Yee Haw! My Guidebook is written.

I stayed up all night post-seminar to complete the text. Now all I need is a cover design, the headers and footers, a quick final proof, and a run to the printers.

Not to mention a good night's sleep.

:)

yawn.

Nearing the home stretch, the end is, finally, in sight!

In the next 4 days I have 3 seminars, a private one-on-one, and just 2 days to get that final draft to the printer. Oh, and design a quick cover for it too....and finish those final 3 chapters...and do the layout, font sizes, spacing...and the TOC with its corresponding page numbers.

On Thursday, after I sleep indefinitely, I am heading to the spa where I will commence to steam, soak, bubble, slough, and shower away all evidence of the toll the previous efforts have taken on me. I'm bookin' that baby!

Then, I don't need to tell you, it will be "cocktail:30!" (clink.)

The only question I'll have to answer at that point is, what kind?

Hmmmm, such choices....such possibilities...

Good thing they don't do lotteries for your cocktail choices!

(Hey, now that I think about it, that is a genius marketing concept for one of my public school seminars.)

Just grinding away on that deadline. This won't be a "cut and paste" of the last one either. I'm taking it further, as well I should. As well I expect of myself. In such limited time.

One more week to go....

Nose.

Grindstone.

I suppose if it weren't for a (self-imposed) deadline, nothing would ever get done!

Sending you all happy wishes....

Now, back to the salt mines....

Make It Work!

Yes, I'm still the middle of a deadline but no, for this 7-yr-old dynamo, Halloween can't wait. Nor can the school celebration, which came a day early this year.

Desiring to help bring to life a well-loved children's literary character, I searched high and low for either a grey or black pleated skirt, to no avail. The best I could come up with was navy blue. Her size. On sale. $7.99. I grabbed it.

But her robe is black and her sweater is charcoal grey. Navy just wont do.

We're at the corner drugstore the night before Friday's costume parade and I place a last minute call to my left-LA-for-Portland-so-she-could-raise-her-daughters-in-a-decent-different-town costume designer/stylist friend. My go-to resource for all things fashion.

"Hey, I'm staring at this bottle of black RIT dye and I'm wondering if there's any chance in hell it will work on a navy blue skirt that's 100% polyester. I know it says "not recommended for polyester," but I just need to get it to grey or charcoal. Black will work too. I just need to get the blue out. Will this work?"

"Polyester? Um, well, no. You can try it, but it won't take."

"Even if I use the whole bottle and boil it? What about using vinegar? Salt?"

"You can try it, but polyester has so many chemicals in it, it's a different thing altogether. It probably wont grab the dye."

"OK, but what would you do if you couldn't find the right color skirt for a shoot? I'm sure that's happened to you plenty of times before."

"We'd have to make one."

"Clearly that's not an option. I don't even have a sewing machine, or fabric, plus I still have to hem that darn robe."

"There's always fabric paint. And if you're really in a bind you can staple the hem. Just don't forget to use a black Sharpie to touch up the staples afterward."

How Project Runway of her. I never would have thought!

In the inimitable words of Tim Gunn, it's "make it work" time.

After braiding my daughter's hair in 6 tight rows and getting her off to bed, I simmer a soup pot of water, dump in the whole bottle of black dye plus a cup of salt, and stir the inky cocktail. Meanwhile I'm in the kitchen sink washing the stiff skirt with dish soap to try to break down the fibers a bit. At first, water doesn't even penetrate the fabric. It just beads off. Shit. This isn't going to work, is it. I add more soap, agitate it, and keep scrunching it and dunking it in warm water until it softens and eventually soaks through the fabric. I toss the sopping mess into the pot of dye.

Stirring, I turn the heat to low and watch as this navy blue skirt miraculously, all 100% polyester of it, turns to black in about 18 minutes.

Yes! It worked!

Now, about that hem.

The hell with a stapler. Thank God for Stitch Witchery and an iron. But for some reason, after repeated ironings, it didn't take, so here I am hemming the entire circumference of her robe. By hand.

Then I make book titles on the secret compartment faux book "boxes" she'll collect her candy in, a fantastic discovery I found at the local discount store. With some fancy lettering in glittery gold and black permanent marker, the often-referenced volumes, Hogwarts: A History and A History Of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot, come to life on the covers and spines.

Next day, arriving at her school just before the parade, I help her into her outfit and remove the braids. A little back-teasing and hairspray and brown eye pencil create the infamous "bushy" hair and thick eyebrows.

Grey knee socks and a red striped tie complete her English schoolgirl look. I fasten her robes with the fancy clasp. She grabs her books.

It's more than a costume. It's an authentic character transformation...

Straight from the pages of the Harry Potter septogy (that's trilogy times seven), Miss Hermione Granger Lives!

Happy girl.

Tired Mommy.

Busy, Busy

Been in a bit of a blur these days. Been building over here. Not much time for posting.

Been working on the website(s)

Been designing my business cards

Received them from the printer today. (They turned out better than expected. Yay!)

Been booking additional seminars.

Been leading the already booked seminars.

Been advancing the upcoming seminars.

Been building on the building I've already done.

One sure way to get me to write that next guidebook is to announce it's release date and book a seminar around it.

After months of procrastination, I have about 2 1/2 weeks to write, edit, proof, and receive back from the printer my next product. Jeez I love a challenge! But if you knew that my first guidebook was raced to the finish line in order to have copies raffled off during a local Mom's Night Out, you'd know this is how I roll. Deadline=Delivery.

Now that I know my way around a Pages layout, you can bet I'll be designing those glossy postcards for it too. (Sharpdots, my new best friend for affordable, delicious promotional materials...biz cards, bookmarks, postcards by the thousands.)

And I just found out I can have a mobile credit card app on my new iphone. Who says I can't become a mobile merchant and an independent bookseller too?

Did I mention that I have to dye and hem a Halloween costume by tomorrow afternoon's costume parade? Without a sewing machine?

Love to my peeps out there. Have a rockin' Halloween!

Message In The Aftermath

Photo: Winding Path

A little over a month into the new school year, I find myself standing back and perusing the vista. I've trekked a good long way, but only in looking backward do I find clarity in the path revealed.

A couple of comments my new virtual friend Deb posted recently have been knocking around my brain, reverberating. Regarding A Few Small Repairs and things in my life breaking down in clusters:

"There's always a message somewhere..." and "What will you do when you run out of things to fix?"

...hahaha. Indeed.

You see, in the midst of the hailstorm, head down, body tucked for warmth and protection against the onslaught of elements, one is merely managing to get from point A to point B. Forget C, D and E or the long-held vision of WXYZ. No. A...A.5...A.75 and eeking out a B will suffice. If you get to B you've done a good thing. Kick the ball, get 10 more balls, begin again!

Let me try to explain.

I spent the better part of the last 2-3 years giving out... to the little school, to the surrounding community, the blustery district political policy machine, while many stressed-out parents, school issues, and larger district-wide problems felt like a million little hands of need...need, constant need...pulling at me for attention.

I am, by nature, a giving person.

I am, by nature, a capable problem-solver.

I am, by nature, one who doesn't sit idly by. I have to try. Something.

But I am now, at this moment, removed from being entrenched in many of the immediate issues. I am no longer there.

I am, at this moment, for the first time in many moons, turning the focus back inward. Not out there to the wider community, but back here. To my self. My work. My family. My environment. Our homestead.

It feels good.

It feels much-needed and necessary. As if all things, eventually, return home. OM.

I reflect back to this former post, Cleaning House, and sense the mounting disarray and neglect around our home even then. Years worth of repairs and maintenance got displaced during the onslaught. Freed from the many burdens, I am just now getting caught up around here.

We are no longer in a fixer-upper school. Although admirable, although deeply committed to the cause, although I adore the community of like-minded in-the-trench-warriors, I am absolutely and completely relieved, RELIEVED, to be free from the constancy of effort needed at that little place.

I still have great love and respect for the community and the work being done there. I still lend a helping hand and offer support when I can. I still bump into staff and friends there. We're still there every day at the bus stop. I recently helped lead a grassroots letter-writing campaign that actually saved a no-seniority teacher from being fired last month due to increased class size ratios. (Through the grace of God, the powers that be, and the cumulative power of mobilized, outspoken parents, we were able to get her a waiver.) And even though we're not there anymore, I still do CARE.

But I don't have to feel like I'm holding up the walls anymore.

I can LET GO.

I can revert the focus back here. Back to center. Back to me, my daughter, us.

I've been volunteering in her new classroom every other week or so. This is a luxury she sadly had to sacrifice in the past. At the other school I was too busy with the big picture issues like school-wide infrastructure, policy, communications, professional development, community outreach, tours. I didn't have time to work in just one classroom; I worked on behalf of the whole school. At her new school, I work in her classroom, for her teacher, with her group of kids. I can be present in her experience, once a week or every other week, and it's very rewarding for us both. And the class will survive without me if I don't make it in. There's already a TA in every class. What I bring is bonus support.

At the new school, they assign a value system for everything you donate, a point per half hour of volunteer time, a point per every $5 spent on either a fundraiser or supplies, tabulated monthly. There are built-in incentives like class parties for the class/grade with the most points accumulated.

I can't even being to describe what assigning a value unit to donated time and services has done for me in terms of re-thinking the value of my efforts and how much I have accumulated over a period of time. It makes me conscious of what I choose to give and how much, because now I am logging it in. I can't even fathom how many points our family would have collected over the past years with everything we used to do for that other school, me with my full-time load, my husband as booster club president.

So as the focus shifts back homeward, trusting that this new school has its systems not just under control but organized and thriving, I am beginning to relax. Catch up. Repair and replace my own fix-it list. Update. And also, gestate new ideas.

We found ourselves sitting around the living room at 9:30 the other night not with a stack of school-related issues to delve into or a 2-3 hour debate about it, but instead deciding which movie to watch. (We ended up playing games on our iphones. Dreaded Word Warp!) I actually hosted a dinner party for friends last week and instead of a burden, it felt lovely, fantastic. It reminded me that even though I used to love to host gatherings, I had no capacity to host much of anything over the past few years so I just didn't. But now I am craving a more relaxed, social, you-know, joy-filled life.

I find myself making homemade pasta, fresh rolled empanadas, and developing new seasonal cocktails. I feel an abundance all around. I am taking time to breathe in the sun streaking through the glass, casting its brilliant particles of vibrancy and possibility all through and around me. At night the moon cuts through the sky in a swath of brilliance, lifting my heart, beckoning me to wake up, embrace the purity of its loving illumination. Lit from within, I become that same beacon of light radiating outward in my life.

I am happy. Possibilities abound.

I spoke to a group of parents at a preschool the other night and walked away on such a high. I get to share my wisdom, my passion with others, and the exchange is palpable. I love what I do. It is meaningful work. I feel I am making an impact. I could go on and on.

I suddenly feel that as I clear through the backlog and get current around here, the path that I had been on becomes even more clear. The work I am doing, and the book I want to write about it all seems just that much more tangible and within reach. I couldn't write it while my head was so deep in the trenches. I had no perspective there. I was just getting by, surviving moment to moment between rounds of mortar.

It is only now that I am removed from it all that I can see the vista, that I can even begin to write about what just took place and my path through it. And there is a lot to tell.

The message is: it takes a lot of courage to chuck out all that work and start somewhere fresh. Sometimes that is the best thing one can do.

In honor of another friend, Ms Link, and her courage to start over as well, may we be filled with the wonder of what is unfolding in this NOW moment... as we gain perspective on where we've just bushwhacked through.

Many thanks...

Photo: Stone Steps

The Growth Of An Idea

It started innocently enough. Back in April '07 I was about to get mentioned in the LAT (LA Times) for my little Westside Guidebook (thanks to Sandra Tsing Loh), and thought hey, what a wasted opportunity it would be if the fine folks of Los Angeles couldn't point and click their way to a site, any site, to find me. Quick! Get me a url.

A You Are What?

Being the nascent blogger that I was at the time, (not even a year into it), I knew nothing about websites. But I knew how to blog, I knew how to post.

So I quick grabbed a Blogger address (I was already GoMama; ok then, GoMamaGuide) used the book title as the title all across the header, uploaded an introductory post announcing the Guidebook, a coupla images, a table of contents, and a quick text link to Paypal in one day. (I'd figure out that "Buy Now button" code later. That was advanced stuff for me.)

Whew. A site. Made it to deadline.

A few months earlier, my Guidebook had been "released" (and by that I mean I was printing it out of my computer at home, burning through ink and staying up nights strip binding batches of them.) It was being hawked locally through email, through word of mouth, through posting on the online moms groups, on yahoo parent groups, other social networking groups, spreading virally, with copies being raffled off at local moms night outs or preschool auctions, and of course selling them in person at my occasional speaking events. Just doing my part to shed light and help my fellow stressed out moms on this whole public school choice thing. LA. Public Schools. What a mess. Here, I can help.

But over time, my little help-out-a-fellow-mom-with-her-public-school-choices, has led to save-the-little-neighborhood-school-that-could, to use-your-voice-for-change, and then get-involved-in-the-public-school-reform-political-drama; this has BECOME my life, my work. This is what I DO. My Guidebooks are just one tiny part of it. I have grown. GoMama has grown. And the GoMamaGuide has become a brand. An identity. An umbrella or lighthouse of many possible opportunities and outcomes.

Meanwhile, this little url was bursting at the seams with added content. It needed to grow too.

One thing that I am very proud of is that every part of this "business" has grown organically, intuitively, from a sudden inspiration to execution, from word of mouth to shared ideas and connections, from solving a problem to growing a new platform, and I am both humbled and amazed by that growth. It's not like I ever sat down and devised a business plan for this thing...it kind of grew me. But as I/we grew, I began to cram so much stuff into the limited confines of the Blogger template that the site was getting unwieldy and hard to navigate with its endless scrolling content. (And here I was, the mama offering navigational services.) It deserved better.

Time for a url upgrade.

But being the cheap, I should say, non-profit mom that I am, I just don't have the budget to hire fancy graphic designers, or web designers, or find web hosts and the like, and even if I did, I'm fairly certain I would still be leaning over their shoulders, controlling every little detail myself. That's just how I am. Minutia, my husband calls it, exasperated at me. Detailed-orientated and cost-effective, I counter. A do-it-yourselfer through and through.

So somewhere back a few weekends ago, perhaps feeling a bit over-confident after having played around with adding some widgets and a new custom background to this site, (love my new look here, btw), I decided to give my ole GMG Blogger url a makeover too, thinking it couldn't possibly take more than an afternoon or two, right?

Suddenly that list of a few small repairs mushrooms into a dandelion patch in a windstorm...

I have to back up and confess that last year I had set up a Wordpress blog to be another free GoMamaGuide url specifically because of their awesome tab-able page system, thinking I'd build it up and switch over to that site at some point when it was finished. But Wordpress has its own issues and limitations, and I got too busy (and frankly lost interest) in learning how to tweak yet another template and layout program. This is NOT my forté.

In my initial exploration, I'd slapped up a crappy looking header where my logo image got auto-cropped badly and the text was nearly undecipherable. I parked it there, and learned to live with it.

Ignore it, was more like it. It sat unattended for months. I pointed NO ONE to that site.

Back to the other weekend. And Blogger. And my list of repairs.

I'm not going to go into the whole process because I've forgotten more than I remember, plus I got a lot of online help, (see resources below), but here's a brief outline of my Project GMG upgrade:

Inspired by the many free background wrapper sites for bloggers, (such as TheCutestBlogOnTheBlock and HotBliggityBlog) I spent hours trolling the web for ideas and how-to's, collecting screenshots of inspiration as I explored the possibilities of change. Many a night I was up 'til dawn. My MacBook desktop looked like someone threw up squares of colored confetti during this phase of Operation Search.

The next part was a big one. Making the commitment to dive in. To indeed commit to change.

Change isn't easy. Change takes time. Change requires patience... for the inevitable screw ups and longer-than-expected unexpected learning curves. Change changes the things around it, the things that touch it. Change is contagious. In the middle of it all, change is a mess. You might regret ever stepping into change. I know that feeling well. But then you push through, guided by a vision, some unknown nudging, and the transformation is your reward. That and the power you gain from going through the transition...to transformation. Change is empowering. Change is GOOD!

* * *

Steps of Transformation:

Go into Layout, switch Blogger template from Rounders 3 to Minima. Fade to white. Everything white. It's a virtual white out.

Wait. Before you make anything final, remember to save a copy of existing template code, and existing page elements. Save sidebar content and its corresponding html code on "draft mode" only posts, to be reinstalled later on new sidebars. It helps to take a screenshot of your existing site for reference, but unfortunately I skipped this step.

Create 3 column template by going into Layout, Edit html, scroll through the miles of gobbledygook and cut and paste bits of code in specific spots. Very specific spots.

Tweak layout (ie. padding, margins, pixel widths) back and forth until everything lines up, again going into the html template code and tweaking bits of symbols and numbers that correspond to various parts of the layout. Even one missing semi-colon, or # symbol, or } bracket, or end tag, or wrong width can screw you up.

Add new Page Element option to header as well as to new sidebar and footer. Keep your options open, baby.

Create horizontal menu bar, ie the tabbed pages such as Home, About, Store, Events, (tabbed pages on Blogger?? Why, yes!) then get the text to line up within the header image. That last part was harder than you might think.

Learn how to do a "rollover code" that enlarges the text when your mouse points on the word. Genius. Add links to the new pages. You have to back-date them and publish them to get the hyperlink, then re-enter each link into the menu bar code.

Now, about that custom header w/ logo. Note that at this point I have 2 sizes to create. I first practice on the fixed width of the WP (Wordpress) url, and then tackle the ever-widening one for my new Blogger 3 column. Warning: math is involved. The new Blogger size is MUCH wider.

First let me spare you the process of learning how to convert inches into pixels, or pixels into inches, or even finding out what dpi/ppi my monitor is so I know the conversion is accurate. Eventually I found an online converter.

Or learning how to create and manipulate in "Pages"- another damn application to learn, save as a jpg and upload as the image for the header. I learn how to cut, crop, size and ghost my logo in greytones into the background. I learn the difference between shapes and text boxes. I chose fonts and created my own GMG custom color palate to work with. I use gradient filled borders and learn how to send elements forward and backward. Suffice it to say, that was a long process for this non-graphic designer. You photoshop geniuses, however, will have no prob.

Insert sound of clinking, clanging, banging, frustration, and rapid heartbeat...and eventually out comes a header.

Ta Da!

750 x 140 pixels for the 2 column Wp site

880 x 190 pixels for the 3 column Blogger site

adding the blk "chalkboard" textured navbar

Did I mention that Pages does not automatically convert to pixel sizes? Can you say trial and error just getting it to fit the new Blogger template???

Let me spare you the veritable morphing stylesheet from hour to hour, day to day, infinite shades of green and the lists of RGB vs hex color codes scribbled on post-its spewed all over my desk around my computer, only to find they don't correspond with the fixed stock colors you are handed for your posts in the crappy schmantzy new post editor on Blogger. Fwiw, I had the wisdom to change back to the old editor after 3 days of stress and lost sleep when nothing matched or lined up..!

Let's see:

- learn code to add borders to images, creating "frames" for my book covers where was once only white edges blending into white background.

- create dotted borders to address the total white out effect, separating sidebars from main body, and sidebar content from the sidebar content below it and below that

- add black background outer wrapper to border the edges of the page and frame it nicely

- add html for my school Google Maps and re-size them to fit in narrower sidebars. Unveil the new Middle School Map.

- create sidebar "marquee" of upcoming events that link to events page. Give up on making it scroll in favor of a fixed less dizzying marquee.

- create new post content with the uniquely GoMama "tone" and tweak line breaks and layout and colors and fonts, oh my!

- add labels and tags to posts, optimizing their searchability

- check every link and hyperlink to make sure they actually go somewhere. Endless detail.

- limit the front page endless scroll syndrome to 2 posts only, (wow I can do this!), and disable comments in the stand alone pages.

Then repeat all in WP which is a similar yet completely different animal...where codes are not the same, and cut and paste does not always work...he said HTML, she said CSS...what the bleep is the code?...so in the end, instead of one, in fact, create 2 complete websites, one a 3-column, the other a 2-column.

Hopefully both clean and navigatable (is that a word?)

Marvel at all that brainiac goodness...throb...throb....get me a cocktail, like stat!

Ladies and gentleman, without further ado, I give you:

GoMamaGuide.com

GoMamaGuide.blogspot.com

GoMama Go!!

And now, a word of thanks to my counselors:

How to Get a 3 Column Template

Tips for New Bloggers: 3 columns

Adjusting 3 Column Margins

Add Page Element to Header

Numbered List and Bulleted List

Add NavBar in Header Image

Hyper Links and Image Links

HTML Color Chart

HTML and RGB Color Codes

Pixels to Inches Converter

HTML Help

Scrolling Text - Marquee

Finally, there's rest for the weary!

Except that business cards need to follow....but hey, I can navigate Pages now, so....

...and btw, did you see that line-up of speaking engagements!

Nope. There's more.

Somehow the date just crept up on us, as if pretending it wasn't there would make it go away....like that river in Egypt....

Add prepare 2008 receipts for our tax appointment tomorrow to my list. The list that just keeps giving.

I know, I know, it's way late already, but last year was such a blur we gave ourselves the gift of an extension.

I guess we've extended long enough, so here we sit amidst manilla file folders and piles of last year's loose receipts, crunching the we're-freelance-take-everything-you-possibly-can-for-a-business-expense numbers that bare their past in front of us.

On the plus side, it's pretty cool to see the bump in my guidebook sales and the continued expansion in speaking events from 2007 when this whole thing started for me. And 2009 is already poised to be more, more, more. Who knew that there was going to be a whole business emerging from this swamp? And who knew it would continue to grow?

On the other plus side, this number-catcher thing will all be delivered and out the door by tomorrow. happy times.

Then I can get to telling you about cracking the code...

Ahhhh...

...she said, as she checks off another round of fixes:

Replace cracked water glass inserts in kitchen cabs?

check.

Replace pond pump?

check.

Get water bell to work correctly?

check.

Install Never MT endless soap into kitchen soap dispenser, prime for 4 hours, sucking, cleaning, pumping, determined to get it to work, only to realize it's not the new Never MT gizmo, it's the old gizmo, up under the top of the dispenser that isn't working. (This is after getting the soap up over 3 feet of tubing, but still 2" away from the top!)

check.

Replace soap dispenser? (aha!)

check.

Figure out if I can use the guts of the new dispenser in the old one 'cuz I like the curves of the old one better.

not yet, but I'm working on it.

Replace toaster oven.

check.

Replace hinge on dishwasher door that just snapped to the floor one fine evening recently

hmmmm....might have to pull out some floor tiles to get to that.

Scrub kitchen floor tiles with bleach solution--first time in months!

check.

Remove and wash slipcovers.

check.

Drop wedding rings at the jeweler.

check.

Make decision on whether to replace, reshank, or redesign rings due to their worn state. (Hence the repeated ring rash.)

need husband to co-partner in this delicate decision.

that would require a trip into WHollywood with him alongside me.

Have naked fingers while wedding rings sit at the shop for almost 3 weeks.

check. (irony still noted.)

Oh, and tomorrow I'll post pictures and tell you about my latest repair and the joys of learning code....

check.

check.

triple check.

Excuse me while I go and have a (celebratory) cocktail!

I believe I earned it.

A Few Small Repairs...

Been trying to repair, replace, fix, update things around here.*

Everything is taking longer than expected.

I need to let go of my expectations and need for instant fixes.

sigh.

Placing hand on heart, tucking in to the center, I inhale a deep swell of air, ribs expanding, then after a pause at the top, blow it all out and open my eyes. Looking around I am instantly transported to a lighter altitude, one of possibility. It's bright up here. Ideas come lightning fast.

How quickly I fall into fixing, of working out the details of physical manifestation. I am reminded of the frustrations (and slowness) of working in density. It rarely comes quickly. Or easily.

* Why is it things always fall apart in clusters? I went through this last year.  Must be going through another upgrade...

Fig Explosion!

For the last month or so, figs have been literally falling from the sky. A veritable bounty of Black Mission figs so fresh to bursting, mere steps from my back door, have been calling out to me, beckoning, offering her lusty wares while her heady scent perfumed the air. Remarkable for a tree that nearly snapped a year back.

But a girl can only drink so many Figgytinis while nibbling on figs with crumbled gorgonzola, or even figs straight up while the rest of the family turns in indifference.

Meanwhile, if I didn't get to them, the birds and bees and squirrels and raccoons and the ground would. We were already attracting every winged creature in the 'hood while mounds of rotting flesh sat at the trunk's base decomposing.

What to do with all. that. fruit?

A moment of inspiration came when my sweet friend Clemence of Gourmandise Desserts (check out her sugary site!) suggested making jam.

Jam.

I'd leave you the recipe, but alas, it was one of those in-the-moment, impromptu improvisations. A just-do-it and don't-think-about it creations.

Introducing, the Black Mission-Meyer Lemon Fig Jam....a recipe in pictures.

Gather figs ripe to bursting.

My precious little sweethearts.

Rinse and cut into quarters.

Add thinly sliced Meyer lemons and a ton of sugar. (My bad, I didn't weigh it, just did it by sight.) Let it sit and macerate for at least a half an hour so the juices release and marinate together.

Into the stockpot under medium-high heat.

Boil it down....And boil it some more...until it thickens and globs on the back of a wooden spoon.

Boil the jars and lids separately. Remove with tongs and fill with hot jam. Carefully wipe rims and replace lids, then return to a water bath, boiling the filled jars for another 15-20 minutes. Remove and listen for the little "pop" that announces that the lids have all sealed.

Ah, my precious little jewels.

(And another big tupperware filled in the fridge.)

Just needs some nifty labels and a raffia ribbon around the top.

I tried slathering some of the jam over a pork tenderloin and roasting it in a hot oven, making a quick pan sauce out of the drippings with zinfandel and butter.

It's all blurry with goodness.

The ubiquitous fresh fig salad over just picked-from-the-garden arugula, crumbled gorgonzola, and drizzled with olive oil and aged balsamic vinegar.

And in another moment of inspiration,

I created this Fig and Rhubarb Vanilla Bean Galette.

OMG.

OMHOG was that good. Pinch me good.

Makes that whole strawberry-rhubarb combo taste like Marie Callender's. (I'm just sayin')

Have a Figtabulous day!!

Feeling Into It

*Photo: www.tedua.deviantart.com

Eyes closed, heart open, hands extended outward, reaching, feeling into it, into the void, the cusp of possibility, edges blurry, momentary glimpses, rising then dissolving back into the mist, as I feel my way forward.

Nothing is certain yet something is certainly imminent, as certain as that jackhammer next door rattles and stops, rattles and stops.

Renovation's begun.

What's next is yet to come, but I am feeling an abundance of potential...

...as it draws near.

Moving On...

We survived the 09.09.09.

No big dramas or melt-downs.

In fact, it was rather pleasant. Shall we say, buoyant?

Miss S started her first day at her new school yesterday. She not only survived, she liked it.

She also liked riding the bus, something we weren't so sure about. (She gets to ride a school bus to school now. In some weird twist of fate, her bus stop is smack dab in front of her old school.)

When I arrived to pick her up in the afternoon, she was swingin' and happy with her mates (she rides with 3 other friends from her former school.) Love it!

In a fortuitous moment of happy happiness, seconds after her bus pulled up, another school bus pulled up right behind hers, and 3 more former classmates stepped off the bus from their first day at their new school. Defectors unite!

The sight of half a dozen happy 2nd graders (and a 4th grader) hugging, smiling, and prancing around the front grounds together in some giant reunion of sorts, was a sight to behold.

Happy, happy!

Btw, 10 is her favorite number. Guess what room she got?

More happy, happy!

Today, I'm off to repair my wedding rings that are bent out of shape and giving me such ring rash I can't wear them. (Irony noted.)

Next up, replacing the cracked glass in our cabinet doors, and the broken pond pump.

I feel a clean sweep coming...

Catching Up to Now

Wow. It's 9.4.9. Counting down to 9.9.09.

I guess the best place to start is where we are: eeking out the last vestiges of summer before we start a new chapter, a new school year, and for us, a new school.

For someone like me, that last little phrase does not get written lightly. There are all kinds of weight and connotation and massive amounts of emotion and transition stirred into that little phrase, but change we are.

We are leaving "the little school that could" - the one I hoped it would anyway - the one I had invested almost 4 years of my life to, sacrificed significant hours and income to, leveraged political ties and social relationships, my capacity to mother and at times even my marriage to. We are leaving behind the little experiment.

There. I said it.

It's a relief, really. As if a giant weight-of-the-world has been lifted and I am suddenly unpinned, weightless. Free of the responsibility of the ensuing issues and dramas and politics and constant challenges at that little school.

On Tuesday, we will be starting orientation at a new school. We were given a rare opportunity, and after an agonizing week of deliberation, we decided to take it.

In a crazy stroke of backwards luck due to budgets cuts and thus increased class sizes all over LA, Miss S won a coveted lottery spot for 2nd grade at a fantastic school – one she never would have gotten into unless someone had either moved away or, I hate to say it, died. It’s a magnet, a charter, a Nat’l Blue Ribbon school, a CA Distinguished school, and an International Baccalaureate program that weaves a focus on Humanities and Global-Perspectives into the overall curriculum, and it’s public so it's tuition-free. It's a great school. It will be a big change for all of us.

Mostly we are counting down to NEW.

Mostly I am rethinking what to do with all this freed-up time.

Mostly I have been relearning how to float.

I have become quite buoyant this summer.

* * *

To back up a bit, the last time I posted back in April my life was churning ahead full-speed. I did a series of radio shows taking on the CA State Superintendent, then the President of the UTLA teachers' union, then the Superintendent of the LA school district offering my in-the-trenches perspective on our dysfunctional public school system. I was asked to speak on Brooklyn's Public Think Tank Radio. Recent press had my Guidebooks flying out the door and me booked solid with speaking events, especially a new model I devised called The House Chat, taking my public school demystification sessions into the living rooms of groups of "strollermoms" and "preKindermoms" all over this fine city, teaching them the ins and outs of our school lottery systems and urging them to get active and involved early on, stoking the grassroots passion and activism I love to inspire. I also began offering individual one-on-one sessions in addition to my usual round of "Choosing A Kindergarten" Nights at many local preschools.

I was awed when my chats inspired a group of strollermoms to launch a fundraising booster club years ahead of the completion of their new school, and another group asked me to come back and teach them how to transform their lackluster neighborhood fixer-upper school. I had goose-bump moments speaking to a class of Early Childhood Education teachers about why, really, we teach, and questioning what, in the end, are we really trying to teach our children, our next generation of citizens, and how together, with collaboration and parent participation, we have this amazing opportunity to not only connect with, but inspire our children, our communities, and shape our future.

On top of this I was waging letter-writing campaigns to our local school board members fighting the good fight against budget cuts, teacher pink slips, losing our Ast Principals (we lost some of them in the end but not without a fight), speaking out in local town halls and local e-blasts, while at the same time helping to establish our school's new by-laws and next year's operating budget, as well as creating our monthly school newsletter, and performing all the myriad tasks I do for our little school.

By the time early June rolled around, I was exhausted.

I put down my sword. I relinquished my 2 -year stint as creator/editor of the school newsletter. I let go of the grant I was overseeing when I realized we couldn't complete the project within the grant's deadline due to yet another ridiculous roadblock with District Facilities flagged by our by-the-book new principal. I stopped trying to wedge in our Professional Development sessions, budgeted for by parents and pre-approved by the former principal, when repeatedly faced with an unyielding Scheduler, um, calendar. I was simply unwilling to become not just next year's Room Parent, but a "Grade-wide Parent" (here we go holding up the school again) to compensate for the lack of volunteers on the other side of the social-economic divide, meanwhile facing either a teacher we all wanted fired or another one who hadn't taught 2nd grade in almost 5 years and having no say in the matter.

Optimistic, yet exhausted, I Just...


Stopped.

Fighting.

Even still, with all this investment of time and effort and resources, it's hard to just walk away.

My heart, my passion…my very blood is coursing through that school. I have been part of the collective vision and outreach of that little school since my daughter was in preschool, circa 2006!

But when the call came that last week in June dangling this amazing opportunity for Miss S, that's what we did. We made the choice to walk away. 


To try something new.

I can't imagine what I'm going to be doing with all this free time….

I just keep reminding myself, all is unfolding in divine perfection.

This moment is fine.

Don’t need to see the whole map.... 


Got 4 more days to float....

Mama Got A Facelift!

So.....

Don't you think it's been long enough since I posted?

I do.

So in light of my homecoming, not to mention the start of a new school year, I decided to give myself a whole new look. Courtesy of The Cutest Blog On The Block.

Hmmmm.... Where does one begin after such a long hiatus?

Why, with a cocktail, of course.

You may remember a story posted some time back about my Mission Fig Tree. No? Well, by all means, check it out here.



In the meantime, I am celebrating her abundant harvest with the following delightful summer sipper...

The Figgytini

The Figgytini

In a cocktail shaker, muddle together the following:

1 overripe fresh Black Mission Fig, cut in half, scoop inner flesh with a teaspoon (discard skin)

juice of 1/2 a Meyer lemon (lime will also work)

1/2 tsp of raw cane sugar (adjust depending on ripeness)

Half-fill shaker with ice. Add:

1 1/2 oz Makers Mark bourbon* (I find this compliments the figs tremendously more than vodka does)

Shake, shake some more, strain, and serve in a chilled martini glass. (You really need to break down the ice to make this one work.) Garnish with a wedge of fresh fig and a lemon twist, or a sprig of mint.

Cheers!

That's it for now, but I'll be back tomorrow with more to share....

Which Way LA?

So Thursday, thanks to a friendly referral, I get a call from a radio producer looking for someone to be the parent perspective in this ongoing drama playing out in our LA public schools, framed by our $8B state- and $719M local budget crisis, and in light of the huge federal stimulus package making its way down to us by way of Sacramento. Would I be willing to chime in…ah, today, like in the next hour or so on the subject?

Me have an opinion? On the up-to-the-minute public school situation?

You betcha!

Here's me with KCRW's Which Way LA host, Warren Olney, and the CA State Superintendent, Jack O'Connell.

Click to listen. (3rd segment)

Little Explosions

Amidst the devastating budget crisis facing LAUSD and the state of California, despite the decimating budget proposal before the school board this Tuesday....



in my own little backyard
things are teeming with life.
(Sweet Orange Blossoms)










Bursting with abundance.
(Sun-kissed Bearss Limes)

Exploding with color and fragrance
(out of it's climate comfort zone, White Lilacs)

and God-given bounty,
(a plethora of Early Girl Peaches)

proving that even in the most challenging of times, we are always provided for

and surrounded by the possibility of creation...
(Caribbean Lily, Scilla Peruviana)

which creates despite its sometimes harsh and prickly environment.

Or, perhaps because of it.

When Life Gives You Lemons…

There are two things you can do:

1. Fall down into a hole of despair, or
2. Make lemonade

Folks, it’s been a bumpy ride around here. The ups and downs have been extreme. From the highs of riding the momentum of some good press, being inspired to expand my work in multiple ways, listening to Obama in town rallying for the people, combined with the sweet victory of our collective voices delaying the firing of all elementary school Assistant Principals across LA, we were feeling empowered. I was riding the wave of possibility, of transformation, of inspiration, of conceiving the formation of a collective ‘alliance’ of like-minded folks across boundary lines and neighborhood council districts, the feeling we will overcome, be invincible, create our new reality, more autonomy...we can DO this whole use your voice for change thing...We the People...rah, rah!

And then the reality hits, startlingly, like a punch in the face. Thousands of our fresh new teachers face potential pink slips. The AP job, while not eliminated completely, is still on the line. The downtown admins will always have seniority. The Fed Stim money is being held up at the state. (And when you consider how long our legislators hijacked our state budget, we have reason to worry!) We may never see that Stim money that's supposed to save teacher's jobs and support our schools. The special interests are already up there scrapping over it. And ludicrously we can't hold our school fundraiser until we pay district fees. Fees to the district to use our own school site for a fundraiser in order to raise money to pay for the things the district doesn't fund anymore. Hello!

I am also in a mother-daughter, my needs-her needs, guilt-ridden conflict. In my heart I know she's not getting what she needs, from me, from the school...and I never seem to have enough time.

What am I doing?
How can I sustain this?
How do we pay our bills?
My daughter’s not happy
I’m overworked and exhausted
It is never-ending, this uphill climb
I need supports, fresh supplies, a life!

At the core it is ugly. It seems they will always prevail. They always have more power, more money, more control. We are ants scurrying around under their footsteps as they wipe away the crumbs. Yet we keep building. Castles in the sand.

What we do for love. For our kids.

We have been bleeding over here, holding up the barracks.
Doing, in spite of.
Creating, without knowing how or if it will work.
Holding out hope.
Rallying for our position.

Yet I know it is just the beginning of a maelstrom. I have been in the boardroom, seen the inner-memos. I get the conflict of interests. The power of the unions. The gaping financial shortfall. The problems with the existing laws. The haves and the have-nots, the social services aspects, the immigration aspects, the middle class aspects, the big business consultants and lobbyists and the overwhelming bureaucracy of it all, each desperately trying to save its own livelihood.

We need the sword of Gryffindor. Excalibur. Cut the multi-headed dragon free. The beast intent on destroying itself and anyone in its path. But the children, our children, are in the belly of the beast!

Today, reaching my breaking point, the wind sucked out of my sails and figuratively down in the dumps, I’m not making my usual lemonade. Nor my adult version here. No, today I'm in need of something stronger. Something soothing yet packs a punch. Today I’m bringing out the big guns.

I'm muddling the Cuke.

Excuse me while I drink myself through this pickle I'm in!

The Cucumbertini

The Cucumbertini:

Muddle together the following ingredients at the bottom of a cocktail shaker until sloppy mush:

4-5 slices of English hothouse cucumber
The juice of half a big fat lime
1/2 teaspoon of sugar
2 fresh mint leaves, torn up

Then add:
Ice to fill half the shaker
1 1/2 oz vodka of choice

Shake the hell out of it until most of the ice is broken down and you can barely pry your fingers off the cold metal. Strain into a martini glass and garnish with an additional slice of cucumber. Ahhhh.

Wow. I’m already:
1. Feeling better
2. Thinking up the next concoction....hmmmm.

I'm gathering ideas for a new cocktail, The Pink Slip. (Not an official firing, just the preliminary notification as per the collective bargaining agreement that one might be fired, so all those thousands of teachers, my daughter’s included, can spend the next several months teaching in a climate of fear, worry, job insecurity, and anger. You know, the best possible environment for kids.)

Send me your suggestions now. You know, deceptively optimistic, but packs a deadly blow.

I always say, there’s something about public schools and cocktails that just seems to go hand-in-hand!

Cheers!

A Song of Hope: "Falling Slowly"

This song never fails to get me. From the movie Once. Listen:



And then, do you remember this moment when they won their Oscar for Best Song, got rudely cut off by the MD (Music Director) in the orchestra pit, and then in a rare moment of Oscar history Jon Stewart brought her back onstage after the commercial break to let her finish:

Watch this acceptance speech!

Make ART, y'all.

Make LOVE.

Dare to DREAM.

No Accidents

Ever.

Even when it looks like an accident, a mistake, a lost opportunity, a broken dream.

So, she asks the universe...what next?

Where do we go from here?

Wah

My Guy didn't win. So disappointing. Even worse was the super low turnout at the polls.

If parents would only realize that at 2 parents per child, and anywhere from 20-35 students per teacher, not to mention contractor, sub-contractor, soil tester, facilities manager, or architect to drill a screw into the wall, etc, we FAR out-number that union vote by a landslide.

Parents need to WAKE UP to the sheer power of our numbers and stop being so f'ing apathetic and MUTE!!

(There. I have sufficiently de-irked for the moment.)

Now, about that blood orange martini...

fresh blood...

excuse me while I go bleed for a bit...

Blood Orange Martini, For Real

Here's the real deal:

The Blood Orange Martini

- juice one fresh blood orange

- generous dose of vodka of choice

- optional shake of Peychaud's bitters

shake, strain, serve, repeat!

Pretty Sweet!

Yesterday morning, thanks to DailyCandy Kids, I opened my inbox to a little good press and within a few hours my guidebook sales were flying into the double digits. Amazing...the power of the word. Mom to mom. Inbox to inbox. Most grateful over here.

Cleaning House

Today I spent a good part of the day cleaning my house. I mean the kind of pull apart the furniture, get up on a stool, roll out and hose down the potted trees kind of cleaning. Shaking out and refitting the slipcovers, de-cobwebing the ceiling with an upside-down broom, pulling off and bleaching the musty grey-once-were-white sheers, and Windexing both sides of every louvered windowpane, all 70 of 'em, that kind of cleaning.

It's amazing how much dirt accumulates when you ignore it and let it fester.

I've been so busy cleaning up the community--and the little school that could in particular--I've neglected my own house.

Listening to a couple of long-bookmarked / podcasts on our current economic "situation," a couple of things occurred to me while I worked.

We always have exactly what we need. Even when we can't see it. It's always there.

Funny to hear that bauble of wisdom when from all outer appearances, it appears that we're losing everything, that it's all falling apart at the seams, economically-speaking.

For months I've been hearing the phrase, use what you have. From gathering disparate pantry items for a quick dinner to swapping out babysitting with a neighbor to coming up with a solution for the school, there are resources right in front of us if we only open to them. As if in our disconnect, we somehow forgot we came from perfect abundance and we're always provided for, we always have exactly what we need. In perfect time. Even when we can't see it. Even when we think we want something else. Even when it's cracking at the seams.

This house has become a shell - a place to come in, drop a pile of papers, campaign madly, go to meetings, express frustrations, hear more frustrations, dump more madness, hear more anger, more tenseness, more anxiety, feed everybody, get them cleaned and to bed, and up again and dressed, and exit according to the day's unrelenting schedule….each day folding into the next, rarely a breather.

Years pass in this virtual motion. Pull in to the micro-focus and surf the wave of minute-by-minute emotions, passions, exchanges and issues…then pull waaaay back and the whole thing looks like a guitar string after it is plucked and vibrating…a blurry bzzzzzzz….. a single suspended note, insignificant amidst the cacophany.

Today, I am taking back my house. I am recreating home. I am ending the siege I've been on (strong word, I know), to make up for where others don't see fit to contribute. I'm stepping aside for a moment, gathering my collective thoughts.

You know that theory that 20% of the people do 80% of the work? In our school it's more like 10% of the people, always the same 10% doing 90% of the work, and then they bash us for "elitism" or "cronyism"...or worse...as if we prefer doing it all by ourselves, as if we couldn't use any help. Are they really too weak or indifferent to pitch in? In a community system, this ratio just doesn't work. It's unsustainable.

There's got to be a difference between giving someone a hand, and giving someone a hand-out.

If we're going to build a system where the community all benefits, particularly benefits from the hard-fought labors of a very small group of savvy, entrepreneurial doers, then everybody has got to come together and do their part--no matter what their contribution is. Making taquitos, running the copier, reading in the classroom, weeding the gardens, or direct cash donation. It's foolish to think we are building community when only a fraction of the whole is doing all the work for everyone else's benefit. That's not community. That's a welfare state. That's taking advantage. That's being a sucker…either sucking the strength out of the whole or being sucker enough to give it all away in the first place.

So? At home I move my furniture back and hang up the newly white curtains. A soft breeze blows fresh air through the windows while sunlight dapples the honeyed floorboards. It feels good to create this beauty and revitalization in my own house. My home. Our home. For the three of us. Effort for our direct benefit. I know I should be productive in other areas, but this effort is making me feel buoyant today.

Next I'm out in the yard pulling a few stray vines. Again I am reminded at how much neglect there has been to our home and property. We need a roof. We need some serious yard cleanup. My hair, my body, even my toenails, all need a serious overhaul. Neglect. Everywhere neglect…all our energies have been going out of here devoted to the whole, at the expense of the one.

I begin scooping copious amounts of algae-ridden waterweed growing rampant at the bottom of the pond threatening to take over the lilies and decorative potted bog plants. The whole system is overgrown, decaying, and in need of an overhaul. With each scoopful, a thick black sludge of compacted fish debris once settled around the roots comes rising up, spreading ink clouds towards the surface of the water, impeding any clear perspective. Shit.

It has to get dirty before it can be cleaned out, otherwise you wouldn't even notice the difference or bother to do anything about it. And/or, things start to look worse before they get better.

Perhaps the whole thing has to fall, fall apart, before any true progress can be made. I'm thinking about the whole school district, second largest in the country. Break it up! Let it fall. Maybe it should go bankrupt. Like everything else. Then we can truly transform.

I check my email. The Courage Campaign announces that the state of California is $41 BILLION DOLLARS in debt. We are on the brink of bankruptcy. Tens of thousands of public workers are being laid off today and more tomorrow. Our state legislators have been in a budget gridlock for months now, perhaps almost a year. It was last April when I was up in Sacramento campaigning on behalf of our children and their schools…. We are one vote away from the 2/3 majority we need to pass a budget. Seriously. They say it's down to one Republican. So close, and yet so far away. Still. While so many lives hang in the balance...these legislators don't seem to notice.

I have been ambivalent about next steps. Although clear, I cant quite seem to muster the stamina or wherewithall. I can't crusade forever. You fix one thing and then there's another…and another…ad infinitum. Ad nauseum. My daughter's in first grade and I've already begun campaigning to clean up our middle schools. What am I thinking? How can I sustain this? Where does this drive come from? I can't hold the bridge up for everybody!

After years of putting out for the greater good, today I'm holding out for myself. After years of calling "all for one and one for all" while only a very few of us were in there trying to make things better, today I'm decidedly being self-focused. I'm cleaning MY house. I'm cleaning out my OWN pond scum. I'm searching for my own clarity and solutions, as surely they are there. All that we need is always right there, I know it. Perhaps I just can't see it. Perhaps it is just hidden under the surface of cumulative dirt and debris.

Tonight as sure as I'm writing this I'm making a freshly squeezed cocktail in a crystal clear glass, in my sparkling clean house, while reveling in the surrounding beauty my attention has created.

I deserve this. I earned this abundance, even if it was here all along.

* * *

The Ruby Red

Post Script: Tonight I created this beauty:











The Ruby Red

2 parts freshly squeezed ruby red grapefruit juice
1 part premium vodka
3 sloppy shakes of Peychaud's bitters
splash of cranberry juice
plenty of ice

Shake, strain and serve!
(note: a squeeze of lime would have been nice, but I didn't think of it until afterwards.)

Cheers!

PPS. A California State Budget was passed early this morning. (Thurs, Feb 19) Phew.

On this Day, Not Just Hope...

..but the seeds of transformation are taking root as we turn a page in history and stare down a fresh, blank piece of paper.

We all know the creative process: the hesitancy, the expectancy, the vastness of possibility, the listening inside for directive, the waiting for inspiration...

...and then, surely, it comes, and we begin to fill the page with our intent-filled actions.

Yet to transform our people, our nation, our collective future....such a big need and an even bigger possibility awaits us.

What an amazing day. What an amazing blank page to be staring at collectively.

Blessings to us all as we grow and transform together.

May we create great things.

Onward and upward!

Rewire or Haywire?

Now that I've had some down time, and that 3 week family lockdown-no-camp-no getaway thing is over, it's time to dump out some of this backlog and fill you in on what's been going on in the GoMama swirl. First, I just have to get this off my chest. There's been some strange patterns I've been noticing.

Within the last 6 months, surrounding the time my back went out…

My computer, my lifeblood, the motherboard (or motherload) - blown. Dead.

My cell phone - intermittently cuts out and goes blank, then is fine again.

2 different watches- both relatively new- have erratic armsweeps, erratic time-telling, or are just plain not moving (makes a nice arm decoration.) Batteries were checked and fine, btw.

Digital camera - powers up then just shuts down, even when the batteries have been charged overnight. Other times, it works just fine.

Smoke alarm (installed closest to my side of the bed) intermittently goes off in ear-shattering decibels for no apparent reason.

My keyless car fob suddenly, and inexplicably, dies. Oh, it's not the battery they tell me, $75 worth of electronic reboots later.

My home phone - the one on my desk, the hand extension can't hold a charge longer than about 15 mins, then beeps a few times, then dies.

Toaster oven - my old reliable for morning toast and school lunches, perfect for quickly heating mini tacos, chicken nuggets, or taquitos...Dead.

My car stereo - the power amp cracks, pops, then ultimately blows.

The DirecTV DVR box - for months I hear this inexplicable wheezing sound, like breathing, is there a trapped animal under our house? Then finally, we trace it back to the DVR box which then suddenly goes to nothing but blue screen. Dead. All those months of shows queued up for that long winter break? Gone.

I wish I was making this up.

I'm not.

Coincidence?

Been a weird time. A time of weird re-wire. A time of contemplation. Time of action. Time of invisibility. Time of non-time.

I've been doing and not doing. Pulling it together, making it happen, yet coming undone.

Over the last few months, every electronic gadget or device I own or frequent or merely even orbit, has been fritzing, as if the vibrations are just incompatible. Or obsolete. Or somehow repulsively degenerative, in need of an upgrade.

It gets to a point where I start to think I am nuts. I am haywire, my system is incompatible, not normal, awol.

Hard not to take this personally, but it's as if all the electronics surrounding my perimeter agreed to all collectively extinguish their lifespan within the same 6 month period. Period.

I've been tracing and studying ascension symptoms assuring myself this is my re-boot, an upgrade, a holy new beginning, only to find myself plunging headfirst into an invisible yet cloying fog so subtle, so unclear, so indifferent that I actually thought I was rising…

…until I found myself sinking into a pudding so thick it was more like being trapped in a jello-like suspension of stagnation and old tapes, "I'm not good enough," "I'm not providing enough," "I'm not fast enough, not hip enough, too invisible, not important? Who needs this? Why am I doing all this? What's the point?"

Fast-forwarding through the What am I doing? Where is my potency? Why don't people see me? Does any of this matter? Am I barking up the wrong tree? Which, then, is my tree? spin I am in I ask, is this a crisis of conscience? Dark night of the soul? But I feel perfectly well and present. Perfectly functioning and competent. Yet everything feels vaguely disconnected and, not right.

Why am I here? Was I put here in the wrong time and place?

I scan my life and my history. My blood relatives behind me, scattered and distant, no connection there. I question why I came here, in that circle, with what intention. A black sheep, a cog in the wheel, unfitted, different, and finally released. Free.

I read about those who came to transmute the darkness into light. Took it on willingly for their families. The transformers, they call them...

I remove myself from the feelings, the pain, so old, so distant, so irrelevant, and over-processed, I just want to move forward, not backward. Am I blind here?

My husband steps over my work and announces after a year of threats that he will be not only be playing in my sandbox but taking over as captain. Is this his way of getting back at me? Of trying to get closer? Of finally hearing my rallying cry and joining the movement, or is he merely trying to prove his power over me?

I just want to run to another place and create a whole new box, fresh, untouched, untrampled by crude, arrogant, always right dominance. Creative energy is infinite. I can create again, I tell myself. I always do. I always will. I am already scanning new vistas, ways to reinvent myself….as if who I am is infinite and need never arrive, never receive fruits of efforts, no harvest, no basket, no rewards. A butterfly scanning for nectar then moving on.

I know this whole process is to show me a new way. It's a push to get me to a new rung or a new height, but I just can't see it. Don't know where to go yet. Can't remember when I've been so passionate or living in my potency for stretches of time where someone didn’t come along and trounce me from it. Can't seem to hold my space, unless it is all meaningless anyway in which case, this creation that creation, never to hold onto one…to set them free and let them resonate where they will…maybe that is the lesson, the chance to be unattached, free. Snowflakes. Each one unique.

Free-falling.

Did I tell you that he is now the booster club president of the school? The one I've been working on for years now. The one he threatened divorce if so much as one more hour went out the front door of this house towards that little school. I should be relieved, right, that he finally came to join the cause? Thrilled, right? He heard the rallying cry and came to my defense, right? Joined my cause, our collective cause, right? Right?

Have I inspired him, or threatened him? Or is it merely coincidence? Or is he trying to get close to me and this is the only way he sees how?

Or is it, like so many electronics around me, time to move on. To upgrade. To be replaced? For something newer and better I hope. Something really great.

I need a new operating platform and some new applications, like, stat.

Coincidence?

Snow and Fog

"Merlin's Beard! It's been a long time!"

As I trudge through mental snowdrifts, the beginning of a white out, images emerge as the flurries begin to settle and subside.

It's only weather.

It's only ever weather.

But there's no temperature in here. It's all in here.

Trudging through the swirling white, seemingly in no direction, it's only in looking back that I can see any small measure of the path behind me.

Thoughts waft through one ear and dissipate out the other. A fleeting reminder to …get the milk, really must respond to, cat medicine time… I feel my body pulling me through a tube…dimensionless…hovering…watching…waiting. It can wait. I let go. It's gone.

Sailing through this time period, neither asleep nor fully awake, I am equal parts in motion, in contemplation, in creation, in the doing, or in the resting from it. There is no perspective here. It's neither good nor bad. Just. Moving. Along.

Thick blankets of fog have enveloped me for months now as I sometimes poke out in anger, in regret, in sadness, in frustration. But it's not all bad; I also rise up in laughter, in compassion, in caring, and in joy. All is quiet now on the western front. Quiet and serene.

I keep waiting for the thing to bubble up, so obvious, like, look mommy, Pinot has a boo-boo on his eye, he needs to go to the doctor.

I need to know who I am, what I am supposed to be doing.
I need to know what I'm passionate about. Where's my passion already?
I need to know how the hell I will know, when, hey, shouldn't I already know?
I need to know what I am feeling. Is this working? Are we working?
I need to know what the hell is wrong with me. Nothing's feeling right. Right?

I realize there are a lot of things that are loose right now. And more than Miss S's latest tooth.

If I just bide my time, it will all be revealed. All in right time, I tell myself. Right?

Am I making mountains out of molehills, or molehills out of gaping mountains so vast that I cannot see them?

Am I about to fall into a bottomless chasm, or free-falling, ascend instead into the sky?

Either outcome would be preferable to this limbo-like fog.

I bake cookies, almond croissants. I make a standing rib roast, Yorkshire pudding, and the unctuous horsey sauce as if by Braille. I invent delicious cocktails and fry off some latkes just to prove I still can. And the roasted pears in tempranillo sauce….with the delicate smattering of shaved cheeses…it's all lovely. Lovely. Who can be angry after a meal like this? Fear doesn't stand a chance near that thick gooey caramel of a burgundy reduction...if I can just bottle it...

Skip the end-of-year top ten book list.* I'll take the top ten meals. Or better yet, I'll settle for 10 moments of clarity.


*Thanks Carrie.













...and for a musical interlude, check out the next post...

Holiday Cheer

Here's a bit of holiday cheer going out to all my faithful readers...some frosty cuts for the frosty air. Hope your down time is filled with peace, and well, more peace. May the New Year bring you all good things!

Enjoy!

(After years of ambiguity, in a burst of self-confidence--or is it self-importance?--and in the interest of giving credit where credit is due, the following songs were written, performed, produced, cover art directed, not to mention uploaded at ungodly hours of the morning for your listening pleasure... )

Holiday Cheer

Creation

Sir Walter Raleigh, the Adventurer:
"Can you imagine what it is to cross an ocean?

For weeks, you see nothing but the horizon, perfect and empty.

You live in the grip of fear. Fear of storms. Fear of sickness on board. Fear of the immensity.

So you must drive that fear down deep into your belly, study your charts, pray for a fair wind, and hope. Pure, naked, fragile...hope."

Queen Elizabeth:
"Go on, Mr. Raleigh. You were… hoping."

Raleigh:
"At first it's no more than a haze on the horizon. So you watch. You watch. And there's a smudge. A shadow on the far water.

For a day.

For another day.

The stain slowly spreads along the horizon taking form until on the third day, you let yourself believe.

You dare to whisper the word

…land.

Land.

Life.

Resurrection.

A true adventure coming out of the vast unknown, out of the immensity, into new life.

That, Your Majesty, is the New World."

--From Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Woman • Warrior • Queen
www.elizabeththegoldenage.net

Hiatus

Been kinda absent
as far as Bloggerville goes,
but I feel my time away
is coming to a close.

Stay tuned for recaps and updates...

love and miss everybody.

GoMama

Results are in…

Update: The above recent expression of Miss S's seems to tie in with the following topic. She also wondered out loud what her job used to be. You know, last time around.

So many of you have asked. And waited patiently. And now, without further ado...

Miss S's Questions (and Answers) To God:

Who was the 1st one alive?
Boy that's really hard. Fairies. Because fairies are magic. They can come whenever they want. And they can leave whenever they want. They can die and then come back the next day, as the same person with the same job, or a different job.

Was the first person living a boy or a girl?
Half boy and half girl. A little bit of both.

How were their bodies then? Were they different?
It was the same.

How did the world come about?
I'm watching a mini-clip in my head. When I'm done I'll tell you. I know. I think I know…. Um, well, there was a space fairy and there had been no planets in the space. So the space fairy decided to make earth. And she had a special wand and with her special wand she said, "draw the earth and make it come true." So with her wand she drew the picture of the earth and then she filled some people in, and she filled the water in and planted trees, grass and plants. She thought that everyone could be friends.

How did she know what things looked like?
Well, she had it in her imagination. And then, she met the Building Fairy. She was the one who built everything in the whole entire world. She went from planet to planet building things after the Space Fairy made other planets. The Builder Fairy started to build houses for everyone and places to go. And then the people started to have babies and the babies grew up very fast. And everyone loved it on the planet, so did the fairies.

What did the 1st house look like?
It was very pretty. It had a garden out back and there were two trees in the front yard and in between the trees they made a hammock, and there was a little light hanging over because they had built a top for it so you wouldn't get wet in it, in the hammock. They made a very pretty bouquet of red roses tied very tightly to the door. It was a white house made out of wood, and the top/roof was made out of brick. Inside there was an upstairs and a downstairs. Over the dinner table was a white chandelier with fake red berries wrapped around it.

Who came up with languages?
A boy and a girl. The boy said, I think we should come up with a language. A lot of different ones too. The girl added, that's what I was thinking. They had been talking in sign language.

How many other planets and earths are there?
Quite a lot.

How did the 1st person get here?
Gravity has to be everywhere so nothing falls.
That's a really hard question.
What I think that God I think. What I think I think that God I think. (laughing.)
By magic. The first person got here by magic.

How many people will ever live in the world, from beginning to end? (God will know when it stops)
(We skipped this one. Too hard.)

How long will people stay alive?
A very long time, I mean not a very long time, quite a long time.

Who lives the longest?
Santa. He never dies.

How did God make people's bodies?
It was magic.

PS. Don't be sure to not think about it.

---
I particularly like the last PS she insisted on tacking on.
That, and also the "what I think that God I think" thing she was sort of chanting.

Mind you, she's 6.

Cheers!