11 Things I Say To My Kids Weekly If Not Daily

You are so precious to me

I love you ( a million times a day )

I will always be with you

You smell delicious! ( daily..lol )

I love your ____  ( laugh, style, sense of humor, big toe )

Talk to the Universe about it ( pray )

What do you think?

What did your gut tell you?

What do you think you could have done differently?

What is your responsibility?

Good job!

 

People In Your Neighborhood

take a seat and read!

I am gobsmacked in love with the grit and intelligence and leadership that this woman has. She went from being homeless and hungry to using that experience to launch herself into creating a way to eat healthy on a teensy tiny budget. This article interviews her and discusses her transformation as well as a new project: putting ready made recipe books into every bag of groceries given out at food banks, teaching how to use to the food they are given, to not give up on eating healthy while poor. One of the best things I"ve found online in a while.

Two of my favorite women writers come together: Lena Dunham writes her memories of the last year and a half of her friendship with Nora Ephron. I was just writing here on this blog a few nights ago about how You've Got Mail was comforting me in the wee hours when I couldn't sleep. Nora Ephron has been an important part of my reading and movie watching life, making me laugh, cry and think while laughing and crying.  

I LOVE this article by Meagan Francis, not only because have more kids and make them clean! could be my slogan, but because I felt a sigh of relief, as I always do, to be reminded that I am not the only mom who makes my kids do so many things that no other child that every walked the earth or had opposable thumbs had to do!!!  

Monica Drake writes simply and beautifully of the death she witnessed with her family in the Oregon river she'd been visiting all her life.

A visual summary of what 'Obamacare' does for you. And for me- someone who with a preexisting condition, wouldn't be able to get health insurance at all without this plan.

not a princess

The Incredible List of 10 Steps To Create A Magical Summer For Kids

1. Start with a soundtrack  In the car and home, having one or two CD's of music that play off & on all summer layers the summer experience for your children; it is a way of sealing experience into memory that gives it an added layer of texture: sound. Music. Pick a type of music that maybe you haven't listened to often or at all. We've done bluegrass, swing, French pop, Michael Jackson (his own catagory), and this summer we are listening to Starbucks New Orleans blues jam at home, and in the car a Disney song CD that has classical music as its underlying presence, layered with Disney voices singing random songs (not from Disney movies) like ' Your Library '- a song that completely delights me and has even hooked Lola and Emily, who are ten. To a thundering string section we hear ' how far away is Neptune? / just what is a blue moon? / What did famous men say? / anything they said you'll find it here! / your library! / something to rely apon! / your library! / take a tip from Ludwig Von! ' What is important is the repetition: the music must be played often and all summer, to seal the summer light, heat and laughter inside of it, to be released for the rest of their lives when they hear it play or remember the sound.

2. Find water. Enter. Repeat. The summer must include water play. Living in Southern California, we have access to beaches all year long, but nothing compares to the summer experience of a blistering hot day, the smell of sunblock, brightly colored towels, shouting, splashing, the feel of cold water against your skin, burning your feet on concrete, stuffing your face after swimming. Swimming has a particularly wonderful effect on children, both energizing and exhausting them, and even the most timid swimmer finds joy sitting in a foot of cold water and flexing their toes. Eating after swimming is incredibly wonderful, food tastes better and you are inevitably starving. Sitting in the kitchen wrapped in a towel, music playing quietly while eating black bean burritos with avocado and cheese, my kids are blissed out. We use the complex pool, but before we had one we used the community pool, and when we didn't use that we had a Wal-Mart plastic pool and a slip and slide out front on the lawn. All are awesome.

3. Surround them with books. A few times a week I load whatever kids are on hand and head toward Barnes and Noble. We go in the middle of the afternoon when it is blazing hot and after we've eaten lunch, and enter the air conditioned book sanctuary with a sigh. I order hot coffee, the older kids maybe have a cookie, maybe not, and I follow Ever around in the kid section while the other children browse and read. We usually end up staying for hours. Every now and then I squat and read Ever a book, but at 18 months she usually only follows along to one or two before she's ready to move. After a while, I hold a book or magazine in hand and read while following Ever. Sometimes at the end, Lola watches Ever while I browse. The books smell delicious, like nothing else. The effect of being surrounded with books is also like nothing else: an entire corniaopia of ideas, worlds, thoughts, experiences, hope, despair, hilarity, adventure, discovery, science, every fascinating thing you can think of is packaged and piled on the floor, on bookshelves and countertops. Whatever Lola is interested in, I find a book on it and drop it off with her casually ' you might like this... ' Last year she read a ton about sharks and Helen Keller. Dakota used to read animae, Calvin and Hobbes and books on dragons. Ian loved anything about old wars, guns and ninjas. Sometimes a child will find a book that sparks an interest they never even knew they had, and they will cry when you have to leave.( OK, so that last part isn't so amazing. ) At home, we have books for adults and kids in every room, bookshelves in every room, and making quiet time almost every day where the groan ' nothing to do ' can be met with ' find a book ' is important. Boredom is the precursor to a lot of exploration, imagination and delving into things otherwise left alone. I also pick a few books to read out loud to my kids every summer. Right now I'm reading Bambi to Lola (and Ever by default)

4. Do nothing. Time to drift, to imagine, where the T.V. and computer and pads of I's are not allowed. Time where ' what should I doooo? ' is met with a SUPER ANNOYING shrug from Mom. Time where the house is quiet and maybe the baby is sleeping and the kids find themselves lying on their backs staring at the ceiling in total silence, after Mom threatens to ground them from T.V. if they ask again to watch it. This is good. This is very good. Make sure there are pockets of this every day. This is the time when, as a child, I created a newspaper/newsletter that I ended up working on for a few months. This is when I wrote poetry, journaled, made elaborate worlds for potato bugs, took naps I didn't know I needed, prayed, found corners of my yard that were perfect for playing fairies and dressed up my dogs. This is the time when a child's mind finds more deeply and profoundly what the world is to them without any interference. It is when spirituality, creativity, intellectual curiosity and self control can be navigated.

5. Spend lots of time in nature. Sit underneath bushes and push toes in dirt. Climb trees. Take hikes, slow and watchful, fast and exhaustive. Crash through waves at the beach, hunt for sand crabs. Swim in a lake. A relationship with the wild is one of the most important aspects of life I hope to pass on to my children- nature is all of our church, is is the true universal language. I myself have a particular affinity for trees and lakes, out of all of nature's offerings; spending time at Lake zaca at my girlfriends's wedding was restorative for all of us. Watching Ever and Lola waddle around the edge of the lake, getting muddy and falling, rolling strange objects in their hands, looking through the long grasses, I was reminded of how powerfully nature absorbs us. The look of intent on Ever's face when observing a fly, the lengths she went to track it and the absorption with which she followed it's flight was beautiful. This is the opposite of ADD. Nature is healing for our souls and our physical bodies, and I want my children to have an instinct to seek out nature when they are lost in life, and when they need to reconnect with peace and acceptance, and to use their bodies the way our bodies were meant to be used when created. Moving amongst the world. Spending plenty of times out doors in the wild means that our children will care more about what happens to our planet, and it is easier for them to understand the environmentally concerned choices that we are making at home. Every summer I take my children hiking, to the beach, the local lake and the local park which has a stream and plenty of trees, birds, small fish and water plants.

6. Watch foreign films and documentaries and amazing animation. We have developed a rhythm where the summer is a time of more experimental fare for viewing. While we watch foreign films and documentaries the rest of the year also, it's nothing like the ratio of summer viewing. Over the summer the T.V. is generally not allowed on until the evening, and then we scroll through the On Demand, after a long day of summering. We are tired and cozy and fed, and I cuddle up Lola while Ever drifts off. During the school year Lola is allowed T.V. at 7pm, and usually watches Disney channel for an hour. Filling the summer with more exotic filmmaking gives the summer itself a more exotic feel; it helps highlight summertime as a special place of magic, where girls speak fluent French and teach in Germany, or we learn how a tiger protects her young in the wild. Last weekend Lola and I watched The Hedgehog, a French film based on the novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog . The narrator is an eleven year old girl who reminded me physically quite a bit of Lola, and is only a year older. The story is a dark, but in my house this is all right, as long as certain perameters exist, which they did in this movie. We had a wonderful talk about life and death and French girls and history after the movie. Oftentimes these movies provoke questions that can be answered later that week at a trip to B&N, where we find a book to tell us what we want to know. It's good for children to have to follow along while reading the dialogue, even if they miss some or get lost at points. It's a good study of human behavior to see how much they understand of what is going on even without the 'explanation'. Usually they follow right along even if they miss a few lines. I ask a lot of leading questions, to help their imaginations and logic come together and lead them to conclusions, or better questions!*

7. Make A big ole awesome craft.  Now I am close to the least crafty person in the world. While I love a good collage, that is as far as my crafty instincts go. But still, every summer I tackle one or two really cool crafty projects with my kids. This summer we are building a giant cardboard castle. Not only does it provide a time to work together as a team, it creates another dimension to the summer, a 3-D cardboard pop-out that comes to mind when the kids remember summertime.

source declutterorganizerepurpose.wordpress.com

8. Explore your neighborhood and city. Maybe you don't have gas money to go all over the place every day- we don't. But we can visit the park ten minutes away that we've never been to, or go once to the nickel arcade, trapse through the pet store we've never been in that has all the huge snakes or spend an afternoon in the library one town over. Learning to be curious about the world around you can start with actually taking time to visit that world. Kids only get to go where you take them!

9. Have your child set a goal and accomplish it by summer's end. Summertime is ready made for goal setting- a tidy chunk of time in which many things can be accomplished. Lola desperately wants an Ipad, which we can.not. afford no way no how. But we can help her to earn money. She made blocks of frozen treats that are currently filling the freezer and will be sold, and is spending some time at her grandma's working to earn money. Her friend in the complex is also working with her, and they will share the Ipad on a schedule and agreement they've come up with my help. Not only is this awesome for self motivation and confidence, it slowly and non-threateningly builds independence.

10. Make magic. Be ridiculous, creative, silly, boldly magical. We hung a fairy banner we already owned on the front porch, spray our hair colors, go on mud hikes, play shaving cream in the bathtub, dance half naked in the kitchen, paint our nails, stay up half the night talking (last night!) , make cookies and watch a movie, eat dinner outside often, compete for weirdest dance move, whatever we can think of.  I try to let joy loose on a regular basis. It's the best magic I know.

* true story- i also say SHHHHH a lot.

naptime

Breakdown Of The Nights of An Insomniac Neurotic

Food consumed this weekend:

Doubleshot 1/2 caf. with soy

Kind bar (raw nuts and fruits)

Cake 

Linguini with crab

Bread

1 stuffed small mushroom

Corona Light

Cake2

Bagel

Doubleshot, 1/2 caf. with soy

Egg and turkey bacon sandwich 

Cake3

2 black bean avocado and cheese burritos

1/2 a Pacifico

1 bag Oreo 'chips' (some Weight Watchers thing that is delicious)

Cup of Noodle

Rocky Road Ice Cream

Pacifico 

So. Yeah. Pretty sure I'm not making premium breastmilk for Kinny with these ingredients.

Stress. Eating. Stress. Eating.

Lying in bed at night trying to sleep. Keep feeling like I have head lice and scratching head. I have no head lice. Give up. Turn on T.V. It's 2am. Ever is sleeping next to me. Lola is asleep on the small bed pushed up next to my bed. Mr. Curry is sleeping on Lola's bed in Lola's room. Turn on T.V. Realize You've Got Mail is just starting, feel tremendously happy. Love  You've Got Mail. Perfect antidote to fearful, neurotic brain: Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, snappy dialogue, sweet, New York, Meg's apartment, Meg's bookstore, the computer messaging back and forth, Parker Posey and Greg Kinnear as the nevermeanttobes, love. Tell self I will fall asleep during movie. Stay up and watch entire movie, minus a break where I spend 20 or more minutes searching for fleas. Find and kill five fleas.

Borax and vacuuming is working, yes. Downstairs for food, back upstairs. Read A Stained White Radience. Fall asleep 4am, neurotic worrying brain finally overcome with fatigue. Wake early, give baby to Mr. Curry, back asleep until 11am.

Ashamed to admit I watched half of Waterworld.

Watched three episodes of Investigates...  and 48 Hrs. etc all which included brutal, in house murders.

Checked downstairs at 1am including closets and laundry room, holding a kitchen knife. Realized I was heading for crazytown and am not allowed to watch those shows anymore, indefinitely. 

List of Worries

Dakota

Mr. Curry

Lola

Ian

my sister Lura who I haven't seen in 9 years

my lack of job

cancer

heart attacks

babies crying in cribs and no one is picking them up

kids getting abused and no one knows

the boy who lives in my complex and is fat and everyone at his school is making fun of him and his dad said he tried to stop it/had meetings with school/nothing is working/son is miserable, keep thinking what can i say to him to help? 

the Supreme Court and health care

my lack of insurance 

Dakota's friend who I believe is very sad

the two women I've read about online in the last week who died of breast cancer and were only in 30's

my novel

babies throwing fits and people getting angry and yanking them

all the babies that cry so much at daycare and preschool because there are too many babies and not enough teachers and i can't believe this is normal/acceptable but it is

Then I start over again with my family. 

This is the last few nights. Melatonin, I"m looking at you. 

West Coast!

(Dakota made me say that)

xo

Three In The Bed and The Little One Said

The Little Boy Turns Eighteen

Dakota

Eighteen years ago. I held you and had a spiritual experience. A storm front rode though the white, sterile hospital room as clearly as if I could reach out and thrust my hand through the thick condensation, breath the cold, wind whipped air. At nineteen, only one year older than you are now, I had been the in the perfect state for complete transformation: changed, but not blossomed, clear but lost, hopeful but terrified, seeking but unfindingunfindingunfinding: then: standing in front of full length mirror with your Aunt Lura and your Grandma Mary- only in her mid-forties then, with long wild red hair- I said this: My breasts look funny. Purple. Hm. Grandma Mary turned to me from the closet, pulling on a sweater, and said Oh Maggie, could you be pregnant? And like so many times in my life, I Knew. I knew at that moment, as I shook my head 'no', then corrected with words ' Well Maybe... ' that I was pregnant, and then, to my astonishment, I knew that it was the best thing that could happen to me; I was briefly  overwhelmed with terror, which I quickly recognized as obligatory, and then suffused with joy. 

I think you will find that this is not the reaction of most 19 year old girls who find they are pregnant while they are unmarried, jobless, living with their mother and sister in a one bedroom apartment and recently broken up with the father. I'm not most girls.

At 20 I lay in Pomerado Hospital in complete bliss, the state I was the entire last few months of my pregnancy, again, the opposite of what you would expect. The last few months normally being a puffy, water retaining, back hurting, sleepless and anxiety producing time of constant peeing and random pains. I felt wonderful. I never have felt so completely calm and joyful at the same time, so excited about the future. I did not have dreams of college at that time, those would come later, any dreams of mine, but your life given to me, your spirit placed with me, was the gift that woke me up from a long, dreamless sleep. As soon as I held you in my arms I felt as they say Fathers often feel about their baby girls: I was taken, completely, you owned me. I knew I was yours completely and that my love for you was limitless. At that moment I felt God. Throughout my life I have been spiritual and then agnostic and so forth, switching around like a lost lamb. I will never fail to report what the truth of my experience is, and while you were being born, and afterward, I clearly felt the presence of something else with us. It felt like this:

When you are out in the wilderness all alone underneath trees, and it is dark. The full moon is out and you feel a cold breeze across your face, in your ear, through your hair, and your cheeks hurt. You are waiting for something wonderful but it is not there. The sky is purple and black and stars are shot through like pinpricks of diamonds. The trees are singing in their tops, murmuring to the sky, swishing. An owl flies over and then nearby and then to your astonishment, lands on a treebranch directly in front of your face. He is two feet away but you can barely see him but his eyes, the enormous saucer yellow eyes of an owl. He hoots at you and stares at you solemnly. The wind blows. The trees murmur. You begin to cry, and the owl hoots again softly, dips his head, and flies away.

When you were born I felt the great owl and the night and the air and the presence of those enormous eyes on me. I felt that the entire cosmos was celebrating your birth, and I thought that if I were deeply religious I would think ' This is how it felt when Jesus was born ' and then I thought that not being deeply religious I was still having that same thought. And then I knew that this is how the world rejoices every time a baby is born. Although the faces around a particular birth may not reflect it, it is there. 

I think back to that day often, and how the feeling that I had did not disappear immediately, as I feared it would, but took years to fade. I was graced, graced with the gift of that emotion, because it protected you from the worst of me, parts of me that were so damaged that I needed, and got, intensive therapy for the first four years of your life. Without that overwhelming, spiritually ecstatic love that I felt every waking moment the first long length your life, the demons that I carried would have hurt you. That was my own personal idea of hell, that I would brand my children with my own pain. If I have ever received divine intervention, that was it. 

It seems impossible for me to tell the story of you without talking so much about me. Your birth and  your life has tremendous meaning. Not only did it save my spirit, it also has graced your brothers and sisters with a mother more healed and more stable than I would have been able to give them were I not forced to grow so quickly to better parent you. Your spirit reflects the enormity, the meaning of your birth as well as it's endless joy. 

You are beautiful.  The very essence of life and it's joy and possibility radiates from your wide, crinkling blue eyes and smile. Young manhood carries you like a sword, sharp and sarcastic and intelligent and brash, bold and arrogant but deeply felt and considered. The lyrics you write for your music reflect not only your wit and intellect but the depth of your reflection on life. Your laugh is one of the most cheerful, energizing things in my world. Your very walk is one of young life- long brown arms swinging, so often laughing, smiling, swimming, skating, running, playing bass, moving like the  young do move. You meet each person you greet eye to eye, as I always taught you to. Hold your head up, son, I'd tell you over and over, and look people in the eye. Smile, because it lets them knowyou mean no harm. To this day you meet people head up, smile open, eye to eye. You honor character, courage, loyalty, integrity. Last week you found a wallet and waited with it in hand until the old lady in our complex came back, frazzled and upset, and found you standing with it open palm. 

Your friends are made fast, as if you were still five. You make friends with babies to old people, police officers- like the one you met and ate lunch with on the East Coast this summer- and hoodlums, gang bangers and business men. You talk to hobos and learn their life stories. Your favorite books when you were little were Calvin and Hobbes, the enormous comic collections that you read so often they are brown and worn to scraps. I read them to you so often I know all the stories. You love music, girls, your family, your friends, bass guitar, writing lyrics, skating, people, Hawaii, San Diego and plan to get a San Diego tattoo on your back soon. You discern character quickly, something I like to think you inherited from me.  You are very funny, something I know you inherited from your dad. You are cautious but brave. You were afraid to bungee jump but did anyway. You were afraid to stay overnight with Grandma in L.A. when you were a little boy but told me tearfully on the phone, I know I'm never really away from you, Mommy. But I miss you anyway. You are interested in every person you meet, a fabulous quality. You love and dote on your little sisters and are comrades with your brother. You are at times volatile but like a man does, you are learning to restrain. You mostly hold back when I see you want to bark at me. You are growing up. You are grown up. Oh....

my sweet boy.

I could type a thousand and five words on this page and all would just be representations of the same

three words:

I love you

I love you

I love you

You are eighteen June 22, 2012. You are going to have a wonderful, love filled, interesting life done your own unique way.

Always and Forever,

Mom 

Who's On First?

Ages and Names of Key Players 

Lola / 10

Dakota / 17

Ever / 1

Me / 37

Lola: Who is in the bathroom? -sounds slightly irritated and aggressive, like a football coach wondering why a play went wrong.

Me: Not me -distant voice, as I am on computer- But I need to use it! Why don't you just use this one? -meaning the one in my master bedroom-

Ever: Wola! Wola! (this means Lola)

Lola: Because the floor is soaked Mom. Did Ever pee in here? Well who is in there then? -more aggressively

Me: Don't be rude, Lola.  And no! Ever didn't pee. It's from the shower. Your shower, I believe.

Ever: No! No! Noooo!! Mommy.

Lola: Well I have TO GO pee Mommy.

Me: Hmmmm.

Ever: Pee! Pee! Crying?

Lola and I simulatenously: No one is crying!

Lola: I hate it when you say 'hmmm'. It's so annoying.

Me: -in warning tone- That's enough, Lola.

From Bathroom, Dakota: Lola! Chill out! I'm using the bathroom. Use the other one and stop complaining so loud!

Ever: -high pitched loud voice, puts hands in fists and shrugs her eyebrows and shoulders- No! No! Wola! Oh mang! -this means 'oh man'

Lola and I: laughing

Lola: Dakota can I please use it now?

Dakota: God! Stop being so loud! I'm trying TO USE THE BATHROOM

Ever: God! Wola! Mang!

Dakota: laughter

Ever: Crying?

Dakota: laughter

Lola and I: No crying!

Ever: Oh mang.