japan.

I haven’t written about it yet because I simply don’t  know what to say.  I’m so completely overwhelmed by the devastation.  And if I think I am overwhelmed by it, than I can only imagine what the people who live there are feeling.  To think that in one moment everyone and everything you care about can be wiped away with no warning.  It’s everything that you think must be fixed in this world, death, destruction, cold, hunger, grief.

And yet there is no easy fix.  I know that I for one can’t help but sit here feeling helpless.  I’ve been glued to the television in a way that I never am and I’m not one of those stop to look at the train wreck kind of people.  It’s just it looks as if it was the summer movie blockbuster, except that it’s real.

I don’t have anything helpful to say.  Nothing profound.  I have nothing to offer but my love and light stretched out to the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, daughters and sons, for those gone and those left to grieve and rebuild.

I do know that I have been hugging my daughters a bit tighter lately.  Appreciating having a house, electricity, food, warmth.  Just the basics, not even all the extras, like coffees and yellow tulips and pizza night.

A reminder to us all.

singing loudly and badly.

i have no photos for this post.

be thankful.

a lot of times i lament on being alone.

sometimes it’s not such a bad thing.

right now i am sitting in a hot bath bookmarking every blog i’ve ever been interested in on my laptop.

i’m drinking a mocha frappuccino.

and i’m singing an old song very loudly and badly, with no backup music.

and no one is here to raise an eyebrow.

did i mention i had a bag of potato chips for dinner?

when you are home alone, no one cares how quirky you are.

and the kids aren’t home for another hour.

perfection.

{i have been playing a lot with words lately}

I had a bit of a meltdown last Thursday.  I had been sick and worn down.  Dotoomuchitis and bugbityouitis.  I have a problem, I want everything to be perfect.    I am a failed perfectionist.

I have tried to let go a little this past week and let myself just be.  Some days have been easier than others.  Tonight, I happened across an article in an old Yoga Journal entitled, “Making Peace With Perfection” and it was this line from the article that stood out to me:

“In Sanskrit, one of the words for perfection is purna, usually translated as fullness or wholeness”.

So now I am wondering, if I strive to define perfectionism as feeling full or whole, will that bring me closer to feeling peaceful with myself ?  If I don’t define perfection as everything being in it’s proper place, the undone sitting, whispering, failure, failure, failure to me every night will that bring me closer to feeling whole or well?

Perhaps.

Perhaps perfectionism is finding a balance between the work that needs to be done physically and the work that needs to be done mentally.  I do have enough sense to know that life should be about balance.

I don’t have enough sense to pay attention to my body before it gives me a swift kick in the ass.

In my ever ongoing  journey to balance my life I have come up with a new plan.  I am giving myself half a day Saturday and Sunday to do the need to’s.    The rest of the day is my time with no expectations to DO anything. No chores on weeknights, dinner, homework, a possible workout, and a chat with my honey is enough.

And I’ve made a pact to not go to bed later than 10:30 on a weeknight.  I’m getting better at it and mornings have been slightly more peaceful.

I’m still working on the perfectionism thing though.  And really I would like to throw the word out the window and away from my vocabulary.

Fullness and wholeness though.

That has a nice ring to it.

I think when I reach those rare moments when I feel that way I will just block my sight from everything else and sink in.  Because how often do we take the time in a blissful moment to stop and say, “this is perfection”.

Maybe that’s the answer.  Finding your bliss.

Or maybe I’ll just let go of the whole thing and just stop thinking.

That’s probably the best option of all.

sleepovers make me want to cry

{my BAM, self portrait this week, between two worlds}

We had a sleepover this weekend.  The girls had their cousins come stay.  Their cousins from their father’s side.   I cannot explain about their father’s family here as it would take too many words.  They don’t see these cousins very often.  Things are distant at best on that side.  So time being what it is and schedules being what they are we don’t seem to find the time to get together, but every year at this time we do, every year in late January.  When the girls came I sat and talked with my old brother-in-law.  We caught up on our lives.  I was glad to report that life is going well for me.  That I am happy and that I am in love and that I am in the process of thinking about combining my life again with someone else and he, the brother of my old husband, was sincerely happy for me.  I miss these girls, my first nieces, both born within two months of each of my own daughters.  I remember being full and swollen, both my sister-in-law and I at the same time.  I remember joy as first one and then two and then three and four, made their ways into our lives  and I remember yearning for the feeling of family.  I remember holding these little babes as peanuts.  Now last night we did makeovers, rolled hair in curlers and  had dance parties in my living room, keeping it in check by punking out to Green Day.

Ed called.  The girls all took their turns talking to him on the laptop screen and then he watched them make me over, lipstick and blush and sparkly eyeshadow, so close but yet so far away.   We made bets on when they would go to sleep, me guessing around 12:30 or 1:00 a.m., him guessing closer to 2:00 a.m. and obviously even with no previous sleepover experience he was the better guesser because by 1:45 a.m. the little ones may have conked out, but the two older girls lay side by side in the covers talking quietly.  I remember those days.  I remember sleepovers and late nights and curling up next to a cousin or a friend and whispering those conversations you can’t whisper to your mother.  Telling them goodnight and heading to bed I had one last conversation with Ed, but I didn’t have much to say.   I always have so much to say to him and I felt guilty for keeping him tied to the laptop when he had a motorcycle to put back together instead of staring at the girl 2,000 miles away suffering with a weird twisted heart.

I think that maybe one day he may tire of my emotions. Of this up and down.  I don’t know sometimes what to think.  How my life keeps changing.  Most times I want to fast forward past all this tedious stuff, the long days and nights when we are apart.  I want to forego the questions of where and when and how we are going to pull our lives together and just be. I want to cast aside doubts that him coming here will ruin the life he loves so much out there or that my moving there will wreck my family who love me and who I love so much.

You cannot make time stay still. You cannot keep your babies young.  You cannot stop life from changing.  You cannot wish the miles to push together and you cannot ease a transition that is certain not to be easy.  Last night in a house that was  full I felt undeniably alone.  The realization that my children are growing and they will not always need me and the realization I have made everything about my life about them.  As much as I thought my life before would not change, or as much as I was pleased to see how I came into this life on my own, or as much as I believed in three girls taking on the world, I’ve finally gotten a taste of what it would feel like for us to be a real family, something I have always wanted  that has always seemed elusive.  So now it is taking everything I have to try to take this world of my past and this world of my future and try to make some sense of it.  To move past the uncertainty of the where’s and the when’s and the plans  because there will be no arrow in the sky or some figurehead to say, “you should do this”.

This is the hard stuff and it would be so much easier to do this wrapped up in his arms.  The problem is once I got there I might not be able to get back out because that is my safe zone. and that is why this is so hard.

hello today-i like you

 

 

 I liked today.

I knew going into it there would be no school and no work due to the snow.

The snow that I seem to like this year, who knew?

I liked having a lie in.

I liked tromping through it sometimes up to my hips.

I liked the way the cardinal feathers floated freely across the top skimming the crust.

I liked the way my body felt alive shoveling my grandparents sidewalk, warming me up so much that hat and gloves and almost coat came off.

I liked listening to my grandmother in her robe fussing at me to stop.

I liked hot homemade ham and bean soup for lunch.

I liked hours spent at the laptop working on a new idea I’m excited about.

I liked having this laptop.  I can work anywhere, my favorite perhaps my bed.

I liked drinking two and a half pots of tea a day.

I liked seeing real shadows falling across unmarked snow.

I liked seeing barn cats tenderly making their way.

I liked befuddled cattle not sure to brave the field, belly-deep in snow and buffalo that tear away and just go.

I liked an old husky dog that turns into a puppy outside.

I liked a boyfriend who called me at lunchtime just to hear my voice.

I liked little girls with pink cheeks and wild snowy hair.

I liked seeing little heads bobbing through the snow towards next door for a visit.

I liked knowing this day wasn’t planned so why not sit down to another cup of tea.

I liked listening to Ed and the girls Skyping on the computer and how he makes them giddy with laughter.

I liked reading the end of  The Wizard of Oz with Karelyn.

I liked a hot bath.

I liked clean, warm flannel sheets.

I liked Ed telling me eventually I will have to let him take care of me.

I liked how a good yoga routine and some deep breathing can help ease aches and pains.

I liked the quiet and the darkness.

I like life, on a day like this.

time, time, time

i’ve been doing all my writing at night.  and i’m tired.  it’s been keeping me up too late, but it’s the time i seem to really settle into it and get a chance to pound the words out.  some of my best words tie together at night.  bed, laptop, music, quiet, and away we go.  i still haven’t settled on a project.  again with the stick your toes in the water but don’t dive right in kind of thing.  i have a lot of people telling me TO write.  I want you to write, they say.

i write here….often, but not often enough.  i write emails to send to Colorado at 2:30 a.m. when it’s dark and i’m lonely and unsure of how we are going to make it all work.  those emails usually contain those great big bomb words i don’t want my mother to read.  Like, *&#* this is so hard, i miss you.  i’ve started a few stories, lacking in faith to put them together.  i’ve written a handful of poems.  then just when i think about it, i find myself back at the editor focused on the photos.

never enough time is there?  i want to write.  i want to take more photos.  i want to make a new quilt.  i want to learn to sew a skirt.  i want to start a new Etsy store. i want to clean out my basement.

all in good time.

i’ll keep writing.  maybe one day it will all come together.

no pressure.

one word at a time.

 

 

This year I am vowing to take things a little slower.  ”slow” doesn’t seem to apply usually here unless you want to count trying to get Emily ready for school, that girl just works at her own pace.  But this year (among other things) I want to take things a bit at a time.

*****

when i am cooking dinner, i want to be just cooking dinner.

when i am reading bedtime stories, i want to be just reading bedtime stories.

when i make my evening call, i want to already be in bed, to turn off the light.

*****

I’ve been intent the last couple years on setting so many goals for myself which has been good, but this year my goals for myself are falling into three simple little categories which I’m not  going to elaborate on here because they are that self-explanatory and that low-stress.  I know without a shadow of a doubt I can accomplish these three things.

live. laugh. love.

 

There are other things I want to do too.  I want to work on my photographs more.  I want to write more.  I want to spend more time here online, but they are not the essentials.  These things are the essentials.  So when I go missing here for brief periods of time which I am hoping will not happen but somehow always does, know that I am busy on my list….living, laughing, loving.

I have worked so hard.  On myself and on my life.  Now I want to reap the benefits of the hard physical and emotional work I’ve done.  I’ve reached  another great goal and another favorite word of mine:

acceptance

This was the word I chose for my first self-portrait of 2011.  This was the word I chose when Shutter Sisters posted their One Word Project for this month, the first of 2011.  This is the word I think will finally define me this year and this was the word that made my dream come true landing a photo of my own on the Shutter Sisters site, a goal I’d been harboring for awhile and finally put out on “the list” last fall.

With three of my Mondo Beyondo dreams having found their way to me since September when  I posted them, I have found  it is best when I just allow them to reside here with me and find their own way to fruition.  They seem to do this best when I  let go of the controls and do another three words:

be. do. believe.

I will take this year one day at a time.  I will work on my photographs, one photo at a time and I will take all these beautiful words that have come into my life and I will write them, one word at a time, documenting this life I’ve been lucky enough to sculpt out of what I never thought was possible.

Quirky

{my photo for the new year: acceptance}

When you live alone for some period of time (say almost three years) you kind of have your own rules, or more accurately some rules need not apply.  Like closing the doors when you enter the bathroom or talking out loud to yourself constantly or eating breakfast  closer to noon on a regular basis or talking back to the movie you are watching or walking around in tanktops in the middle of winter because that’s who you are.

Then someone else walks into your home and all of a sudden you realize A LOT about yourself.  Like how quirky you are, how controlling, how much a creature of habit.  Then all of a sudden you are turning to someone else and looking at them and if you are LUCKY they are laughing at you, or smiling or finding the fact that you write an abundance of lists in colored Sharpie markers cute….not insane.

The other thing though about letting someone else into your home is that the things you thought were going to bother you, do not.  Like needing  the house to be spotless, or your hair not slapped back in a messy ponytail, or how you look naked.  Those things just fall by the wayside because you are wondering if you should remind him again for the third time to check the chocolate chip cookies because it’s your recipe and you think they might be burning (they were okay by the way, he had it all under control).

It’s amazing after years of introspection to suddenly see yourself as someone else might.

So maybe it’s not so okay to give him four reminders to check the cookies, but maybe it is okay to narrate the movie.

Maybe it’s not okay to leave the bathroom door open, but maybe it is okay to lay still and let him stare into the real you.

Because that’s what it’s all about.  Because in 2010 I found out who I was and then when I saw myself reflected in someone else’s eyes I saw the same person and I guess that’s called being true to yourself.

Life as I Know it.

 

You know that picture you have of  life in your head.  The dreamy one.  The one you read about on “other people’s blogs”.  Oh, if only I was a homeschooling, back to the land,  Julia Childish, yoga guruish, perfect husband, children, weather, chickens, make everything from scratch, sew my own clothes, never lose my temper, house always perfectly simple, organized, quaint and spot-free kind of thing.  That’s kind of the problem I have with the blog world sometimes.  Because in reality, none of us are all of those or even part of those things.  My favorite blogs are from “real” people because they are open, they are honest, they dialogue the good, bad and ugly.  Life can be beautiful and  messy, all at the same time.

It is Flickr, it seems, that has shown me so much more about documenting real life.  Doing 30 days of Gratitude this November has shown me how easy it is to document all these parts of life.  It’s also given me a new look at how much beauty, how much perfection there is in my life right now, just as it is.  The best part is it is much easier to grab one photo and a handful of words to sum up your day, and  flip through your Flickr contacts to see their visions of their lives through the lenses of their cameras.

Now I am a 365 dropout.  I didn’t make it past March this year taking a photo a day, so I cannot imagine (even though it is a nice thought and possibility) that I could continue a year’s worth of gratitude but I want to continue to make this daily connection with the positive in my life.  I want to continue this journey of loving my life just as it is and I am thankful for all the wonderful new contacts I’ve made there through this project.

This year has been a new path in my journey. A path of looking internally.  A path of self-acceptance.  A path that has led me to believe in myself and this life.  I don’t need to make comparisons anymore.  When I look at the things I have written, at the photos I have taken this year, they are deeply personal.  They are much more internal, much more reflective.

This is me, the way I am.  And as one of those real blog friends of mine would say, this is my life.

And I am proud of it.

 

 

 

Priorities

Here lie my two most important.  I know I have been gone from this space longer than usual.  I know I have been away from Little Bits for even longer.  I’m dreadfully sorry it’s been even longer since I made real blog rounds.  This past week I’ve been sorting out priorities.  It seems you only get so much time in a day (bummer, most days really) and I have tried what is a novel idea of doing the things that should be done prior to the little extras which means more time here in the real world.

My girls and I had a kick-ass night last night.  I mean one of those nights where you laugh so hard at dinner your daughter has to spit out her food so she doesn’t choke.  We have re-introduced the bedtime story, every drawer and cabinet in my kitchen was purged and organized last weekend, the animals bins have been emptied daily and the house looks less like a tornado has just blown through.

I started writing on the weekends, real writing that comes from my soul.  Writing that makes me proud.  I found a writing partner across the ocean and today we sent our first bits of writing off to each other.  When I get done here I will draft off Day 2 to send her tomorrow a.m.

I started 30 days of gratitude on Flickr.  Every day, a photo and a message of something I am grateful for.  I thought it would be fun. It ended up being something more for me.  It reminded me that I need to slow down and appreciate the fantastic things I have around me on a daily basis while they are here.  It reminded me that first and foremost I have to blog, I have to write, I have to photograph for me.

There is a limited amount of time, both in the day-to-day and during this lifetime so I have chosen carefully what I want to focus on.  I want to go out to dinner each month with my adult girls and drink wine and eat good food and laugh in a way I cannot do here at home.  I want to spend more nights wrapped up in a blanket with my little girls or out daring them to push themselves. I want to finally finish making this home the simple nest I’ve been envisioning now for two years. I want to go ahead and lay casually in bed and talk on the phone late at night like a teenage girl and find a new form for an old relationship.  I want to explore my writing and my photography in a way that does not elicit pressure.

I am remaining committed to this blog because it is as much home to me as everything else in my life.  I am putting Little Bits on the backburner because as much as I like it, I don’t love it enough.  I organized my blogroll so that when I have the time I can find  my friends and the places that provide  inspiration easily.

And that’s the whole of what I’ve been doing.