Glowing, Howling, Kissing, Candy

There is always a light bulb burning out in my house. Every day it seems. Does anyone else have this problem? The question is not How many Jennys does it take to change a light bulb?, but How many effing light bulbs does Jenny have to change?! And have you ever noticed that ceiling light fixtures look like boobs? Glowing boobs dangling down from the ceiling. Lovely. As for actual loveliness, I surprised Stella at her school for lunch this week. She looked up, smiling, and said, "I had a feeling you would be here today!" That's my intuitive little wild thing. I had her and Rosie howling at the full moon this week. We were driving home from the Y, howling all the way. I told them I was a wolf; Stella couldn't decide whether she was a bat or a cat. I said, "As long as you're wild!" Rosie gets this growly voice and says, "Where the wiiild things are..." Adorable. Anyway, I went to see Stella in her cafeteria with three intentions: 1) To see my girl, 2) To chat with her teacher, and 3) To check out the boy who asked to kiss Stella last week. Can you believe this? Well, yes, but my baby! He asked if he could kiss her, and she said, "No, but we can hug." So they hugged, and he turned to another boy and said, "Watch, I'm going to marry Stella." She told me she might want to marry him too. So, in the cafeteria, I asked her to point out her future mate. He is a cutie. Of course, all kindergartners are cuties, but there he was, missing his front teeth, sporting an orange polo shirt and blue fleece, and the kicker: high-top Converse All*Stars. I gave him a knowing smile. Meanwhile, the red-headed boy next to Stella was grossing us out with his slimy eyeball candy. And by grossing us out, I mean making me and the 5-year-old girls around giggle with glee. Speaking of Halloween, let me post some pictures of my creatures...

Wishing/Treasuring

Monday morning, New month, Full moon. Wish list:

1. More time and focus to read everything I want to read
2. Full body massage
3. New socks
4. This cheese grater I saw in a magazine
5. My own copy of Eat Pray Love
6. Better guitar skills
7. A bicycle, or a new tire for the totally rad vintage Schwinn in my garage
8. To go dancing or roller skating, soon
9. A clean house
10. My dog to stop shedding
11. A trip to India with my sister
12. Understanding (What was that blade of grass? What was that hiding-star?)
13. Wild patience. Wild, wild, ever wild.

That being said, I lack nothing I need to exist at this precise moment. Same goes for you, you beautiful treasure of a person. [wink, smile, peace]

Five Sets of Sisters

Last week we had family visit from out of town. Out of state, actually. My aunt and two cousins flew down from Pennsylvania, and another aunt and uncle brought their motor home from Denver. As we gathered at my mom's house, I had Stella count all the sets of sisters. My mom & aunts + me and my younger sis + my cousins + my kids + my nieces = five sets of sisters! In one house! Of course, there were a few gaping holes in the gathering in the shape of my older sister and my alpaca-raising Coloradan cousin. But we had so much fun, eating and catching up and eating and looking at old photos and eating and singing family songs. We always sing when we get together. We may not sound like the Von Trapps, but By Golliwog we sing! We sing The Old Rugged Cross and When You Wore a Tulip and a folk song about the Titanic sinking that is quite tragic and could be pretty if sung slowly and seriously, but we've always done it in a disturbingly upbeat fashion. When Uncle Mike from Denver joined the family, he brought with him Bob Dylan and other essential Americana artists in his big notebook full of songs. We sang some of those last week--I tried to keep up with him on the guitar, and my aunt played the dobro (a lap-steel guitar.) I took Mike and his mandolin and my aunt and her dobro to Joel's school to join the middle schoolers in some after-school fiddling. That was some fun-fiddle-tastic music-making. Also fun music-making happened on our last evening together. We were playing a family game of Beauty Parly, meaning we were styling hair in my mom's kitchen. I sat up on the counter with my dad's old Gibson and strummed the blues while my aunt improvised narrative lyrics. Every now and then I would take one of her lines and sing it soulfully and we'd suddenly have a chorus and a room full of laughter. As well as being so fun, this was an important visit. Well, any time family gets together is important. I mean, we are related by blood. We share DNA and we share a story, our history. I can't even begin to understand the mystery of that bond. Yet we see each other so infrequently, only speak once in a while. This visit, for me, strengthened our bond, gave me a sense of my place as a woman in the family, and left me feeling grateful. So grateful. We may be spread out across the globe, but we are a tribe with a song--a beautiful, eccentric medley of songs.

Oh, Joyful Starlight

I am steering by starlight, thank you, and I haven't had a typical week for years.

Last night I finished Martha Beck's book Steering by Starlight, though it is one of those books you never really finish. It is a self help book (no shame!) about finding your right life, using the metaphor of your own North Star (your right life/destiny) and the process of following it (steering by starlight.) Man, oh man, does Martha speak my language. I remember reading her articles in Real Simple magazine back when it first came out. Now she writes for O. I picked up another of her books a few years ago, but put it back down because she said to put it down until you start taking 10 minutes a day to Do Nothing. I suppose I could pick it back up now, since I do spend time in my quiet corner almost every day, lighting my candle and breathing and meditating. Anyway, I've been reading Steering by Starlight since March, I think, and I can truly say it has been a magical experience. Following the line I quoted at the beginning of this post, Beck writes about Einstein, how he said there are two ways to look at life: as though nothing is a miracle or as though everything is. Like Martha, I choose "everything." Nothing seems typical lately; the pain and the pleasure feels magical, the big bursts and the little bursts, it all feels like part of a big beautiful picture, a skyscape. I'll leave you with a passage that particularly resonates with me:

I see life as a cosmic gymnasium where we have come to be broken and healed, broken and healed, for the joy of the process and because we have decided to become strong... This is how strength training goes in the soul's gymnasium: Life breaks us. We hurt. We seek healing. We find the path to our North Stars and know instinctively that following them will lead to healing. We act on that instinct. We heal. We learn to trust that the path we've taken is the one we're meant to take. And with every experience taken through to its conclusion, we become more able to experience joy.

Man, oh man!

[achoo]

sometimes what you need is to sneeze
sometimes to feel the seat under your knees

These are the words from an old email in my "Drafts" box. No recipient or subject. Just something I wanted to remember, I guess. The start of a song, perhaps? I'm thinking now that what I was thinking at the time was how I was sitting there thinking about all these abstract subjects and felt the sudden need to put my hand on the bench where I was sitting down thinking so that I could touch and feel something solid and not at all abstract. And with the simple touch of the wooden bench, a wave of relief came over me and my thinking returned to present reality. As far as sneezing goes, it is impossible to sneeze and not be present in the moment. Sneezing takes over whatever else is going on. Even if you stifle it, the stifling itself is a strong reminder of present reality. So, yeah. Saying "Bless you" when someone sneezes, on the other hand, has nothing to do with present reality and has to be one of the most absurd social mores still existing. I don't know, I could be persuaded to think otherwise. But, it is strange... People will hardly say hello or make eye contact, but if you spasmodically expel air from your nose, they will bless you. They will interrupt their conversations to wish you health and stop the devil from claiming your freed soul. Huh, when I think of it that way, it's actually pretty nice. Bless my little Stella, she had her first sick day today, for sneezing and coughing. I'm popping pills and chugging water and resting when I can in hopes of staying healthy. I am determined not to get sick nearly as much as last year. That was just mean of the Sick Season to pick on me and my family so often. What the Sick Season doesn't know yet, is that I am stronger and wiser than I was last year, and I will sneak attack its sneeze attacks. That's right... Bless you, Sick Season. Bless your evil little heart.

This is the moment I boil down themes.

Life is too short and too important not to laugh when you are running, if you feel like laughing when you are running, despite onlookers. Also, life is too short and too important not to huddle in the corner and cry if you feel like huddling in the corner to cry. (Oh, cold world--I have grown so weary of you and all your horrible bathrooms!) We've got to feel what we feel. Our feelings are not just suggestions, they are powerful and true and tend to hang around until we acknowledge them. Anyway, I'm not working on a motivational bumper sticker here, I just want to write about Life, living it and being at home in the moment. Well, actually, I did come up with a bumper sticker recently on this very topic: "I'd rather be living in the moment." You know, like the "I'd rather be fishing" stickers but more ironic. It seems like the theme of so many books and fortune cookies boils down to the idea that happiness comes from living in the moment. Lately I find it helpful and meaningful to name my moments, especially when I could easily be rehashing the past or worrying about the future:

This is the moment when I enjoy the sight of red onions, which are actually purple, softening in my Le Creuset stock pot, as opposed to Ugh, I need to get dinner on the table or my kids will implode and I hope they like it and eat it so they don't become malnourished and turn to wild animals to raise them.

This is the moment when my body wants to quit, but in a second I will feel invigorated, vs. Why did I decide to take this class today? and My muscles are going to pay for this tomorrow.

This is the moment during my hair cut when I get nervous, but in a second I will feel relieved, vs. I am going to look like either Donald Trump or Edward Scissorhands for the rest of my life.

This is the moment when I sit at a traffic light with my window down and listen to Damien Jurado after an intense day, vs. Traffic sucks and I just want to be home in bed.

Allow the moment to be just what it is, knowing that Everything always passes, or, Everything is constantly changing, and everything is already okay. There is nothing else I need right now in order to exist at this moment. (That is some Martha Beck wisdom that has seriously enriched my life.) Right now, as far as feelings go, I am angry, disappointed, encouraged, confident, nervous, hopeful, overjoyed, content, tired, and the list goes on. I am okay with all that. I am alive, and this is the moment when I publish a blog post. Peace, man, cool, yeah.

My Feminist Campaign

Warning: I will be discussing certain reproductive organs in this post. Determine now whether you want to read on! Seriously.

These thoughts were triggered by the Wolf Book, with the mention of ovaries as a source of strength in women. I never put much thought into my ovaries, or anyone's ovaries really, except that freaky story from high school anatomy about a doctor discovering teeth and hair in a patient's ovaries. That's weird. Sorry I repeated it. Anyway, it got me thinking about how everyone talks about bravery in terms of balls: That was ballsy, He's got balls, Grow a pair, etc. And yes, it takes some daring to let it all hang out there, vulnerable to the unknown. But what about that hidden, life-giving fortitude within women? The mysterious place inside that contains the very cycle of life and death, following cues from the moon and releasing power from its reserves when the time is right! We may be the "weaker sex" when it comes to an arm wrestling match, but we've got strength and wisdom and intuition deep inside our bellies. So, friends, I wonder if you will help me change the way people talk about courage, not necessarily replacing the current metaphor, but at least bringing this feminine image to its proper place of recognition. Join me! That is, if you've got the ovaries; and if you don't, you might consider growing a pair.