Swirling, Swirling

My squirrel-y Virgo mind has been trying to measure the sacred in my life.  Starting with this altar I built for winter and to work through Jane Cunningham's Choosing True over Nice class.

And the smaller altar built as a reminder for my work with Grandmother Bear in SouLodge this month.  Each piece holds strong meaning, symbolism for what is  going on deep inside me ~ transitions, shifting of my DNA, a kind of goulashing of lessons presented and internalized.  I can not grasp any of it firmly and yet it is all "there", at a level of connection that defies words.

This week brought much gratitude into my orbit.  Libations from a grateful neighbour for helping to move her car over a snow drift

beautiful hand crafted envelopes, all the way from Amsterdam

another hand made card from California

a previously quoted $700 refrigerator repair bill reduced to a much more manageable $160 bill which allowed me to work with Anna Wingfield for a bottle of Bespoke (oh yes, it did and I do and it is).

More gratitude came from Sherry with this card

in response to my last post about supportive parenting.  In that post I questioned whether I give too much or not enough support to my nine-year old son.  My discussions with him over creating and selling his own ideas was such a mirroring experience for me.  It brought how I/we value our personal work, how to market it and how charity/gratitude also plays a role.  I hadn't meant to solicit funds here or to actually sell the newsletter that he had put together.  On Sunday morning, at Riley's insistence, we walked the streets, looking for buyers, so confident he was in what he had created.  And we met every kind of person - the rude, the kind, the I-would-love-to-but... (fill in the blank).  A whole geography of consumers.  He floored me with his courage in approaching strangers, in his belief that he had a product that people would want.  All the while I could hear the lesson coming to me about my own work and how I value it (or don't) and how I put it out there (or don't).   It is this example of synchronicity that is coming at me from all sides now.  Parenting 101, the student is the teacher.

Limited Edition

For Sale.  Limited Edition of five.  50 ¢ each with all money going to Unicef.  The Daily Flight, all the breaking news about dragons.

My son, he slays me.  He inspires me and makes me so proud.  I wonder if sometimes I go too far nurturing his creativity.  But how far is too far?  As a parent I am so often sitting at the crossroads of not enough and too far.

The Wave Jumper

My Favourite Bug

and I are headed out to the west coast for a little fun time.   I am chucking out what is expected of me and answering to the call of my heart.

And speaking of heart, a birthday message from my Starbucks barrista last week (I wonder if he knew...)!

August Break

First day of school.  A new year, a new attitude.

I'm the one who is not ready.  I want another July and then I might be ready.

Views from my kayak

I haven't posted enough here since Blogger changed the format and every time I do show up here, it feels a bit frantic as I click around finding my sweet spot.

I have been having some sweet experiences like outdoor art for everyone

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finding polar bears during an extended, parching heat wave

and out houses right off the secondary highway

not to mention thinking I was candidly photographing a heavily tattooed man only to get home and find I wasn't so candid with my camera.

Life has been hard and strange and exhilarating and I still don't know which direction I am headed any given day. The best I do is show up and sometimes muck along, sometimes grab the brass ring. Just when I thought I had tempered the change blasting through, I feel yet another wave of light and shadow shaking me up and making sure I am exactly where I need to be.

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Turbo Snail III

Don't ask what happened to I and II.

Today

Talking about today makes me need to preface last night. Last night at 9:00 p.m. I discovered that I needed a "Christmas" related costume for Riley for his swimming lesson at 9:00 a.m. this morning. So what is a hard-pressed mother to do? First up, scrounge through the holiday bins in the basement for the Santa hat. Check. Then get creative and pull out my Caran d'Ache colour pencils and VOILA!

Riley as a Christmas tree! Not too shabby for 12 hours of notice.

The rest of my day involved finding my main yahoo email account hacked, and with my deepest apologies to those who also subsequently got invaded via their emails in my contacts list. I have had quite a few problems with yahoo these last two years and am thinking I need to switch over to another provider. I also have tried GMail but am not crazy about their formatting. Any suggestions out there? And now I read in the news that Paul McCarthy also feels "hacked" and I guess I should feel as if I am in good company (snicker).

What I'm Not Going to Talk About

What I'm not going to talk about right now is what I was going to post as my pet peeve of the week. I'm not going to mention how I hit the roof last week at the post office, mailing off my OWOH packages. One to Canada at $11.65, the second to the U.S. at $4.95. Same box, same contents, same everything except it costs two and a half times to mail something within my own country than across the border. But I'm not going to talk about that. I'm going to talk about how I had promised to take Riley skiing again today. It's March break here and even though we've had weird melty kind of slushy snow fall from the sky, it was -19 last night which meant waking to cement snow. The sun was shining this morning and it was minus too much with the windchill, but we went anyway. And you know, I felt the same as the last time we skiied. That day I didn't want to go either because it was too cold but I had a great time and I remembered why I like cross country so much. Same for today. If only I had remembered to bring my camera.

Today it was just the two of us. There were a few other people on the trails, ones who were keeping a well kept secret - the conditions were much, much better than I expected and the wind was less in the trees. I noticed the buckets mounted on the maple trees as it's time for the sap to start running.

At the half way mark of our trail there is a cabane where we were going to stop for a drink of water and a granola bar but we found something better - maple syrup on the snow.

A little too sweet for me but the ritual of pouring it out in a line, waiting a couple of minutes for it to freeze, then rolling a popsicle stick over it to pick it up, the syrup mixing with snow crystals...It's a winter ritual here and today almost (almost) made me happy to be living here.

Shots all were taken with my cell phone which were impossible to see with such bright sunshine.

Back at the ranch, we had another guest - a repeat visitor.

Here, look a little closer, we'll zoom in. He's pretty well camouflaged, there is even a branch blocking out his eyes but I would bet my last dollar he was seeing me loud and clear.

He seems to have made himself quite at home in our neighbourhood even though the crows aren't too pleased he has moved in.

How to end this near perfect day? A glass of chilled white wine, a hot bath, a solid sleep after our work out. And I'm not going to talk about the postal rates.

What I've Learned, Week 11

Has it really been 11 weeks since my 50th birthday? I guess it has been, because this is where I find myself now. And I've been true and diligent in my soul searching/navel gazing. This week it's all about my personal boundaries - how I have been trying to create and uphold them and learning that it's truly a life experience to have and not have them at all.

Front:

Back:

I started with a piece of watercolour paper that I used as a blotter for extra ink, I believe mostly Tim Holz distress inks. That piece of paper sat on my table for weeks. Recently I picked it up and scribbled on it with Caran d'Ache Neocolor IIs, creating a horizon. From there I used some Tim Holz masks and Pitt pens and a white gel pen. The back is a Kim Klassen scratch background texture with simple text on top. "These last two weeks the question of my personal boundaries has been forefront. Sometimes I can't escape the lesson coming down the pike and that's true here. I see my boundaries constructed through choice, specifically what I choose to do with my time. Goals take commitment. Lately I have been challenged to take a stronger stand while staying flexible, to remember the root reasons for my choices and to not pitch a hissy fit when my boundaries have been breached." I do love the blues and greens and how they sit together on this card. Yum!

Dinner

What do mad scientists eat for dinner?

Mummies? Ninjas? Vampires? Or ladies in aprons and hairnets?

Stay tuned...

First Day of School (a few days late)

International Lego Day

Betcha didn't know that it's International Lego Day.

See? It says right here on our calendar.

This day was planned awhile back and the boys are having so much fun, we've decided to declare another one next March. The rugs have been rolled up and they are only stopping for lunch.

Before the whole thing kicked off, Riley and I took a walk by the lake, something we haven't done in quite some time. This guy was completely oblivious to the fact that he shouldn't just be hanging around, he should be getting out his legos.

And while you're at it, when you're dreaming, why not dream BIG?

Right now I am dreaming of finding one measly plastic orange duo-tang with crimps and inside pockets. One like this.

Yes, I have one but I need two. Actually I need two each in the colors of red, black, light blue, dark blue, yellow, green and orange. Finding the school supplies this year has been like going on a treasure hunt. I ended up emptying and cleaning up the folders from last year. They are a little beat up but they are plastic and have both crimps and inside pockets. But it seems only one orange duo-tang came home at the end of June instead of two. What would be dandy is if the schools would liaise with the stores and see if they can't order up what parents need to buy. An even better idea is a school committee to prepare packages of the needed supplies at a fee, goodness knows I would still save a bundle between the cost of gas and my own time. Or how about this: I supply the kid and the enthusiasm to learn and the school supplies the rest. Dreaming? Maybe.

Have you ever....

...seen a caterpillar like this?

I wonder what kind of moth he will grow into. We spent the last few days doing this

and this

and seeking out these kind of trails

and skinning knees and palms on dirt roads.

Now, it is good to be home. I have one more week of vacation and we are going to make the most of it.

Value

I had a lesson in self-value yesterday. I went in to work, with the intent of giving two weeks notice. I had been romanced over to another place recently and I spent the weekend mulling and weighing the pros and cons of staying -vs- leaving. The end result of my mulling was I would stay if my current employer offered a considerable increase in wage. The increase seemed impossible to meet, I thought, and it was all but a sealed deal that I would be changing positions. It turned out that I was wrong. After almost two years at this one job, after feeling very much under valued and under appreciated more often than not, it turns out that I have highly valued knowledge and skills. Who knew? This whole magilla got me thinking of how I value myself. How important is money to how I feel about myself? Money is just one of the reasons I decided to stay the course, the other was some flex time that means time for art and time to be there for Riley at the end of the day or when he's sick. "Me" time. It was great big huge to know that my presence, my contribution makes a difference in someone else's world. And although my "work" is far from any kind of soul enriching service to humanity or the planet, it did tweak how I will look at going in, giving up my precious "me" time to earn the money that pays for our life.

One thing I am so disappointed in is not leaping. It's been a year since taking that leap of faith has been in the forefront of my mind. That old monkey on my back - fear - keeps me from believing that I really can. My one precious life? What am I doing with it more than mucking along, one foot in the quagmire of fear while my heart pulls and pulls to really soar.

But I can really only deal with one insecurity at a time.

Another lesson in self-value came last night. For the first time all season, Riley's soccer team won their game. They play twice a week, so we're probably a good 12 or 14 games into the season. It's been a lesson in disappointment for him. How would you feel if your team never won? As an adult, how easily could you keep yourself buoyed up with loss after loss? I know I would have a hard time thinking, "it's just a game - you're here to have fun". Honestly, up until last night, the team had only scored a total of two goals all season. But something came together for them, I'm not sure what, but they played well despite our excessive heat and humidity. They not only won the game, they mopped the field with the other team for a 5 - 1 win. The thrill and joy was over the top for the kids and for the parents too who have had to be the ones saying, "it's just a game - you're here to have fun". There is an element to winning sometimes, that's one of my truths.

A New Life

Life is strange sometimes, wonderfully strange. Not long after my gentle, old dog left us last week, we received a call to care-take a hamster for three weeks. Today we brought "Creme Fouette" (translation: Whipped Cream") to our house. He's a little shy at the moment, having gone for a drive, been shaken (not stirred) and getting used to the new sounds and smells of our house. I am so happy to be given this chance to take care of another life, grateful to be entrusted to the daily watch. It's filling a gap and hopefully will be enough to satisfy the recent requests by Riley to have a rodent of his own. It is his responsibility to feed, water and exercise. For some reason I have agreed to the more mundane cleaning of the "cage" and tubes and the general and regular checking of the whole apparatus so that Whipped Cream, a.k.a. Houdini, does not escape. I thought it prudent to take a lot of photos early on in case I need to make a quick trip to the pet shop for a double.

I thought I would be housing a wire cage, about 1 foot by 2 feet; instead I have a space age acrylic apparatus with multiple tubes and passageways branching off. Yowza. Whoever said, "it's a dog's life" never hamster-sat a modern-day hamster.

Firsts

We had a couple of firsts in the house today.

Riley's first bike ride without training wheels.

It was a long time coming, fear holding him back more than anything. Something I'm quite familiar with so I let it ride, but today, as a father's day present, he looked his fear in the eye. We set ourselves up in the empty tennis court. Lots of cheering and utter surprise. Not a little self confidence blossoming too.

There was also the first hot dog. Ha! I know...but he's always been a picky eater and since hot dogs aren't the healthiest of foods, I let that one go. Today, he managed one jumbo at lunch then another two regulars at our pool opening BBQ.

When you live with an incredibly picky eater, any new food that passes more than one bite is time for celebration. It just opens so many more avenues when eating at friends' houses too.

My rock this morning told me to

I guess a part of my spirit has been sitting on the sidelines since last Tuesday. Baby steps, for me. I'm happy to say I joined in life today, celebrating moments as they happened.