the house

Sorry it's been so long, I promise to update on the whole surgery process. I've been a little slow lately...recovery is not quite as bad as I anticipated but it's still frustrating and slow...as it should be for such a large, long operation.

But this is where my thoughts lie today. I believe I have mentioned before that I have been in the process of cleaning out my grandparents' house over the past couple years. And that if you have ever been responsible for such a thing you understand why it takes such a very long time. Anyway, while involved in this process, I've not had much time for feelings about it, other than getting it done. I've had a baby, had cancer, a bunch of "life" has happened while I've been in this process. And frankly, there were such bad feelings around the house in the last few years - my grandfather's dementia, having to evict my uncle and the preceding and following strife around that whole debacle, my grandmother's decline, the increasing deterioration of the house - that frankly, I just wanted it over with, done and gone.

 

But now that it is done, now that the papers are signed to put it up for sale, now that I looked on realtor.com this morning and saw it listed...now it's real and now I feel it. And now, like I suspected would happen all along but didn't want to admit, now it breaks.my.heart.

It's the place that raised three kids and many animals over the past 64 years.

Adding on to the original 2/1 house.

My mom and uncles

 

It's the place that when I had dreams when I was little and they took place "at home", that's where they were, not in the crappy apartment where I lived.

My first Easter Sunday with my grandparents

 

It's the place where I spent the majority of my childhood, where 90% of my childhood memories live, where my name is still carved in the cement of the driveway, on a small square between the sidewalk and a dilapidated fence built by my pop pops hands.

JLC 1983

It's the place where I could walk to the next block over and go to the house in which my grandfather was born, where my aunt (his unanticipated twin) was placed in the warming oven of the stove because she was so small.

Some unknown holiday dinner

 

Halloween circa '84?

It's the place where I learned to roller skate down the sidewalk, and almost lost control of my bike going down the steep hill at the top of the street, it's the place where I learned about crushes on boys (my friend had a crush on one of the neighbors grandsons - I still thought boys were icky and had no idea why she would do that...funny enough, that boy and I are still acquaintances)

 

It's the house in front of which most of my "milestone" pictures were taken - baptism, holidays, graduations...

Christmas of some unknown year

Baptism

 

It's the house in which my grandfather built all of the kitchen cabinets, which will likely be torn out and tossed away.

 

It's the backyard where all of my childhood pets are buried.

The graveyard resides in the back left corner



Suburbs anyone?

It's the shed where I spent hours upon hours watching my uncle (not the one we evicted) work on his motorcycles, sitting on them, pretending I was flying down the highway.

 



Mom getting ready for a dance

It's the house where my uncle tried to teach me to ride a small motorcycle, where I took the corner down the driveway a bit too fast one day and dropped the bike (going all of what, 10 miles an hour?), where my mom freaked out, scared me and I subsequently never rode a bike again.

The motorcycle riding uncle, 1969

Random card game

My grandmother

 












It's the street down which my uncle tried to teach me to drive a stick (didn't work, had to learn it on my own, on the rainiest day of the year).

 



My uncle with Arlo

It's the backyard where I helped my pop pop garden, plant, build, create.
 



My pop pop's work shed

It's the back bedroom where I had my first kiss the summer after 8th grade.

It was the house where on a Saturday morning when I was 5, I learned what loving your animal until the end meant when our dog Arlo was taken to be put to sleep, with my mom and uncle crying all the way there and back.

 

Arlo and Horatio

It's the house where so many of my cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. visited over the years, when so many of the other family houses had dissipated.



One of the few times in the past 25 years my grandmother allowed the fireplace lit

It's the place where, in the living room, my grandfather took his last breath less than 500 feet away from where he took his first one.


 

My grandparents

 

It's the house in which, while cleaning it out, I am 100% certain that there were multiple times in which my grandfather and uncle made their presence quite known and scared the bejeezus out of me.

It's the place that when you're driving around the neighborhood after being away for many, many years, taking the back way out of the shopping center, and you don't really remember the right way to go but your steering wheel just follows what your hands do, which are turning without thinking, and you feel the way back that you've taken a million times before, that you apparently could truly do with your eyes closed.

 

For all intents and purposes, whether I wanted it to be or not, it was my touchstone. I will likely go back up to the house one or two more times and once, for certain, I will sit in the living room, by myself, and cry. And say goodbye.

A Roiling Boil...

Do you ever have so incredibly much going on - good or bad - that you just feel like you are in a bubbling whirlpool? I'm in the whirlpool. Between my very long and scary surgery tomorrow, Jack turning four, my baby girl just changing immensely every day, my grandparents house, a house that I pretty much grew up in, being almost emptied and up for sale....I'm just overwhelmed. They aren't all bad changes, but they are big life changes all at once and my goodness, for someone who does not like change at all, well...I was driving home from my grandparent's house this weekend, singing loudly with my Mumford and Sons and streaming tears - some happy, some sad, some grateful, some freaked out.

 

So now I will try to go to sleep until 5 am tomorrow morning when I get ready to go to the hospital, and kiss my sleeping babies heads, and get ready to put one of the big life changes behind me.

My little man

 

 

Somewhere, somehow...in a mélange of blinks of an eye and interminable days, you turned from this small helpless baby to my little man. You are so steadfast and determined - you do not absorb, move, learn, react, engage, until you are ready to. On the other hand, you are so incredibly full of energy, sometimes to a frenetic extent, that you continue to grow my patience quota daily. You are sassy, and so very sweet. You are hilarious. While you are full of a pre-schooler's disregard for others at times, you show moments of such sweetness and kindness - moments that you don't know that I see - that you make my heart balloon.

 

Oh my heart, I love you so very much. I am beyond thankful every day that I get to continue to enjoy the privilege of hearing you call me mama. Happy happy birthday my love. 

Mother's Day 2014

 

Mother's Day now, to me, is not a day to be feted. In fact, oftentimes I'm so frustrated and disappointed in my own mothering skills that the last thing that I think I deserve is any sort of congratulations in the matter. What it does represent is a day to be so thankful that I was gifted these two beings. I don't always remember this in the throes of another dinnertime where Jack is refusing to eat or when AR decides to scream and cry for half an hour because I don't give her the 300th cracker before lunch, but I am well aware of many fellow cancer ladies who have been stripped again of one of the most basic of human rights - the choice of whether to have children or not -  as a result of this completely unfair siege.

 

This is a day to thank God again that I get to be here. A funny thing about Mom's with littles who have gone through this fight - while most other people (and I do NOT in any way begrudge anyone this, it's just a difference that I have noticed) talk about their bucket lists and places they want to visit and things they want to do (and yes, I am not in any way saying I still don't see myself sitting in my little coffeehouse at the end of the street in the Salzburg Altstadt, sans kids, sometime soon), we make deals with God about time. And not time for us, time with our kids. I can't count how many of us have told each other that we have tried to bargain with God by asking "Please just give me 5 more years so I can get them into elementary school" and then "Please God, can I just have 10 more years because then they will be in high school" etc etc etc. Things that don't occur to other Mom's swarm our brains every.single.day. So these holidays, Mother's Day, birthdays, etc., are not just holidays, not just breakfast and flowers and cards -  they are milestones.

 

 I don't need to know how much they love me - I desperately need them to know how much I love them.



Happy Cinco de Mayo!

How time passes so quickly I have no idea. I write something then turn around to write again and find it's been over a week. Amazing. Anyway, just a stop in on this May 5th to show a tribute to my own familial Cinco de Mayo...

 

 

My Mexican Nana (my great-grandmother) and my French Pops who joined forces to create a whole bunch of dysfunctional family members! I didn't get to know them much...Pops died quite a few years before I was born. I knew my Nana but she was sick and bedridden which is a bit of a scary prospect to a 3 or 4 year old. She died when I was 4 and as any good Mexican family would do for any occasion, her after-funeral reception was filled with tears, laughter, fighting and lots of alcohol, not necessarily in that order. But these two people raised 5 kids in a house that, from my memory, had to be less than 800 square feet (we bemoan having 4 people in our 1280 square foot house quite often). When my grandfather and his twin sister were born, my aunt was so tiny that they kept her warm by putting her in a cigar box in the warming oven. Their 5 kids went on to have 14 grandchildren, 20 great-grandchildren, and 7 great-great grandchildren so far. Their house still stands on the next street over from my grandparents house. They are remembered.  Salud!

 

Happy Easter

Wishing you and your family a wonderful, peaceful Easter.

 May you find joy and happiness in whatever you are doing and whomever you are around.

 



Craigslist encounters...

 Sounds salacious doesn't it? Well, I meant it to because you really wouldn't want to read about my Craigslist rantings otherwise would you?

For the past 6 months (and sporadically the past three years) I have been one of two main people cleaning out my grandparents house. Doesn't sound like a big deal does it? But if you've ever done it, you know. Sixty years of stuff in one house is a LOT of stuff. And if you have ever had dealings with any Depression-era folk, you realize that you have to look through everything because they are so adept at hiding things all over the house that truly, Jimmy Hoffa could still be in the garage (I haven't looked in the rafters yet). You cannot, in any uncertain terms, just toss bags of stuff like you would say, at my house, because there could be important documents hiding within, like car titles, stock certificates, tax documents, cash, Christmas cards from 1968 (not even joking), your grandfather's pay stubs from approximately 1948 through 1983, receipts for oil changes from 1973, etc, etc. Anyway, the process of cleaning out the house and my feelings on it, that's a post for another day. But now that we are almost cleaned out there are a few pieces of larger furniture that we either need to sell or give away and I have been using Craigslist quite a bit for that. Don't get me wrong, I've used Craigslist sporadically before for both buying and selling, but not this much at one time. And it has proven to be a usually fruitful relationship, considering it's free, which is an automatic winner in my world, and considering it's usually very easy. You want it, you come see it, you buy it.
However, apparently that's not how it works for everyone. Apparently there are people out there that choose to flout the rules and make this lovely free platform of buying and selling into a frustrating hell. Therefore, here you go-

1) If you say you are going to show up...SHOW UP!! I realize things happen, but things do not happen to 10 people on the same day. If you say you will meet me at a certain time, especially to pick up a FREE ITEM, then have the courtesy to drag your lazy ass out of your crack den into the bright sunlight, get your coffee, get in your car, and get over here. Though you may not believe it, or mommy may not have taught you this, other people's time is as valuable, if not more so, than your own. If you cannot make it because said car broke down, your bed is just that cozy, you scored a big hit the night before and need to smoke up, have the decency to text/email me to let me know. I have 30 other people that could have come but no, I did the fair thing and offered to the first response. Thanks for being a tool.

2.) If I say pickup time for something is between 8 and noon, do not text me at 11:50 and say I just got in my car and I'm on my way. No. This is L.A. Unless you live on the next block, you won't get there in 10 minutes. Thank you for assuming that all I have to do on a weekend is sit around and wait for your rude entitled millennial ass to waltz on over.

3.) If you are coming to pick something up that is of the large-ish persuasion, and usually have trouble lifting the 5 lb bag of sugar at home, bring help. Do not assume that the person you are picking it up from is capable and/or willing to help you. You could be  picking up from an 80 year old lady, or a paraplegic, or hell, from me. As an aside - people younger than me who are picking things up, for goodness sakes, put down your damn phones and facebook and iPads and lift a weight or two every once in a while. Your general weakness is pathetic. I'm a pushing-40 year old women who has had recent cancer and has an arm I'm not supposed to seriously exert. If you can't carry half of a TV 30 feet...really???

4.) If you are coming to buy furniture - large furniture - don't bring a tiny car. Really. I mean, I just... really.

5.) When you respond to a Craigslist add, do more than what basically amounts to a grunt. Don't just say interested. Okay, that tells me nothing. Be polite enough to say, Is this still available? If so, I would like to come see it, etc, etc. Also, don't just send me a phone number or say call me. No. I'm not here to call you. I don't call anybody. If God had meant for people to be talking to strangers on the phone then He never would have gotten rid of the 90's party lines and invested texts.

See you on Craigslist - anyone need a free couch?

 

Constant battle

Source: Pinterest

It has been a bad few weeks on the news front as far as our facebook group of girls and some other people that I have heard about as well. It just saps the heart out of you some days, and your already semi-constant anxiety grows and you have to consciously, almost physically, stop your mind from spinning like a hamster wheel. It's tiring, exhausting actually, but you do it. You contemplate running away, singing while your fingers plug your ears and not looking back but then you remember that you would not want people to run from you if, there but for the grace of God, something should happen.
So you make sure to soak in the sound of the rain that's fallen for the past two nights. And to stand in the ferocious winds that blew today, with your face toward the sun and the sound of hyena-like child giggles in the background, and breathe.
 

Nature vs. Nuture...daughter of anarchy?

This post has taken me forever and a day to write. I couldn't really figure out if I was telling the club's story or my father's story or my story or what, but I guess that's the point, it's all an intertwined mess that can't be separated. I don't know enough about the club to tell it's story specifically, but I do know my story, as a child of a member of the club, and the ramifications that came along with it.

With the wonder that is Netflix I developed a love of binge-watching shows during chemo (I am a voracious reader but 4+ hours in a chair + IV benadryl = limited cognitive abilities).  I've gone through American Horror Story, the first season of Downton Abbey (bastards went and switched over to Amazon Prime so I'm stuck for now), House of Cards, The Walking Dead, Mad Men, Hemlock Grove (OMG!), The Fall, Top of the Lake, and probably more that I can't remember. TV's great, we get to escape for a awhile, to Regency England, to the 60's, to an insane asylum...well, you get my point. Maybe you see yourself in a character or see a snippet that reminds you of something but for the most part...it's fiction, and that's the point (and great for taking your mind off of sitting in a chemo chair and to drown out the older gentleman "singing" next to you).

 

So in bed a couple weeks ago I was searching for something new to watch, which if you have Netflix you know is a feat in and of itself. Came across Sons of Anarchy, which I honestly didn't know a whole lot about (for the longest time I think I assumed it was something akin to Duck Dynasty or Appalachian Outlaws, some pseudo-reality show about hillbillies), and thought oh hell, why not. Well. Here's where fiction and reality cross paths. No, I most regrettably do not have Charlie Hunnam riding up to my house, guns literally and anatomically blazing, (omg, have you seen this buzzfeed?? #11, ummm yeah...Charlie Hunnam Queer as Folk or Cold Mountain days, NO, not even...now, omg, I have dreamt about him) preferably speaking in his native accent. I don't even have Tommy Flanagan with that "Glasgow smile" and gorgeous Scottish brogue lilting around my house (yes, I have a serious British Isles accent thing). What I do have is in my blood.

My father - sperm donor, biological contributor, whatever - was a founding member of a motorcycle gang called the Heathens. They started in Southern California, namely Venice, in the late 60's, spread a couple chapters around and sort of flamed out in the 80's. They have regrouped these days and you can actually find a website they run (www.heathensmf.com), but I would gather to say that it's pretty much just some guys flying colors these days and not much else. And there you go - I was raised knowing what terms like flying colors and ape hangers meant (although much hilarity ensued when I was little and mistakenly called them monkey bars). Instead of the Mayans and the Grim Bastards, I knew who the Vagos and the Mongols were (funny enough, small world story - when my husband and I were house hunting years ago, we walked into one house and my eyes went to the huge flag on the wall. I screeched, "This is a Vagos house?? We can't buy this house." The real estate agent looked at me like I was nuts...and kept more than a few paces away from me after I explained what it all meant). Instead of Opie and Juice and Tig, when I was born I was held by people with names like Turk and Hillbilly and Grinch.




These are my "cousin's" parents...we'll get into their story below.

As I started watching the show, I felt things most people probably don't feel while watching a show - I saw, acted out in front of me, things that I knew a family member had done but could only imagine before. I didn't need to imagine them now. Obviously I've seen all of this portrayed before, but not on a show specifically about a motorcycle gang. Because while the show is fiction, many of the crimes were all too real. The drugs, the guns, the gun running, the beatings, the rapes, the murders...I know that I come from someone who participated and committed most, if not all of those crimes. And I don't quite know what to do with that, because knowing it and seeing it are two very different things.

 



Have no idea who these people are but these were the easiest pictures I could find, the other photo albums are packed away somewhere.

 

Since most of these people are still alive, and I'm borrowing their story through my eyes, I'll use initials to protect the players. You think the show goes overboard? A little dramatic? Too many people interconnected, a touch incestuous in the dealings? Let me give you the rundown of the people in the first picture above. Big B was married to my cousin L when they were very young. They got divorced and Big B was then with M, who had my "cousin" (always called each other cousins but we are not blood related) Little B. Little B and I grew up together, he is 6 months older than I am. Little B was born with fetal alcohol syndrome and was also born to a mother who had on/off periods of being a junkie and a drunk over the years so he had quite an uphill battle. Big B was not around except sporadically, which was more than most. Little B and I grew up and he tried really hard to get through school but it was very difficult for him.

We kept in contact over the years as we were close growing up and our moms were still good friends, but sort of lost track for a couple years. I went to college, the Marines, Little B worked his way through gas stations but did end up becoming a plumber and making a decent life. I went to his wedding, he and his wife came to mine. When my husband and I bought our house he came down and helped fix some old plumbing, helped us install a gas line for the dryer. Then he and his wife decided to move to greener pastures in Denver, cheaper living, more jobs, bought a house they could never afford here. And I thought he had made it. And then their marriage fell apart, and he stupidly followed her and hounded her and probably harassed her, not violently, but the guy she was dating had connections and he didn't let up. He was convicted of stalking and has been serving the past 10 years in prison.

M's sister S was also married to someone in the club. S and Big F had two kids and moved to Vegas to try and get away from the life. Well, they didn't get far because in the early 80's, during some sort of highly volatile argument, likely drug and/or alcohol fueled, Big F shot S and then killed himself, leaving behind two small children, J and C. M found them. I still remember hearing about that, and really, as a 7 year old, I shouldn't have had to know what a murder/suicide was, and their kids should most definitely never had to have lived it. I saw J and C sporadically over the years...J tried really hard to keep clean and stay out of trouble, and other than the occasional teenage scuffle I think he may have, I'm not sure. C however didn't fare quite as well and last I heard, years ago, was dabbling in drugs and prostitution.

Now I'm not saying these stories are specifically because of the club, but there is an aspect of the life and it's all too real.

I can tell you what wasn't real...stacks of cash on the table and professionally decorated houses. Most of us grew up in shitty apartments, hand to mouth, with single or may-as-well-be single mothers.
 

As for me, well, here it is. What would not get a second look or thought these days as far as family dynamics go was pretty traumatic 35 years ago. I was the only kid with a different last name than their parent, and I was only one of two kids in my elementary school class (I went to Catholic school so went to school with pretty much the same 35 kids from 1st-8th grade) raised by a single mom. Add to that the fact that my dad was not just gone but in prison for murder (I remember that he, explaining it to me in a letter, said that he "had gotten angry and hurt someone really bad") made it all the more something to hide. I'm guessing not many kids got letters from Soledad when they were 8. By high school I didn't care so much anymore about the circumstances, I just was dealing with growing up without a dad. Although I was actually a really good, responsible teenager, probably specifically because of what I was raised around (I never drank a drop until college), I was quite guilty of playing the card "well, whatever I do can't be as bad as whatever my parents were doing". My mom knew for years that I would race out to get a tattoo on my 18th birthday because "it was in my blood", and it was. I've loved tattoos since I was little, when only, well, criminals and gang members got them. Drinking in college...eh, wasn't doing anything as bad as my parents had done!

So, just like Jax on his rooftop perch, I often wondered - is it in me? I don't know. I know that I come with a mighty temper than I could have acquired from either parent. I know that motorcycles enthrall me. I know that I've never been afraid to start shit with people, and have been lucky that's it has never blown back on me. Whether that's luck, or because I look scary when I mean it, I don't know. My mom loves to tell the story about Little B's 3rd birthday party when he got a motorized truck. She says most kids would ride around the park smiling and laughing and giggling, but apparently we got in it, started riding roughshod over everything and mad-dogging everyone along the way, not a tooth showing between either of us.

I also know that I've always been an extremely good student, that the most serious infraction I've had is a speeding ticket in 1997, that I put myself through college and went on get my MBA,  that the thought of being in jail terrifies me, I've always had a decent respect for authority,  and the thought of some of those crimes makes me ill. I was lucky in the fact that regardless of whatever issues my mother had, and there were plenty, I was raised in a relatively stable environment given the circumstances, with a strong emphasis on education. I can tell you that I would tell Tara to take those kids out of Charming and go far far away. So who knows...

 

And then Jack went to a birthday party a few weekends ago...and picked this out all by himself. Passed up the soccer balls and dragons and turtles...and picked this. And I said, yep, that's definitely my kid. Uh oh.

 

 

My 39th year...

 

"Oh, Earth, you are too wonderful for anyone to realize you... Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute? No, saints and poets maybe, they do some." - Wilder

 

I can guarantee to you that my husband...and Jack...and A-R if she could talk...and the rest of my family and friends would tell you that I am no saint. My high school creative writing teacher, Mrs. Roth, would tell you that I'm no poet. But with all respect to Mr. Wilder, although not a poetic addition (see, I know what's not poetic), I would add "and people who have or have faced life threatening illnesses or situations".

 

 

Google Images

 



 

This crazy beautiful precious life is just funny. Life truly ain't nothing but a funny funny riddle. You spend your youth voraciously coveting additional candles, longing to be older, waiting for the day that your life will "begin!!" "When I'm older I will..." starts innumerable sentences. Somewhere in your 20's, you start feeling time accelerate - not only chronologically, but also across your face, parts of your body, your hair (in my case for sure, I've been going grey since my early 20s). What only years ago was a source of pride - "I'll be 16 six months before you!!" - becomes "Ha Ha, you'll always be six months older than me!" Your 30s come and eventually parts of you start creaking and cracking and you realize holy crap, somehow I've ended up precipitously close to middle age. The music you grew up with starts to be played on "retro" weekends and classic rock stations and the band members are receiving their AARP membership applications. You find yourself going to your 20 year high school reunion, which you can't really understand because you are certain that, even though you have been married for 11 years and have two children, you KNOW you only left college about 5 years ago. But if you are healthy, all of these thoughts are accompanied by the tiny voice in the back of your mind going "but I still have soooo many years ahead, no big deal." And then something comes and smacks you in the face so hard that a punch would feel like a cotton ball, turns your world so upside down that vertigo seems like a gentle ride on a small carousel, that everything you previously knew for certain, everything you knew to be true about this world, is intrinsically forever changed.

 



People who hide their ages, are ashamed of them...I just want to shake them and say "Why can't you see? Why can't you see how very very lucky you are? Those years are family you got to love and sunsets you experienced and places you traveled and children who were able to know you." But I understand. It's truly not something that you can ever comprehend until you live it and I get that. And I mean that - I have been on both sides now - even if you have taken care of someone who has passed, even if you have lost people around you, even if you have lost a piece of your heart when they left. I have lost many people in my life. I have lost people at a young age (both them and me), I have taken care of people that I have lost, I have taken care of someone who at one time held my heart, I have lost chunks of my heart, a rather large chunk of my heart- but I didn't fully understand - I didn't fully ingest, absorb, taste, consume the complete and utter fragility of this life until I got sick. I can see the theoretical thestrals. I wish to God I couldn't, I wish I thought the carriage was still invisibly guided, but I can see them.

 

So this is what a birthday means now.

 



 It means that I had another year to practice at this crazy dance called marriage. It means that maybe to these two beings I will actually be a tangible mother, not a vague memory or scent conjured only by pictures or stories. It means I had another year to try and realize any, some, bits and pieces of my dreams and goals. It means that I have had another chance to continue in this powerful play, to contribute another verse.

 

It means that if someone says, "Oh, you'll always be older than me" I will smile and say, "Yep, isn't that great!?" It means if someone says, "Don't worry, you'll be there one day", that I will gleefully say "Yes, I will, and I can't wait!".
 

Never again will I lament the opportunities, the blessings that the passing of this time has given me. Never again will I fail to celebrate another candle, another 365 days, another 525,600 minutes.

Never again will I spend and waste time as if I had a million years.

I am 39 years old today.

2013

I think this picture kind of sums up this year. I cannot believe that much of the first six months of this year I was still in active treatment, chemo and radiation. Events that filled almost every day, that my daily life revolved around, that consumed so many minutes to give me so much more time - dates, times, actions, results, appointments - now seem so far away. While this nasty nasty beast still unfortunately inhabits a too-large place in my mind, it has been evicted from the front room. Now it resides in more of a hall closet. It will eventually move to the backyard and then the next block, town, county, state and country, maybe eventually planet, but for now, this is progress.

 

My baby potty trained, started expounding in paragraphs of conversation, and started preschool this year - my baby baby started walking, running and semi-talking.

 

The next year I am certain will bring greater joys, accomplishments, opportunities. My husband and I, after the past two years, are more intent than ever on setting some serious and much anticipated changes in motion. Life waits for no one. The holidays will be here again in the blink of an eye and we will gather again, eyes sparkling in the bevy of twinkling lights, to celebrate and look back in awe of all that 2014 has provided. 

It's still in OUR hands...

 

It's only December 5th, but I have already heard from many people the annual bah humbugging, the Bill Murray Scrooged (one of my most favorite movies ever btw), the boo on Christmas, the "I hate Christmas because it's ... commercial, fake, Christ-centered, not-Christ-centered-enough, overly happy, depressing, encroaches on Thanksgiving, sparkly, not sparkly enough, " etc., etc., etc.

 

I myself have had, in years past, Christmas seasons where I wasn't exactly tilting my wassail cup with joy so I can't begrudge anyone their feelings, but times change and circumstances change and there's not anything that I wouldn't give out of heart, soul and pocket to be here for the next 20 Christmases with my children. So color me overly romantic about the holiday, and I will gladly concur with my donning of red and green-glitter colored glasses. But one thing that sticks in my craw about some of the complaints is this fact - we are still in charge of our households, and to a certain degree, what enters them. So while complaints about decorations going up before Thanksgiving (personally I LIKE going to the mall and seeing lights all over the place - just seeing them makes an unrestrained smile break out on my face. I unabashedly love twinkle lights, I think they should be used in more household decor) may be justifiable to some, the argument of "Christmas is so commercialized therefore I hate it" doesn't hold water for me...in fact I see it as a blatant cop-out.

 I get that I can't control what Jack hears at school or what he learns from his classmates about gifts and what to ask Santa for at Christmas. But I CAN control what enters my home and how I choose to have my family interact with it. Believe me, I get that Jack is three and the baby is 1 - but that's my point - this is the time for my husband and I to try to instill in them what we believe Christmas to be about, and on a larger scale, what we want our family to be about. I'm not making a judgment here - if a family wants to focus on gift giving at Christmas, more power and the Toys R Us catalog to them. But if you are just going to toss your hands up in the air and say "Oh well, Christmas is screwed because it's all commercialized anyway" then I have to call bullshit on that. I say that's teaching your kids that when you don't like something, when you don't agree with how things are run, then you just sit back and complain about it. When did we all cede control of one of our greatest gifts - our family - to some vague corporate overtaking?  It takes some work, but doesn't all of this crazy parenting fiasco we are entrusted with?  Sit down with your kids and a nativity scene and explain it to them, read books, sing carols, visit people, do some of the 8,000 things you have pinned, establish gift giving rules from early on and be firm - this is your family, not your parents, your in-laws, aunts, uncles or cousins. Let's pull up our big girl holly-covered panties whether it's with an overflowing-make-no-excuses-huge-pile-of-presents or whether it's with a tote bag-full but let's own our choices. Our families are still our responsibility, no one else's, and that includes how we choose to celebrate or not.

Day 6 - My Children

Raising children is some serious shit. It's hard, difficult work that tests your patience in ways you never knew, like working muscles you never knew you had during that first Pilates class. I am still amazed that a tiny little person (in Jack's case, not so tiny, he's already more than half as tall as I am) can create ways to push your buttons in ways even your husband hasn't figured out yet...boggles my mind. Adding a serious, life-threatening illness to the pot is like adding some sriracha to a bowl of cayenne pepper soup - it just adds fuel to an already heated situation, and I am in no way proud to say that I have taken my emotions out on them at times over this past year - I've snapped and yelled at times much louder and more often than I should have. I pray and pray that some of those memories get lost in the ether.

 

 

But beyond the frustrations and madness of raising children is truly an awe-inspiring space, a place where time both stops and careens forward. I know other parents see their children growing up and want desperately to push the pause button...but I, warranted or not, feel like I'm sprinting, holding their hands and dragging them along, because I want to see everything that they do, I want to see all of the years and the events and growing and the stumbling and the successes and the failures. I want to see and touch and breath it all and I feel like I have to do IT RIGHT NOW. But I can't, so I take every day, and though I may lose it sometimes and I will most definitely never be the perfect mama, I dole out copious amounts of hugs and kisses, and breathe in these beings who for whatever reason were crazy enough to choose me to pass through.

 



Day 4 - Family

Family

 

This has me thinking of a post that I would like to ruminate on, so I will post something succint here. I have a pretty large family - a small immediate one but cousins, aunts, uncles, distant cousins galore. This, as I'm sure many of you have experienced, can cause both great joy and fun, as well as strong dislike, decades-long arguments and fisticuffs in the old days. I would not have chosen to grow up any other way.

Most of my family has been great over the past year, either helping out, making food, or just sending thoughts and cards. Some have not and that's okay too - I know now whom I can depend on. My in-laws have gone above and beyond - something I can never repay them for. Like I said on day 1 - I was truly given insight into people's true character, a gift by itself.



A month of thankfulness...

I don't usually participate in this sort of thing, but I saw this on a blogging site yesterday and it caught my eye because it's not your typical "What am I thankful for today" for however many days there are until Thanksgiving - by giving a different prompt every day it challenged me to really start thinking. So I will take this as my challenge (much in the blogshpere right now about different writing challenges so this is my way of participating) and post my answer everyday.

A Blessing

I have been blessed with many many things...some obvious, some not so obvious. An interesting thing that I have been blessed with over the past year - I have been allowed to see the true character of many people in my life. I was honestly shown who my true friends and family were, in great, wonderful, unexpected ways, and also in hurtful unkind ways. That is not something that everyone gets to experience and I believe I am richer for it.

 

Now here are some fun photos from the rest of October (and from last night!) that I just can't help but

share...

Very serious for a little girl in a pumpkin patch...

 

My little ham...

 

 

A sea of orange beauties...

 

Daddy and a not so happy at the moment pumpkin...

 

 

I love this picture (which is not easy to say for me!)

 

A fall birthday...

This is a long time coming due to a missing, then non-working camera cable...but here we go finally!

 

Baby girl's first birthday party - obviously having a baby to celebrate in the month of October is going to be wonderful...for me at least, maybe not for her eventually. So I had to have a fall themed party - what else? And it was actually pretty stress free - I mean, the house is already decorated for fall/halloween, so I just had to add some things here and there...

 

Easy decoration - tissue paper pom poms

A book for guests to sign

The welcome wagon...

 

Caramel apple party favors - easy and delicious

More easy tissue paper pom poms...I think they are a little classier than balloons right?

 

Crafts to keep Jack and his friends occupied for a bit

The birthday girl...still deciding that she could crawl faster than walk at that point...although that has started to change this past week.

 

 

Marshmellow fondant leaves - this recipe is soooo easy and doesn't taste that bad!

 

Birthday girl could not understand why everyone was singing to and staring at her at that point

Hmmm, this feels interesting...

But I don't think I will actually taste it for a while...

  

The boys are over celebrating a one year old girl....

Family shot...Happy first birthday to my baby girl - I eagerly look forward to many more with you.