On My Mind Monday

"The best quotes don't speak to one particular truth, but rather to universal truths that resonate- across time, culture, gender, generation, and situation - in our own hearts and minds. They guide, motivate, validate, challenge and comfort us in our own lives.  They reiterate what we've figured out and remind us how much there is yet to learn.  Pithily and succinctly, they lift us momentarily out of the confused and conflicted human muddle.  Most of all, they tell us we're not alone.  Their existence is proof that others have questioned, grappled with, and come to know the same truths we question and grapple with, too."

Cheryl Strayed

Brave Enough

Amen to that.

January Inventory

Reading Ghostbread, the first book of 2016.  Livingston's memoir is humbling and touching.  I found the short vignettes perfect for a stolen moment or two.  It is the kind of book one could motor through in a single sitting, but I wanted to take my time with her thoughtful words.  I'm well into Safekeeping.  It's a YA account of a world gone mad, but instead of being a political rant, it is more a story of strength of spirit and gratitude. I'm going to pass it on to Lily. I started The Omnivore's Dilemma hoping that it would help kick my healthier eating hopes into gear, but this book makes me not want to eat a thing.  I just started Dear Mr. You.  I've heard many positive reviews, and I just know I'll enjoy it because I am queen of unsent letters. I have 5 books waiting for me at the library too.

Wondering when all the outstanding, little things will be taken care of so I can move into my kitchen.  It has been a long 12 weeks folks and I am done.  I'm done with people not showing up, or showing up at strange times and just entering my home.  I'm done with excuses and shoddy work and more than anything I am done with being told, "Well, this happens."  

Noticing the way fog obscures the scenery.  The way it dulls and softens the world.  And also the way it is lighter a little bit later every day.  We are on the other side of darkness even if it is sometimes hard to notice and accept. 

Watching Star Wars.  We enjoyed a family date for pizza and then the movies the other night.  It was a mid-week adventure.  I think The Force Awakens is a good sequel to the Star Wars institution.  I'm not sure I'll watch Making a Murderer. I am a little caught between the irresponsibility of presenting only one side of the story and my interest in true crime drama.   At the end of the lopsided debate, I believe Avery is a bad guy and he's exactly where he belongs.

Listening to my intuition.  Do you do that?  It's not always easy because it seems unevolved.  I want to ration and reason against what I know to be true simply because I feel it.

Eating pizza four ways.  They were half off so we each ordered our perfect pies and then had breakfast and/or lunch the next day(s).  

Drinking lots of tea.  I recently rediscovered my Harney and Sons Cinnamon Sunset and it's perfect for January.  I want to try a cafe misto with coconut milk the next time I'm at Starbucks.

Wanting world peace, an end to poverty and hunger, that every child and animal have a loving home, and cures for diseases like cancer and Alzheimers. That's not asking for too much...right?

Wearing wool sweaters and boots (sometimes Lily's) and scarves (also Lil's at times).  My infinity necklace, a new favorite.  Eyeliner once in awhile.

Hoping Ted has a fun day of skiing, Lil's friend can come over today so I can begin the process of deChristmasing guilt-free, I have time for a workout before the Packer game tonight, that the Packers win, and that there is enough room on our dvr for all the movies we want to record as Showtime is free this weekend.

Thinking how risk invites both creativity and intimacy.

Enjoying cozy family time, and the comfort and warmth of our home.

Loving my new marble kitchen accessories and trips to Williams Sonoma and Sur La Table.  UPS just delivered a box.  It's like Christmas.  It's been a long time since I've had a toaster and a blender. It's a long weekend.  I need an extra day even if I will still be sharing my home with contractors.

two day pass

all i wanted to do on friday night was sit beside my tree with a glass of wine in peace.

instead i had a house full of workers and no wine.

i also had a son reluctant to use uber who then needed to be picked up after my bedtime.

then i woke saturday easily and early.

after a quick cup of coffee, i started on the day's long list of organizing and cleaning tasks.

i had intentions to clean and move into my new kitchen.

sadly, we are still shy of that point.

the weather was finally cooperative so ted was able to ski.

i think it made me as happy as it made him.

i am of the opinion that there has been a glut of technology use in our house owing to new games and gadgets over the holidays.

the boys went out for breakfast sunday while the girls went to see a show.

lily and i joined aunt jess and aunt loie for newsies.

it was an energetic production that was most entertaining.

it was certainly deserving of the tony for best score and choreography it earned in 2012.

we then headed home to join a packer party in progress.

my dad brought his better than bw3 wings and my step-mom her meatballs.

we made a pot of italian beef for sandwiches and a couple salads.

we all squeezed in the family room to cheer the green and gold onto victory.

so while saturday was all work, sunday was all play.

and while i didn't get to accomplish all the things i wanted, i did...we did...make measurable progress, and have lots of fun too.

Grateful Friday

Today I give thanks for...

Getting back to my Grateful Friday.  I haven't been a very regular blogger lately.  I do miss the time I spend here.

This piece, which I just read and this book soon to be released. It appears that Lucy Kalanithi is a thoughtful, gifted writer just like her late husband.  I will read When Breath Becomes Air when days are longer and sunier because while it sounds beautiful, it also sounds heavy.

The kitchen is 99% complete and I am 100% in love with it.  We are anxious to have our house to ourselves and also to cook in our new kitchen.  We used the stove the other night to boil noodles for mac and cheese. We are not counting that as our inaugural meal.  I also boiled eggs.  Pasta and eggs are the foods that have been the most challenging to make in our basement kitchen.  The home stretch involves hardware and electrical work, cabinet  repair (yes, they are new and already need repair) and touch-up/clean-up.  It has been a long 11 weeks and some new cabinet doors and stools are still a couple weeks out.  I have learned much throughout this process that I will probably write about at some point to get it off my chest and also to help anyone considering a remodel including my future self.  My Dad asked me if I would do it again, and I didn't hesitate to say yes.

My lap cats.  Sit and they will come.

A very chill NYE celebration.  So chill that we almost served dinner on paper plates.  Aunt Jess and Uncle Mark joined Mike, Lily and I for dinner and games.  We ate Caesar salad and twice baked potatoes with our steak and lobster, and we played Fish Bowl and Name That Tune before ringing in the new year with champagne, kisses and a few fireworks.  

An even more relaxed New Years Day in part due to this burger called the Hangover.  I had no business eating a burger topped with bacon and eggs.  I spent much of the day reading in between naps.

A fresh new year.

More games (Wits and Wagers) and good food (chili) at my brother and sil's on Saturday.

The way he's been coming home and picking up the guitar lately.

The way he's worked up the nerve to come out from under Ted's bed even when there are contractors in the house now, yet  he still keeps a safe distance.

Getting back into the groove.  We're back to healthier eating, earlier bedtimes and other routines.  

My guys relaxing after a long week.

It still looks like Christmas around here.

Tickets to see a show this weekend with my aunt and uncle.

A little Packer party on Sunday to celebrate our new kitchen and, hopefully, the continuation of our season.

Now and Then

Lily and Mike watched the first three (really 4-6) Star Wars movies over break in preparation for viewing The Force Awakens.  I grew up with Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Hans Solo.  My brother, Dad and I were big fans and so watching my daughter enjoy the films with her father fills me with warm longing nostalgia.

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While they were watching, I dug out a few of my brother's action figures.  They are filed away in boxes in the basement remnants from two childhoods now: mine and my son's.  I am keeping them for the next generation.  Just writing that makes my heart palpate.  For the record, I still have my Honey Hill Bunch Kids and Barbie loot galore.  My future grandchildren are going to love coming to visit me. 

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When we were kids, I was relegated to Princess Leia, R2D2 or C3PO and always a storm trooper or two since my brother had at least a dozen of them.  Holding Darth or Chewie still feels foreign and sneaky.  Taboo. We would set up worlds in the small living room of my dad's bachelor apartment, and before we knew it Friday became Sunday. It was time to go back home to my mom's.  There wasn't as much time for playing there because we had school and homework and bedtimes.  We also had our own friends so we didn't hang out as much together.

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My kids don't hang out much at all, and that makes me sad.  My brother was almost always my friend.  I think that was partially by design and out of necessity, but those circumstances made us realize we enjoyed being together.  We were quite good at compromise too.  I would play Super Heroes with him and then he would play school with me.  I was always Wonder Woman to his Aqua Man and the teacher to his student. Childhood is so different today.

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You would think I would say better, but I'm not so sure.  There are things I envy my kids: having a nuclear family, one bedroom and not having to miss social outings happening across town.  The truth is that I think we were so close because our parents were divorced.  We were shuttled around and in the middle the two of us always together in our aloneness...a family within the family. 

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There was a family that lived in a massive two unit apartment in the complex.  The parents managed the Colonial Manor.  Stevie and Sherry were twins who were a tad younger than I was and a tad older than my brother.  We spent a lot of time together swimming, visiting the Stop and Shop across the street for treats and spying on one another.  They had every gadget and toy imaginable so we usually gravitated to their apartment.  As big and nice and inhabited by two parents as it was, I realized even as a child that it was not better than mine.  I could tell their mom and dad were brooding and angry.  I remember thinking that they didn't seem to notice their children or their friends no matter how loud we sang The Bee Gees, how acrimonious the boy versus girl feuds got, or how late we stayed up eating candy and having pillow fights.  They were completely checked out.  My parents argued about more time with us.  We were so wanted that our mom and dad fought over whose turn it was. My dad cooked us hamburgers in his Presto Magic and made us go to bed after Fantasy Island.  He watched us while we swam in the pool, or played in the Rocky Mountain-sized snowbanks the plows cleared from the lot, or sloshed around in the creek looking for crayfish and gold.  He was happy and present.  My mom called us home for a dinner at night that she cooked and then again when it got dark out. She always knew where we were and at least thought she knew what we were doing.  She was positive and positively determined to give us a "normal" childhood despite our bifurcated family unit.

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I was on the phone with my dad the other day while Mike was driving home from a store across town.  Although I was scarcely paying attention and clueless as to where we were, suddenly everything felt oddly familiar.  Then I spotted it...the Colonial Manor looking mostly the same as it did when I last saw it thirty odd years ago.  It was like seeing a ghost and not because the buildings are white.  My life ages 5 through 14 were on rewind in my head.  When I told my dad we were driving by he said, "Oh, that dump."  I laughed, but truthfully some of my fondest memories were made at that dump and it made me a little sad.

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Mike and Lily haven't seen the new movie yet.  Our one trip to the theater over vacation was to see a movie none of us particularly wanted to see.  Point Break was a compromise, or really more like a quarrel resulting from fierce Irish and German roots. Roots that tend to yield stubborn streaks.  I wanted to see Star Wars, Mike and Lily wanted to see Joy, and Ted wanted to see Concussion.  My how things have changed and yet remained the same. 

Christmas Captures and Confessions

I have always had an affinity for the 31 days of December.  That fancy goes beyond pretty packages, sweet sounding carols and vacations.  It's a month that invites joy and celebration.  Invitations I rarely decline.  Along with joy comes sorrow...at least for me.  When I feel happiest, sadness creeps in to deliver the blow that this too shall pass.  Melancholy is as much the thief of joy as comparison.

  I was a Christmas loving, Santa Claus worshiping kid like none other, but the holidays often served as reminder of who and what was missing (the displaced relative, the divorced parent, the perfect, intact family).  Christmas Eve was my mom's night, and at the very end of it, it would become her dad's.  He passed long before I was born, tragically and suddenly. It bothered me the way she would sit beside the tree listening to crooners choking back tears at the end of the festive night.  Every year she'd explain that she just needed a little time with her dad.  I couldn't sleep while worrying about her communicating with ghosts.  Today I get her need to sit with the memory of her father who died shortly after her 19th Christmas, and I also know how alive ghosts can feel.  Every Christmas Day I would worry about my mom home alone as I celebrated with my dad and his big  family.  She made light of it and even shrugged off her solitude.  Her last Christmas, she was finally invited to share in the celebration, but she didn't make it because of the selfishness of others including myself.  Guilt shows up around the holidays too.  Timing is everything.

Lightness is achieved when I stay in the present moment rather than those lost or looming.  I remind myself over and over to be. here. now.  Because here is a pretty sweet spot.

1. Fred comes with St. Nick and leaves with Santa.  While he's visiting, he is sure to deliver laughs and small gifts and, hopefully, warm memories too.

2. Teddy wrapped the last gift of Christmas on Christmas Eve under master wrapper Mike's watchful eye.  All the while I'm vacillating between how cute it is and how necessary it is because all too soon he'll be out on his own.  He needs to know how to do all manner of things many of which he has yet to attempt let alone master.   

3.  The cats love when the gifts are unwrapped and they can play in the boxes and with the bows.

4. After a family dinner out on the Eve eve, the kids burned off their wings and curds by racing through the snowless city streets...

5.  and under the light of an almost full moon.  A full moon on Christmas Day strikes me as something quite special.

6.  The winter solstice is tinged with an air of  heavy holiness too. It's one of those days that leaves me feeling wistful and exposed.

7.  Tigger caught sampling Santa's cookies.

8.  Peanut caught digging under the tree.

9.  Fred rode back to the North Pole on Santa's Harley.  He's got a sense of humor that elf.

I was going to work Christmas Eve day and then I wasn't.  I hemmed and hawed, and then ultimately decided that my heart was more on board to spend the day with my family than at work.  Never mind that I ended up making last minute purchases at the last place I wanted to be: the mall. We arrived in church early enough to claim our seats in time for the concert and two extras for my brother and sister-in-law.  Lily even acknowledged that our awesome time management made for a stress free send off.  This is not always the case on holidays, but it should be.  The night's celebration was in limbo for awhile, but my brother and sil saved it.  We went old school just the six of us celebrating together and it was a great night of stew, spirits, crackers, games and gifts.

1. On the steps of Old St. Mary.

2. The church was candle-lit and decorated with red roses and a bounty of poinsettia.  Coming in on Christmas Eve to see the manger set up and surrounded by twinkling lights, always takes my breath away.

3. Our annual lights tour took a turn up Wisconsin Avenue which was lit up in sparkling blue and white.

4. We four.

5.  My two.

6.  Uncle Brad made such a big, grateful deal out of the golf ball finder glasses Lily picked out for him that rather resembled Blue Blockers.  It made her feel extra proud.

7.  Ted and Aunt Ashley posed for a photo of their own.

8.  What's not to love about boys in pink crowns?  Ted insisted on "dressing" for the Eve.  Of his own accord, he put on a coat and tie and looked handsome.

9.  Or girls plating up cookies and milk for Santa?

Morning came early and went too fast.  Mike and I nearly fell asleep in front of the tree waiting for Ted to shower before bed on Christmas Eve.  That boy and his penchant for cleanliness.  I love our family time Christmas morning best of all because it is cozy and quiet and all ours.

1.  Santa delivered new sleds, but still no snow.

2.  Lily and I modeled our new scarves both gifts from Teddy.  He went back to get me the one I'm wearing after I admired it when we were shopping together.  He had already gotten me something else, and I just found that an extra sweet gesture.

3.  A Kate Spade clutch...from tween to teen in minutes.  

4.  Mitten model too.

5.  Holding their Nanny ornaments and melting my heart.

6.  Ted is stoked for new fleece layers for skiing (if we ever get snow).

7.  And if not, no worries because Peanut will sleep or lounge on the sleds.

8.  The guys.

9.  The other guys.

As we drove to my dad's for brunch on Christmas day, it started to snow ever so softly.  It set the scene for another warm and festive celebration.

1-10 Hi, my name is Lily and I got a selfie stick for Christmas.

Saturday we celebrated our third Christmas in as many days at my in-laws and when that was't enough family time, we invited everyone over for Teddy's 15th birthday celebration Sunday.  We just ordered pizzas and I made a salad since we still don't have a fully functional kitchen.  The gang watched football and jammed and had another good time.  I'm adjusting to the fact that the holidays are over and I now have a 15 year old.

1-9 Family doing what family does best...smiling, playing, loving.

On My Mind Monday

"We all believe our stories.  Everyone does.  But where would we be without them?  They embrace the full contradiction of our lives."

~ Natalie Goldberg

I came across this nugget this weekend in Goldberg's essay Another New Year.  I read it once.  Reread it.  It struck me because I've many stories from the past week of revelry and review to share, but I'm stuck without words because of the weight of contradiction they hold: happy/sad, full/empty, satisfied/desiring, laughing/crying.  And the biggest one of all...in the present versus in the past or in the future.

One thing that did become abundantly clear to me over the new year is my word for 2016.  It is grace.  I find the gift of unmerited favor comforting and also necessary to forgive and encourage myself and others (but especially myself) for all the ways I feel like I can and should do and be better.