Work In Progress

getting funky

thanks, first of all, for the love the other day. i heard from people very dear to me, and to know that i'm not alone in these feelings is comforting. cutting ties and letting go of expectations is scary and, frankly, really sad. i'll grieve for awhile. but in the end, i can't keep wishing on stars that will never fall.

to cheer myself up, i did something yesterday that i've wanted to do for 20 years.

i got a tattoo.

interestingly enough, the one i've wanted to get for years ... all four of our zodiac symbols on my back ... is not the route i went first time out. which means i have to go back and get another. lucky for me, i have two others planned, and a third isn't out of the realm of possibility.

(they really are like potato chips: you can't have just one.)

anyway, the place opened up at noon, and i was there waiting at 12:32.

finally the "open" light came on, and i hopped out of the car and ran in. after waiting awhile for the guy, andrew, to re-sketch my sketch and get it prepped, it was finally time.

i asked him how many people back out at the last minute on their first one. he said not as many as you might think.

and then he started.

and it was amazing. the sense of freedom and relief and excitement was overwhelming. i was giddy.

the owner of the parlor came over to chat while the tattoo was going on, and asked me why i was getting one now. i said that i'd wanted one for 20 years, and had refrained for all of those  years because i was stuck in this cycle of being the "good girl." it was the same cycle that propelled me to not double pierce my ears until i was 18 like my mom said, to go to a college i didn't want to attend, to have one of the most boring weddings on the face of the planet, to never ruffle feathers, to always be responsible and polite and helpful, to not do the things that were risky or might be regrettable. and at 39, i was done with that and ready to take ownership of my life and the remaining years i have in it.

and in the end, i had what i wanted ... an "m" and an "m" (marc and michele) on either side of an ampersand made of an arrow and a heart.

and the owner looked at it and said, "no one will ever give you trouble for a tattoo that says, 'mom.'"

and i said, "huh. how about that."

and now i kinda love it all the more. i love my husband and our life together enough to brand myself visibly with it. but it turns out i am also showing the world who i am - a mom. and that's pretty okay, too.

another amazing thing about this "mom" gig: i now have a child old enough to be sharing music with me and getting me totally hooked on stuff i wouldn't have otherwise heard. and then i go digging around for that band and find something pretty awesome. so, thanks for that, henry!

 

teaser

the kids had spring break this past week and we actually went away!! i'll post pix and stories over the course of the week, but considering half the pictures i took are on my phone, i need to spend some time organizing.

but here's a little teaser and a hint:

it rhymes with "shmerto pico."

give me a day and i'll be back ...

my new favorite thing

several months ago, i was reading a blog that's on my list of "check into every few days to see what's up," and the author wrote an entry about noonday collection. noonday is an amazing idea that takes home parties, jewelry, altruism, artistry, self-reliance, hope and compassion, and stirs it all together. what comes out is something amazing. and i'm now hopelessly hooked.

now, i'm not a jewelry person, but i was so moved by noonday's mission that i couldn't wait to support them. their purpose is to become a way for women (and a handful of men) in impoverished communities around the world to craft something beautiful and become their own industry, providing an income for themselves and thus finding their own way out of poverty, and to provide safety and education and hope for their children. after i finished reading the blog entry about the company and its vision, i immediately looked on noonday's web site to see if there is an ambassador (the person who represents the company and leads the home parties) in the twin cities area. turned out, there was only a single ambassador in all of minnesota (that has since changed; now there are two.), and she lives in my town. go figure. i called it fate, and immediately emailed her about having a party.

we got a time set up, and in october i had a great evening of girlfriends, appetizers, and noonday.

while everyone got excited about the product and the philosophy behind the company, the thing that really got us talking was noonday's support of overseas adoptions. friends at the party had either been through the adoption process themselves or knew someone who had/is. we had the best conversation about it, and it created even more excitement and support among us for noonday.

i've now been to a few other parties in my neighborhood, and there seems to be an unspoken agreement that every couple of months *someone* will host a party and we'll eat more appetizers and buy more jewelry. and give yet another artisan/mother hope.

some things i love:

i couldn't resist this necklace. it is made in ethiopia, from found ammunition casings which are then melted down and made into beads. the artists have found a way to take something that brings fear and destruction and remove its power, take control over its state, and turn it into something beautiful that will bring only good things. and it is nearly weightless ... like all of the pain has been stripped away.

the beads of this necklace are made from a seed found in ecuador, which is where marc is from. so i feel a little affinity toward it.

the paper beads are made in africa and are so colorful and lightweight. the earrings in the top right corner? have them. love them.

i am currently coveting everything on this plate. i mean, come on.

my favorite thing is this scarf, crocheted from alpaca by an artist in peru. sadly, this scarf left me at a swim meet last month. i set it down next to me, and then it was gone. the school doesn't have it in the lost & found. i have a feeling someone else saw it and liked it. which i am choosing to view as the universe's way of telling me to get another and support this artist twice; which is proportional to the amount of love i have for this scarf.

one of the things i love most about noonday is that the ambassadors are not in it to be on the top of a sales pyramid. the company is structured so that the profits go back to the artisans. ambassadors gain nothing from recruitment; they just want more people out there spreading the word about noonday in order to bring more good to the communities and artists that are supported by it. so if you need some extra income and love the home party vein of employment (and, really: this stuff sells itself. my ambassador, andrea, gives the history and mission of noonday and shares some of the artisans' stories at the beginning of the party, and then lets everyone touch and try on the jewelry, and answers questions. no pressure, no guilt.), you may want to consider this. or find an ambassador in your area and have a party. you'll have a great time, find some great pieces, and do a good thing.

 

 

snowflake brought the north pole with her

to get up to speed, on friday we found snowflake and gray kitty hanging with the snowman crew:

saturday morning, snowflake was a bit trickier. as in, harper was totally freaked out that snowflake wasn't here. turns out, harper just didn't look in the basement:

i guess snowflake assumed that harper could look harder on a saturday. bad assumption.

so sunday, she was a bit more obvious: she held a braveheart-type meeting with some littlest pet shop warriors:

harp was so excited about that that she colored (half-heartedly, per her norm) a picture for snowflake and folded it up and laid it on the table beside her. snowflake must be more impressed by harper's skill than i am, because she put that picture on the fridge for this morning:

the best thing snowflake did over the weekend, though, was bring some of the north pole back to minnesota with her.

we had been hearing since thursday that snow was coming, and when i went to bed at midnight on saturday, it was indeed coming down. and didn't stop for the next 19 hours.

we woke up to a world of white on sunday.

before lunch, we sent the boy out to shovel ...

(okay, both boys ...)

and harper tried (again, half-heartedly) to make a snowman.

she quickly gave up and went exploring instead.

when the driveway was done, marc went inside to thaw, and henry and harper made snowcones out of snow and sunny d ...

then they stayed out to roll around in the white stuff while we made lunch (mini quiches and cheese & crackers ... perfection), and then we used the snowy day as an excuse to finally decorate the tree.

and a few hours later, we all went back out for round two of shoveling. we got about 11" in all ... more than all of last winter's snowfall combined.

we may get a real winter this year. and that makes us all happy.

so, thanks, snowflake, for bringing our missing holiday spirit back to us. i guess all we needed was snow.

that was pretty awesome

on friday, henry came home from swim practice holding a piece of paper and trying his hardest to not smile his fool head off. he handed me the paper, and lost the fight against the grin.

"i got bumped up to juniors," he said.

only three months in the top intermediate tier, and his coaches moved him on.

he was super proud. as was i.

he was still riding that high on sunday, when he attended a break-out clinic, hosted by his club and led by three olympic swimmers: megan jendrick ('00, '08), matt mclean ('12), and jimmy feigen ('12).

(sidenote: my kid always looks like a giant. put him next to two olympic swimmers who are 6'5" and 6'6" and suddenly henry looks like a kid. however, he's supposed to end up around 6'5" ... which makes my mom heart go apoplectic at the thought of feeding and clothing him for the next handful of years.)

the four-hour clinic started with about an hour of introduction and advice and "what i've learned" from the athletes, during which mclean's gold medal from london made its way around the kids.

i think it looks right at home on henry, yes?

and i totally held that puppy.

it was surprisingly large. and heavy.

the kids were completely into the the moment, and hung on the swimmers' every word.

but then it was time for the fun part: swimming with the olympians.

how many kids get to say they've done that?

for the next two hours, megan, matt, and jimmy broke down the strokes with some training drills, and the kids swam alongside them.

and then it was time for the races.

each kid got a chance to race the swimmers. henry (lane one) chose to swim in a backstroke heat - 25 yards against jimmy feigen (lane four).

jimmy gave the kids a five-second head start, and he didn't go his hardest ... but my kid totally won the heat.

and got a high-five from jimmy.

and a head-pat.

and i think henry was floating after that.

the final heat was a 25-yard freestyle race, which henry was also invited to swim in.

now, i've been to the olympic trials before. i've seen these athletes swim In Real Life. however, unless you see them in a regular-size pool with regular kids, you just can't grasp the power these athletes have in them. it was awesome to watch.

the last race was a good one ... and henry swam his heart out.

after the last race, the kids went back into the stands for another half hour of Q&A. megan, matt, and jimmy were charming and patient and great with the kids and full of tips and honesty, and the kids ate it up.

on the way home, henry was fairly quiet. then, about 10 minutes into the ride, he very quietly said, "that was pretty awesome." then he went back to playing on his phone.

yes, it was pretty awesome, indeed, buddy.

morning walk

these are my favorite nine days of the year: when the leaves are gorgeous, the mornings are cool and crisp, and color is everywhere. i know that by sometime next week, it will all be brown for the next eight months.

it makes me think of emily dickinson:

Besides the Autumn poets sing,

A few prosaic days

A little this side of the snow

And that side of the Haze

A few incisive mornings -

A few Ascetic eves -

Gone - Mr Bryant's "Golden Rod" -

And Mr Thomson's "sheaves."

Still, is the bustle in the brook -

Sealed are the spicy valves -

Mesmeric fingers softly touch

The eyes of many Elves -

Perhaps a squirrel may remain -

My sentiments to share -

Grant me, Oh Lord, a sunny mind -

Thy windy will to bear!

 

or my favorite autumn quote, which seems to sum up my thoughts on the season quite perfectly:

 

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it,

and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.

- George Eliot

 

and it makes me think of our wedding, held in the middle of october when it was beautiful. and marc's best man alluded to eliot's sentiment in his toast to us, when he wished us a life of eternal autumn ... neverending color and beauty, and always appreciating how rare it is. (not that it's an ending, he was quick to clarify.)

yesterday morning, when i looked out the window at 6:15, the sun was just starting to lighten the sky and i could see the misty fog out our back windows ... the the heat of the previous day struggling with the cool of the night.

once the kids got on the bus, i grabbed my camera and my walking shoes and set out to enjoy the autumn that has come to our little space in this world.

and the balloons were back ... how wonderful would it be to float silently above all of this color?

after school, the kids and i set out into the empty lots to look for bugs for henry's science project. because the nights are now so cold, bugs are getting hard to come by. but we did find interesting things, nonetheless:

and all the while, i was feeling sad that this is our last autumn to enjoy all of that space and quiet behind our house.

equipment is starting to move in to lay the infrastructure for the next phase of houses that will take over the empty space. by spring, it will be noise and dirt and urbanity behind us.

luckily, it's still peaceful out my front door.

even if the color is fleeting. however, i have high hopes for what it must be like during a good old fashioned minnesota snowfall. we're all crossing our fingers we get to experience that this year. just not too soon.

here we go again.

6 a.m. alarm = summer is officially over.

nevermind that it's 218 degrees outside with 40,000% humidity, because the kids are once again in school.

i got up this morning and made henry an egg & cheese & bacon burrito (yes, i fried that bacon just for him at 6 a.m. ... hope he doesn't expect that to last.), while he got ready and gathered his things. there were definitely a few more nerves this morning than last year, not sure why. i predict he'll be totally fine by third hour, once he's seen all of his friends and gotten the hang of being in the halls with the masses of puberty again.

i forced him to sit for a first-day-of-school photo ...

and he was gently reminded that i will do that every first day of school until college. and even then, if he stays within a 90 mile radius, i still may show up on his doorstep.

after that, we sat on the steps and chatted for 10 minutes. he was in no rush to go to the corner. we just talked. and it was nice. he's such a good kid.

the bus came, and he left, and i turned around to start the process over again with harper, while marc went back to bed.

instead of a burrito, there were pancakes. (not homemade ... she doesn't like those. they were the mini frozen buttermilk ones from the local market.) and then i made her lunch: chicken and smoked gouda and avocado on a spinach wrap (totally by request) and baby carrots. and there may have been something special put in the lunchbox when she wasn't looking.

and then it was time for a first-day-of-school photo, and she happily complied ...

then she trotted off into the yard to look for bugs and check out the dew on the grass. until the bus showed up 10 minutes early. and no one was at the bus stop. and suddenly all the kids and camera-wielding parents came running.

apparently, no one but the bus driver got the memo.

but by 8:02, they were both gone. an hour later, marc was gone, too.

and i checked the news. and facebook. and read a couple of design blogs. and ate an apple. and comtemplated taking a shower and running to the grocery store. By. My. Self.

i might be sad and lonely later. but by then, they will both be home and be so excited to share all about their first day. and i will get them a snack and listen to their stories.

and then the next nine months will fly by.

so ... the "exciting" stuff

the other day i mentioned that the last weekend had been "exciting."

here's why.

remember when i told you about henry's upward trajectory of improvement and involvement in swimming this year? well, a week after that swim meet, we attended the C finals meet. he qualified in a couple of events.

one of those events was the 50 meter freestyle. he was seeded in 32nd place.

then he swam it.

he improved his time so much that he won the event. won. kicked 31 other kids' times out of the way.

so, wow, right?

after that, we knew the summer session was pretty much over. there were the A/B finals the next weekend, which henry didn't swim, and then the state meet at the U of M the following weekend. so we took it easy ... he took a week off of swimming to just chill. then he took a week off for a fencing camp.

well, in the middle of that second week, i got a call from his coach. he said, "sooo ... you know that henry is in two relays at state this weekend, right? we haven't seen him at practice, so i wanted to make sure you knew about it ..."

uh ...

turns out, that 50 free time of his got him on the 200 free relay and the 200 medley relay. and we didn't know about it. and he hadn't been practicing.

so we quick got him in three more practices, then headed to the U at 6:45 a.m. saturday morning.

the atmosphere was amazing. i think henry was truly in awe of the size of the natatorium at the U, and the amount of kids wandering around. he was nervous, but soon he got with his team, did his warm-ups, and settled in.

most of the kids who were there from his team swim in the level just above where henry swims, so he didn't know any of them. luckily, during warm-ups there were some times to be silly and relax. like when all the girls danced the macarena and the boys tried to hide:

(sidenote: people still know the macarena?! huh.)

then practically every one of the 300+ 13 & under swimmers in the arena danced along to YMCA.

not henry, mind you. he may take after his mom in the pool, but when it comes to dancing, he's all his father. ie, he doesn't. but he did crack a smile, at least.

(oh, and how cool is this? the meet was selling olympic caps - with "lochte" and "phelps" printed on them. there were also caps that said "bootsma" ... rachel bootsma is a local girl who just graduated from high school and made the olympic team. all the girls on the team sitting in front of me were wearing "bootsma" caps. i don't know if they swam for her old club, or if the girls were just supporting a local hero. either way, it was fun to see.)

then it was time to get down to business.

i know he was nervous and overwhelmed, and he'd been having trouble with his goggles coming apart at the nosepiece during starts, which made him pretty tentative off the blocks. but he did a great job. and his 200 medley relay ended up placing 10th. (don't know about the other relay ... the results weren't up before we left.)

he was proud of himself, and i think the fact that he even made it to state his first year out put a little extra sparkle in his eye.

and then ... then ... more exciting.

not only was henry a swimming fool that weekend, but harper also had a fun meet at her swim school.

her pool is about 20 yards long, and because it's a school, there was an instructor in every lane keeping an eye on the kids. but that harper ... she swam in four events.

a "50" free ...

a "50" backstroke ... during which she gave me a big smile before as she turned ...

(the kid smiles the whole time she swims. i love it.)

then a surprise "25" butterfly ...

which we didn't know she was swimming, but she got 2nd place in her heat!

and then she turned right around and headed back for a "100" IM ...

amazing. she kicked little kid booty. and had a blast.

icing on the cake is that my mom was in town for a work event, and had been planning to head home on friday, but was able to extend her visit by a day to go to both events. the kids were thrilled. they never get grandparents at any of their events, so i know her being there meant a lot to them both.

it was an exhausting day for them both, but i think the excitement of it all kept them going. my little swimmers.

now that's something you don't see every day

yesterday evening we were wiped out. exhausted. the weekend had been exhausting, the past two weeks had been exhausting, and we were just done. (i'll let you in on what was so exhausting in the next day or so. it's pretty exciting stuff, actually.) so we made snack dinner (crackers, cheese, apple slices, etc.), watched some recorded olympics, and vegged until about 8 o'clock. at that time, i told harper she needed to pick bath or shower, and she chose shower in the basement bathroom. so i got her going, the boys headed upstairs to get cleaned up, and i wandered out to the sliding doors in the basement to look out over the yard. and that's when i saw the hot air balloon.

now, we see hot air balloons quite often, actually. they are always off in the distance, aross the lake, small balloons miles away. we watch them float and think about how fun it would be. this balloon last night was not like that. it was big. it was close. like, ON the lake. the lake that is just down the hill from our house.

so i went into the bathroom and told harper to chop chop, that she needed to hurry so she could see something cool. then i ran upstairs to get my camera and yell at the guys to tell them what i saw. they yelled back, "we're in henry's room and we can see both of them!"

both?!

from my angle in the basement i could see only one balloon. however, when i got upstairs i saw that there were, indeed, two.

realizing just how cool this was, i ran to the basement, pulled harp out of the shower, wrapped a towel around her and said, "hold on to the towel ... we're going outside!" and out we went ... into the backyard to watch, in amazement, as these balloons hovered ever closer to us.

and as we stood there, the blue one appeared to come straight for our neighborhood. it approached the house down the street from us and seemed to lower.

then it lifted and came straight for our house. i could hear marc and henry talking and yelled to see if they were still in henry's room. they said they were, and they couldn't believe how close the balloon was getting.

it drifted, literally, right over harper's and my head. we waved and yelled hello. they waved and yelled hello back to us. i took a photo of them ... they took a photo of us.

and then that balloon drifted right. over. our. house. marc said he was eye-to-eye with the people in the basket, then they lifted over the roof, maybe ten feet above henry's room.

just when we thought it couldn't get more amazing ... that balloon landed across the street. in the park.

so harper and i ran inside, she bolted up to her room to put clothes on (remember ... she was still wrapped in a bath towel at this point.), and we ran out the front door ... marc already in pajama pants. (which, if you know marc, you know that Never Would Happen under normal circumstances). as we crossed to the park, we looked back to see where the other balloon had gone. it had made it as far as the back part of our neighborhood.

the entire neighborhood descended upon the park. kids were running everywhere, all the adults were mingling, telling their "when i noticed the balloon" stories and sharing photos they'd taken, all while we watched the balloon deflate and the crew and passengers disembark.

marc had wandered over to talk to the pilot, and discovered he'd been piloting balloons for years, and has set 20 world records over his career. so naturally, marc got a brochure.

when all the excitement was over, everyone started to head back home. there was one last look at where the other balloon had landed, and then it was over.

but all of our weariness had disappeared. we'd been amazed, delighted, astounded, inspired.

what a great way to end the weekend.

summer

we're two weeks into summer break, the crazy hasn't yet hit, and yet it still feels like it's all going so quickly.

last night henry was at a friend's house for the night, and the friend lives right next to a local park, where a summer festival was taking place. they were planning to walk over and do some activities, eat some hot dogs, watch the fireworks. a typical summer night, and i'm amazed that he is old enough to do that without mom & dad. and yet, i'm also so excited for him, that he is entering this phase of freedom and independence.

at home, harper went to bed a little after 9:30 after a long day, begging that she really wanted to sleep in my room (where this has come from in the last year, i have no idea. but it's driving me crazy.) and that she just can't sleep alone. where i'm enjoying the view of henry's growing maturity, i'm hiding my head behind my hands at harper's abyssmal bedtime and mealtime behaviors. less than 20 minutes after getting her in bed, i started hearing the pops of fireworks. sure enough, harp came banging down the stairs, complaining about the noise and how she can't go to sleep because she's scared of it. i tried to reason with her that it was just fireworks, but that didn't work. so i went upstairs and told her to come into my room to look out the window. sure enough ... we could see a fireworks display going off in some 'burb on the other side of the lake. (i don't think it was from the same festival where henry was ... the direction wasn't quite the same.) and then someone who lives on the lake started to shoot off fireworks. as we were watching the display, a memory hit me: last summer, on july 4th, we had opted to go to the new neighborhood and see if we could see either of the nearby towns' fireworks displays, since they were, pretty much, in our front yard. we ended up at our former neighbor's house to watch with them, but after awhile, harper wanted to go for a walk. we walked down to where our house was being built, we climbed up the temporary wood steps to the upstairs, which was framed in but not yet walled, and we sat in what would be my bedroom and watched the fireworks going off across the lake. then we walked to the open area that would be the loft window, and we watched the fireworks from the local towns. and we whispered that next year, we would be able to watch fireworks from our house again if we wanted. a year later, we were doing exactly that. minus all the mosquitos.

about 15 minutes into it, i said, "harper ... look at the wild part of the yard!" (the above picture? taken in the "wild part." the back third of our lot was planted with native grass seeds and left to grow. i love it and have big plans for it ... i'm sure the neighbors aren't as sure.) she looked ... paused ... and then spotted them: "fireflies!!"

now, we've lived in minnesota for 15.5 years. we've NEVER seen fireflies. i'd read that we don't have them because we're too far north ... that the lights of the city interfer with their light communication ... but suddenly, we have fireflies. and my kids, who have only had the pleasure of chasing after those little fancy bugs a few times in their lives when we've been in indiana during the summer, can now add "fireflies" to this list of childhood memories.

and once again i was hit with how "right" things suddenly seem. this PLACE we've found for ourselves ... the being a part of a community instead of just existing in our own sphere ... the peace of living in a little lake town, full of bait shops and liquor stores, surrounded by farms, where everyone waves, and the night sky is dark enough for fireflies. this is the childhood i wanted for my kids. i understand that life is what you make of it, and you have to bloom where you're planted. and we've always done a pretty good job of it. but there's something so timeless about being here ... the bikes, the bugs, the local festivals, the kids walking down the hill with fishing poles, the kids on the corner with a lemonade stand, the neighbors who walk over just to say hi, the four-lane local grocery where the check-out ladies recognize you and chat. when we moved to minnesota, never in a million years would i have said that this town is where i wanted to be. we loved the city and the vibrancy and the opportunity. but you know what? yesterday, we drove henry 30 minutes into downtown, watched "blue man group," signed the "vote no" pledge for the marriage equality ammendment, grabbed a snack at brew pub on a corner, then came home, about as far - in distance and atmosphere - from The City as you can get. and both sides of our world came together in perfect alignment. you need the yin with the yang, otherwise that balance is lost. maybe that's why i suddenly feel peace and contentment: i was missing the yin-part of life. the part that was wrapped up in the fireflies.