People In Your Neighborhood

take a seat and get enough!

Boston Mamas < This post on a specific, super easy to use time management technique comes with 

                             an online hookup. Sweet!

New York Times < Jenny Lawson, The Bloggess, has written a really smart, hilarious book.

Rage Against The Minivan  < Kristen writes for me here. The title says it all: Default Stress and the

                             Fleeting Nature of Gratitude ( Smashing Pumpkins album, right? )

Mamapundit < Katie writes about something I spend a lot of time thinking about with a 17 year old

                         son: What kind of mom will you be when your kids leave the nest?

like a low humming coming from the West

List What You'd Most Like To Do

In the Order You'd Most Like To Do It

Or Alternately, Whatever Comes To Mind

^ read an amazing novel in bed with really good chocolate cake and freezing cold milk and complete 

  silence with the knowledge that my children and husband are completely happy wherever they are.

^ be clean, shaven, smell wonderful and have highlighted and trimmed hair and a relatively bloat free

   stomach and lay in bed with my husband all day alternating between sex, T.V., novels and eating.

   my husband must be in a stellar mood.

^ call my bank and be shockingly surprised to hear that the balance is thousands of dollars more than

   i expected it to be and all of my bills have been brought current.

^ apply for health insurance and be accepted. find that the rate is reasonable.

^ exercise, shower and find that my body has responded with mutant like powers to one hour of 

   exercise and i have an ass you could bounce a quarter off of.

^ discover that because of the vitamins and eating habits we have had in the last decade my entire

   family is completely immune to cancer , heart disease, neurological disease and any other eases 

   that aren't so easy.

^ listen to a cd that i sort of know of but not completely and find that i absolutely love it and continue

   listening to it, uninterrupted, for hours on end until it has become part of my dna.

^ continue nursing ever but overnight find that she does not wake at night anymore to nurse. except

   once. just because.

^ come home and find that my entire house has been cleaned baseboard to ceiling with the most 

   extreme level of obsessive care so that not only are the dog butt stains on the lower part of my

   walls gone, so is the almost invisible BUT NOT quite dots of oil in my kitchen and the tinge

   of discoloration around the toilet base.

^ open my underwear drawer and find piles of beautifully folded underwear and bras that fit perfectly

   without a single sign of anyone ever having a period, ever. 

^ pull on a pair of jeans that look good and don't magically grow two sizes two big one hour after

   being worn.

^ after a nice swim, lie naked in a soft patch of grass on a towel in the sun and get warm goosebumps

   head to toe. preferably my husband is there. preferably he is also naked. and on a towel. and

   getting goosebumps. 

She Said With A Straight Face

Lola: I was playing this game with my friends. It's a secret tree fairy game.

Me: Cool! I love trees.

Lola: My friend's secret name was Amalya.

Me: What was yours?

Lola: Loleaka.

Me: laughing, more laughing, more laughing

I don't know why, but I laughed so hard in the hallway that tears rolled down my face.

That Pig Is Radiant!!

** This is my favorite kind of sponsored post- where I get an awesome product, make a little money, and am able to give something to the readers at Flux Capacitor. If you love skin products or think it might be time to stop washing with soap and water and look into something more, shall we say, youth enhancing, then read on **

I'm 37. I love my 30's- despite the enormous pressures and stress of 'it all' (insert your own itall) I have felt more confident, grounded and happy with myself in the last seven years than anytime before. Whatever stresses come my way, and they are plentiful, with love and other drugs I have weathered it fairly well. The thing that shows wear and tear? My skin. I'm a white girl with blue eyes and freckles. Any damage done from sun or stress to skin like mine ends up looking haggard quite quickly. Every shadow and indent on my face stands out against the background of pale Irish skin.  I've worn sunblock pretty religiously since about 15 or 16, and I eat as organic and whole foods as we can on this tiny budget, but I can't erase the exhaustion and late lights/early mornings of the occasional life crisis and  nursing and co-sleeping and raising four kids- I didn't nurse Ian, but raising him along with his Momma and Mr. Curry? Yes.

I think the trifecta of good looking skin ( outside of avoiding stress and exhaustion hahaha! ) is:

+ sunblock

+ healthy, whole foods diet with plenty of good fats

+ great skin care products

To me, great skin care products have to be not only effective but can't be used on animals and needs to be made with natural ingredients. 

Muvazi is all of that.

They also have a 100% 30 Day Money Back  'without asterick' return policy- if you aren't happy with it for any reason, you can return it. No tricks or hidden rules.

I have been using a skin care system from Muvazi for two weeks. This includes the facial wash, face serum ( very important ) , moisturizer and eye cream.  The facial wash is really, really good. It doesn't dry my face out, so after I use it, I do feel that ' super clean and just washed ' feeling but without the ' i just plastic wrapped my face ' feeling alongside it.  After using that with warm water, and Ever standing at my feet saying TOOTSIE NIGHT NIGHT ( which means, I demand you put me to bed and nurse me instead of caring for your skin!!! who cares what your stupid skin looks like, Mom!!! )

I put on the serum. From all the beauty magazines I obsessively read in my twenties, I know that the serum is THE important part of changing your skin. It's got the concentrated powerhouse of ingredients to work overnight so you can see actual changes in your skin.  I then apply the eye cream, and then the moisturizer. Both the eye cream and moisturizer are again a perfect consistency- Muvazi is really good at this. You feel soft and clean but not oily, not over heavy on your face.  The eye cream works on those wrinkles you get from laughing, crying and smiling. I don't need mine to go away entirely ( that's laser work ) but I would like them to not take over their territory entirely as I age. We can compromise.

 

So after two weeks? I can absolutely see change. My skin- to use a wayyy overused advertising word, but also a word used in one of my favorite books, Charlotte's Web- is radiant after use. I'm assuming that this is dependent on actually using the products every night. It's like vitamins- you can't take them every now and then and then complain they aren't 'helping'. Most things, to have a quantifiable result, demand routine use.  I can see a definite reduction in the signs of late nights and a fussy toddler- the uneven skin and deeper lines are more even and more shallow.  I'm stoked. I don't have time to do much makeup and the situation with my 'wardrobe' is really embarrassing, so having clean hair and good lookin skin is pretty awesome for me.

Here's what Muvazi is offering:

The entire Muvazi kit that I have been using- that is facial wash, skin serum, eye cream and moisturizer-  for over $80.00 OFF the regular retail of $149.95. That is a total price of $69.95 + Free Shipping.   They are also, for the first time, offering a free Comedone Extractor for the first 25 who order. The retail on that is $11.95. It is a blackhead, blemish remover- SO SATISFYING. I love this kind of thing. You can pop out all the clogged up stuff!

***Plug in the words  FluxCapacitor  when ordering to get this price.

It's kind of awesome how blogging provides a way to get sponsors like this for me as well as deals like this for anyone who reads blogs. Like a club with serious discounts. I personally have used the discount code off of numerous other blogs and their sponsored offers over the years including most recently for baby products for Ever. Thanks for reading. xo

the railway children

Over the weekend we went to the Poway Train Exhibit. Our new home has the best location of any place we've ever lived- we are smack dab in the middle of suburbia, with all its benefits, but it's a very countrified suburbia, so it's slogan 'the country in the city'. Our neighbors have horses, and driving the kids to school it is a regular, non noteworthy thing to wait on horse back riders crossing the street...and leaving behind ENORMOUS piles of shit. Wow. Anyhow, the street we live on also happens to be the street which small, charming little shops are lined up on- a coffee shop, liquor store ( we go there for donuts for dessert once a week ), bridal store, zumba, etc. Just two blocks down from our home, on the same street, is the beautiful park where this exhibit took place. It has it's own running train, that runs in a loop every Saturday and Sunday.

Here is the train station where you buy tickets. We took the girls on the train a few weekends ago and Ever was beside herself. I don't think I've mentioned here that the girl is OBSESSED with two things. One: trash trucks. Two: trains. So Ever lucked out big time living here. Every day either Mr. Curry, myself, or both of us walk Ever through the park in her stroller, and she says 'choo choo' a bagillion times.

Isn't our fountain gorgeous? I use it to meditate- I stop on walks and say a prayer.meditation for every level of water that is falling.

It was about 80 degrees and gorgeous.

Inside there was a miniature model train exhibit. Ever was in love. Personally too I'm upset by the appearance of the dreaded double chin in this photo to notice much else.

Ever goes up the stairs. And down. And up. And down. She is also saying 'mine' and 'no' and 'crying' all day. She says 'crying' to notate when she or anyone else IS crying, and it's the saddest little inflection you can imagine. ' CrYIng?' She also threw her first real tantrum over the weekend. 17 months. It's on.

I can't imagine sisters more in love with each other. I can't imagine how I got this lucky.

About five thirty pm and everyone was tired. Long day and still a walk home and then driving Ian to is other home. Ian looks like he's thinking about something here. Something he's considering. Hmmm.

Ever and Mr. Curry are in that sweet spot of bonding. When he picks her up from my preschool she says 'truck? vroom vroom. truck? da-da. bye!' She's ready to head out with her Daddy. Hope you all had a good weekend!

bathroom talk

I am in the shower and my hair swirls across the walls like ink pen illustrations. I put the hair there after it comes out in my hands. I am a mother of four. I am a wife. I think about things like: clogged drains. I clearly see a beautiful nude, her arms raised, breasts curved, head turned backward to look for someone. Around the water sounds escape like baby coos- there is Lola's laughter, the dogs barking, Mr. Curry's bass trombone for Ever.  I stare at the hair on the wall and wonder if I photographed it and put it on Tumblr I could make a famous site: Maggie's Hair Illustrations- The Art of The Mundane. Everyone would come and view the masterpieces of my hair, the brown and blonde and grey pieces delicately curving, making surprisingly poignant sketches that sometimes move in a surprise splash of water. A whole new art form. I also had the million dollar idea of ' Soapy Pussies! ' which is simply an entire website full of shots of ... you guessed it. This probably already exists and is making some other shameless housewife rich. I wish I didn't have so much shame. Guilt. Neurosis. Who would it hurt? We could buy health insurance. We could pay our rent without spending the entire 30 days beforehand in a horrible and gut wrenching countdown of budgeting, seeing if we will actually have enough money to pay for where we live. My life becoming like so many artists lives I have read. Without the drinking problem. Without the cigarettes, a habit I gave up at 30. Without drugs. With the kids, though. With Mr. Curry. Not alone on the boat. I also had the idea of Naked Movers, but that's already been done.  We googled that last week. Mr. Curry assured me that must be gay men moving for gay men and apparently it is so. No woman wants a bunch of naked sweaty balls and buttcrack moving all her precious things, he pointed out. True. It's like when Charlotte's fiance sat down naked on her white couch. Ball sweat on a white couch? Not good. I guess I'll have to go back to brainstorming.

domestic triumph

i am going to wake in this morning
inside of it, in the slip water over my face
the duckling pout of the children's faces
sourball eyes, a smear of recollection still
puckering their expression- in dreams,
they were close to the thing, they flew.
i will do what mothers do and i will be
found lacking: minus eggs. minus bacon.
the car will start and there will be one
moment when i will feel i cannot do this
the pain sits like a cat on my chest,
flicking its tail. licking its chops.
my marriage is straining, groaning,
coming apart in sparkplugs and silence-
i am being wounded internally. in the liver
that cannot filter debris of this size,
the gut with it's long ugly cry, that will not
let me eat, and the heart! of course, the heart.
my lover is all gone away. he throws his
demons at me like startled cats, they claw
my face and hands, i move quickly and think fast
but no one can escape the home they live in.
no one can escape the heart they live for.
all the poems in the world can't save me
now, i will think, but then the phrase
' you must change your life '
is spoken sternly into my ear,
and i am in tears as the children
argue about gum chewing and breathing,
because i know that i have found these
things, and no one can take them away.
i know that i have found these
things, and no one can take them away.

maggie may ethridge 

in spite of my rage i am still just a rat in a cage

you used to say 

x

you were a tomboy

genius a

calligraphy major.

now you ?

change is managed

by the broken 

hearted.

collect it

at cost.

a headache a backache a stomach ache a pulled muscle in the left upper shoulder follow the wave of tendon to the wall of neck. my stress goes. where does it come? on your tits! the tsunami of stress is foul mouthed. illiterate. ignorant. small. meta. 

until i release myself from believing my own bullshit this will continue.

to bad for me i'm so persuasive.

my book says 'You can transcend all negative when you realize that the only power it has over you is your belief in it. As you experience this truth about yourself you are set free.' -eileen caddy

few words are as beautiful.  you are set free

few words.

all the answers are already there. if only i will read them, believe them, enact them, and live in them.

!!!!!!

i'm laughing weakly.

but still laughing.

raver baby