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Thanks to Kirstin’s blog post, I’ve been thinking about Dorothy Day again.  Man, I love that woman.  Back when I was a more active Catholic Worker, I would read her writings and just ponder what she put forth.  Dorothy had an uncanny way of talking about the exact issues that tear me apart sometimes— what are we suppose to do for the poor?  What about when people are crappy and mistreat you?  What about when you are tired?  How do we avoid war?  How does one small person stand up against injustice?  What did Jesus mean by….

Me and Dorothy need to get together to pray sometimes.  Here she is talking about St Theresa’s “Little Way”.  Yeah, I think I need to meditate with Dorothy a little more and maybe I can figure it all out.

“Paperwork, cleaning the house, dealing with the innumerable visitors who come all through the day, answering the phone, keeping patience and acting intelligently, which is to find some meaning in all that happens—these things, too, are the works of peace, and often seem like a very little way.”

1 Comment | In: Music and philosophical musings | | #

About a month ago I was asked to speak at church for the fourth Sunday of Advent– today.  Our church has a tradition of having a mother speak on this day as it is the reading where Mary rushes off to see Elizabeth.  The child in Elizabeth’s womb “leaps for joy” and Elizabeth prophecies the place of Jesus in the new society that is to come.  It is a cool thing to be asked.

At first I was honored, then stressed out, terrified, and gradually worked around to confident.  I worked very hard on this piece.  I mean, I ACTUALLY practiced it!

And it went really well.  I felt pretty good about it.  I got a lot of support and positive feed back, so I am flying high on that one.  Here is the text if you are interested!  I cut the second and third paragraphs for time, but I am including them here because I was sad to see them go.

Fourth Sunday Reflection

So here we are in Advent, waiting for Christ and our song is (sung) “We’re waiting for Jesus like Mary”.

On the way to church one day I was bemoaning the task of putting together this reflection to my husband Brad. “What could I possibly have to say about patience or waiting? I’m not a patient person.” “Yeah,” he said, “You are not exactly what I would call serene!”. And then laughed!

“I am too serene!” I wanted to yell. In close relationships, sometimes we offer what we think is this amazingly forthright confession, only to be met by exactly what we don’t want to hear. I didn’t want him to agree with me. I wanted him to tell me how wonderful I am. But I am not a patient person. I am mostly okay with this because for the most part people confuse my impatience with effectiveness, but really at the heart of it all, I want what is not here yet.

Brad and I have three children, Francis who is 6, Zephyr is 3, and Inez is 1. I am a high school language arts teacher by trade, but I am home caring for children right now and sometimes all the waiting and trying to be patient feels like it is killing me. I am sick of doing all the same chores over and over again. I am impatient for the kids to grow up, to need less from me. I am impatient for Inez to quit screaming during church. I would like Zephyr to take his fingers out of his mouth for 2 seconds. And I am sick to death of diapers, diapers, diapers. Older parents say to me, “Oh it goes so fast!” and “Cherish this time!”. I know that they are right, but it is hard for me to muster spirit for their words, maybe because I am exhausted and have diapers to wash.

Pregnancy has always been such a powerful image of waiting, but despite experiencing three pregnancies, I never got much better at waiting. With number 1, I didn’t understand what was happening to me, by number 2, I was eager to be tougher than I was with Francis’s birth. With Inez, the last one, I just wanted it to get over with. That was about month 5.

I’m not good at waiting, but I do understand longing. My pregnancies did help me understand that sort of deep, physical and spiritual longing that comes from some mysterious place inside you, a passionate place, where love and pain are all mixed up together, where you feel something and gasp for breath at how much it hurts. I’ll add here that I don’t think you need to experience pregnancy to know this. We think of this as our heart aching, but why do we hurt in our core like this when our feelings are born in our brain? It is mysterious.

All my children were born in birth centers with midwives. The midwifery model recommends that a laboring woman stay at home as long as possible where she might labor in her own comfortable setting. For me, this was always at night. As I am unwilling to accept comfort when there are things to be done, I was up walking the streets in the dark trying to get my labor to speed up. This is what I sang as I walked: (This is as serene as you are going to get me, so enjoy it). “As the deer longs for running streams, so I long, so I long, so I long for you”. I longed for these babies, these mysterious miracles, these loves of my life.

I understand longing. I can long, and adore, and want change all at the same time. I love my life, my church, my community, but I long for change. I want justice, I want women’s ordination, I want people to stop calling other people “illegal”, I want gay and lesbian couples to have their relationships acknowledged and affirmed by the larger community. In a pregnancy, we know the waiting will all be over after 9 months. Waiting for justice might take a long time though. What are we suppose to do as we wait?

I like this Mary from our Gospel today. She is impatient too. I can just imagine her with her robes hiked up around her knees, her hair and veil flying behind her, rushing as fast as she can over the hills to her cousin Elizabeth’s house. She is out of breath, she is excited, she is bursting with information and can’t wait to hear what Elizabeth might know. Before she can do anything more than call out at the door, Elizabeth shoots up and calls out mightily, “Blessed are you among women! Look at what is happening to us! It is truly wonderful!”.

And it is wonderful. Mary and Elizabeth are not just excited about babies. Yes babies are exciting, but I think what they are excited about is change, is hope. Elizabeth is old and yet she is bearing a child. Mary has been told that her child will rock the foundations of society. Change is coming. The messiah is coming. I imagine that some of you women out there in your 60s and 70s might not consider it much of a favor if you were told by an angel that you were pregnant. “Oh please God no!”, but maybe we can think of this more as a deep symbol for all of us, childbearing or no. Pregnancy in this “old” woman is the ultimate sign of hopefulness. What seemed impossible is not. What seemed too late was not. What seems un-reparable in our human relationships is not without hope.

We long for Christ. We long for peace, for justice, for change. We are impatient. We want to hike up our skirts and run over the hills seeking out our dearest friends and family members to say, “Look what is happening in our world! Look what joy!”. There is value in being patient, but maybe there is value in being hopeful, in letting our longing let us make possible in Christ Jesus what did not seem possible before. Here is the question: can we make our longing manifest in action?

At Advent, we are all pregnant. Close your eyes, wrap your arms around your belly. This is where something wonderful that you long for is growing. Is it peace? Is it healing in your family, in your body, in your human relationships? Sing with me: “As the deer longs for running streams, so I long, so I long, so I long for you”.

What do you need to do to bring it to birth?

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Sorry I haven’t been much up to date on goings on around here.  The thing is that I am super crazy busy at Bible Camp….

I am doing the music portions of our church’s camp for 2-7 year olds.  There are 70 kids going crazy with art, music, story-telling, and games for 4 hours all this week….and it sort of feels like a life-time.  I did this last year, except I was a coordinator.  This year I am doing the same music-leading duties, but no organizational stuff, which truly I don’t do a great job of anyway.  I make confident decisions, but I have a hard time caring much about the woman who is stressed about the kids not washing their hands well enough, or the person who wants the chairs “RIGHT, EXACTLY, BACK WHERE THEY WERE”.  I pretend to care, but I don’t really.  I pretend like I don’t think those people are crazy, that I respect their input, but in reality, I am standing there thinking, “How long do I have to sensitively listen to this person before I can go about doing exactly what I want to?”.  I tell you, I am MEANT for leadership, eh?!

It is interesting leading music.  I am actually not “performing” for more than about 25 minutes at a time, but it is super exhausting.  I am up there with my guitar singing super loud, being hyper and trying to be animated and excited.  It is like teaching but super compressed.  I feel like I have just put on a Broadway show…. but in 25 minutes.

The other part of my duty is to pull out the kids who are falling apart (for whatever reason kids fall apart), and be nice to them and get them re-integrated to their group (except not screaming or pitching a fit).  Again, camp is for 2-7 year olds, so they fall apart for all sorts of reasons.  I tell you, I wonder about the sense of having 2 year olds.  They cry.  They whine.  They do things that 2 year olds do.  I find myself sort of disliking the whiner/criers and being so grateful that mine are not.  Of course, a great guy in the kitchen today noted that he would have been a whiner/crier, that he was a sort of nervous kid, so I really have got to stop thinking mean thoughts about the whiney/cry-ey set.  They grow up to be great people too.  Man, where is my patience?

I wish I could put some pictures up here, but as I am working with other peoples’ children, I just can’t.  Anyway, it is super fun (in a really strange way), and if I do not fall down dead of exhaustion by the end of the week, I will update stuff around here again.

4 Comments | In: General bitchin', Music and philosophical musings, projects | | #

It’s June and that means it is parade season in Portland.  Last year I went to the Starlight Parade, the Jr Rose Festival Parade, some of the Grand Floral Parade and Gay Pride.  Put people in a line marching down the street and I will stop and stare…. and clap… and yell various supportive and appreciative things.  I love a parade.

Lindsey and me lovin' the parade (Grand Floral)

I hit the Starlight Parade a couple weeks ago.  Last year I had one of those really unfortunate experiences that leaves you seething and trying to think of witty comebacks for a year (but it is WAAAAAAY too late).  Some nasty lady, (I keep thinking of her as being from Gresham, but I realize that is really unfair), had spread out about 3 blankets and was taking up about 20 feet of sidewalk for her party comprised of a pecked looking husband and two miserable teenage (redundant!) daughters.  She marked her end of the great domain with a cooler.  Once my friend Angela rapidly sat down when the police went by and put a smidge of her right butt cheek on the lady’s blanket.  Woa!  The lady was angry.  The second time my poor father who had just had knee surgery tried to get up and sort of fell sideways because his knee wouldn’t bend, catching himself on the lady’s cooler.  Yet again, she FREAKED out.  HOW DARE WE TOUCH HER BLANKET?  HOW DARE WE MOVE INTO HER SPACE?!  Kendall pointed out that people who feel this way about others should not go down to a crowded urban event.  It is about being together, not protecting “the domain”.  If you want to sit on your fence line with a shotgun, stay in the country!  (That’s what I always say).

Anyway, that was depressing.  I don’t know why it affected me so much.  I guess I kept thinking that I wanted to stay away from people like this in case armageddon is suddenly upon us.  People like that would really suck to be with in a global emergency.  I think about armageddon a lot.  I worry that people will rip my vegetables out of my yard.  I worry that if I ripped them out first that this would be like not sharing, and yet how could I share with all those starving people (you know, like if armageddon is upon us).  I put those vegetables in there because I have the presence of mind to THINK AHEAD to global meltdown, so I think I have every right to pull out those beets to eat raw myself if it is indeed the end, and yet, I want nice, sharing people near me, especially during a parade.  So obviously I need to work these issues out.

OKAY, but anyway, the point is that I had really nice experiences at the parade this year.  The guy next to me said, “Oh please have a seat!”.  Then he invited a whole family to sit in front of him.  ”If you are sitting on the ground, I can certainly see right over you!  Please sit down!”.

I love a parade.  After the Starlight, I went to the Grand Floral Parade with our friend Lindsey.  Lindsey is from the south and has an infectious enthusiasm for all things parade, with specific enthusiasm for marching bands.  We rode bikes down to the route, bundled under a blanket and a tarp and had a great time.  It was one of those days that threatens to rain but never quite gets around to it.  Perfect for a parade.

Francis brought the perfect parade accoutrements... Playmobile in a little bag, bubbles, and a swirly ribbon stick for between floats.

2 Comments | In: Current musings, Music and philosophical musings | | #

The backstory is that Lauren was in the school musical “Honk”. Sonja, in kindergarten, was too young to be in it, but not too young to memorize every freaking word from the London cast recording. I got her on film.
I wish I could figure out how to put this here. It is amazing. You must go watch this little film of my niece Sonja the Broadway diva.

http://www.efn.org/~werth/holdyerhead.mov

3 Comments | In: Awesome!, Music and philosophical musings, family | | #

It’s true.  I am an awesome mother when I have my own special things going on.  

I have been doing this stay-at-home mom thing for three and a half years now and I think I am getting the hang of how to do it and not feel

1 )  Bored

2 )  Guilty

3 )  Angry

4 )  Lame

For me, the struggle has been to strike some balance between stimulation and quiet.  I like to be doing things, hosting people, planning projects and parties and organizing people, and yet it is easy to suddenly feel completely overwhelmed with just the basic things I HAVE to do in my life.  As a stay-at-home parent, you need to be doing things, but there isn’t always left-over energy to take activities on.  It is hard to meet the needs of your mind and your body all while being exhausted and overworked.  The truth is though, that you are exhausted with laundry and whining and not enough uninterrupted sleep at night, not that excellent physical exhaustion that lets you drop into bed like a rock.  Taking care of kids is strange as you don’t often get the exercise you need and yet you are weary so you don’t feel up to running that mile (or even limping down the street to the grocery store).  You are tired, but not tired of body.  It is more like a spirit tiredness.  And then you are so focused on meeting immediate demands (for clean diapers, clothing, comfort, nap-times, etc), that it is hard to let your mind pursue any deeper course.  The end result?  You feel dull, listless and stupid.  People ask what you have been doing lately and you have a hard time coming up with anything.  They don’t want to hear about potty-training success or thoughts on dealing with day-light savings and bedtimes.  You feel like a lame excuse for a human being.  You wonder if you should go get a “real job” so that you have something to talk about.  You wonder if others see you as simply mooching off your husband (although in my household I KNOW that I damn well earn my keep.  These people would starve and descend into total chaos without me, thank you very much!).  

This week I was a super-awesome mother.  Really, I was more patient and kind and I FELT better.  This is why.

First, the sun came out.  It is super cold, but look at that sun!  I got out and put my face in the sun.  It is amazing how much time I need to spend on the couch nursing the baby.  I think people walk by and say, “Man, that woman is STILL on the couch.  She is ALWAYS on the couch!”.  It is necessary for me to sit a lot and nurse this kid, but it is also good to get off the couch. 

Second, I have sought out “good help”.  I have Inez and Zephyr visiting a neighbor woman once a week for 4 hours.  It was hard for me to justify hiring someone to watch my kids for a bit when I am the one home who is technically assigned to that job, but I can see and FEEL already that this is the right course of action.  I need this time to pursue things that make me recognize myself and remember who I am.  Woa, that’s deep!  

There isn’t time for further talk of “who I am” here, and it might be about as interesting as the potty-training update, but I can simply say that this week I felt like myself because I got time to work in the yard.  I loved my day and a half of garden projects.

This is what I did on Wednesday:

I hired a day laborer to help me level this stretch of thorns and weeds.  This “hedge” was truly disgusting, full of trash and rocks and small, unsightly shrubs.  I can see beauty in all sorts of wild things, but this really was not one of them.  The plan for this stretch of ground is a nice row of raspberries.

Carlos the worker was so amazingly effective.  He, unlike me, was able to start a task and actually see it through to the end!  I worked alongside him doing the easier stuff and totally enjoying his accomplishments and congratulating myself for being smart enough to hire him.

This is what my front yard looks like now:

How about that load of yard debris?  I have to figure out how to get it to the recycling center.  This is what the city of Portland gives us for our yard debris:

Dang wheeling cart is never large enough.  I swear I could pull this thing out every week (maybe twice!).  It took me a month and a half to get rid of our Christmas tree.  I think I still have the trunk in that big lawn pile.

While weeding, I found this!  (While you are at it, check out my mulch!).  Brad loves rhubarb and as I love him, I planted a bunch to call our very own.  He thought it was a goner, but there it is.  Rhubarb takes a couple years to get established, and I was unsure how this might do, so I got two varieties.  Here is her cousin:

I put this beauty into the backyard, which to me is still sort of a wasteland.  There was pretty much nothing there but weeds and butterfly bushes when we got here, and I am still struggling with removing the blights and introducing beneficials.  Blights=invasives like blackberries, straggly butterfly bushes packed together and poorly pruned, garbage and plastic in the soil, tell-tale beer bottles and the stupid bamboo that is creeping in from the neighbors’ yard.  Beneficials= mulch, shade trees, compost, worms, chickens, and plants that add interest and variation to the yard.

Here is another crazy thing I am doing.  While I was in El Paso last, I was checking out the “dry riverbed” thing that a lot of landscapers are doing down there, and I thought it might work fairly well here if I could just figure out how to keep it from becoming a mosquito cesspool.  Ain’t nothin’ stays dry around here.  I have to incorporate some drainage into my plan.  What I am working on is making a dry riverbed leading to a dry “pond” that is actually a sand box.  It will have large rocks surrounding it and be a naturalistic and functional place for kids to play.  The “river” will start up behind the compost and “trickle out” a bit beyond the “pond”.  I think it will look really awesome when I am done.  Right now Brad keeps calling it my “mud hole”, but those of us with vision must live with the detractors in our lives.  It is going to be AWESOME.

Putting in all the new plants has been a great joy, but it leaves me torn.  My chickens are so excited when they see a fresh chunk of dirt; they simply must scratch.  This means that they effectively dig up anything I put in.  I tried to put all sorts of weird things around the new blueberries I put in back, (like a broken laundry hamper), but really the most effective course of action is for the plants to grow large enough to not be hurt.  That will take time.  What do I do in the meantime?  I love my chickens, but I also love my new plants.  The only thing I came up with was quarantine.  Sorry girls.

4 Comments | In: Current musings, Music and philosophical musings, chickens, family, projects, urban farming | | #

Anne wraps up her lighting job in preparation for Rick and Tuyen's wedding

In case you were not aware,  February 21st, 2009 is Anne’s 26th birthday.  Now Anne is off adventuring in SE Asia, having a big old wandery time.  She wasn’t much for getting presents back when she actually HAD a home, and now that she is on the road it is all but impossible to give her anything, so knowing that she has no home address to get a card, but will surely eventually stumble here, I give you 26 things I love about Anne.

1.  She is very artsy in surprising ways.  She has a great eye for colors and patterns and can do amazing things with chunks of paper.  She also sews proficiently and will enthusiastically cut stuff up and make things that people need, like leiderhosen.

2.  She is honest about what she knows and does not know.  She’s smart, but she doesn’t need to constantly prove it by pretending to understand concepts in order to impress people.  She’ll say, “what is that?” or “I don’t think I’ve heard of that”.  She doesn’t pretend to like people or ideas that don’t appeal to her in order to impress others.

3.  She has an old fashioned sense of the decency of manners.  She is impeccable about being on time.  When she is entertaining, she gives time and attention to everyone around her.  If a group is lame or someone is having a hard time socially, she will bring that person out.

4.  She is incredibly independent and does not need anyone to prop her up, thank you very much!  If she chooses to be in a relationship, it is because she really likes that person, not because she is afraid to be alone.

5.  She thinks dogs are kind of gross and isn’t afraid to say so.

6.  She likes to skate!  She also likes to bike!  She always wears her protective equipment because she also likes her bones and skull.

7.  She is one of the only people I know who actually exercises regularly and (seems to) like it.

8.  She is quick to answer a call for help.  If I didn’t know what to do, or felt overwhelmed and miserable, I would call Anne.  Often she would jump on her bike and come right over.

9.  She has long, elegant fingers.

10.  She is very lithe and graceful but has the heaviest legs someone has ever thrown across my lap.  She is about 2% body fat and the rest is just heavy, heavy muscle.

11.  She will read books that are recommended to her.

12.  She is funny as freakin’ heck!  OMG!  SO funny!  Her e-mails are worth saving.  Her writing is full of folksy storytelling.

13.  She is a dork.  She is nerdy, nerdy, nerdy about linguistics.  I like to hear her say, “fricative!” with such enthusiasm.

14.  She can keep a secret.

15.  She doesn’t let everyone in.  She doesn’t share the workings of her inner mind with everyone.  It is a special thing to be her friend.  

16.  She is a hard-worker.  She goes after the things that she wants.  If she were a stock, it would be wise to invest everything in her.  You will not lose by believing in Anne.

17.  She values family even while being aware of their short-comings.  She likes to feel connected to people and will really give them her time.

18.  She is an adventurous eater.  She’s not picky.  She is also a healthy eater without being obnoxious.  She doesn’t diet.  She eats carbohydrates and ice cream.

19.  She is cooperative and a problem-solver.  She is flexible and will bend in order to come up with group solutions.  She understands that sometimes being with people is more important than what is being “done”.

20.  She is not a materialist.  She takes an “easy-come-easy-go” attitude about her possessions.

21.  She doesn’t have a car and she doesn’t see why she would ever need one, but she dreamed about a ferry over the Willamette from her Portland neighborhood to mine (just like I did).  She also figured out that it was quicker to roller-blade from her house to ours than to take public transit.

22.  She can make cheesecake.

23.  She was the first one on the scene after Zephyr’s birth and Inez’s birth.

24.  She is Zephyr’s godmother and she really understands what that means.

25.  She has actually said, “Isn’t that a little dramatic?” to me when I really needed it.

26.  She likes to make fun of herself and has a funny giggle that sort of bubbles from the back of her throat when she is trying to illustrate how ridiculous she is.   

Okay now, what is your favorite thing about Anne?

She is a great sister, and I miss her but am so proud that she is off adventuring and exploring all that the world might have in store for her.  I love you Anne!  Happy Birthday!

10 Comments | In: Music and philosophical musings, family | | #

Wow, I’ve been really busy this week.  I can’t quite put my finger on what it is that I have been doing, but judging from the mountain of laundry that I folded last night, it was not house-keeping.  This week was fun (I think).  Zephyr and I went to a play at Oregon Children’s Theater.  ”Click, Clack, Moo, Cows that Type” was pretty great.  It reminded me of The Muppets, the way that humor would work on multiple levels.  In case you haven’t checked out this children’s classic, it is about cows who go on strike after finding that their barn is cold.  They learn to type and in that way deliver their demands to the farmer.  One cow read “Animal Farm”, “The Communist Manifesto”,  and the biography of Malcolm X, so she would occasionally yell, “Down with the Oppressor!”.  Hilarious.  It occurred to me on the train coming back that in The Muppets, the “high humor” character was usually Gonzo.  Maybe that is why I liked him so much.

I’m going to sum up this week’s changes in bullet form.  That will be fun, right?

• Inez is a new baby.  A better baby.  An improved baby.  The crying is over and this kid is so super sweet and mellow.  She doesn’t seem to cry hardly at all now, except when I totally neglect her and leave her in the swing too long.  She is excellent.  I am so glad that the colic has gone (back to hell where it came from!).
• Beer.  We have a lot of it because of Dad’s 70th birthday party this last week.  We tried our best to empty the keg in our kitchen, but after being quite drunken last Sunday (or Saturday?  Monday?  Huh?), the beer is not as appealing.  It is hard to wake up to feed a baby at 3am if you are reeling around the room.  If you are my neighbor, you are getting mason jars full of beer on your porch today.  I need to empty this sucker and get it back to Widmer.
• Mulch.  My obsession is paying off.  The front yard is looking pretty good where I dumped all the mulch from the fall.  I haven’t gotten out there as much as I want to, but the sun is peaking out around here and spring does look like it is on its way.  The weeds are smothering, but now I have to go pluck up the particularly determined ones.  Did REM do a song called “Night Gardening”?  Or was that “Night Swimming”?  Anyway, that is when I garden these days as that is when the kids manage to leave me alone.  I can’t wait for more time in the yard!  I want plants!  I want weeding!  I want life!
•  Chickens.  I need to figure out how to keep them penned up more.  There was entirely too much chicken shit on the back lawn.  On the positive side, the grass sure looks healthy!  I did a walk through with the hose and sprayed all the turds, making the most potent fertilizer this side of the Dallas cow shit ponds.
• Chinese media!  I am reading “Peony in Love” by Lisa See.  It is so engrossing.  I love it.  I am not getting enough sleep because I just want to read.  And I have “Tuya’s Marriage” from the library.  Technically it is a Mongolian movie, but it is close enough to a Chinese film to give me fits.  I can’t wait to watch it.  I love Chinese movies.  LOVE, I tell you.  If it has Gong Li in it, I swoon.  She is my girl-crush.
• Music.  I have a bunch of stuff to practice for Saturday and Sunday.  I am doing music for Family Mass the third Saturday of every month.  This is great as it means I get my Sunday church obligation out of the way and can relax on Sunday morning.  Oh but wait!  I also sing in Gospel Choir the fourth Sunday of every month.  Do these sound like different weekends to you?  Not this month they aren’t.  They aren’t next month either.  Geeze!  I have a bunch of stuff to sing in Spanish on Saturday and then I return Sunday and have soloooooooooos to stress over.  It is all good, but requiring attention and effort.  I have a small headache thinking about it.

Okay y’all.  I wish you music, beer, great kids, fertile chickens and less weeds this week.  Oh yes, and awesome Chinese movies!

7 Comments | In: Music and philosophical musings, My super freakin' cute kids, Reading, chickens, family, urban farming | | #

Okay, I’ve been trying to show off this cool widget where you get to check out all the books I’ve read in the past year and they sit on this fancy little bookcase…. but man!  It just doesn’t work!  And when it works, it takes forever to load and is just a general pain in the ass.  So instead I am going to do this the low-tech way and let you just go click on the link to the right of here under “pages”.  I’ll add a new review every now and then when I can get to it.  All I can say is that I had better get to it soon or else I will forget what the book was about.  I have a very short memory for literature, which is funny as this was my area of study in college.  I guess it suits me as my career path as a high school English teacher means that I will read and reread books a million times.  With my rotten memory, it is new to me every time!

Go check it out!

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Francis has “Mis Noticias” (“My News”) at her Spanish immersion school, so almost every day she comes up with some piece of news that is charmingly 5 year old.  I think yesterday her news was a picture of her in her flower girl dress for Clementine’s upcoming wedding.

My news for today is sort of silly and has to do with a lunch box.  My friend Nancy from Eugene makes these lunchboxes:

Lunchsense Lunchbox

They are very cleverly and durably designed.  Even though I sort of balked at spending the initial dough on one for Francis, after she went through TWO other lunch boxes, the dollar amount for this one that would actually last seemed a lot more reasonable.  You can completely unsnap the thing and send it through the wash, which means that there is no stinky spoiled milk smell that can collect in there.  I bought one for Brad last year, as a nice black lunchbox looks a lot more professional than the ratty bag that he was carrying.  A year later, with daily use, it looks just as good as when I bought it.  (In case you are interested:  http://www.lunchsense.com/).

Anyway, Francis has a packed lunch every day of school.  About two or three weeks ago, she just stopped eating her lunch, or rather, stopped eating any reasonable amount of her lunch.  She started to subsist on 3 grapes and a drink of water, or one bite of sandwich and two crackers.  I was really confused.  I remember hearing about those weirdo people who thought they could live by extracting nourishment from the air, Breathairians, and worrying about Francis’ future as one of them, a SHORT future.  I don’t want to be a crazy mother pushing food, and I in general, try to avoid that sort of power struggle as it just seems weird to push something as natural as eating.  I had heard from a pediatrician that no kid would actually starve his or herself, so in general, I’ve tried to let her own body dictate her needs, but this struck me as more of a mystery than anything.

At her parent-teacher conference, I asked her teacher about snack times at school as I suspected that Francis was either filling up on crackers at snack or holding out for something “better” from her peers.  That wasn’t really the case, but he suggested that I try to “pack things she liked”.  Huh.  Like cupcakes?  Ice cream?  Anyway, I sort of dismissed that suggestion in my mind as nutrition is so important to me that it seems way beyond the kids LIKING it.  Who cares what they like?!  I’m talking about things that are GOOD FOR YOU (so, yes, I am controlling in other ways…).  Anyway, after her lunch came back two days ago with one bite out of a sandwich, and she informed me that she threw away her hard boiled egg as it was “too cracked”, I told her that I was sick of doing all the work of packing a lunch for nothing and that she would pack her own lunch from now on.  SO there!

Yesterday she forgot to pack her lunch, which I think was a good lesson for her to see how time-consuming it is, (I did send her something at the last minute).  This morning, however, Francis packed her own lunch!  I was worried that each lunch from now on would be lemon curd or jam on bread, but this is what was in it:

one small container of green peas

one container of carrots

a thermos of water

She was so pleased with herself, and I laughed at the HUGE irony of what I might pack versus what she might pack.  Who was the bigger vegetable pusher?  I did insist on her adding a chunk of bread to her meager fare.  She turned down the offer of some cheese too, but whatever… she’ll live.

In other news, I have a lot of music happening this week and month!  I played yesterday at the kids’ Atrium class, where I was horrified by Zephyr’s behavior.  The music went well, but I almost wish that I had remained blissfully ignorant of how he acts there.  I will be doing music for the St Nicholas celebration this weekend at church.  It should be sort of fun.  Some awesome old guy is dressing up as St Nick and leading the kids in a lantern procession around the church.  It’ll be fun for the hipsters on Alberta Street to gawk at the crazy Catholics.

My gospel choir director last night taught our choir a song for me to lead, a prospect that fills me with joy and DREAD!  I don’t understand my deep yearning to sing and perform and my huge fear to, well, basically do the same.  I am so afraid and so thrilled and from moment to moment, don’t know which one is more powerful.  I am going to be solo-ing (or in gospel speak, “leading”) on a groovy version of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”, and I can hear the possibilities for diva-esque stylings.  Just the thought of it sends chills of terror down my spine.  We perform December 28th, so I have a couple weeks to get over it and learn to believe in myself.  Think, “I am awesome!  I am awesome!”.  Gospel style singing has no real room for any lack of self-esteem, I suppose because you are testifying for Jesus.  If you sound good and go all out, you aren’t seen as showing off, but rather, making a joyful noise and really communicating the words for a higher purpose.  It isn’t the space for a shrinking violet, and I know that I won’t perform well if I can’t get over my fear and insecurity.  I sort of have to grab the mic, take a breath, and try to blow them away.  There is just no other option.  God help me!

4 Comments | In: Music and philosophical musings, My super freakin' cute kids, food | | #