What comes

Hope where it may be found, joy where it may be allowed in.

At least the days are longer

Recognizing a sense of unrest in myself; waiting for things to unfold. It's been an itchy, confining last half of winter and I can't even remember the last time the roads were clear enough to go out for a walk. (There are no sidewalks in our area, so in winter when the roadsides are choked with snow it's not safe to walk AND you run the risk of being spattered head-to-toe by passing cars.) I hate feeling complainy about the weather, but I'm ready for change.

First day of spring, out my back door....

Begin

Warm, moist breezes are pulling back the blanket of snow and releasing the sprouting bulbs I planted last fall (transplanted, actually, from our old house). I savor the rush of emotions; winter is letting go, spring is rushing on, and we are settling in more and more to a place we are making our own. The best kind of change is surrounding us.

Snoh

Even after all the blizzards we've had this winter, these surfaces were all pretty clear until today.... Wish we could have friends over to play in it with us and help us remember the fun parts of snowy days!

what you want to see more of

I had a fantastic birthday. Truly. I will admit to some measure of pre-birthday indifference (which is not my usual style); I didn't wallow, I just kind of *noticed* it and moved forward.

I went ahead and made chocolate cupcakes with Kahluha buttercream frosting, Ken took the day off from work, and Dean had a late-start school morning so we were able to ease into the proceedings.

We take all kinds of little back roads, and pass through several old town centers (the parts of some very historic towns -- you see lots of "Established 1698" signs and that sort of thing -- that are on what were once main roads but are now the backwaters) on our way to Dean's school every day, and my plan for my birthday was to do some exploring. We parked, got out of the car, and went into one-of-a-kind, local shops where the owners are there working behind the counter. We had lunch in a place that never was and never will be part of a chain (charmingly, while they do not accept credit cards, they just send cash-strapped customers down the street to the ATM -- "just go get some cash and then come back and pay your bill"). We whiled away the day and then picked Dean up at school and made a couple more stops before going to an exquisite Japanese restaurant for dinner.

I wish for their sake that the place had been crowded, but on the other hand it was a Tuesday, it was early, and the weather had turned less-than-pleasant (sleet) by that time. We will definitely go back, and swoon once again at the fresher-than-fresh sushi, and perfect miso soup, and kindly attentive service.

And since it was a school night, and a work night, we headed home early and the boys put a candle on one of those cupcakes for me.

Middle age is an interesting territory.  I get it now, why some people kind of flip out at this point. Suddenly age isn't *just* a number, it starts to give you some very definite physical reminders of its presence -- the kind that remind you that you aren't getting any younger. There's no way to avoid the drive to take stock, to think about being in the back half. I only wish it all didn't fly by so quickly. Really -- the ONLY thing that gives me pause about being 51 is that it feels completely impossible for that much time to have passed. Slippery. inevitable, fleeting time.

But I refuse to let that stop me from being delighted on my birthday, and celebrating.

Celebrate what you want to see more of.  Aren't those words to live by?

Playing

I'm often enough delighted by the graphics that people post to Facebook; the funnies, the profound, the kind and gentle reminders about the joys in life. I thought I'd play around a little with the idea; for no particular reason today (well, other than perhaps to avoid things like housework and shoveling snow) I put this together quickly as a test. Harry Callahan taught at the Institute of Design in Chicago, where my mother was one of his students. I'm sorry to say that what comes up when you search his name is fairly disappointing (the Wiki entry is pathetic), but he was a master of the photography of *ordinary* things and moments (if there are any such things).

A repetition

He's coming!

 

Will you be ready? 

 

I have always loved Groundhog Day.  And really, what's not to love?  It is ancient and  mysterious and comes without any fanfare in your local shopping emporium!  It gives us some hope in the grip of winter, something fun and joyful and silly and profound.  It made for a great movie, too.

I'm not exactly sure how I managed to find a groundhog cookie cutter, but if you're feeling the need I see there's a similar one here.  I can't recommend the new recipe I tried for chocolate-espresso shortbread (way too dry), but if a deep dip in dark chocolate to represent that peek out from the burrow isn't appropriate AND taste-saving I don't know what is.

We'll be having fondue for dinner on Saturday, in front of a roaring fire and with that certain perfect movie on screen.

And I'll be thinking of my dad, who passed away 14 years ago on Feb 2.  I cannot believe it has been that long.  I still miss him and think of him every day.  And yet it's a little easier every year to smile when I think about all the jokes he would have made about passing away on Groundhog Day -- really, he would have found that endlessly amusing.

Celebrate the day, won't you? And let's hope he does not see his shadow....

Toasty

I think I baked my first loaf of bread when I was about 9 or 10 years old. My parents had a friend who was a bread baker who was happy to bake a batch with me, and back then (early '70s) homemade bread meant dense, dark loaves with lots of grains and "stuff" that made the bread healthy and clearly homemade. Not one single thing wrong with that, and I do still love those kinds of breads.

I've gone in and out with bread making over the years -- varying degrees of time to devote to it, and varying degrees of interest around the house in eating it. I do make pizza dough every Friday, but that's a story for another day.

So it happens that Dean gave me The Bread Bible for Christmas, and I set aside time over this past weekend to try out the recipe for hearth bread.  It was the first time I went through the "sponge" process where you put the beginnings together one day and let it sit overnight before beginning to actually make the final dough. Wow. I turned out a loaf that's wonderfully rich and dense, yet not heavy (does that make sense?) -- Dean and Ken both declared it "restaurant bread-basket worthy." None of the steps was difficult, but it did require being around on "day 2" to manage the various rises and all. Totally worth the effort.

And now I get at least a few days worth of my favorite breakfast -- toast made with good bread. A nice reason to have winter, I think.

New again

I'm pretty sure that someone I know made a new year's resolution to be nicer/friendlier. It's kind of funny (and fun, and pleasant) to be on the receiving end; she wasn't necessarily evil, or anything, before, but she's noticeably nicer these days. Do you think it will last? I'm trying to be supportive by being a happy receiver of her chipper greetings and her new "so how are YOU doing?!" efforts and also trying to make a point of giving back even more random friendliness to her.

Meanwhile, this could be the first year of my life (since about, maybe, age 12 or so?) that I haven't really made any resolutions. Nope. No grand (nor quiet) pronouncements on New Year's Eve, no carefully composed nor hastily scribbled list. I did say that my goal would be to have a party at some point this year (it's been since about forever that we've had a party, unless you count Dean's birthday parties which I don't think I am going to count), and I'd really like to make that happen. But otherwise, nope.

It's not that I lack for self-improvement ideas, or more, um, meaningful goals than throwing a party.

It's more that I've decided to trust myself. Yup, it's a good idea to get up and take a walk whenever possible. I know which foods to eat more of and which less. Getting more organized would always help, as would finishing up projects. But I don't need to make lists and feel guilty and give up or whatever. I just need to enjoy life and be happy and balance doing the things I know I should, the things I need to do, the things I want to do. Do it because it's right/meaningful/necessary (or decide purposefully what NOT to do), but not because it's on a list hanging over my head.

As I get older, I am slowly appreciating more that being happy is what matters, and that there are all kinds of voices in my head that I need to shut OUT in order to just enjoy life. That nagging vague dissatisfaction (which can get driven by making too many lists!) is the thing that I am trying to cast out. Not getting all hyper-ventilate-y over having things go a certain way. Whatever! It CAN be all good, if that's how I decide to look at things.

Who knows how often I'll get here to post? I like being able to come here sometimes and look back at where I've been, and that's my incentive to keep putting things here from time to time. Happy to have you along for the ride, if and when your own spirit moves you.

Resolved!

And I may still do a 2012 in review here, because there's no such thing as "too late."

Keep making merry

The holidays aren't over, even if the big day has passed; we keep eating cookies and playing games and are enjoying being home with no agenda other than to celebrate. Hope it's cozy and calm by you.

For every mom I know

Could be the best gift idea ever

 Like so many of my journeys, this one started by accident and veered off in a direction that I never expected but that totally delighted me.

I went online to order a new return-address rubber stamp for us.  See, I can't grasp (nor apparently spend time prepping for) Thanksgiving next week, but I was thinking that I was going to need that updated return address stamp for my Christmas cards. Yes, I am crazy. It's ok.

Anyway.

I often find myself kind of sucked in by those offers where if you *just* spend a little more money, shipping is free. So I got the address stamp all settled and realized that I could upload ANY image to have a rubberstamp made -- didn't just have to be text -- and that since the money I'd spend on shipping for the ONE stamp would practically cover the cost of the second stamp (and really, there went the afternoon)....

I have always loved this photo of my dad (yes! there is a connection!), taken in about 1934:

 

He's clearly just so happy, and just so loved -- his homemade little cowboy outfit melts my heart. He was the kind of boy who loved stories, who loved to hear them read to him, who loved listening to radio programs, who fell in love with all those cowboy heroes of his childhood. 

I opened the picture in PhotoShop, and slowly and carefully removed the background:

 You just need to work slowly, work with the image really really large so it's easy to cut out the background -- and of course you'd want to start with something that's really sharp and that can in fact be removed from the rest of the photo cleanly.  (If you want to try this, and I hope you will, feel free to ask me for some more tips on how to do it in less time than it took me initially.)

I uploaded it to this company's website:  http://www.rubberstamps.net/

Again, if you're going to do this, I can give you a couple of hints that would have saved me a lot of aggravation, but you're probably better at this sort of thing than I am and maybe what wasn't obvious to me will be clear-as-day to you.

And for less than $11 and in only about two days (with free shipping!) I got this:

A deeply etched rubber stamp, with a wooden handle, and my image is actually engraved into the wood on the top!  This is 3" x 1.5".  You could use a photo, or artwork -- you see, don't you, how the possibilities are endless and the cost is pretty darned low?

Now I just need to keep myself from making a lot of gifts for ME.  Go ahead.  Make a custom rubber stamp for someone you love, and for you, too.

November?

 one

 two

 three

 four

Almost time to go get dinner into the oven, but a moment here first. The days, weeks, months fill more quickly than I can grasp; I know it is the result of my own choices, of our choices that we make, and that for now I don't seem to have a better idea of what to do with my time.

We continue to settle in to our place. I'm struck by how, as we have our first each of the holidays, we figure out how to make this our home. There weren't as many ways to use our Halloween luminaria (one), so I bundled them onto our windowsill and we luxuriated in their glow.  Snow has fallen already (two), but with warm sunny days since that hardly seems true. The soccer season has ended, and now with the way high school sports work there won't be a competitive spring season (he'll play recreational soccer at school); I loved the aerial look to the game that day (three)....

And four. Four. No more leaves (the hurricane took care of that), heavy, substantial clouds hang low, warm sunny afternoons get cold quickly -- as soon as the shadows fall.

 

Still surrounded by boxes, at least in the private spaces -- here I am at this moment (forgot how much fun PhotoBooth is!). Someday this will really be my...office? study? studio? When, I suppose, I decide it's important enough to spend time and a little money on getting it together. Not sure what I'm waiting for.

Live the life you have imagined.

 Reading "On Walden Pond," by Henry David Thoreau, used to be an American high school rite of passage, and if somehow you managed to miss it in high school, you probably met up with it in college. It has never gone completely out of style (first published in 1854), and it is enjoying a resurgence as a new generation grapples with the need, the desire to reconnect with the natural world and a more simple way of living.

 We live, well, a stone's throw (or so) from Concord, and Walden Pond, but last weekend was only the second time I've been. We had weekend guests -- dear friends from Ireland -- and it turned out to be one of those in-your-back-pocket-gems that we all seem to only appreciate when we see them through the eyes of out-of-town (and better yet, out-of-country) visitors.

 It's a place that brings out people's desire to leave a mark, although it's refreshing to see these kinds of impermanent, natural marks rather than the graffiti that's been a problem in the past. The lake is quite small -- quite a few people were swimming the length and back again despite the cool temperatures (I guess it's one of those, "we're here, so we have to swim it!" kinds of things.)

The original house is long-gone, but the park service built this reproduction close to the park entry (not the original location, but convenient for those who can't or won't stray far from their vehicles). Cozy as it is, I cannot imagine lasting through New England winters in it.

The book can be a slog, because in between the clear and compelling charge to 'live the life you have imagined,' there's a LOT about the cost of nails and boards and how much he had to spend on beans.  Building the cottage cost him $28, which they translate to being less than $900 in today's dollars -- so, really cheap even for the times.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."

— Henry David Thoreau

He did find it sublime, of course.

The previous owners of our house left a poster up in the room that's slowly becoming my craft room/office, where I am sitting now.  But it bothers me that the quote is incorrect -- "live the life you dreamed," it says.  I'll live.

Landed

For all of the angst and drama, hard work and worry, mood swings and paperwork and more paperwork, the thing is done. We are moved. We have moved. We have packed up, or given away, or thrown out the entire contents of our home of 22 years and moved the boxes and furniture and ourselves to our new home.

There were a couple of things about the whole process that really hit me hard. I was totally unprepared for the emotional side of the process. Only part of that is the journey of letting go of the place where Ken and I really got our life together underway, the place to which we brought our baby boy home from the hospital, the first home we bought. The gardens we worked on and created from nothing, filled with plants placed in memory of loved ones lost, or plants that forever reminded us of the day or the place we first got them. The scratches and chips here and there that had stories that went with them. That was the stuff I expected to have to face, and all in I would have to say that piece of it was easier than I thought it would be.



But there were these other lessons in store for me that took me totally by surprise.

I was unprepared for the huge, huge portions of uncertainty and ambiguity that get served in this process and how hard it would be for me to live with that. To find ourselves with a buyer for our house but no house found yet for us to move in to. To have to really define what we did and did not want, and what we could and could not afford, to have to face who would be compromising and who would be getting more of his or her wishlist boxes checked. To imagine a place already inhabited by a family somehow becoming OUR place. (We bought our first house pre-construction, so no one lived in it before us!)

The big one was the uncertainty. I kept being hit with that lesson like a wave crashing over me; as much as I think I manage change well, I discovered that I do NOT manage the complete unknown well at all any more. I believe that piece is about not having my life be just about me anymore, but the weight of the responsibility of knowing that my family is counting on me to make a home for them and to know where that home is – that it will be safe and feel like home. Just taking deep breaths and having faith that it would come together was important, but it was very, very hard.



The worst part kind of all got boiled down on that night when we had moved everything out of our old house but wouldn’t be doing the legal pieces and moving into the new house until the next day. To have leapt but not landed. To feel myself suspended in that space and having to reassure Ken and Dean without truly knowing myself what was ahead. There were a number of late challenges with the literal process and timing of the two sales, and we didn’t know right up until about noon on the big day whether or not we would actually get into the new house. It got to the point where I truly had to accept that big pieces were out of my hands, and as desperately as I might have wanted to hold them tight. I did finally reach a point, for my own sanity, where I let go and believed the lawyers who said that things would somehow work themselves out, sort of.

And somehow, they did.

There are still challenges and adjustments. I remind myself how lucky we are – we have a lovely home in a place that’s safe (I think about how for so many in the world that is an unimaginable luxury). Being our first “used” home, and one that’s core is 35 years old, we are getting used to discovering things – some good, plenty enough not so good (the list of what needs to be replaced or fixed is growing a tad more quickly than we’d hoped. ) The house has been added on to twice, and at one of those points the entire original house was gutted and re-done; the result is one house that flows nicely from space to space and has a unique floorplan. But, it also means that some windows are very old, some floors are noticeably less-than-level, and stuff like that.

I did know that I dreaded the Mountain of Boxes. And so I do.

But this place also has a yard like no other and a lovely small pool. Sitting out there feels truly like being on vacation (except for the part where when you are on vacation you usually don’t start making mental lists of the plants that should be torn out or moved or added, or where the firefly lights should go, and whether it makes sense to add a vegetable garden…).

The neighborhood is more populated than our old one (hard to beat a cul-de-sac with 6 other homes where everyone is on at least two acres), but it is SO much closer to stores and movie theaters and we were EVEN able to have a pizza delivered – right to our door! – which is a luxury I haven’t known since my Chicago childhood. A neighbor already stopped by with a gooey plate of brownies and a warm welcome (although perhaps a little diabolically – she runs a women’s fitness center and I certainly feel the need to check it out after having wolfed down so many of those brownies!).

Sigh.



Where I am rambling to with all of this, for now, is that I do still believe change is good. I think it’s important to shake things up sometimes and start fresh. I now believe that houses themselves need it – they need someone new every now and again to care about the things that, once we live in a place for a while, we tend to overlook. We’re working in different ways, thinking different thoughts, waking up to a slightly different mix of birdsongs and neighborhood sounds, and finding out what it means to be home.

[Please excuse the oddly random photos; I hadn't been taking many pictures because I didn't know where my cable was, etc. These are from the day we moved in and reflect my inability to think much about what I was doing -- so no pictures of the front of the house yet and all...]