas loaf of bread is like rise then rise again in the pan, then cook for 35 min. so yeah they are the new bread we have on hand always now. last night we made plain for the hummus, and also some with blueberry oatmeal (leftover) in them for breakfast. plus cinnamon. heat up, put cream cheese on. yum.

12-7-09

i haven’t had a christmas tree for years, but since i got myself (and quinn) a shovel this year, and since quinn has been gaga over all the trees he has seen so far, around town (like in the sewing machine store when we picked up my machine after repair on friday) i decided we’d do it. it is a solstice/xmas tree, and it has babies. 3 trees total. we will plant them somewhere- maybe even in the yard, if the landlords want more trees, otherwise we’ll find a good home for them somewhere. quinn and i got the lights put on last night, i got them planted in pots while he was napping. he’s excited to decorate more- we’re going to paint pinecones and such things….

so we hung out with coparent this weekend again, more than usual. less than turkey day weekend but still… on saturday we brought him to ona beach, where we met up with amy and her 6 kids, so he got to meet them.

12-15-09 (added 8-26-20 from found notebook)

“i’m making a heffalump-or-woozle-heiny.”

“hammock baskets” (nets)

12-15-09

ok good news first!!!!! TIM AND NATALIE ARE PREGGERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

haven’t spoken to my mom yet, will probably call her today she must be soooooooooo stoked! now she’ll have two local grandbabies! next august anwyay.

12-17-09

breaking eggs for carrot muffins. or something.

holding baby hope

making bread with grace

laughing!

he needed to make “a red sign that says stop here!”

mr. firewood helper- he walked a long way around a corner saying “i’m going to go look for some more firewood, guys” and came back with this. what a kid. he’s at work with me and he just saw that picture and said, “there’s quinn picking up a dandy” because his dad said “that’s a dandy” when he brought it back.

quinn and i came home at noon. he finally napped at 3, still sleeping now. i hope he wakes up soon, yet i know this is my only break but damn the bedtimes have been brutal. last night was particularly bad again. not as bad as that one night, but i was yelling again. let’s just say that. he was kicking and hitting me and trying to roll over my head and stuff. and i was so ready to sleep, as i am every night. i am not sure what is going on with him, maybe i need to read up on toddler sleeping and so on….hmmm…..

12-18-09

quinn and the sleep…. oy. he is just having a lot of trouble falling asleep at bedtime, some nights it’s ok and other nights it is literally hours, and he already has a “late” bedtime for a toddler (10). but the only time i mind it is when he is kicking and hitting me. when i yell, he usually laughs. only very occasionally do i bark loud enough that he is startled into crying. it’s awful, either way. the first way, feels awful to just be laughed at when i am pissed, and the second way makes me feel like such a lousy person and parent. i mean i know i’m not that bad, but it’s hard in the moment. and i am at a loss for what to do differently.

i want to be mindful of not sending quinn the wrong messages. i value my connection with quinn, and leaving the room for more than a couple secondss to catch my breath and calm down, feels like abandoning him. i do leave the room, i say “i need some space because i can’t let you hurt me” or whatever “i need to calm down” and such, and then i leave and if he cries i make it extremely brief, and if not, i take a bit of time to regain composure then go back. there is so much more i feel like i need to say about this but i am just a ball of feelings right now.

12-19-09 (added 8-26-20 from found notebook)

“sometimes bugs turn out slugs. and then we don’t really touch the slugs.”

me: “we can touch them….”

q: “yeah. and sometimes, we can scoop ’em in a big white bucket, and bring ’em home and put ’em in a little box!”

me: “really? and then what would we do, feed them lettuce?”

q: “yeah!!!! feed ’em that kind of stuff!!!”

12-19-09

i actually feel great, in general, in spite of coparent and in spite of the darkness and weather and such. i am hoping that doesn’t mean i’m just in denial or in some sort of weird dissociated state. but idon’t think so… i just think it has really gotten to be a habit of mine to stay positive, so i am glad it is sticking, even when stuff sucks more for a few days.

so in the mornings with quinn, his dad is there when he wakes up most days, and quinn cries for me, to “have milk” and tells dada to go away, go back to the shop, and if dada gets close he pushes his face, etc. coparent lately does go away out of the room, quinn apparently gets quiet, lays in bed for a while, and then when dada comes back in 20 min and knocks quinn says come in, dada comes in and quinn says “wassup dude?” which is their typical greeting. and they are fine the rest of the day, except MAYBE after nap depending on when nap is. sometimes after nap there is a similar episode. many days, nap is just ending when i get home and it’s no big deal. other days he is still asleep.

but because quinn wakes up asking for milk, his dad has suggested that maybe it is time to “take the next step” with weaning, because a. he feels it is unfair to quinn to be there and give him milk, then not be there (torture) b. he is afraid quinn is showing behaviors that coparent saw in his friend’s son, who was still nursing at 5, and coparent believes said child’s behavior problems were due to primarily not being weaned when he “should have been” so he doesn’t want quinn to be slowed down in his emotional development because he isn’t weaned “when he is supposed to be.”

we can never have this conversation though. the other day i just let coparent spew what his opinions were, without responding. that went fine. but if i have anything to say, he accuses me of stirring up debate and not communicating, not communicating well, being a b!tch, etc. he criticizes my research/knowledge of others’ weaning experiences, he criticizes everything i say on the topic, then he yells at me for not filling him in on “what the plan is.” as if i would feel safe planning anything with that type of situation going on. i said most of that last night- that i felt criticized and unsafe stating my mind.

my main point was that, coparent’s attachment to quinn needing to be strengthened, should not depend on my attachment with quinn being weakened. he hated that. he acknowledged it is true, but he also had to go on and spout how me weaning quinn doesn’t mean our attachment decreases, it just changes…. yeah somehow he has crowned himself king of breastfeeding knowledge, without ever having had a breast. (can you hear the pissed off ani mother bear in there?)

one problem is, all of my great examples of successful child-led weaning (i dislike the term but that is another topic, but it is the going phrase for what quinn and i are doing i suppose) and have really awesome kids and are really awesome people, who i use as my “models,” are my rad mamas. one whose daughter weaned at 4, and the story is just beautiful. and another mama’s son is 3.5 and is still nursing at night to go to bed. it’s just that their approach is SO MUCH IN LINE with all the rest of how i parent- that quinn gets a choice, that he is a real person, that his feelings matter, that our attachment is paramount and that we are free to choose how we do this.

i told coparent i don’t think that will solve the problem he’s having with quinn in the morning, i think that is about their attachment to each other, not mine and his.

to be fair, i guess i am lacking in solutions to offer but there is only so much i can do, i only play a support role in their relationship with each other and am at a loss for suggestions… (and i did admit to coparent that yes i do think he’s right that the time they spent apart when i left was detrimental to their bond- he said it angrily and i validated well yes of course being away from each other hurt things…. but then we both realized that is the past we have to deal with the present, and there isn’t anything we can do to change what happened…. so that was actually a positive moment i thought.)

whew…. now i am starting to feel lighter……..

quinn and coparent get along great, is the thing, at all other times. i always try to talk to quinn at night about just saying “wassup dude” to dada instead of telling him to go away, and i try to make sure he’s prepared for who he will see in the morning so he knows what to expect but it has been going on for so long i think it is just habit for him now to tell dada to go away. and in general, his dad approaches most stuff like i do- quinn has a say in what they do, he plays on the floor with him a lot, reads him 10000 books at nap time, they go fishing, they do all kinds of stuff that quinn likes. honestly, i think my only constructive advice to coparent is he needs to think positively about his relationship with quinn, and not be so bummed about this morning habit thing. probably hard to do, and in the moment i think he SHOULD let quinn know how it hurts his feelings and be real with quinn about that, but also to proclaim to me and the rest of the world that he and his son have a great relationship- even if it is fake it till you make it… i don’t even think it is “fake it”. quinn doesn’t understand how his words make his dad feel, and dad should know that. that is what i think.

i think if i weaned him now, he’d only cry more for me in the morning. because then not only would he miss me, but he and i would have a shaky relationship (because i don’t believe it is the right thing to do so i don’t see how i could pull it off without it hurting our mama quinn relationship) and i am not willing to risk that. i think yeah he wants “dada to go away” because i am not there, not because he dislikes his dad. but i don’t even think it is milk that is the big deal, it is simply me he is missing, not just my boobs.

today quinn and i are going to hang out with elizabeth and wyland and cole. should be fun. hoping for fun, relaxing weekend, then i only have two more days of work before a long break!!!!!!! yippeee!!!!! (i go back jan 4th.)

12-20-09 (added 8-26-20 from found notebook)

“yittle” becoming “ylittle” or “ittlittle”

12-21-09

we have a solstice party tonight, same people as thanksgiving. it should be cool.

pictures of what i did with some of my chocolate-orange sauce: cheesecake for the solstice party. elizabeth and i made the sauce together, it was a recipe she came across from some french preserving book. there are actual slices of orange in there. the cheesecake was good, but honestly my favorite thing i did with it so far was make hot cocoa. elizabeth made me a latte/mocha with it and that was very good, too.

as for christmas, we’ll do a nice breakfast and open presents. that kind of thing. mellow.

12-22-09

last night went fine. cool party. at another person’s house (terry and anne) up on the hill where lee and kate (of thanksgiving) live. so amazingly pretty out there. last night we walked about 1/4 mile from where we parked up to the house, in the dark, with the moon and stars and the forest, and on the way back to the car we realized that even though it’s like 10 miles out into forest, you can hear the ocean at night. wow…. i already wanted to live out there but that just topped it off for me. and terry’s house was awesome with funky little hobbit-like shaped rooms (octagons and stuff) and glass front that looks like it traps lots of sunlight for heat, and wood stove, and just very very cozy and nice. i like it a lot. kate’s house is fun too, very cabin-like, but more roomy less hobbit like. pretty much a rectangle, unlike this one last night. oh and terry’s has the exposed beams and stuff, i love.
i made yummy cheesecake. quinn ate pizza and stuck by me, but at the end of the night anne and annie (both awesome, annie is partners with dude named dominique who does the farmers market in newport with me) the two of them sat down at the piano and badly played and sang xmas carols, and annie let quinn use her jingly bracelet to jingle along to the tunes, and he danced too, and at one point was “singing” just kind of umming along with them. it was so cute.
this morning he woke up crying before i left and was telling me “i need my raincoat! i need my raincoat!!!” ? i have no idea why. i was like yes i know sweetie, i’ll get it, let’s just have some milk first. but i made sure it is there for when he wakes up. maybe he has plans to go out in the rain today with dada?

mb

magic & bioluminescence

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