And then again...

Y'all know it's not truly a calendar that saves the day nor a 'smart'phone that simplifies your life. Right?

I'm just late to this party, this realization, this evolution of humanity, and I want to be clearer than I was in my last post: I only write about my calendar because it's a breakthrough for me. All of you, dear readers, are waaaay ahead of me in figuring out that I am a flake-with-a-capital-reschedule when left to my own brain's ability to multitask.

(Have I mentioned that multitasking is the evil of our generation?)

Until a couple of years ago, I thought the calendar and the electronic gadgety things that start with "I" or that have a name that came from Startrek or Star Wars (or was it Dancing With the Stars? Android? His quick step was ah-MAY-zing.) were fine for people with high-pressure, deadline-oriented lives. In fact I lived by my Daytimer (TM) and my pager (ha!) while working in publishing and this is a gift to you, this giveaway about how long it's been since I was a professional person. And my years in real estate sales (shudder here) were ruled by a cell phone and the electronic mail, the fax machine, the clients' calendars, the banks' calendars.

So I know from schedule stress and I thought my stay-at-home, homeschool self should just be able to keep it in my head. You know? The lessons and doctor appointments, the veterinarian and farrier visits, the gym times and my husband's duties on local committees and commissions.

I thought pretty highly of myself and I feel better now that I've reduced that opinion. I sleep better. It's simpler, even though it's a crazybusy life we lead.

Thanks. I needed to post that.

Meanwhile I must take the applesauce out of the canner because one of my four timers went off while I was typing. And case in point: I have four timers while only three calendars (wall, phone, purse). I have four timers because I am easily distracted and things can burn and a timer means "pay attention," it's time to [use your imagination, something urgent usually, or else just the end of someone's screen time or the dog's outdoor 'bathroom' break]. I have four timers because my memory is fallible, short-term and long-term. I forget. It happens.

And skirting and the edge of my no-politics-on-interwebs rule: Please remember to vote.

Perhaps put in on your calendar.

Look! It's autumn. Or: Still peaceful, happily surprised

Madeleine took this picture at the dedication of a local park (engineering done by Mr. Suite!). And then we rode in the balloon. A Very Good Day.

Over the summer we took approximately forty-nine trips to the river, "rednecking it" with our lawn tractor trailer full of toddlers and inner tubes and a cooler full of pb&j sandwiches, iced tea in Mason jars.

For the first two weeks of October we left the flotation devices and life jackets and whatnot accessible. "One more swim" was still possible. Beach books still resided in go bags. Sun tea was even an option because we still had, you know, sunshine.

Salvador has discovered his pockets. So boy.

Now that the rain is here and our stove is crackling with flames that fog up the viewing glass I am almost instantly ready where I wasn't before. I didn't see this coming, and the surprise is a little burst of joy over and over. Fall. How is it possible to be taken unaware by a season one has loved for 40 years? I think it's a bonus, a little-known side effect of that cliched but wonderful practice of "living in the moment."

Come to find out I like the NEXT moment a lot better when I enjoy the one I'm IN well.

The tractor races at Farm Suite's front room always draw a big crowd. Scalewise anyway.

When Madeleine, our nearly 14-year-old, was a tiny baby, we were unfortunately anxious. (Royal we again.) When is the next feeding? How long will she sleep? Should she sleep that long? Can we grocery shop between naps or let her sleep in the car? We missed a lot of joyful moments, I fear, in the practice of scheduling and looking for what was next.

Our schedules today, as I go on and on about here, are ever-so-Seussian muchly much much more busier than that. (The house it often looks like it was visited by the Cat in the Hat.) On a daily basis our calendar is so full as to give me hiccups if I look toward what is next, or worse, how many/few minutes we have to prepare for "what's next." Algebra, chemistry, literature, ballet, tap, jazz, modern dance, flute lessons, community theatre rehearsals... they all go better with a cup of tea and my full attention. The next will come around in its own time.

And just in case you ever struggle, as I have for years, with how to do that, how to be fully present and still be ready when the agenda switches up, I want to share the logistical, completely non-spiritual tool that has helped me achieve a little bit of peace in apparent chaos.

It's a calendar. In my purse I keep an old-fashioned appointment calendar. I also have it hand "synched" to my phone and kitchen wall and computer calendars. Even though I resisted this system for years, preferring in my fantasies to think I was better unencumbered by such mundane tools, I actually feel much more FREE having it all written down, keyed in, cross-referenced.

My little purse calendar saves the double-booking disasters and saves my life. (We also have a newer launch pad system of dance bags, snack bags and whatnot that I think you can probably imagine better than I, and this is instrumental in the new peace system as well. I might write about that later but I'm not very predictable in the posting. Maybe I should put blogging in my calendar. A-hem.)

Does jazz start at 3:00 or 3:15 on Mondays? Would we be able to pick up an extra child in the carpool next Tuesday? Can we move flute to Friday at 4:00? In five seconds I can answer and I don't have the anxiety that comes with the not knowing, the must-remember-to-check.

When I get an email tweaking rehearsal schedules I transfer the new information to my calendar(s). When the girls get invitations to parties I write the time and contact info in my calendar. When I make my weekly menus I write them in my calendar.

The calendar saves us from the fast-food drive-through, which my kids and wallet dislike strongly, on nights when there's no time to go home for dinner between dance and theatre. I can plan ahead for portable meals for my actors and snacks for the rest of us. I can reasonably tell my dear, patient, already organized since birth engineer husband what time we will be home.

Don't get me wrong: I still struggle with busy-ness. But it seems somewhat manageable this way and I can even feel free to be happily surprised by something as small as a "divine appointment" with a friend at a coffee shop or something as huge as the change of seasons.

Now to go deflate the inner tubes. Because, friends? It's raining outside.

If you're busy and you know it

It's been a little while since we looked in the attic.

It will be a library. Soon. And that is a (not-plugged-in?) power tool next to the baby. Just sayin'.

Because September and October are the real months of summer in Western Oregon, we are still harvesting. Just last night I brought in the last of the tomatoes under threat of frost. We haven't finished picking blackberries yet, but I do believe that'll be this week. And just one more apple tree still holds fruit, which we hope to core and peel with my super-duper thirteen-dollar gadget as we did the apples from the first two trees. Applesauce is our friend, my friends.

Late in the summer we took a little trip with Grandma and Papa to the butterfly garden and the adjacent Fort Umpqua, the southernmost Hudson Bay trading post to view the in-progress buildings and gardens. Summer school. Who knew?

And Mr. Suite and I went to a Jimmy Buffet tribute band concert in some friends' back yard. I never laughed so hard. Ever. Highly recommended.

Madeleine and Sarah are back in the dance of things, with ballet, jazz, modern and tap filling six afternoons a week. Oh, and hip hop on Fridays. I don't want to talk about it.Grace dances too: ballet and tap and jazz. Laura just moves creatively in a preschool dance class one day a week and Sal waits (more or less) patiently for everyone elses' classes from 2:30 until 5:30 most afternoons. Thank goodness for the Legos in the waiting room.

We are busy and it's still somehow peaceful. How did this happen? I think it's all about perspective and intention, which I fully intend to write about here once I stop writing about it for a national magazine. YIKES. (Mommy's busy too.)

Oh! I almost forgot: Madeleine auditioned for the community theatre's holiday season production of Willy Wonka, where she won two roles: Oompa Loompa and a candy shop child whose name I can't recall. She is super disappointed that the OLs will not be face-painted orange. Rehearsals 6:30 until 9 most nights.

Meanwhile we continue to learn and grow at the school table most mornings from 8 until noon. I thank God for homeschool, among many reasons but front of mind today is because one afternoon a week we pick friends up at the middle school for tap dancing class and that carpool line is brutal.

Sarah is working for Grandpa at his office, performing hard labor at her own initiative in pursuit of an electronic gadget that starts with an "I," one morning a week. She still plays flute and her private lessons directly follow working for Grandpa. Well, they directly follow the Dutch Brothers coffee stop that directly follows me picking her up from Grandpa's office.

Circling back to dance (as every day does around here): Sarah and Madeleine will both perform in the Nutcracker Suite this year. Sarah is a Chinese tea dancer and Madeleine a Spanish flamenco dancer. Rehearsals ramping up soon.

To fill the waiting time I have my laptop and my embroidery. A little knitting. And I'm tired, but it's a good tired, you know?

The wings of, and wrinkles in, our friend Time

I spend entirely too much time in the pointless and, don't worry, I've noticed, paradoxical, consideration of the fleeting nature of time. And then today I read a theory about the three phases of life in Barbara Kingsolver's latest novel, Lacuna, and I'm simply slain.

 Her book, which (it goes without saying) is incredible, is the story of a young writer growing up through the Great Depression and the Great War and the Red Scare, not a true citizen of either his father's homeland nor his mother's but a son and inhabitant of literature, of words and their power.

 Anywhat.

 It touched me, his description of his mother's view that in the first phase of our life we are children. In the second phase we have children. And then? The third phase and the final curtain.

It was hardly the point of her beautiful book. But it stuck with me. Here I am, with one child entering her beautiful teens and my youngest just teetering on the edge of babyhood and the rest of them truly giving me a run for my money every day of the week and I think: I don't want to miss this phase nor any of the next.

Do you write every day? Every week? Do you take pictures as though the event will not have happened if you aren't recording it digitally? How do you live in this phase, whatever phase you enjoy now?

Finally, the blackberries ... a birthday... and a little ice cream

Our summer moves more quickly, and more slowly, than any I've remembered. It was late this year, the weather in Oregon not sure what to do with itself. Kinda matched my mood, frankly.

My physical self rushes around, driving country roads on the way to camp. after. camp. after camp.

My all-too-active inner self soaks in the sunshine and reflects, light and otherwise.

This summer marks my dad's 60th birthday, my son's first birthday. My girls are playing multiple instruments apiece (we're apparently starting up a traveling family band).

I miss my grandmother something fierce this season. She and I used to pick blackberries every year. Our stained fingers filled the pails and she filled my mind with stories of her growing up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin; growing up in the Great Depression, having her first children in a log cabin, moving bravely across the country to San Francisco to raise all four babies through wars and an uncertain economy and civil unrest and gardening and on the whole living an amazing, rich life.

Yep. I miss my grandmother. So much so that a visit from her daughters, my dear aunts, brought me to tears. Just hearing Sandra's voice, so like her mother's, and seeing Pat's expressions, so like my grandmother's... this was the essence of summer fruit, sweet but tart. We wait a long time for that first bucket of berries, and then the ice cream and the pies and the cobblers crowd together so thickly that we think we can freeze some of it to enjoy later. But we can't. We have to gobble it up, this life. We have to take it as it comes ripe and say, this is what it is to live in the moment. Tomorrow's joys will be better, and fresher, if they're uniquely tomorrow's.

So this week we are enjoying the last camp (can you see me, ready to slump?) of the summer. Madeleine and Grace are fiddling around. (Har har.) They are playing Cajun music and loving it. The camp is across the road, run by the rural arts, and I am loving that. No driving. No driving myself crazy packing up the whole family. (Did I mention no driving?)

Paradoxically to my whole fresh fruit/live the now theme: Next week we may start canning, although I will likely have to buy produce at the farmstands since my garden has suffered the effects of a late start to the growing season and a general chaos in my being.

Not that I'm dramatic much.

I have missed you, friends. I hope your summer is as delicious and fresh as ours has been.

Another miraculous weekend

I mean that.
The everyday miracles were everywhere.

Beautiful.

And tiny.

But no less miraculous.

I hope yours was lovely too.

At the intersection of Quilt and Barn. With some out-of-character End Times discussion.

There's that patchwork barn from my road trip of a week or so ago. Really the dreamy light does not do it justice. Can you imagine how many pizzas that rancher had to buy for the teenagers who painstakingly used all the oops paint in a creative manner? (Imagine with me, if you will. 'Cause I don't know anything about this barn or its owner other than it made my girls and me smile and wonder and make up fun stories about its quirky paint job.)

Outside my window the forget-me-nots and lilacs have upstaged the fading show of daffodils and tulips. Daisies and columbines wait in the wings for the next act. This springtime is gorgeous in our area, and I'm almost feeling guilty because I know so many are suffering through floods and severe weather patterns. Friends of ours who are serving in the earthquake recovery of Port-Au-Prince, Haiti are already experiencing punishing heat. Other friends are just now driving home to Oregon from storm ravaged Kentucky. The news from around the world is bleak. The radio and television stations are talking about the end of the world and they're not singing lyrics from a pop song when they do so.

The African violets on my windowsill have nothing to do with the parade of blooms outside, with my continuing barn obsession nor with the darting hummingbirds nor mounting projects stacked on my sewing table.

And, honestly. My faith has nothing to do with predicting whether tomorrow is the beginning of the end of the world. I hesitate to say any of this for the record, on the world wide web. But my faith is in the thin vein of beauty and truth, an ore much more precious than a prediction of dire circumstances on a certain date.

My God is a God of mercy and, yes, I hope you know Him too. I hope that judgment day is not a reason for fear for you because none of us can achieve the standard but through grace. Amazing grace.

My pantry is full and, yes, I hope yours is too. But I hope you aren't just hoarding water and canned goods for a catastrophe but rather thoughtfully planning how to take care of yourself and your family and your neighbors if need be.

Oh I so rarely get on a soapbox here but I can feel myself stepping up there now.

I read on a web site today about how much food to store per person for certain periods of time, making my notes and commenting to myself how similar the lists were to the provisions the pioneers must have packed for their westward journeys. And right after I found myself nodding with the web site's writer, I read that I should instruct my family to never, under any circumstances, disclose that we have stored food for emergencies.

Really?

Because I want you to know, my real and virtual neighbors alike, that what I have I will share. That whatever we can do for one another in the event of an earthquake or storm or financial hardship is what we should do.

It's obviously easy to say this from my comfortable chair in front of my computer screen, electricity humming and refrigerator full, children tucked in and husband reading by the sound of the Giants game on the radio.

I have a comfortable chair, a comfortable life. I'm guessing you do too.

But I never want to be so comfortable that I forget that some others are decidedly not. I want to share my comfort, my knowledge of God's mercy and grace, before others are frightened into a judgment day panic mode just as I want to share my pantry's contents with a hungry neighbor.

Take care, dear readers and neighbors. And as you're driving through the countryside of life, imagining the motivations and small joys of your fellow man, remember too their likely pains and trials as they too try to gather beauty in a sometimes ugly world.

I don't think tomorrow is the beginning of the end. But I do think we should live like it is. Not with fear nor with secrecy but with confidence and compassion. I think we should, I should, be willing to be a little less comfortable while it's still an easy choice. I think I should (because I know you don't come here for the preaching) place more emphasis on the bits of beauty, the patchwork-painted barns and the blooming violets and the play dough parties, because they are my icons for the joy of the world, for the hope of grace and glory amidst difficulty and strife. A true icon is very different from an idol; an icon points us to a larger truth while an idol, of course, is a substitute for the Truth.

May you find Truth and beauty and rest this weekend.

(And may I return with a lighter post next week.)

Easter and a new day

The Lenten rose is still blooming.

And I keep trying to get a picture of all five children. At church. With impossible backlighting.



At Grandpa and Grandma's house.

Where even the 3-year-old despairs the photo session.

Mr. Suite thinks the soggy back yard is the perfect spot.

Too bad we didn't get out the tripod and include him right in front of me!

Don't my buff-colored shoes make me look barefoot? Gah.

And my untucked blouse, rumpled sweater, fresh from nursing the baby? Perfect.

Doesn't Laura look resigned to a day of all pictures, no candy? Manoman.

Doesn't Gracie's goofball face make you sigh? Me too.

Doesn't Sarah telegraph her exhaustion? Poor beleagured models all.

Doesn't the fact that Salvador is actually barefoot bother you? Bleh.
Baby will shed his socks and shoes at every opportunity!

Madeleine alone stands ready for a portrait.

I think the memories, frankly, are way better than the pictures.

We had a blessed Easter. How about you?

Front porch barefootin' bliss

A little bug hunting...

...picture snapping....

...barefoot happiness.

Over the amazingly sunny weekend (spring! sprung!) my sweet husband and my wonderful father-in-law put a puttering deck in front of my Valentino canned ham trailer. What? You've not needed a deck on which to putter? I know. I am spoiled.

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I potted some flowers. I considered painting but thought better of it.

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I sewed a skirt for Sarah while I enjoyed having front and back doors wide open so I wouldn't miss a breeze.

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We mowed, finally. ("We" is that famous royal we which consists mainly of me drinking sun tea and my husband providing the fresh mown grass aroma.)

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We were fortunate to purchase a flute and a clarinet for two deserving and grateful budding musicians. .

And we released all the ladybugs we caught.

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A good weekend was had by all?

Thursday already? Thinking time.

Lately I have been thinking about writing.

At first blush, this is not very productive, all this quiet and thinking.

But something is brewing as surely as the flame under the kettle means tea is impending.

Often of late an Idea sneaks in during quiet thinking time. It's so big, so capital, this Idea, that I am tempted to stop thinking! To rush to get that little notebook and immortalize my brilliant notion (full measure of humility here) with the instant-gratification sound of chicken scratch graphite hitting composition paper.

I resist.

If it's that good, it'll still be there when I'm done thinking.

I try not to overemphasize this thoughtful time by scheduling it or by calling it something grand (meditation? intimidation!). I just find it here and there, in the serendipitous moments of littles napping and biggles reading and dishes drying.

Do you afford yourself that time?

On the fifth day of Christmas (sing a little song with me)

How about a snap of the church across the road with a dusting of Christmastime snow to put us in the mood for a singalong? These are a few of my favorite things.

Speaking of favorites, here's Sarah snuggling with Bonnie Belle on the couch. I love that dog more than is reasonable.

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Sort of makes me want to cozy up with some hot chocolate and the piano for a few rounds of I'll be home for Christmas.

I think maybe I like taking pictures of the chicken yard in the snow because, well, it looks a lot cleaner that way. But there aren't any Christmas carols about chickens. I don't think. Hmm... Away in a manger? Alas, a roosting box is not the same as a manger. But I'm dreaming of a white Christmas anyway.

And God decorates for the season with or without snow. There's a song on the radio called Christmas in the Northwest. Its lyrics include "a gift God wrapped in green" and it's uber sappy. Just how I like 'em.

But dashing through the snow is more fun than contemplating inedible berries.

Ever since finding my Christmas I find it everywhere. To the tune of all I want for Christmas are my two front teeth.

I discover I'm singing carols in my head all the time. But it's not so much you better watch out.

It's a Silent Night, a miracle in the everyday that fills my head and heart and makes me a little dizzy.

I can't seem to take a decent photograph these days. Nor to string a coherent sentence together with another. I read recently -- can't remember where (search "mommy mush brain") -- a theory of the impending demise of the English language (presumably other languages also?) due to the prevalence of quick-type Twitter- and text-centric lifestyles.

I was prepared to freak out, because, let's be honest, I'm always prepared to freak out. And? I was a double major in journalism and English lit so somehow feel it's my duty to stand for all things Jane Eyre, King James, and, er, Chaucer. Wait. If those examples of the English language can all be, oh, exemplary, and yet so different.... Wait. Gotta think.

Huh. In a barely related vein I've read some alarming studies about the endangered family unit. About the rarity of the family dinner table and the paucity of surviving nuclear families (ooh... sounds dire indeed). These same articles, even books devoted to the subject, don't so much give a guideline or roadmap "back" to family unity but rather stop short at bemoaning our cultural abandonment of "traditional" family values.

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While I can follow the logic of each of those arguments (barely -- let's remember I have five children who've stolen most of my brainpower for the foreseeable future) I don't personally find them to be all that scary.

I don't think the written word is dying. I think it's changing. The purist in me is mildly concerned but the realist says, meh, it's an evolving language. Change is inevitable. The proliferation of texting at least means most of this new generation is communicating with one another, possibly even with their parents. Do my kids use "text spelling" in their writing? Nope. (But they don't have electronic communication devices.) Will I be worried when the first of my children writes "ROFLOL" instead of something more articulate? For goodness sakes, no.

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Nor do I think the family is an endangered species. Does my family look different than your family? Probably a lot different. Does my family look different than the Ingalls of Little House? Or The Marches of Little Women? Certainly. But I think the love my family shares looks exactly the same. (Every good and perfect gift has the same source.) I think my generation was raised with a keen understanding of the pain of a broken family and an equally sharp focus on building family, fostering love, and creating an unshakable sense of stability for the next generation.

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So in the midst of my hymn singing and carol babbling I find some more Christmas, some more sacred in the everyday.

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I may not be taking great photos. I may not be writing, or often even reading, great works of literature. I may not be raising the next president of the United Nations. However, I am taking a lot of snapshot pictures, hugging my and other people's babies, eating more than my share of fudge and singing a lot of goofy songs in my head while counting the dishes as a meditation.

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That has to stand for something.

Easy

Last week it was so hot I had to unpack (non-maternity) shorts and capris.

This week it's raining cats and dogs and the horses are for sale again.
Curriculum is ordered and class has begun.

The blackberries may not be ready, but fall is on its way.

Change is in the air. It's on the tracks, chugging steadily for on-time arrival.

I'm okay with that.

(Reserving the right to freak out later though.)

How's your season going?

Inspiration point

Do you have a place you go to reconnect with your self? A thinking rock, a cozy chair, a pond in your backyard? The driver's seat of your car, the corner table at Starbucks?



Sometimes this reconnection requires a journey. Sometimes it's too noisy, even in the wingback chair in the back of your den. Sometimes the pull of a to-do list is too strong in your own house, hometown, county.

Sometimes it's a road trip that's called for. Almonds and dried cherries and chocolate chips in a little paper sack. Licorice too maybe. A huge iced tea and a full tank of unleaded complete the preparation.

(Of course in my particular situation there's also a diaper bag or three, sand toys, color crayons and books for the back rows, a camera and lenses, a baby sling, a cooler stacked with yogurts and bananas, and a zipper baggie full of allergy medications. You pack according to your needs andmayGodblessyouifthey'reanythinglikemine.)

I find my inspiration where I can. But when I can choose, it's the ocean that unfailingly fills that cup. For my husband, who grew up at the ocean, it's rugged mountain terrain or high desert that he craves.

This last weekend our whole family visited the ocean thanks to Mr. Suite's new contract at the coast. The girls and I lounged at the public library and walked the tourist routes while he conducted site visits and presentations. It was a perfect mini-vacation with a three-week-old baby in a sling.

Clam chowder in a bread bowl. New literature stacked high in my bookbag. The sound of crashing waves recorded in my heart.

My children in Saltwater sandals and my ever-driven compulsive and compelled self left behind for just a day. This is inspiration, spirit breathed into everyday life and tranquility overflowing for the crazy days that follow: Nurse the baby sixteen times a day. Change diapers at least that many times. Remember rural art camp. Remember to sign up for swim lessons. Fertilize. Water the garden. Feed the horses, the chickens, the bunnies, the children. Fill out a 22-page form. Return a call. Pay the electricity bill. These tasks, simple and pleasurable each on their own, can easily create traffic jams at the intersection of peace and calm.

A little time at inspiration point was called for.

How do you recharge?