boxes of treasure and a shout-out to re-ewes gear...

Every so often in my life a box arrives from my Aunt M. From these boxes, amazing treasures are revealed, one by one, adorned with unique ribbons and beautifully penned notes. There is something mysterious and delightful about each item--my family gathers around in wonder as we remove and examine these surprises.

There were boxes in my childhood, but the one I remember most clearly from my adulthood showed up on Christmas Eve, the very first Christmas that David and I were parents. We had journeyed north to visit the family with our tiny, ten-day-old son cradled in his precious car seat, and the trip home through the snow in the dark was especially nerve-wracking for us because we were still quite new to the concept of transporting something so valuable. Also, I'm pretty sure he cried the whole way home.

When we arrived at our little crumbling cottage of a rental home, we found a gigantic box sitting on the back porch--a fine dusting of snow on top giving us an idea of the time of its delivery. A package, arriving late on Christmas Eve? It had to be...Santa Claus, right?

We hauled the package in, and, while Jabber nestled hungrily into my arms and I sank into the permanent divot on the couch (formed by the endless hours of nursing him there and of holding him while he slept and simply staring at him in wonder and amazement), David unpacked it and placed each beautiful box under our pathetic little Christmas tree. It was the most magical box in the universe. It was from Aunt M.

Recently we found another such box (thank you so!), and in it the usual supply of eclectic awesome. Included was a note, in which she expressed her mission to "redirect the society's excesses and rejects: recycling!"

Yay!

And this brings me to my friend Ellie and the business she's been growing--the business that is all about recycling those excesses and rejects...recycling them into the softest, snuggliest, and most amazingly beautiful mittens! Her newish business is called Re-ewes gear, and it makes me so happy to hear about her successes. If I reach for something made of styrofoam, it's Ellie's voice in my head that stays my hand. (I still smile thinking of the day she brought a tub of real dishes, silverware, and cloth napkins to the staff training to protest the use of those throwaway lunch trays and soup bowls!)

Check out her new website to read about her mission, or go to her facebook fan page to look at her inventory...all lovingly made from recycled wool and fleece.

I got my mom and another aunt mittens for Christmas, and I got my Lovely Daycare Provider one of her fantastic oven mitts...though LDP says it's too pretty to use! (I insisted she use it anyway...)


So here's my mom, thrilled with her recycled treasure!

Guest Blogger: Jabber

To Papa Rick

2009

This is a race car going over a ramp. And he’s going really fast, so that’s why I drew little yellow stripes saying that it’s fast. And there’s puddles, ‘cause it’s raining. The mountains far, far away. The clouds, wind, rain. And here’s the sun, it’s just starting to come out.

Papa will like it because I drew him what he wanted, which was a race car with flames on it, all painted yellow. Also a back tail fin, the motor sticking out of the hood, and that’s it.

From Jabberwock
(Barcode)

Waiting

I horrified my Lovely Daycare Provider this morning by revealing that I haven't really started my Christmas shopping...a statement that is not *quite* true, in fact, but it's close. I haven't started my shopping for David and the kids. Now that's the truth. And it's not an unusual truth, either. I admit that I am awful--really terrible--about buying gifts for people for specific occasions. I actually like giving people things, but I don't like waiting to give them on a particular date. I cannot even tell you how many times I've bought D. a gift for some reason and then given it to him right away instead of hanging onto it until a special occasion. I basically have no patience.

So then I started thinking about queries, because I'm in the query stage with novel number three, and querying involves a lot of waiting. First you send out your queries. And you wait. And then you may get requests (well, I finally got a few, anyway!), and you wait.

And then an email comes.

Different writers have different ways of dealing with the appearance of an agent email in their inboxes. Many of them cannot look at the email right away; they need some time to prepare themselves mentally. Me? I have opened them heedlessly when checking my email during my prep period at work. It's like ripping a bandaid off; I can't let that message sit there, unread, knowing it's in there. It will drive me crazy. And yes, this is probably a bad practice because there's a lot of emotion tied up in those emails. So sometimes I'm a little giddy while teaching class. And sometimes, of course, the opposite is true. But that's good for them, too, to see what it's like for a writer--and really, to see that with any goal, a person will encounter some exciting strides forward and some disappointing setbacks. I think it's good for them to see me keep on keeping on.

Which brings me back to Christmas, sort of. So I have my manuscript out in the world in various places (one of which shows up when I google myself--a fact which still gives me chills)(what? you don't google yourself? I'm just impressed that most of the items on the first page are now me instead of a Mormon polygamy trial!), and I know it's pretty unlikely to hear from people before the holidays are over. So here I am, being patient. Finding ways to keep myself busy, like revising novel number four!

I suppose I could try shopping...

aniversario de boda: ocho anos!

David and I were married on November 1st, and David's cousin got us a souvenir from Mexico for our wedding with a dia de los muertos skeleton bride and groom getting their portrait taken by a skeleton photographer (which was doubly meaningful since D. is a wedding photographer!).

Since then, we've bought Day of the Dead decorations for each other (okay, I admit, mostly he has bought them for me because I suck at giving gifts...) for all our anniversaries.

This year was our eighth anniversary, so I snapped some (not that great) photos of our collection.

Here they all are!


http://www.flickr.com/photos/32155717@N05/sets/72157622594740041/

Thanks Grammy and Papa!

Look at this amazing book my parents made for the kids. It has the cool eyeball pocket on the outside that holds a magnifying glass, and then inside are pages and pages of pictures with Papa Duck hiding in them, Where's Waldo? style. (Some of them are really super hard, and I'm not actually completely convinced that Papa Duck is really in them...)

Anyway, the boys love these books! And Monkey loves his magnifying glass, as you can see!

Six Hour Shopathon

For some women, six hours of clothes shopping might be fun. Entertaining. Enjoyable.

For me, the mere thought of traversing the mall makes me break out in hives. But when Mom calls and wants some help picking out some summer work shirts, of course I agree to go along. After all, spending time with Mom is nice, and besides, she sounded so desperate. Since it was past 8:00 pm when she called last night with the idea, it was a surprise to David when I finally rolled out of bed this morning. Surprise! The kids are all yours this morning. Just a couple of hours, though, no biggie.

Six hours later we arrived back at home, finding the house more or less intact and David's left eye only a little wiggly and twitchy. Both boys were accounted for, and neither of them had any major bruising or emergency room stickers. I, on the other hand, had about the worst headache ever and a new pair of jeans, that Mom bought me. I also had the experience of looking at, discussing, and doing a complex materials check on each and every women's shirt for sale in this city. The materials check was important, since it seems that this summer the material of choice for dressy tops is linen, which turns into a big ol' wrinkly mess as soon as you so much as breathe on it. So we did a lot of, "Oh, this one is cute. Wait, let's see how it holds up to this." Then we would grasp a chunk of the shirt tightly in one hand for a bit and check out the wrinkle factor.

Personally, wrinkles don't really bother me. I know I have an iron, but I'm not sure exactly where it is. But Mom takes the wrinkles a bit more seriously. So once a shirt passed the wrinkle test, the next thing we had to determine was whether or not this particular shirt would make a woman with an average body shape look approximately six months pregnant. An awful lot of the shirts did not pass this second test. Finally, before a shirt could make its way into the fitting room, it had to pass the "But is it too low cut?" Mom test. And of course, there was the hysterical "Does it look like I'm wearing bananas for sleeves?" test. I don't pay a whole heckuva lot of attention to the world of fashion, but there's some seriously strange sleeve-work going on out there, let me tell you.

When all that was said and done, we still had to try not to get anything green or lavender, since Mom said everything she already owns is one of those two colors. Then we had to avoid blue, too, 'cause everything she bought at the first two stores was some shade of blue.

I'm sorry, did you get a headache just reading about it?

I did have fun hanging out with my lovely mother, and she did buy me lunch and a pair of jeans. (I happened to tell her that the jeans I was wearing were my only pair, which they were, and that they didn't currently have a button, since it fell off one day and I'm too sewing-impaired to fix it. I think Mom was slightly appalled that I was walking around in public with unbuttoned jeans. No worries, Mom. These hips can hold up anything!)

My Mothers' Day Gifts

My three boys gave me some terrific gifts today for Mothers' Day. The first, and probably most dear to me, was that David took the boys downstairs at 6:30 a.m. when they woke up and let me sleep all alone in the bed (pure bliss) until almost 9:00! This was after a long night of Monkey nursing at least once every twenty minutes, so it was definitely appreciated.

Then, I had the luxury of a bath, a wonderful French toast breakfast, and a parade of beautiful gifts, including a stained glass rain gauge for the backyard, flower seeds in case I manage to plant something this summer (would be a first), candy, and an interesting clay sculpture that The Jabberwock made at daycare, which he explained, "is like a clip for you hair, except it isn't."

As if all that weren't more than a mother could dream of, I also had the pleasure of being read to by The Jabberwock. The book was a little hard-cover novelty book for teachers, full of cute sayings or stories about being a teacher, probably a gift somewhere along the line from a student or parent.

That, however, didn't limit my little imagination man from telling me the story his way:

J: Once upon a time there were two green frogs, and they both wanted to go to the stream. And do you want to know what happens next, mom?

Me: Did they get to the stream?

J: Yeah. They got to the stream, and there was a Wake Woam!

Me: What’s a wakewoam?

J: A LAKE WORM, it’s a worm that lives in lakes and streams. And that's the end, 'cause it's a happy story. Isn't it a happy story, Mom? Would you like to hear another story, Mom? This one is about two frogs that lived 98 years from now. Wow, Mom! That’s when dinosaurs lived. Isn't that amazing? Imagine! 98 years from now there were dinosaurs and frogs! Want to hear another story? There’s a lot of stories in here.

Me: Yes, yes, read me another one.

J: (Reads some nonsense in a rhythm.)

Me: Sounds like poetry to me.

J: It is, and it’s GOOD poetry. (reads more nonsense poetry)

Me: Is there more to the story about the two green frogs?

J: The lake worm squirmed up close, and the two frogs died.

Me: I thought that was a happy story.

J: There isn’t any happy stories. They’re all for big kids. They’re for four year olds. Well, this area of the book, right here, these are nice stories. The two frogs, guess what they did?

Me: What?

J: A king came, and gave the two frogs some medicine. Then, the two frogs carefully awoken. Then the two frogs went to the river pond every single day. And they never saw any more Lake Worms. The end.

He told me a few more stories, and I began to work on correcting poetry my students had written. Later, he came over to read me a few more stories. This is what he said as he was rummaging through his book:

J: No, no, no, you don’t want one of the bad stories. Oh, OK, here we go...Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess. But she was mean. What??? You don’t want to read that one! That’s a bad story, too! What is going on here? (mutters) The wonderful prince...came, and...Oh, no! I’m not reading THAT! I give up, these are all bad stories!

These amazing kids--they bring me daily to a state of wonder with their antics. They truly are the best gifts of all. This whole day is a gift to me, a reminder of the role I have earned in this life. Sometimes I get to feeling trapped by this role, wondering if I'll ever be able to be anything but a mother, if I'll ever have a moment to write, if I'll ever again sleep through the night, if I'll ever have time to fix my hair and buy cute clothes, if I'll ever have the freedom I used to have. I wonder if I'll ever be able to wrap my brain around complex issues again without feeling it split into pieces, some of which are making grocery lists and some of which are just now noticing that I'm in public with baby snot on the leg of my pants.

This role, motherhood, is not an easy badge to wear. It's heavy and heartbreaking.
But the joy it brings, the wonder and the laughter and the happy chaos--makes it the best role of all.
Happy Mothers' Day!