This is a bird. I found three options on a blog of what it might be. To my eye, it looks most like the surfbird, but based on the description of rock sandpipers being solitary and quiet, that seems like a likely choice. It also resembles (to a person who looks at fish all day) the black turnstone, so I am not ruling that out as an id, either.
There was quite a breeze, and I loved the way the outer tidepools divided between the textures of the water within and just outside.
The find of the day was a dead octopus! I have never seed a live octopus in a tidepool, and while that would have been cooler, this was pretty remarkable to see. I stared at the scene for quite a while as quite a few hermit crabs crawled around the suckers. The large red sea urchin appeared to be quite interested in octopus meat as well.
I think the anemone pictured above is a painted anemone (Urticina grebelnyi). Below is our very common giant green anemone.
I have kept a gratitude journal for much of 2020. It helps me in November, and this year I needed help in all the other months. I was also looking ahead with some awareness that this November might not be my finest hour either, and thought of it as an investment, but it’s not really money in the bank I’m picturing. More like a seed bank, like I was putting away seeds from the flowers I grew this summer, knowing I would need to have the memory of past flowers and the hope of future flowers tucked in a safe place in order to get through the flowerless days. In July I recognized this, and was grateful for, “this garden of gratitude I am growing, one which will be able to be visited in November and harvested from when I may not have enough of what is in season.”
A few of the summer seeds I collected in my bank:
7-12
Hummingbird having a snack of crocosmia while the sprinkler was watering the terrace garden, and then resting on the flower stem to have a little shower before taking off again.
8-27
Pulled over on Otter Crest Loop overlook and took pictures of the beautiful blue ocean, trees, rocks, Queen Anne’s lace. Whales came by to say hello.
9-1
The smell of fifty pounds of beautiful peaches ripening in the kitchen.
9-3
Egrets wading in the bay as we drove the bay road home for date night pizza night. Their reflections in the blue, blue water (so nice and sunny) were just stunning.
9-5
Having enough energy to chop two ziplock bags of peppers for the freezer and can nine pints of fresh chopped heirloom tomatoes in rainbow colors, the urgent care variety I salvaged from the compost bin at market. One green zebra tomato (with one tiny squashed shoulder) the size of my head filled two pints with one more chopped piece leftover… one pink damsel that was about the same size (with one hole poked in it from another stem)! By tomorrow these would have been slumping with mold. Some beautiful vegetables are so vulnerable that it defies all pragmatism to try to bring them home, but I do it anyway, to honor the farming wrought, against all pragmatism, to bring them into being.
9-17
Walk on the beach- a fun egg case, a new nudibranch, and the whole place to myself since I arrived at dawn in the fog. Just what I needed.
Date night. Always.
11-5 today:
Speaking of date night, it is date night once again… modified for the times we inhabit, but we still observe this weekly tradition. I am grateful my love didn’t look at my tenderness, my propensity to fall to pieces, and decide I was too vulnerable, grateful that he defied all pragmatism and brought me home anyway. Grateful for the gratitude seed bank today.
11/6/20
~30 days of gratitude~ day 6
I am grateful for the tiny bird that visited my window this morning, when the sun came out (grateful for the sun). I did not think I would get any photos but this little guy really wanted to check out what was going on in our living room, and kept lurking long enough for camera retrieval, and even after Lisa kitty wandered over and settled herself down to watch the nature channel. (The bird did decide to depart when Bart panther-pounced up beside Lisa.)
I am no birder, but my Sibley guide said it might be a Ruby-crowned kinglet. They would like our spruce trees, and would be coming down out of the treetops this time of year to migrate, possibly. When I first saw this bird’s head, I thought it could have bashed its head on the window and been bleeding. No, it was a little more red violet than red, so maybe it had smashed one of my last few raspberries on his head (DIY raspberry beret?) and finally I got a good enough look to realize it was the actual color of the feathers. (Parsimony would have helped me here.)
I later discovered that the scientific name of this little bird is Regulus calendula, and, of course this magical creature would be named after a star and a flower. Not just any star… the first schooner bunk I slept in on my first semester at sea was also named Regulus. And not just any flower… calendula, one of the only things still blooming in my flower pots in November, a botanical healer, an edible salad topping, and of which quinn asked me as a toddler, “are you going to put calend-u-willa on that owie to feel it better?”
Basically, this little bird might as well have started singing to me, “you belong among the wildflowers, you belong on a boat out at sea, far away from your trouble and worry…”
So it was an easy choice today, though happy nacho day to those celebrating (we’re out of avocados, such bad form! We all know I will be grateful for nachos other days this month!)
11/7/20
~30 days of gratitude~ day 7
I am grateful that a woman can hold the office of the vice president of this country, and not just in theory anymore, but in reality.
What it’s like for me personally, is I’m just now realizing how much it matters to me. I have been thinking for a while, like since maybe a little over four years ago, of how it matters to little girls everywhere, watching, listening, absorbing, that women be trusted with positions of power, but it hit me tonight that, as Quinn pointed out to me one time, I was once a girl. Tonight, hearing our Vice President-elect say, “I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last,” was the moment I could no longer hold back tears. The other thing this election outcome is like, for me personally, is like the time when I was leaving an abusive relationship and I was having a panic attack that I had almost forgotten to get some of his tools out of the vehicle we had shared, and my guy friend who was helping me pack my U-haul told me, “MB, someday, someone is going to say nice things to you.”
I’m getting pretty used to the person I’m married to saying nice things to me all the time, I mean it’s pretty relentless, all the nice things he says, and does. Also, when I showed up wildly unprepared for cold rain and gusting wind at farmer’s market today (pretty sure I’m not the only one with some of my ducks not in a row this week), I was so grateful for his XL hooded sweatshirt (and the fishing community who keeps him supplied with F/V swag from all the boats he works so hard to build and repair every day) stowed in the back of the car, which nested nicely atop my size M sweatshirt and kept me warm for the whole day.
I am grateful to be able to look forward to having a president very soon who, when he speaks, will not trigger memories of years of emotional abuse. A nice aside is that the President-elect is the very guy who wrote the legislation that enabled me to get a restraining order when I needed one. America, get ready, because someday soon, someone is going to say nice things to you.
11/8/20
~30 days of gratitude~ day 8
I am grateful for the glorious weather today as my honey and I made our annual honey pilgrimage to obtain our four-gallon bucket of gold. I am grateful for the fully stocked chest freezer and pantry heading into the season of slow cookers and staying in. I am grateful for the way the god light was slanting through the conifers in the fog as we drove east, and for the colorful trees painting our journey into a rainbow road trip.
11/9/20
~30 days of gratitude~ day 9
Today when I was waiting an extra long time for my grocery order, I was grateful I had brought along my book. I am grateful for the ability to order groceries from home and pick them up outside the store, and for the energetic youth who cheerfully hoisted two cubic yards of potting soil into my trunk, saying he does the same to help his grandmother, who also likes to garden. I’m grateful the store gave me a discount I didn’t ask for, just because I had to wait; I basically got paid to read fifty delicious pages. I am so grateful, in case I haven’t said it yet this year, for good books. Sometimes, they take me right out of myself, and sometimes they pour me right back in. I have leaned on them hard this year for both of these essential services.
11/10/20
~30 days of gratitude~ day 10
There are days when writing a gratitude post is like plucking words from the air as easily as picking raspberries off the vines in the vase on my kitchen table. Even though I spent part of my day today studying word-crafting, tonight I am in percolating, not plucking mode.
I do have one gratitude I’ve been tucking away for a day when I was otherwise undecided. I have been having a much easier time waking up in the morning this November, having finally bought myself a full-spectrum light near the end of October. I’ve suspected myself to be a SAD puppy for a lot of years now, so I’m not sure why this took me so long. I’m grateful that when I mentioned it, my husband was also wondering why we didn’t already have one, and happily turned it on for me the first few mornings, during his usual wake-up (yes, I’m a grown-ass woman who has trouble waking up before dawn without help). The thing is, just a week or two in, I’m already awake enough to turn it on for myself, and more importantly, I don’t feel like rotten black death inside for the first hour of the day as my body rejects it’s-still-night-time like a mismatched organ. I don’t know what wizardry this is, but I know this little light is better than any supplement has ever done by me. We call it my sun ball.
When I was buying it Rich supportively said he thought it would help us both, though he felt he may not be as affected by shortening daylight as I am because, he said, “I generate light.” Boy does he ever. (He meant welding but I mean how he lights up my life.)
11/11/20
~30 days of gratitude~ day 11
Today I am grateful for and in awe of the connections… the unseen order of things… the cosmic consciousness. This may not make any sense to anyone else, and I’m okay with that. (I’m not taking this class for a grade!) I was told to “just obey it” yesterday when the wrong scene came to my mind during my writing workshop, and I spent ten minutes writing descriptive language about a scene I had no idea was connected to the piece I’m writing. Turns out it was so integrally connected, I spent the next twenty-four hours with wave after wave of profound revelations crashing over me. A significant breakthrough. In the earlier part of the class, when asked to explain why I was the most qualified person to write what I’m writing, I wrote why I’m the expert on mothering my son, including a sentence about the placenta that it still in a ziplock in the back of my freezer. Then today, as I was reading more of my book (my teacher is one of the authors), I came across a passage where she announced to her teen daughter that her placenta is still in the freezer. Shortly afterward, a rainbow came pouring across the page as the low and lazy November sun streamed in through the glass block window.
In other literary news, Rich and I discussed this morning what constitutes a nacho (singular). Grateful for November nacho nights, a pair of placentas, and rainbow connections.
this will be less verbose than some, but it is time to reconnect via rainbow…
rainbow: portrait of the artist as a tidepool…
rainbow: dahlias and hydrangeas being the rainbow.
rainbow: anemone and seaweed being the rainbow, too!
rainbow: heck, even a double-trailered coca-cola truck on a highway in idaho is being the rainbow. or at least, reflecting the sunrise.
red: oklahoma hummingbird sipping on some texas hummingbird sage.
red: by the way, rich and i just got back from a road trip to oklahoma!
red: some of the 67 quarts of tomatoes i have already mentioned from summer days of yore.
orange: dahlia beginnings in an enchanted garden.
orange: an enchanted garden from which some transplants have been shared with my own garden, like these wonderfully prolific helenium.
orange: my own garden is becoming increasingly enchanted over time…
orange: more flora and fauna, they are ok.
yellow: from the hick-a-rew daisy crop.
yellow: dahlias just beginning…
yellow: dahlias in their full glory, keeping the bees busy.
yellow: this is a special hollyhock, grown from seeds sent to me years ago from my friend in durango, and what a delight to find out they are the most delicate pale yellow imaginable.
yellow: black eyed susans, another delightful surprise that took until year 2 after seed planting to flower.
green: the rainbow terrace garden still reads mostly green, even in the height of summer. something about oregon… don’t mind that husband person with some sort of tool in his hand lurking in the upper right hand corner.
green: home sweet bayou hammock.
green: summer ocean productivity in abundance.
green-blue: heron taking flight on a lovely tidepooling excursion.
blue: whales surfacing in the surf zone during same lovely outing.
blue: one thing that is very definitely ok about oklahoma, is that they have blue butterflies there.
blue: this one perched for me in the amazing “gathering place” in tulsa, a community wonder.
purple: speaking of communities, a large village of sea urchins.
purple: mostly purple, but one red.
purple: glad to see these glads.
purple: swallowtails meet on the butterfly bush. “hey, do you come here often?”
purple: purplicious, to be exact, but also leaning a little bit towards red violet.
red violet: flat bride has been wanting me to grow stargazer lilies since i was very young, and i am happy to say they came back healthy and thriving in their second summer in the rainbow garden.
watching the moon with quinn one night, we saw a dragon cloud overtake the moon, sliding up its nostril and eventually becoming its eye. though the moon was enfolded in wisps of cloud, the cloud was now illuminated from within. dragons are always on our minds here at the dragon house, but especially for quinn recently as he has been reading eragon and making spinoff dragon cards for a new game. his first two creations of a wind drake and a storm drake are pictured, including an extra-spirally tail on the storm drake!
in his game about barbarians, archerers, giants, and goblins, situated among castles and builder huts, barracks and cannons and archer towers, he developed a defense of a spring coil, to propel enemies back over the wall surrounding the compound when triggered. then he modified it to have them land on yet another weapon, a tesla. he explained this electrical-magnetic device to me, and i asked him where he had learned the word tesla.
don’t you know, he read about tesla in the t section of the dictionary back in fourth grade. when he was reading the dictionary one day. as one does.
i had him browse the wikipedia article about nikola tesla and his eidetic memory and amazing mind. i thought maybe he could relate to the guy.
he still pronounces archer “archerer.” the holdouts are few and far between now, and he will reminisce with me about certain ones like “last day” for yesterday and “next day” for tomorrow, which were his staple reference points in time as a toddler. this is the type of thing i wasn’t able to anticipate about being a parent; as i’m headed up my spiral staircase, he is also wandering up his, and we’re both reaching vantage points along the way from which we are both looking back downward and outward together… it’s impossible to articulate what a trip it is.
quinn’s tag pull-out class was re-established to close out the school year. they took a field trip to an escape room, full of different locks and puzzles and codes they had to put together. he had fun, and though he said his group went over the time limit, they got to the end of all of the clues anyway. he described it all in intricate detail (such as tables with checkerboards painted on them) and was pleased to bring home a souvenir key. the kids are planning to build their own escape room to put their peers through back at school, so this was good research!
other forms of entertainment besides watching math videos this month have included a may the fourth! star wars movie night at home with (the best ever, made by rich) popcorn.
he and i played his new strategy game (from his easter basket) called odin’s ravens.
we also attended the dance performance of the wizard in oz in which several of our young friends danced.
one sunday after a women’s self defense seminar, i asked quinn to go for a jog with me. i started teaching him about which side of the road to run on, pointing out exceptions and how to make a judgement call when you’re on winding back roads with various amounts of shoulder. he is a good little runner, very uncoordinated but has endurance and is cheerful about it. i need to get him some better shoes to run in than his vans. we decided we’ll run to karate sometimes so we can be in good shape for fall cross country season.
one week quinn was sent to the library during the time his classmates did each state test session, to work on his “elo” or extra learning opportunity. he made a google slide presentation comparing mythologies from 4 different cultures (greek, roman, norse, and egyptian), as he had planned ahead to do. he missed both thursday and friday of the school week (at his dad’s house) and i learned later that he had not been collected from the library after each test session in a reliable enough manner, and that he had missed lunch period both tuesday and wednesday as a result.
i asked quinn more details about what had happened, and whereas his dad had framed the oversight as something more sinister (shame/disapproval/punishment by staff of those opting out of testing), i found out from quinn that he had been sitting in an area behind some book fair shelves on a low cushion, causing no trouble for the librarian who had her regular library classes coming and going, in addition to book fair. i explained to quinn that he has a choice of how he looks at what other people say and do, and it’s possible that his dad might interpret something in a very negative way without having all the information. we can choose just as easily to interpret what happened as an unfortunate oversight, and if we give people the benefit of the doubt that they are in a jumbled up routine and the dots didn’t connect how they were supposed to, it makes it easier to adapt. equally importantly, i also encouraged him that he can speak up for himself, and say “hey, i didn’t get lunch” to a teacher (this he did not do), who might be able to open up a box of granola bars for him at the very least. spending our energy on developing strategies to make it in the system instead of judging the system. that’s a lot of baggage i don’t want him to carry around.
as it turns out, this story has a silver lining… his friends, to whom we’ll refer as aragorn, gimli, and legolas, had grabbed him a bag of carrots and a fruit cup (the portable lunch items) and brought them to recess for him after lunch on the second day of him missing lunch, because they had his back and were worried about him missing it again. i asked him if he had been okay missing school the following two days, or if he would rather have gone, so he could be with his friends, and he said he had agreed to stay home, but that he had also wanted to go. i let him know i felt it was okay for him to insist on going, even if his dad was leaning towards having him stay home. self-advocating still a hot topic, and looks like it will be for a while yet.
quinn helped me come up with pseudonyms for his three friends, and though we explored pokemon, star wars, or naruto characters, we agreed the reference to the fellowship made perfect sense. encouraged by the friendships forming and bonds building among these four throughout fifth grade, i have been thinking of ways to try and nurture their bond over the coming summer, and into the start of sixth grade. i don’t want to necessarily hyper manage his social calendar, but i also hear a lot from the poppy moms about how hard a time so many of them have with finding and keeping friends… so being able to foster it a little bit into these middle school years feels like a good investment. they’re his friends, he made them himself, i just feel like i could nudge things in the right direction to keep the friendships going over the summer and into next year… when it may feel like it matters more to have some dependable friends.
he presented his comparative mythology research, result of the three days he spent in the library, and i was so glad i got to be there for it – because he advocated for doing it during my thursday afternoon volunteer time. i took video… it’s 14 minutes long. the sound is poor, but it’s possible to hear his voice over the bouncing yoga balls if you play it in a completely quiet room.
we had a delightful visit from our pancakes in april! lots of minecraft and dragon playing went on in between basketball games!
we attended a karate seminar with our sifu’s sifu. he’s a fun older guy with a 7th degree black belt, we like him, and he’s a good teacher. he loves quinn and i, always remembers our names. our mrs. todd was testing for her black belt (the big reason for his visit from california) and quinn was very excited to congratulate her on her promotion!
one saturday i took quinn with me to farmer’s market because rich was also working, and he was a big help again. we got to leave early, and attempted to go visit the tall ships for deck tours. however, there was a super long line and even though we stood in it for over an hour, they had to close before we could get on. quinn was very bummed, actually shed a few tears even though we had been talking about how it might happen, but he bounced back really well. i took his picture with the ships, and then we decided to try and watch their “battle sail” from the shore. we sat on the bay beach and ate our lunch and bundled up in a blanket and watched them. it worked out well, but they didn’t do much battling; gotta love when it’s too windy for sailing. by the end of our adventure, he was content. this was timely, because i really needed to use the bathroom, and i said, “i could just go over behind those bushes,” but quinn wouldn’t have it, “no! do not besmirch nature like that!” i was laughing so hard at his word choice that he wondered if he had pronounced it correctly, and i knew then for sure that it was another case of a word learned from literature. he was grinning at his correct usage and pronunciation, when i assured him he had it right. (i did not besmirch nature, i went inside the visitor’s center.)
in other vocabulary news, i have been getting called out on exaggerating things, with a quick retort of, “that’s hyperbole, mom.”
at our spring parent-teacher conference, his teacher told us what a long way quinn has come in his writing, saying he is most certainly ready for middle school in that area… “he is using appositives correctly, he’s ready for semi-colons.” (quinn chimed in, “i already do use semi-colons!”) moving right along to the next topic…
the pythagorean theorem, of course. his star test results are saying he’s ready for that type of math, and she went over again how she wants him to continue his khan academy math over the summer. she feels he is doing great, going at a good pace, and as long as he plans to continue over summer, will be in good shape to skip ahead to the 7/8 accelerated math for which she recommended him; where they learn the pythagorean theorem and then in 8th grade he’ll be walking down to the high school for geometry.
she said he’s ready for things in middle school, and recognizes that he needs a lot more challenges put in front of him than what she has been able to do in her limited way, and we get to start to expand on that in middle school. she recommended we visit with the teachers (at least for math and language arts) at the very beginning of the year to let them know that sometimes quinn needs cueing on certain executive function things, but to let them know about his test results and that he is ready for the challenges, and make sure they are putting those in front of him- there is no accelerated language arts, but she made a good point in that the students tend to get sorted a bit more by level in middle school, and i remember that… i was in enriched english and accelerated math with the same set of kids, who therefore kept showing up in my other class periods for p.e., french, science, social studies… because we had the same constraints on our schedule. this ends up meaning for quinn that his particular class for english may tend to be able to handle more advanced stuff as well.
on needing more coaching or cueing on things non-academic… he has made lots of gains in these executive function areas, but has room to grow. my job as i see it is to empower him to solve these things, and if that means an extra one hundred conversations about not avoiding bathroom use, that’s what i’ll do. i feel the same way about self advocating (about bathrooms, math classes, or parental duties to drive him to his activities,) and plan to keep the whole conversation going. the latest addition to the time management tool box is a watch, and he has been wearing it consistently and reporting on the time at regular intervals. rich and i are hoping it serves to increase his awareness of how much time various tasks require, and maybe clue him in on where he loses track of time.
on conference days, he went to work with me, set up a schedule for the day, and stuck to it while i was stuck in a freezer for 3 hours! he even did some khan academy math, a homework summary, and spent lots of time on khan computer programming (he has completed over 90 lessons as of this writing! essential items such as how to code a rainbow!). he also played a little minecraft and read some of eragon. then he wrote music note letters into his sheet music for hedwig’s theme. over the course of these two months, he has become proficient at playing the song, and i think he is very proud of this accomplishment.
he participated in open house and the spring concert at school (they played recorders, which was priceless). all he wanted to do was go make slime in one of the classrooms, as they had a “fair” atmosphere with activities. his hands were too warm, so he got all gooey and messy.
at the nexus between quinn’s math and music concentrations, he found himself once again engrossed in vi hart’s imaginitive and fun video on “folding space-time” which turns out to be centered around a tiny hand-crank music box that will play notes punched in strips of paper. even mobius strips! vi explains how music is a great medium in which to play with the dimensions of both space and time, and my hat is off to her for enfolding so much wonder and delight into her videos, whose nerd metaphors are now permanently embedded into my son’s psyche. i couldn’t resist obtaining a music box for quinn so he, too, can fold space-time.
at quinn’s school, students are voted for by their classmates throughout the year for exemplifying each of their “eight essentials.” (the full list of eight: respect, kindness, patience, selflessness, honesty, forgiveness, humility and commitment.) quinn was nominated for the commitment award! he was very proud that his peers felt him to be a committed person. i affirmed that i observe him to be very committed: when he sets a goal, he doesn’t give up, and goes on to achieve it with focus and determination, or as our karate principles describe it, perseverance, and indomitable spirit. but also, in the sense of commitment to people he loves, or causes he believes in, i see evidence of a very caring, principled, and loyal guy!
tour of sixth grade science classroom; at his table, from left: gimli, quinn, aragorn, and legolas
something that was a pretty big deal in may was the field trip to visit the middle school! i was asked to go along as a chaperone, which was an insightful peek at how nurturing these fifth grade teachers must be. there was high intensity that day, spanning the full range of human emotion. this is a huge transition for a kid, as i well recall. i think quinn is mostly taking it in stride, is excited about the new opportunities he’ll be met with, and ready to take on this new set of challenges. he had one minor freak out about a lost raffle ticket, but his peers were all over the board with elation and trepidation.
along with the explosion in learning/absorbing, there has also been a period of emotional intensity. as a result of forgetting to take care of his basic needs for food, water, bathroom, throughout the day (executive function skills), he has had a few music lessons where he was not at his best. processing those times after the fact is also intense, requiring quite a bit of finesse to extract what is going on internally for him, and involve him in finding solutions. i have been working on finding a good balance of stern firmness (holding the line of politeness to his music teacher) and compassionate sounding board (patiently waiting for the “it” that is really bothering him to be revealed, nodding understandingly that the piece of paper he didn’t want cut that morning and the disagreement over the game with his friend caused his “really bad day”), then revisiting lessons from earlier in life about mindfulness of staying on top of processing our emotions in real time so that we don’t take them out later in the day on our unsuspecting music teacher.
by lights out the night of one such discussion, he was telling me “i love you as big as the sky, as big as the ocean all the way to the moon… no… do you know the name of any galaxies besides ours, the milky way?”
“no.”
“well then, all the way past the milky way and back again eleven quintillion times.”
enfolded in the layers of all those surly emotions, there it is.
p.s. in the spirit of lifelong learning, i looked up some other galaxies. and quinn, i love you all the way to gn-z11 and back again, eleven quintillion times. (that’s 32 billion light years away, folks! it’s found in the constellation ursa major, aka the big dipper. there are also a sunflower galaxy, a whirlpool galaxy and a tadpole galaxy, all very cool looking, but they’re not as distant!)
i may have already mentioned a certain man i am thankful for, but recently i’ve been specifically feeling gratitude for his navigational skills. there is just about nothing i’d rather be doing than riding in the passenger seat while he drives me anywhere. it was why we chose to go on a road trip for our honeymoon this summer. we are very happy driving places together! this still blows me away, because there was a time in my life when not only was i expected to do the navigating, i was put down for how badly i did the job. i still claim that i am better with directions at sea than on land, but i don’t think i’d be so bad at land navigation if i hadn’t been emotionally abused so much in that area. now, on the exceedingly rare occasions that rich does ask a navigational question of me, guess what? it’s okay with him if i make a mistake or simply have no idea what the answer to the question is. it’s just simply not a source of stress in our lives.
most of the time, however, nothing is required of me in this department, because rich just seems to always know which way to turn. we drove a different way to portland last weekend, back roads the whole way, until at one point he told me, “ok hang on, we’re going on a new adventure!” and put on his turn signal. it’s amazing how he never has to back track or ask for directions, and equally amazing how he turns off on so many unmarked country roads that seem like they probably don’t go anywhere, at least to my eye. we made it to portland with time to spare for coffee and a burger before the show.
in the state of oregon, his directional abilities have a lot to do with having driven his kids back and forth across the state for years on their way to track meets, basketball games, and other sporting events. he rarely even consults an atlas anymore, when we are traveling inside the state. when we drove across state lines to montana for our honeymoon, he could be found sneaking a peak at various maps. i think it is recreational reading for him to study how the roads all weave together across the terrain. all of this is lovely for me, since it means i get to ride in my favorite seat and photo-document the journey.
11/10/17
~30 days of gratitude~ day 10
today i am grateful for date night, rainbows, and inspirational women!
11/11 and 11/12 and 11/13/17
~30 days of gratitude~ days 11, 12, and 13
i am grateful for forgiveness. i sometimes lose track of days and plans and agendas and schedules whenever the week transitions from life with quinn to life without quinn. i forgive myself for not getting an A in gratitude, and skipping a few days while i regrouped (and worked, and played, and went on a date, and cooked and cleaned.) i forgive myself for putting off writing a holiday to-do list, and i forgive myself for that list being insanely long once i finally wrote it, in spite of wanting to keep the holidays simple, and i forgive myself for not checking any items off the list yet.
i’m thankful for the way ani difranco (who i got to see on friday night, so lucky, so grateful!) has managed to write lyrics that describe my life for several decades running. she had her daughter a month before i had my son (and he was almost a month overdue), and while we were both pregnant she wrote, “you’re gonna love this world if it’s the last thing i do, the whole extravagant joke topped in bittersweet chocolate goo, for someone who ain’t even here yet, look how much the world loves you…”
it feels like an extravagant joke topped in bittersweet chocolate goo to drop off my son only to turn around and get taken on a date. i miss him but i think i appreciate both him and the time alone with my man all the more for the times in between. and then i am overjoyed to pick him up a week later.
transitions are a way of life for my kiddo, who spends equal halves of his life in two separate households. he has grown so much in his ability to transition gracefully, and now he does a better job than anyone. and that’s not to mention developmental transitions that are going on all the time. into fifth grade, into percussion lessons, into packing his own school lunches, into attending theatre workshops, into defying his mama and staying awake to read his book under the covers by head lamp. more bittersweet chocolate goo!
i am thankful for how forgiveness of past hurts frees me from the poison of resentment. i am also thankful for the perspective to know the difference between forgiveness and acceptance of unacceptable behavior. forgiveness is a present i give myself, not a welcome mat for abuse.
i thank my lucky stars that my husband and i don’t venture into areas requiring forgiveness.
like the little creatures in the ocean that bioluminesce, i am trying to generate my own light during this dark time. many organisms are triggered to glow when they encounter disturbance, and transition times are a continuous source of predictable disturbance for me, like waves, like tides. i have always felt like that dynamic position in the universe where air, land and sea coalesce on the edge of the ocean is the most magical, and of course that transition between rain and sun that brings us rainbows is another personal favorite. i am thankful for the magic around the edges of things.
11/14 and 11/15/17
~30 days of gratitude~ days 14 and 15
i am thankful for rainbows in unexpected places and other surprises.
i am a summer girl at heart, but early spring is a very happy time of year for me, because of all the hopeful new beginnings, new growth, and flowers! the first flowers after the longest period of going without flowers are some of the sweetest. part of the changing of seasons for me is allowing myself to feel the associated dread, diappointments, anticipations, longings, awe, wonder, and magic that each ephemeral moment holds. giving myself permission to feel the whole spectrum of the human emotional experience.
pink: as i was brainstorming wedding cupcake ideas with wedding boss and co., we settled on flowers in every color. i won’t spoil all the details, but i am happy to say that cherry blossoms will be representing in the candy pink/baby pink department. to explain why, i wrote that to me they symbolize “the saga of a tree and an over-extended metaphor about renewal.” the ornamental in the above picture at dragon house 2.0 may actually be a plum, but the metaphor lives on for me in every blossom i see, and is always a reminder for me of what can bloom even after brokenness and devastation.
red: the hummingbirds have certainly recognized that spring is upon us, and are emptying the feeder in frantic four-hour periods this week in preparation for nesting.
orange: also in the “it’s officially spring” department, robins! (we saw a turkey vulture soaring over the bayou the other day as well!)
yellow: more work on the rainbow terrace garden was accomplished as providence provided another sunny sunday, but a few bulbs in their bucket transitional homes have bloomed before i could transplant them. these crocuses will be leading off the early spring end of the yellow terrace level in years to come!
yellow: 3 trilliums, petals of 3, sepals of 3, and leaves of 3. the magic number! a sweet-smelling spring favorite of mine, always just before my birthday. (39 this year on the 3rd! more 3s!)
green: spring brings signs of life, signs of renewal, signs of love. tender new leaves emerging from long dormant earth.
blue: speaking of love, i haven’t moved all of my 8 yards of compost yet, but this handsome man moved most of his 10 yards of gravel in a little over a day. it’s hard to get my own work done because i get distracted by watching him! (or at least, that’s my excuse.)
purple: sprouting broccoli at the farm stand on saturday, and since my kiddo has been requesting broccoli lately, i brought some home for him to try.
purple: another fresh spring arrival, the pile of radishes featured one rogue bunch of purple radishes, of which i couldn’t resist snapping a photo. the farm seasons offer a comforting continuous awareness of renewal as last season’s crops fade away and new arrivals make their appearance. i find the farm work especially grounding in this current life season, as i have had about all i can take of looming budget cuts, grant-funded research, and the restrictions and expectations of carrying on an unsustainable lifestyle in order to be under paid and lack job security in a project i can therefore not invest any life force in, since i only having a master’s degree. looking forward to renewal in the area of career in the upcoming months.
brown: a squirrel heartily enjoying a pine cone. rich and i got to watch it peel each seed and spit out the husk, turning the whole thing over and over in its paws like corn on the cob.
i didn’t have a major topic lined up for today, which is probably another case of providence, since i think we could all use a little breather after my previous post! i want to say that i appreciate each and every comment and the effort and time you each put into responding and searching and digging into the meat of a difficult topic with me! the one link i want to share today, concerning empathy, is one that i felt was helpful for me in articulating why it hurt to hear many versions of “get over it” following the election wherein folks were “sick of” hearing others expressing fear and sadness. we are all human, and i want to be clear that one reason i appreciate my readers so much, is the way you all already regard my and each other’s feelings as entirely valid; the “get over it” sentiments are not ones that i heard in this space! empathy takes us a long way past many of the roadblocks to dialogue that much of our society seems to have a hard time clearing.
“When we react to our emotions with rejection or repression, they become complex story bundles, locked in our hearts and bellies, and we call them things like depression and rage. Allowed to exist on their own, they are weather patterns, and the rain they bring renews the despairing or apathetic soul with life giving force.”
mary good’s post also talks about how we can “give our hearts permission for the full range of experience,” including those very vulnerable feelings that can be uncomfortable. when we let the ephemeral clouds drift across our skies and simply observe and validate them, we get to both experience them more fully, the whole rainbow of emotion, and find much greater ease in letting them go. i’m finding this to be an excellent and much-needed reminder for myself right now, with uncertainties and unanswered questions stirring in my own life, and knowing there are vulnerable times ahead for so many of my friends and family as well. let’s be rainbows in each others’ clouds as we embrace the renewal that spring brings.
we’re in high rainbow season, and we’ve been taking our cues from the skies and being the rainbow every chance we get.
being a fairy dog mother is a way i like to be the rainbow in someone else’s cloud, or in other words, be the community on which my friends can depend. i took this while walking my ruby pup one lunch break.
spending part of inauguration weekend taking care of ruby’s kids so their parents could attend a conscious teaching conference felt like being a rainbow. fixing quesadillas, detangling my favorite curls and snuggling up to read stories, some of my favorite ways to be a rainbow.
not sure whether still having our christmas tree is being the rainbow, but it is being a rainbow itself, so we’ll not mention our procrastination tendencies.
rainbow tree water. water is life.
red: summer in a jar, strawberry jam on a biscuit makes him smile. still life of boy with 99 cent pineapples.
orange: caught him grinning as he added branches to his first bonfire at the dragon house.
yellow: sunset self care visits to the beach are right at the end of my work day this time of year.
yellow: quinn advanced from junior green belt to adult half yellow belt! we are having a great time with our new sifu and learning a lot!
green: lumberjack in his element. rich took down several small overcrowded trees this weekend, and i helped. i got to tie the rope on each time and pull them in the right direction while he wielded the chainsaw. they all landed right where we wanted them, and none of them landed on me at all. success! more light for the apples and future garden area! not to mention the venue of an upcoming get together…
green: another thing that felt like being a rainbow on friday was cleaning up a beach with quinn’s fourth grade class.
blue: juvenile eagle blessing the beach cleanup.
blue: various hubbard-y blue squashes riding the wave.
blue: selfie with dust.
purple: sunset watch.
purple: eating my greens and purples; still life with dirty dishes. dust and dirt, just part of being a rainbow!
2017 is a going to be a big year for us, no two ways about it. i don’t feel the same usual timid anticipation of the unknown to come, because there are already some big plans laid out for this year. standing here on the threshold, it’s more like a certainty cutting through the fog of my winter brain, that this is just bound to be a big one.
i was having trouble articulating actual intentions for the year, but then i realized that in 2017 i will watch my son turn 10 (!); turn 39 myself; and get married!!! and then i cut myself some slack, because that is enough for one year! if i can pull off those three feats with some small measure of grace, it will be an accomplishment.
throughout the transition to the new year, i have been contemplating spiral symbolism (wearing spirals, as i always do, sorting through seashells and fossils in spiral formation, etc.) and reaffirming that every day (not just january first) is an opportunity to begin again. and every hour, every minute within each day, can be a new beginning. the choice to start fresh at any time is so freeing, and empowers me to make life what i want it to be.
last year my intentions were minimal, and i checked most of the items off of that modest list (live music, a doctor visit, new glasses, consistent self care practices) and this year i am just going to reaffirm that self care remains high on my agenda, which enables me to care for my guys in the best way i can.
i watched a clip of maya angelou singing and sharing a spiritual about the rainbow, and encouraging people to be a rainbow in somebody’s cloud. i think i’m adopting that as part of my intention for this year. it’s just vague enough to exert low pressure but be highly inspiring, especially since i tend to be a rainbow (my current theme song when driving alone in my car is “she’s a rainbow” by the rolling stones) every chance i get by default anyway.
in an effort to gain some clarity or insight or inspiration on 2017 intentions, i drew some nature cards from my two inspirational decks (i’ve written about these cards before here, here ,here and here where you can also find links to the artists.) the cards all made me chuckle and nod, for each of the three of us, as usual. but none so much as the very first one. “just think about the rainbow” it said, encouraging me to recognize the magic in each moment, each day.
i didn’t take enough pictures this week for a full rainbow monday post, but i also don’t want to skip posting today, because i am feeling so blessed and joyful. i attended a wonderful yoga and writing workshop on saturday that filled me with inspiration was just so invigorating. then yesterday (sunday) looked at a beautiful house with my love that we would like to put an offer on. (all good house-buying mojo/chanting/prayer/finger crossing appreciated! not to wish anyone else out of the running, but there are others interested… even if we don’t get it, it felt very hopeful to see something that was such a good fit for us.) i spent a good hour on the phone with my mom hearing about the niece and nephew blessings in my east coast family, and then not long after that, received the news of my newest nephew’s birth here in oregon. i just returned from meeting him, it’s important to let them imprint on their aunties as early as possible. i am off to a great start on my theme for 2016 of lightheartedness, don’t you think? i thought quinn’s joyful look of receiving rainbow blessings in his upturned hand was perfectly symbolic for the occasion.
