Rock To Wind A String Around

Here’s a shot of my crazy little gal, dancing through an empty parking lot on the way to the Metro.  Astrid Meklit loves life!  She was thrilled by our museum choices, our restaurant selections and the shopping we did.  She had a king-sized bed all to herself this week and she refused to share it with her doll Meskerem, “she takes up too much room.”  Poor Meskerem was given a pillow for resting on the floor so that AM and kitty could slumber undisturbed (it’s exactly what we did with you, girlie, when we wanted unblemished rest…)

The rest of us enjoyed the too-short week full of museums and trains and gluten free pizza.  I can’t believe it’s really over–Elliott will be off to school a week from Tuesday. Grappling, really grappling with that new reality.  I hope to make peace with it soon, in the meantime, there is a great deal of Enkutatash planning left to do, and I’m fully immersed.   Busy-ness is a nice distraction tool.  At this rate, I won’t have time to think about our many life changes until sometime in 2011—well done, me!

We’re back from our month in Florida and are slowly settling back into our real lives.  Normalcy is creeping in as I begin to plan Enkutatash and the Dead of Winter event, shop for groceries, reschedule our many canceled appointments and weed, weed, weed. The lack of fencing lessons removes a good bit of the structure of our regular week, but fencing camp begins Monday.  In the meantime, we’ve filled in the gaps with haircuts, cookie baking, and the aforementioned weeding (seriously, the well-manicured beauty of our yard became a jungle in our absence.

Grief is a funny shape.  Blogging has become non-existent, my insomnia seems pretty reigned in, what with the need to sleep for 7-8 hours at a time (maybe too much contentment = insomnia?  because it hasn’t been a problem since the beginning of May, and my nutritional plan has relied all too heavily on the sugar group. The sleep is a plus, the sugar and lack of communication with the outside world is a big minus, but I’m hoping for more balance in the next few weeks.  In the meantime, friendly faces and some time on the treadmill seems to be good for what ails me.  Yard saling helps too–the kids and I bounced around the north part of Cowtown for most of the morning.  My wallet is a little lighter, but so is my heart.

crying santas

phone calls

taps

deli trays

sleep

car repairs

thank you notes

furniture shopping

appointments

jigsaw puzzles

cousins

repeating a dozen times a day, “his date of death is May 8, 2010″

a very empty recliner

beautiful flowers

Shrek

phone calls

donating clothing

polishing his shoes

working to fill the silence.

I won’t lie, the last few weeks have been miserable.  When we aren’t making arrangements or canceling credit cards or writing thank yous, we’re cobbling together my mother’s financial future, and trying to fill the void with games and puzzles and beach outings and furniture shopping, but we’re all still reeling…

I’ll be in Florida for a few more weeks, my mom just isn’t ready to face a quiet house, and Maude love him, Elliott does his very best to prevent that.  We’ll stay with my mom a little longer and then she’ll come stay with us for awhile.  This new relationship with my mom reminds me a great deal of attachment parenting.  All of the things I did to foster attachment weren’t meant to be long term.  We coslept and used a sling and kept our little people close so that they would feel secure and comfortable with autonomy.  I think my mom chafes at her own need to stay close to others right now, but I know she won’t feel this way forever.  In the meantime, I am happy to be close, happy to provide what she needs, knowing that she’ll feel more comfortably independent when she’s ready.

I want to thank each one of you for the thoughts and prayers and emails and calls and cards.  Your kindness soothes the heartsore;  you have no idea the gratitude I feel for each of you.

I’ll be back soon–I feel so raw, it’s hard to write, but soon I’ll be able to add funny anecdotes, and an umpteenth reminder to support EOR.   Be prepared!

I’ll be MIA for a few more days it seems.  My dad died while Albert and I were in Portland for the EOR event.  We couldn’t make arrangements to leave yesterday so we attended to our duties at the amazing Lights of Hope event (and by the end of the evening I was feeling considerably more hopeful…such generous people–it was an amazing evening) and flew standby this morning so that we could come home to collect the kids. We’ll start the drive to Florida tomorrow, as soon as we can track down  socks and bathing suits, and return library books and make arrangements for the lawn in our absence.
Too sad to chat much more. I’ll check in after the drive, I think.

So, my boy, he is a thoughtful boy.  He has hatched some crazy wacky scheme for my birthday tomorrow and he’s enjoying the raw rush of power as he shoos me from rooms, dives for phone calls, borrows my credit card, and sallies to the neighbors’ house with lumpy bundles of food.  In the midst of all of this, there came a knock at the door around 8 tonight.  Too late for UPS, I realized it was our neighbor, Bill, from across the street.  He was carrying an Edible Arrangement delivered hours earlier. He didn’t want it to go bad, so he rescued it from the doorstep and watched for signs of life over here. Elliott could barely contain himself when I brought it inside.  Want to guess why he needed my credit card?

For the record, I am not an Edible Arrangements kind of gal–that kind of money for the presentation of fruit (which is just as delicious and more likely to be organic on a plate) seems incredibly wasteful to me.  For the record, Elliott is an  Edible Arrangements kind of guy.  If you’ve ever seen the Simpsons episode, Life on the Fast Lane you’ll know that my Edible Arrangement is a lot like a bowling ball named “Homer.”  Given as a gift, but not intended to be used by me!

Tomorrow, we’ll spend the day out to lunch, and in classes, and then prepping for the Enkutatash planning committee meeting, which is when Elliott’s plans will surely come to fruition.  The day will start though with a beautiful Edible Arrangement of fruit for breakfast.  I hope I get to sample a grape or two before my helpers finish it for me…

jumping into the Subaru for our 8 hour journey of joy back to Cowtown.  I hate being out of touch for the day, but I’m sure when I emerge from this cross-country cocoon there will be all sorts of referral news to delight me.

Fingers crossed, applesauce!

Waiting at the Subaru dealership for some recall work to be completed.  It’s kind of nice to be here–free wifi, decent coffee, quiet waiting area.  Know what would make it better though?  The chance to get a pedicure or seated massage.  Seriously, I would pay big money to walk away with a car repair AND freshly polished tootsies.

Just sayin’…

When we moved to San Francisco a few years ago, I soothed my initial loneliness with several trips to Lush.  I bought lots of bath bombs and other goodies, but I was particularly besotted with the massage bars–they are fabulous on super dry skin, smell great, and don’t stain the sheets.  Fast forward three years and I found an unused wiccy magic massage bar tucked away in a bedside table last week so last night we both enjoyed a massage.

The interesting thing about a wiccy magic massage bar is that it contains scores of aduki beans.

adukibeans

As the shea butter heats up, the beans, which feel oh-so-nice as they glide across your back, begin to loosen from the bar.  A massage for 2 adult humans means that your bed will quickly fill with aduki beans.  After a thorough massage, neither of us was particularly motivated to throw back the covers, scoop up beans and dispose of them, so we pushed what we could off the bed (without dislodging the covers–it was 4 degrees last night) and planned to attend to the rest in the morning.

Good in theory, but not so much in practice.  The beans fell from the bed to the hardwood floor all night long. Sometime in the night, I began to dream of our wedding.  During the ceremony, a very small guest wet herself.  The stream of urine hitting the hard wood sounded like pearls falling to the floor and several people in nearby pews began to look for pearls or beads.  While I have no actual memory of this event (what with the vows and all up at the front) I dreamed the dropping pearls so vividly, it was if I had a seat at my very own ceremony (and might I add that the bride was gorgeous…and young!) The intermingling of myth and dream and reality was so interesting, all though not particularly rest-enhancing.

Tomorrow, I think I’ll pop into LUSH for another bar or two.  These, not surprisingly, will be vanilla, or chocolate, and decidedly bean free.

Lots to love about the last few days.  Our friends, Dan & Alex met their beautiful daughter last week and I was lucky enough to meet her tonight.  She is a vision, with the loveliest little ears–perfect little flower petals.    Lots of other friends have similar good news–referrals, court dates, embassy appointments (and labor soon, I hope, for Jill).  It really is raining babies (and 3 year old boys) around here.

We attended the 1st men’s gymnastics meet of the season.   We’ve gone for years, are stalwart fans, and are even more enamored now that Elliott has caught a tshirt!  This may well be the pinnacle of his year and he is even more committed to attending the rest of the meets.   This  is in spite of the fact that he is now a gluten free diner and can no longer enjoy any of the snacks at the gymnastics meet.  You can’t imagine how that particular fact pains him.  Still a gf Elliott is likely a good thing.  To help ease the pain of wheat withdrawal, I minimize his considerable debt to me by a dollar each day if he is a cooperative GF eater.  I don’t usually pay my children to eat, but I knew this would cut down on his grumbling  and  he’d have a hope of receiving allowance sometime in the year 2010.  Just remember kids, retainers and hotel rooms DON’T mix!

My dining room redo is almost complete–the golden walls are gorgeous and I’m almost finished with the various accent pieces (lots of painting and  fabric changes).  Pictures will follow, um, maybe.

And finally, my greatest love might be my new Cuisinart smart stick.  Smoothies are smooth, herbs get chopped, and all of the implements are submersible.  I’m almost glad I let the last one  fall to the floor.  This, this is the road to smoothie heaven!