Wednesday's post ~ Take III

It figures that once I resolve to post once a day, my first day on is full of trials and tribulations. Thank you so much SelfTaughtArtist for all of your tech support today. I'll get back to you on exactly how to clean my cookies.....
My first post was just four or five clever little paragraphs about the kink in my neck that I woke up with this morning and the funny relationship with the local chiropractor. Nothing spectacular. Mostly just words. The second post I wrote today was grumbling and bitching about not being able to navigate through Blogger successfully. For whatever reason, every time I hit Publish and then View Blog, all that would show up would be the title and the label. Nothing more.
And here I am, almost 8pm, still got a bitch of a kink in my neck and I'm getting ready to crawl in to Ella's bed for a suspenseful chapter of Inkheart. (for anyone who loves juvenille fiction, this series is the new best thing! Cornelia Funke is the author. I'd link to it, but honestly, I'm too fucking tired.)
Looks like whatever time I devote to real writing and true blogging will have to happen tomorrow. Maybe from the little cafe next to where I'm getting a massage in the morning. It's about time I get one instead of give one.
SelfTaught, thanks again. Talk to you tomorrow!

Sharpening my Focus

When I first started this blog, I had no idea what would come of it. I still don't. I'm just desperate to write and to have some venue to do it. And I'm tired of journals. My wrists hurt when I use a pen at such a feverish pace and I'm a fast enough typer that I can almost keep up with my brain. So being on the computer makes more sense. I didn't want it to be a mundane, irrelevant tab of my day to day doings, but I didn't want it to be solely based on my past either. Although, the more I wrote down those old stories, the more I realized how much I was really enjoying getting them into the written form after all these years. I've been finding that my writing, much like my day to day doings, is so much about catching the past up to the present so that there can be a sense of cohesiveness to my life. So that there can be a stronger sense of peace and definition. I've spent the better part of my life thus far groping around for some idea of who I am and it's only been in the past half decade or so that the answers have been trickling in. Slowly but at a steady pace. I have to work for them. I'm just standing by the fax machine of self-realization gathering the paper in neat stacks.

When I first started this blog, I kept it to myself. I wanted to have some freedom and space to see what happened to my writing without the inhibition of known readers. I looked forward to the anonymity. I've noticed that since I've given out my blog address to a few friends, my writing has slowed down tremendously. My conscience and subconscience have recently gathered in the ladies room and put two and two together.

I've got stage fright.

I laid in bed last night, the window cracked so that I could hear the rain and feel the cool breeze on my head, and I made a decision to post at least once a day.... on whatever. Something.

Last winter, I joined a small writer's group. We have a studio center in our neighboring town where artists come for anywhere between three week and three month residencies. One of the artists-turned-employees led our group. It wasn't necessarily based on feedback as much as it was based on process. The first group led to another and then another....the last two being focused on writing poetry. It was my first time in that kind of writing venue, and while I enjoyed the company and the new experience, I found that at the end of it all, I was no longer able to write poetry at all. Something that was always entirely free flow and intuitive became totally stunted. Still is.

Years ago, Jim Brandenburg, a photographer who does work for National Geographic, took on a project in the mountains of Northern Minnesota. Over the course of 90 days, he allowed himself to take only one photo a day.... all of which were then published in National Geographic in a feature called the North Woods Journal. As an exercise for the class, we decided to take on a similar practice with our writing. To write, even if it was only a paragraph, about at least one thing a day.... one observation.

I have real issues with follow through. I really do. I try to work on it... and it continually gets better but twenty years from now there will probably be some kind of medical breakthrough and a resulting prescription for what I deal with. My North Woods Journal lasted, maybe, three days. I wasn't feeling it. But honestly, I think I just may not have been feeling the class.

For as many gaps as there are with this blog, I feel like I've been following through... maintaining it. But last night, rain falling outside, the smell of wet earth coming in with the winds, I decided to start up a new kind of North Woods Journal. Not necessarily observations.... no limitations..... just something.

If I start to slack, leave a comment. Hold me accountable. I need that!

We can just bag the Equinox marking spring here in Vermont. Usually when the Equinox rolls around, we're still under at least two feet of snow. There are no crocuses bordering pretty houses. I doubt robins have even begun their journey north. Spring happens when the ground thaws.... when the circles of wet Earth start to ring the trees and big bellows of steam can be found billowing out of sugar houses along the sides of country roads. And we're right about on the cusp of that.

So, I'll just kind of visualize my writing as the little crocus bulb working it's way toward the sun. A post a day. It's possible.

Calling all Bloggers

Has anyone found, with Blogger, that they have a really hard time signing in? The only way I can get in to make a post is if I make a comment on a blog (usually my own) and then my computer reads me as logged in so I can go right into the posting area of my blog. I'm not sure if it's just my own computer but it's been happening since we've had that option, when signing in, of using Old Blogger or New Blogger.

Wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience.

Also, I've reread some of my blog posts and gone in to edit some things and no matter how many times I do it, it doesn't change. Anyone?

"And I turned twenty one in prison

doing life without parole ~ no one

could steer me right.

Mama tried

Mama tried

Mama tried to raise me better

but her pleadin I denied

So I got no one but me to blame

cuz Mama tried."

We had us another Grateful Dead dance party this weekend. Friends congregated in our local town hall and projected a concert from Three Rivers Stadium, Pittsburgh 1991 onto a big white tarp sealed over the entire width of the stage.

Friends of ours had a beautiful baby girl this past summer and, while I love kids, I'm not the type to really scoop the closest baby up into my arms. This little girl, though, has won a very specific peice of my heart. I've been holding her in my arms since she was just days old and the last time we had this event, she fell asleep in my arms as I danced.

This weekend, as soon as she arrived with her dad, I claimed her as my own. She sucked on my necklace while jiggling around on my hips that refused to stay still.

I found myself singing the above lyrics into her ear as I danced and she sucked, wondering where it was being filed in the developing recesses of her brain and how it was being processed. I wonder the same thing too about Ella's love for Johnny Cash. Folsom Prison the first CD she purchased with her very own money because "he sings to jail people" and, I guess, at five years old, that was really cool. I think at any age, singing to jail people is pretty cool.

It looks like our little dance parties will be a monthly event. Each time we hold it, we send the kids around with a big jug to collect dollar bills from everyone. The money goes toward raising money to restore the town hall. Each year they tackle another project on the building. The clock tower, a handicapped access, a new foundation. One of these years, they'll get around to tearing off the peeling wall paper and maybe painting the walls. For now, we have no complaints.

It's a big wide open space where the kids can run and freak out and the grown ups can get a taste of the yesteryears. Good stuff.

Lenore

This here is my Nan, as you're likely to find her. She doesn't leave the house without her purse. Doesn't leave the room without her purse. You'll see it, constantly, cluched under her knuckles as she makes her way around the world. And once she gets there, she expects a beer. At 87, she's known to show up for family gatherings in black leather pants and lips adorned in hot pink. Always. Sometimes, we have to take her by the elbows and lead her to bed at night. At her age, she still puts the beers away, although, she's slowing down a bit on the drink. She still plays cards five days a week, goes to church twice weekly, gets her hair done every Friday and almost keeps up with our generation of drinkers. I can keep up with none of them anymore.... nor do I attempt.

I call her the Bionic Grandma. She's the first person in her family to live past fifty years old. I'm not sure how much of is has to do with her nerves of steel or how much of it has to do with modern medical technology. She's been widowed since 88. We lost my Pop to lung and liver cancer. It was only when he was diagnosed with severe emphysema that my Nan, reluctantly, gave up smoking cigarettes.

She had a brain annurism at forty, lost a breast from cancer at forty eight, had a stroke at fifty-five and then several heart attacks to follow, including a quadruple by-pass surgery and about a dozen stents (I kid you not) strategically placed throughout her body, holding her arteries open for blood flow. Still, once a week she drives across the bridge to the Arby's drive-through where she orders a half dozen Arbies roast beef sandwhich (with the special sauce) and keeps them in her refridgerator for daily lunches. She does what she wants.

She was almost eighteen when my grandfather first saw her. He came back to town for a homecoming football game and she, Lenore, was a cheerleader. They "courted" (I can only imagine what that means) for a year or two before my pop, Trevor, enlisted for WWII. He got whisked away to England where he helped load children onto trains to get them out of the city. Lenore became very bored without her suitor and so enlisted herself. On their military breaks, they would meet up where they could....France, Italy, Greece... and, upon arriving home, they were married. For those Grateful Dead fans, it was a real, live Reuben & Cherisse.

There have been times in the past summer or two, after an afternoon of margaritas or daquaris, where she'll proceed to tell me (because she knows I'm receptive to such things) that she occasionally wakes in the morning to find Trevor or her mother sitting in the chair beside her bed. She tells me that she knows she's ready to go but every time she makes her peace with it, our family plans one more event.... a graduation, a wedding, a reunion... and then she knows she just has to hold out for that one more thing. Every time I come for a visit and then hug and kiss her goodbye, I wonder if she'll still be there when I come next.

I wonder how many more years she's got of holding out for that one more thing.

More on Ella

I'm sitting here at home on the computer, the screen blinking in front of me as I try to figure out what I'm about to write. Bill is standing behind me looking through the dvd's, trying to figure out if he's in a surf flick mood or a Lord of the Rings mood. We hear the thud, thud, thud of Ella's feet running down the stairs and sliding through the kitchen, and hear her yelling with urgency "Dad! Dad! I have something for you!"

In an instant she's in the doorway, flips her body around in a little sassy swing so that her little pygmee ass is facing us and then proceeds to let out a little helium pitched fart.

This is how it is in the thick of winter this far north.

Mommy ramblings

I've made it a solid three days, plus half of this day.
I feel like a recovering addict, assuming the mantra of 'one day at a time'.
I've resolved to not turn into psycho-bitch grump mom every morning in the rush to get Ella to school on time and in the hustle bustle routine of bedtime.

On one hand, the routine of a school schedule has opened up a new rhythmn for this household. Routine is something we've never known much of. We have a regular bedtime now for Els, which means that Bill and I get to catch up on a nightly basis about day to day stuff without the jungle house pygmee bouncing off the walls, demanding constant attention. There is a kind of reliability to the day to day that didn't exist before this year. Homeschooling was kind of off-the-cuff when it came to how we planned everything and with that, Ella seemed to always feel caught off guard when it came to the comings and goings of everything. I think now she feels like she at least knows what to expect.

On the other hand, there is so much less flexibility. If we have a late night for whatever reason, she can't just catch an extra hour of sleep in the morning. Instead, she drags her little behind around for the rest of the week until Saturday comes, when she can indulge in that extra hour or two in bed. It's wake-up-get dressed-pack the lunch-get to school and then get home-do homework-make and eat dinner-clean up- and go to bed. The mornings are rush rush rush and in the evenings, I've found myself barking relentlessly, till I'm annoying my own self, in my effort to get her to round up her hurricane messes and get to sleep at a reasonable hour.

The barking, I've resolved, has got to go. I do not want to be that kind of mom and so, four days ago, I decided I wasn't going to be anymore. I've made some basic rules for her to follow when it comes to being responsible for her own shit (taking her dirty dishes to the sink, cleaning up messes after she's made them, and being mindful about other people's space) and while she's bitching endlessly about how strict I've become, I've also pointed out that, by her following these basic rules, mom won't have to be a super-nag anymore. It seems a fair trade, really.

More often than not, when I find myself in the throws of reeming her out for her thoughtlessness, carelessness, forgetfullness, if I tune in carefully to my own self, I find that, really, it's my own shit that's getting on my nerves and my bitching at Ella is really just a venue for venting... a vehicle for release. How fair is that?

If I'm unhappy about the workload I carry at this house and if I feel like it's being taken for granted, then I need to take the necessary steps to make sure that I remedy it. I need to get creative. She's 9 years old, right? I'm the adult. If I don't want her to behave like an entitled princess, wallowing in her own foodscraps and paper cuttings, then I need to round her up and get her on track. If I don't want to be psycho-bitch grump-mom, feeling like an asshole every time I say goodnight or drop her off at school in the morning, then I need to rally my own self and make a plan.

So, walking down the stairs last night, after getting her to sleep, I patted my self on the back for getting through Day III of kindness and patience. I'm sure it's not been as bad as I make it out to be in my own head but if something feels off-kilter in our hearts, then it's all we can do to remedy it. So I've rounded up a bit of first-aid kit for how I go about my day to day. So far, it seems to be working.

I AM done digging out. Thanks for asking.

The snow is still waist deep but, fortunately, all the paths we walk here in the winter have been shoveled. It's something like a labyrinth right now on the farm.

The day after the storm, when the winds were really strong, I came to terms with the fact that I HAD to take my compost out to the pile outside. I had no more strength in my shoulders to actually the shovel the long path out there, but, the container on my kitchen counter would just no longer accept any more foodscraps.

Normally this is Ella's job, but seeing as the snow levels at her chin, I didn't think it'd be all that fair to send her out there. It would be hours before I saw her again. So, I pulled on my snow pants and Muck boots and took a deep breath before I tackled the 100 yard stretch through the tundra to the compost heap.

Earlier that morning, Bill headed north to the mountain with his snowboard. He waited at the lifts for about a half hour while they dug out from underneath five feet of snow. The winds were strong, 70mph, and by 8:30 am, the mountain decided to close for the day. Bill, snowboard in hand, located a snowmobile path that traversed a path up to the top of the mountain and proceeded to hike TO THE TOP.... earned his ride down.

About halfway to the compost heap, I decided he was fucking crazy. I was breaking each step of the path with my thigh, rocking back and forth twice to get momentum for the next step, all the while balancing the compost bucket in the crook of my right arm. My two dogs followed behind me, thinking, surely, that I was taking them on a hike...of all days. The winds were harsh and, for the most part, I could hardly see three feet in front of me.

At one point, in the quiet of the pasture, just the sound of winds blowing through, a handful of red onion skins blew off the top of the bucket and rolled, like tumbleweed across the snow. It was like a scene from blizzard western ghost town.

But, at least it's winter in February.

SNOW DAY ~ TAKE II

Whereas yesterday, the snow was up to Ella's waist by sundown.... this morning she jumped from a snowbank into the pasture and couldn't move from there. Just had to stand there, like she was in a straightjacket. She asked me to dig her out but I had little sympathy, as I'd been out in that knarliness for two hours by then, shoveling a path through waist high snow to the barn and then from the barnyard door to the pile of composting cow shit. I knew I had at least six 5 gallon buckets of poop to carry out there so I figured I may as well make a comfortable path rather than trudge through each time. Els came out to roll around and have fun just as I was finishing barn chores and starting to tackle the project of digging out my car and making a walkable path to the mudroom.
In the barn, I herded the adult girls out into the yard to devour their hay. They each stuck their nose out the door and, like choreography, turned to look at me as if to ask if I were serious. In my mind, all I can think of is the Little House books when Pa would have to tie a rope from the house to the barn, lest he get lost in the swirling whiteouts in between.
Bill's at the mountain making turns. He called at 8:30 this morning and they were still digging out the lift stations.
This is the kind of snow that makes for spring floods. How's that for looking ahead? I guess I should go out and dig Ella out of the pasture now........

Bill's Logic

Today, while further cleaning out my desk drawers, I made a big pile of papers and clutter to take to the dump in the morning (I've since decided to bag going anywhere in this storm). As I was stuffing it all into a garbage bag, I saw some of my chicken scratch on one of the sheets of paper and pulled it out to take a look.
Bill's dad and stepmom took he and Ella to Disneyworld this year between Christmas and New Years. I had to stay here, it being a holiday week and me working in the tourism industry and all..... It was a mixed bag. It would have been great to see Ella's face in discovering all of that crazy Disney shit (much as I loathe Disney) but I really did like having the house to myself for six whole days. It was filled with stoney nights, lots of writing, dancing and yoga in the living room by the light of the Christmas tree, midnight walks in the feilds out back and naps in the middle of day.... just because I could.
I guess at some point upon their return Bill and I got all engaged in some discussion about the environment and global warming. At that point, very early in January, it was still practically tropical here. Frightening, really.
What I found, in my chicken scratch, on that sheet of paper, was something Bill had said in the midst of that conversation regarding global warming. I don't know how the conversation came to creating an entirely new atmosphere, but somehow it did. And Bill's response to that possibility was, "They can make an atmosphere! If they can make Disneyland, they can make an atmosphere."
Good logic, Bill. Where's that bubbler?