ingrid

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: Chickens Are Super Fabulous, family, My super freakin' cute kids, Philosophical musings, Reading, 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!

1 Comment | In: Current musings, Philosophical musings, Projects That I Do With My Clever Little Fingers | | #

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: food, My super freakin' cute kids, Philosophical musings | | #

It is strange to write about this, but it has been on my mind a lot the last few days, so I might as well acknowledge that. I was asked to do music for my cousin’s friend’s funeral. I am happy to do this as it is probably one of the only useful things I could do with myself right about now. Plus, a lot of people don’t know musicians when they need them, so I am pleased to meet what I see as a real need. I guess a lot of people don’t think about music until those important moments in their lives—- weddings and funerals. Then they realize that there is something about the music that is a relief, a ritual, a comfort. That’s okay with me. Being able to sing is something that I can just do—- I don’t think I worked particularly hard at it, nor do I deserve it, (guitar is another issue! I am not that great at it and just faking for all I am worth as I go!). Anyway, I think that when something is just a free gift, you had better use it pretty liberally. I think about the biblical phrase, “To whom much has been given, much will be expected”. I don’t know that my musical ability amounts to “much”, but without access to the chart showing me the break between “a little” and “a lot”, I figure I had better not take my chances. I think I am suppose to sing and do music whenever I am asked, so I try to remove my ego from it, (because I figure thinking you are not good enough is probably just as bad and selfish as thinking you are TOO good.) If someone asks and I can, I will do music for them.

How many weddings have I done already? I think about twelve with the first one being somewhere around when I was twelve. Funerals are even bigger on my circuit! I’ve done more of those,(maybe twenty five?), and it requires a very different sensibility. Only once in a wedding did I break down and cry, but funerals are an all-out struggle to hold it together. The problem is that if you like music, then you really listen to the music as you do it. The words, the melody; they all mean something. It makes it hard to hold it together. Mostly I think of it as my job to hold it together and I thoroughly chastise myself before I begin playing. Like a nasty, unsympathetic coach, I say, “Now don’t YOU start crying you self-indulgent girl! It is time to sing and play and there is not space for YOU to be sad. Time to make good music for these poor people who have real reason to cry!”. I am there to provide an emotional experience for others without actually experiencing it myself. It is a weird line to need to interpret a song without all-out sobbing. It is even odder that I am sort of good at it.

Here is a strange thing: have you ever noticed that every good song is about death? Every song seems to have something in the words that makes it hard to sing. There is a lot of meaning lurking innocently in those words. When you need to find the perfect thing, it is nearly impossible. Believe me on this one.

This funeral is particularly sad because it is the service for a young woman who ended her life as the result of severe depression. She was absolutely beautiful too— a radiant person who obviously didn’t feel so radiant inside. A young woman with a beautiful child and charming husband. I do believe that she suffered more than anyone could understand. That is the only reason why she would leave so early. I do believe she will find some peace, because she was crying out for it for so long.

I’ll be doing Alison Krause’s “A Living Prayer” and another taize song. Wish me luck, and let’s all be good to each other.

2 Comments | In: Philosophical musings | | #