The "getting real" post

It happens, every so often, that I read a flurry of articles and blog posts imploring mommy bloggers and fashion bloggers and farming bloggers and faith bloggers to just get real. (Political bloggers need not fuss with this stricture as there is no getting around the real ugly.)

In case you missed the memo(s): Others' Facebook happiness makes us depressed, Pinterest as a whole makes us dissatisfied with our mere human crafting/cooking/skydiving abilities, and the rosy lives pictured in weblogs are akin to Photoshopped models in fashion ads, creating a rarified air that none of us can really breathe. Focusing on the positive can smother a person, apparently.

Pshaw.

 If y'all want ugly there's always mainstream media. And the cupboard to the left of the sink. And screen-time-limit meltdowns and arriving a month early (or a month late!) to the orthodontist-whose-bill-comes-anyway, or an aching shoulder and a little bit of arthritis in that hand that makes you inadvertently drop a pot full of stewed tomatoes. Talk about a hot mess. The satellite internet limit that is exceeded by streaming school classes two weeks into the month. And the neighbor who left cookies in your mailbox and then got upset when the mail lady thanked you for them when they were so obviously for your kids from the neighbor (Follow? Me neither!). Someone from your church facing divorce, someone in your family facing cancer.

I kinda got on a roll there just thinking about the "real" of this week. It's only Tuesday.

You know, these are the everyday and bigger uglinesses that just don't bear talking about.

 Let's encourage each other with thankfulness and prettiness and focus on that. Won't you? I am aware that on your blogs and facebook pages, most of you edit out the schmutz. And I'm good with that. Not because I don't want you to be real! I do! I am so achingly glad you a real human being on this journey with me, and I want to walk with you through whatever you want to share.

One of the ways I survive the ugly is to post the pretty.

Y'all know it's bad if you can't look around and find some beauty. 

There's my one-time farmhouse. It is so very pretty in each season. Finally sale pending and approaching closure, not that I want to jinx anything, after seven escrows. Seven. I haven't blogged adequately about the heart-wrenching decision to move to this new farm two years ago. I haven't shared in any small part how I feel about the quality of light at that house, about how I left behind community and struck out for something new and found myself not just alone in the wilderness but lonely here. It took more than a year to understand that the light filtering through forest is its own kind of golden green. There's a glow from the barn when the stars are the only other light, and when you drive past the spaces between the barn boards look twinkly. My garden is amazing -- and overwhelming! -- and friendships once easily maintained by a stroll down the lane and a cup of coffee remain, and that spending time with those loved ones on the once-dreaded phone and internet is a new kind of beauty.

My new farmhouse takes more careful framing to find the photo-worthy. So I focus carefully because otherwise I'd live in a puddle on the floor. Truly. I thank you for your positive, for your gratitude, for your rose-colored glasses where the world wide web is concerned. Because I think the more we zoom in on beauty, the more we find.

Yesterday I realized my husband's dog Jake died five years ago. And my dog Bonnie Belle died nearly three years ago. So we got Murphy and Molly two years ago and now Molly is gone. Guess what? I never blogged adequately about the vomit and the accidents and the geriatric care that each of those pets required in their final days. Do you know how I got on this subject? I happened upon an old photo of sweet Bonnie Belle on the forbidden couch, and then laughed as I scrolled through that album to see all of the dogs fully owning the couch at one time or another. I remembered that Jake's last trip around the property was in pursuit of sitting by Laura in the stroller, down by the barn where I was watching the big girls ride ponies. I remembered that Bonnie Belle would ever so genteelly accept treats at the coffee drive-through even though she would never, ever ingest them because she was above the crunchy bone-shaped weirdness and she knew enough to wait for homemade peanut-butter-filled jerky treats at home. Molly? Molly loved the children so much that she let them dress her in hats and scarves. She would paw around in the dress-up bin for a favorite wool (dog slobbery) beret. Which is more true? The embarrassing bodily functions of aging pets or the photographed and internet-shared memories that cast them in best light?

I'd rather watch for the prettiness on the internet and hold your hand in person when we're having a crisis, big or small. I want to be "real" with you, but not so much on the internet. I'm just sayin'.

Oh, my friends...

 We are deep into school now but my heart is a little bit back at summer.

 Recurring theme: I'm not ready.
For the facetime (?) and skype sessions (?!)
with homeroom teachers.
For the twelve-class-per-week dance year
to sweep us off our feet and onto our toes.
For doctors and dentists and library days.
Schedule schmedule.

 So I take some deep breaths and focus on now,
but not with the camera lens,
because it's hard to teach
United States government
and shoot at the same time.

 I can't recall having this particular angst before,
and believe me I thought I'd worried them all

to the bone, those worry-worthy subjects
of children who grow and change and,

you know,

get lives and governmental theories of their own.

 This week Madeleine and I met with her high school adviser.

I considered canceling but unfurling leaves keep reaching for sunshine.

This week Sarah started algebra.
I considered helping.
I offered to help.
But she let me know she is fine
as she went about solving for x,
that timeless question of an unnamed quantity.
Quality.

This week Grace cracked herself up
while reading Alice in Wonderland
and Laura explained the difference between
a letter and a phonogram
to Salvador.

This week I lost my coffee cup approximately seven times per day.
Not everything is different from last year.
Just to be clear.
Some things remain known.
While I'm solving for x
when change remains constant.

Here a little, there a little

Oh, look! My father- and mother-in-loves' house is so very scrumptious. Just pulling in to their farm for a family reunion makes a person happy.

A close second in the world of wonderful is that pie sign at the county fair. I didn't even have to eat any to get a sense of sweet satisfaction.

While we were in the great county of Humboldt we fed the pigeons in Eureka Old Town.
This was a first for my farm children.

 

They loved it.

Little ol' Victorian Ferndale is our favorite. The Mercantile, the Meat Market, the hat and shoe stores. It's like a Hollywood movie version of a small town but for real, because everyone there knows one another and stops to chat. And to figure out which of my husband's bajillion first cousins they went to high school with.

Yes, little Ferndale is our favorite. Unless it's littler Scotia with its big history, bigger timber and tiny houses all in a row.

 

The town of Scotia, as of this writing no longer a "company town" but not yet incorporated as a city, is a storybook of swept streets and pastel bungalows. My husband grew up here when everything was owned by the legendary (some say infamous now) Pacific Lumber Company.

 

Inside the Winema Theatre at Scotia is a staggering amount of unfinished, massive redwood timber framing and trim work. We wandered around in the cool and dark for 20 minutes, feeling like time travelers. Also feeling a little like trespassers because we had merely accidentally followed a paid tour group whose guide did not lock up. Or close the doors. Oops. And hey.

Back home the sunflowers didn't miss us at all.

                                   

 

Gee it was nice to come home again.

Tomatoes and green beans are heaping up waiting their turn in the canner as I type. I've said it before and brace yourselves because I'm going to say it again:

Is there anything sweeter than coming home again?

No, nothing sweeter than coming home again when the whole valley smells like a blackberry pie and the memories you just made will carry you through a lot of days of standing over the pressure canner, a lot of days of driving to ballet, a lot of days of your oldest child starting high school (!) and your others teaching the 3-year-old to read when you're not looking so then you have to put down the green beans and cry because that's your baby.

We take the sweet with the tart now and then. We move through our own history like we know it won't always be swept streets and pastel house fronts; sometimes it's carpool and craziness but it's, as they say, all good.

If I Were August

If I were August I'd make a note.

Summer is notoriously fleeting.

I wouldn't want to miss a minute.

Calendula and yarrow, dance and baseball, sewing and sky watching.

These notes of August make summer a poem woven of dried grasses and lake days.

I'd try not to make a paragraph, even.

Because in formation of a thesis one could lose the essence,
whole and sweet like a raspberry warm from the vine.

 Rather to jot those notes on whatever paper or palm lies nearby.

If I were August I'd make a note to revisit on days of mist and cool.

That the summer, days of wine and roses, could warm that later moment too.

A time capsule of sunshine.

[Lazy?] Days of Summer

All of our hay is in the barn.

The drought reduced our yield by about a third.

This year's crew was nearly all child labor as Mr. Suite was on deadlines.

The borrowed hay elevator helped a lot.

And we paid the children in swimming parties at the river.

Since putting the hay away it has been all theatre and dance all the time.

Madeleine, Sarah and Grace were in an original
melodrama staged at our community theatre.

Sal and Laura and I have been busy while the big girls were rehearsing song and dance numbers. We've visited the library, a wading pool in Nearby College Town, the ice cream shop (three times) and the movie theatre. They are loving Mommy Camp.

Ooh! I forgot to mention that my sweet nieces
spent the better part of two weeks with us, swimming and
feeding the chickens and being the farmgirls they were born to become.

And we had a sort of big-deal weekend at the dance studio when a celebrity visitor came to town for our free community dance class in the park.

I wasn't a fan before (I'd never heard of Summer Glau) but I am now.

She was gracious, and beautiful, and kind.

And she said she has a dream to be a farmgirl.

So.

Dancer, actor, farmgirl. She must be a kindred spirit, right?

After the theatre and the dance and the swimming and some more dancing...

we are gardening.

Canning a little already.

Loving this crazybusy again.

Backup. No, back up.

 I don't write here very often or very regularly but every once in a while I remember the days -- do any of you? -- when I wrote many times a week. When my teens were small and I made a lot of doll clothes and organic purees. Thanks to the "you may also enjoy" feature that I somehow managed to add to the blog I sometimes see a baby picture of a toothless Laura, who is now 5 years old and reading, writing, running (our lives) or a paragraph or two about how Grace, now 9 and a pianist, seamstress and outdoor enthusiast, loved to play "finger family" and had named all of her digits and assigned them specific personalities and habits. Being the middle child in a family of five must make for a creative kid.

 When I blogreminisce like that I get a little frisson of panic, you know? Not just the passing of the years but the sheer volume of digital/electronic/interwebby family history I document here and notsomuch in a physical scrapbook.

For instance, Salvador,turning 3 this week, was photographed in the palm of his daddy's hand just days home from the hospital. Now he is a member of the hay crew. Well, with crayons and a hot dog in the tow vehicle. But still. (B)logged here.

 Our relationships with dear neighbors at the church-home of my heart, blogged here. Our ups and downs with barrel racing, horses, free range children, penned-up chickens, lonely ewe lambs and dearly departed Golden Retrievers. Blogged here.

 Might I take a side road, just a minor detour, to introduce to you Harold and Linda, our neighbors at the new FarmSuite homestead? He is 86 and still making hay. She is "in her 70s" and still riding along. (Blogworthy.)

My girls' theatrical and dance escapades, all chronicled in photos and a minimum of whining about the price of gas and the late hours of rehearsal.

                                      
When considering the massive volume of valuable-to-me farmy and not-so-farmy Suite family history I today undertook the BLOG BACKUP. Dun-dun-dunnnnnn.

It was a three-click procedure that didn't preserve the photos within the posts. But still. Have you backed up your blog lately? I bet your children and your vegetables and your life -- all growing. And if any of y'all or your tech-savvy friends know how to back up the blog without losing the photos, would you be so kind as to share that information with me?

Because I blogged here about backing up a horse trailer and I might need to refer to that one day.

In non-technical news, the garden is ENORMOUS. We are eating salads every day, twice a day, and watching the corn and beans grow before our eyes. I am excited about the coming tomato harvest (almost afraid to say it, just a little superstitious) and have set up a canning kitchen on the back patio since our new cooktop is glass. The hay is in and it was a somewhat disappointing bale count compared to last year. We are very grateful to be able to make our own hay but it does look like we'll be buying some to supplement this year as a springtime drought kept the grass from growing.

Feels like being a farmer.

Madeleine and Sarah are halfway through a three-week break from ballet and they walk around the house on demi-pointe all day to keep their, what, feet flexible? balance intact? I dunno. We are looking forward to a drama camp and some dance camps and a lot of swimming in the river this summer. Also a lot of garden produce.

I hope your June is blessed and, backing up a bit, that you make time to back up your blog.