burning sage

On My Messiness

My house is a mess

because it is full of life and living

(perhaps I could do better

but I do many things well,

so maybe this thing is not worth as much as I try to believe it must be

when I look around my full, brimming, messy house).

Remember

http://lauriemo.blogspot.com/2010/02/in-which-i-speak-of-unspeakable.html

http://www.tulipgirl.com/

The Painter

My little one paints with the row of colors directly in front of her, and the paper, her artwork, to the side. Total delight in the paints, dipping, and stirring, and brushing. The outcome is secondary. Even the process is ignored in full delight in the octet of color. Her own work sits to the side. It's just the joyful "overflow". Eventually she Has To take a bit of that color, put it on her own paper and Look at it. Almost surprised by how it looks there, and then back to the colors. It is all about the colors, The Paint!

V-Musings (Which may be a copy written title)

I have not written. When I break a habit, a plan more, I am most likely to let it go altogether, as if it has lost it's worth. And I can't do that because I must write. And I still haven't written my Purpose Of Writing. So it is much too early to give up. Not sure how to sustain this though, and seriously wondering if it will make any difference if I do. I compare myself, come up lacking and want to wash it all away so that I can pretend I am equal again. Equal by doing nothing.

It is Valentines day and V-day. And I am thinking about how amazed I am by the opportunity to raise a daughter. There is nothing about which I am more passionate. To raise her with dignity and an understanding of worth. To teach her that her femininity is a treasure, her vulnerability a prize - that none of this should be exploited or used as a weapon against her. To show her how to nurture her own soul without violation so that it can never be violated by anyone else. Raising a strong, wise woman who can and will change the world for men and women - - I sat and watched you eat your lunch today in the winter sun and wanted to tell you all this. But your world is still simpler than that, and this is time for showing, not telling. You dropped a noodle and commented that it was shaped like a star, and then corrected yourself. "A human shape, with a star head." Humanity and femininity. Happy V-day, little baby girl.

Father Daughter Dance

I can hear their muffled voice upstairs

Cadence and Call that is all theirs

Neither of them know that they

Are the only spot still sane in the other's awful day

Grabbing on to the only branch

Big and little little

Flitting like their words into each other

safe Here

Father Daughter Dance

Not Published

Making appointments, trying to pay bills. Instead of Nicor I pulled up DTE Energy. I wish I could cry on command, crying would make it easier sometimes. Someday I will figure out why this time of year is so hard. Where is the connection that the important parts of me are still hanging on to? Or maybe next year it will be easy and I will forget.

Roughing It

Someday the baby will nap well again, and I will write in sunny bliss with marshmallows floating around me while butterflies hum.

Until then, baby cries, sick as can be. Nothing I can do to help her. Messes feel like failures, but so does angry frustration. Appointments made, facebook has changed again. Please give me answers. No, please just help her. One armed-baby is so sad.

Until then I type in bathroom to have it done. One more day - Accomplished.

Missing One

And so I have already missed one post of my own personal marketable skill challenge . . . err, endeavor . . . Hmmm. Not sure what noun goes there. But not writing has given me something to write about, so once again I can delay what should have been the original post.

Sometime the child will nap and I shall write that post.

And so for tonight we have:

Vague disappointment

A pinch of anxiety, a dollup of dread

Heaping cup of why did I say that

And a bit of . . . here it comes. Remorse.

It's the remorse that I never know what to do with, not in part due to the fact that I don't believe in regret.

I believe the tub is running over.

Writing Else Where

Blogspot won't let me log in so I'm writing here

and copying it later. It's after midnight, but I'm counting this as Friday night.

Still not taking my time to write my "Why I am writing this" speech. It's in my head, I'll get it down eventually.

Speaking of getting it down . . . Since the first breastfeeding days . . . err, nights. . . being up alone at night makes me feel somehow linked to all the other mamas out there doing it. Snuggling sick little ones, nursing the tinies through the night - the little ones who haven't yet learned to abandon life for sleep for these longs stretches we call normal. Just mamas, fixing their own little piece of the world. Making it better, making it work for someone. Redemption in the tiniest piece of the universe?

I would pace the living room in our first little house with R., before I learned to tuck her in with me in dark, and picture the landscape as it would look from much higher. Darkness, with lit windows here and there where mamas rocked their babies. Other mamas looking out into the darkness not asleep, because something was suddenly more important than the most basic need we have.

Once again words don't sum it all up right. They're weak things to stuff feelings down into. "Use your words", but sometimes words just don't get it exactly right.

Write Now

This is me. Writing because I must. Must, must, must write. Off to watch a movie now, and to chill, and to recuperate from a day that was. But tomorrow I will explain. When I write. Write again. Write, Write, Write. Must.