quest for a faerie child

thank you

I don't have much time this morning, but I felt compelled to just write for a moment.  I'm sitting on the front porch and it is unbelievably chilly, but for the first time in days there is a lone star visible in the early morning Pacific Northwest sky and it inspires me.  Make no mistake, it will not last.  Even the weatherman stated, "the rainy season is officially here."  So, we must celebrate each individual star that manages to break through the unyielding cloud cover, even if for only a brief moment in time.

I've been a busy beaver in the last week or so.  I've been making and canning an astronomical amount of fresh apple/pear sauce made solely with orchard picked apples, pears, cinnamon sticks and cloves.  There are 21.5 pints of sauce downstairs in the basement and I estimate about 70lbs of fruit still left to go.  There is something incredibly satisfying about doing this in my new, big kitchen with the weather raging outside.

I've also been working dilgently on adapting a recipe for Roasted Turkey Roulade from Barefoot Contessa for Thanksgiving.  This has taken a great deal of thought, creative energy and multiple attempts, but I believe I have managed to create a gluten-free, allergen-free, almost dairy-free (it still has eggs) fig and cranberry stuffing even better than the original recipe, which I made for the first time last year.

Our guests and my husband will definitely not feel deprived by my whole-foods diet and I can't tell you how happy that makes me.  I am going to attempt it one more time without eggs, now that I have the answer to the bread portion of the stuffing (i.e. making my own).  I'm also going to substitute portabellos for the sausage in a portion of the recipe to see if I can make it completely vegan.  Stay tuned for the results.

In other exciting news:  I have an appointment tomorrow with the midwife, and the mirena is coming out.  As of 3pm tomorrow afternoon, I will be birth-control free.  We'll see how long it takes.  I have been pregnant 4 times in the last 4 years and for the last year and a half, I've had the mirena in.  So, really, you could say I was pregnant 4 times in 2.5 years.  To say Moose and I are fertile together, is an understatement.

Someone or something wants us having babies...

I also just wanted to mention, I have gotten a couple emails in recent weeks and I will be responding to them.  I do so love getting them.  I need to be better about responding right away, but I fall into this trap of wanting some unadulterated time to do so and I never seem to get it.  However, please know until I actually do sit down and thoughtfully respond, it really touches me when you guys reach out to me.  Thank you!  Thank you!

My readers are a small base, but unbelievably caring....

it was truly lovely.

As I continue to unpack box after box, I feel almost as if I am pulling back the layers of an onion.  I am reaching boxes I never even unpacked in the last house, boxes I haven't looked at in years and years, boxes that have remained packed through move after move. 

You know the types of boxes to which I am referring, right?

The boxes holding mementos, old textbooks you couldn't bear to part with, scrapbooks from high school, pictures and the like.  They are a doorway to your past and when you open them, it is next to impossible to not get sucked in.

I opened one this evening as I continue to try and get my new office into some semblance of peace and tranquility, rather than a picture of chaos.  Out came a 3-ring binder, the contents of which were always so precious to me. It holds the memories of a time spent deep within the darkened, almost claustrophobic confines of a darkroom. 

My early days with Karl.

You recall Karl, right?  I spoke of him here and here and probably in a number of other places I can no longer recall.  I can recall these posts because they occurred last year at this time, when I found out he had passed away after a long battle with cancer.

This binder holds contact sheets and negatives of multitudes of black and white photographs taken while in my photography phase, a phase I happily shared with Karl, who taught me much of what I knew of developing film and printing prints, despite having grown up with a professional photographer as a grandfather. 

As I was pouring over the contact sheets, Karl's face jumped out at me in print after print.  He truly was beautiful, the strong angles of his perfectly-nordic featured face.  There were a number of times where we traversed out amidst the cold, wintery, Chicago snow, set up a tri-pod and took pictures of ourselves either together or separate. There are pictures of Karl swinging on a swing, dressed in a long, black wool coat, amidst a backdrop of clean, white snow.  Pictures of Karl standing out along a rocky ridge, looking towards Lake Michigan.  Karl and I huddled on a park bench.  Karl and me kissing.

Those were truly happy days, full of the spark of creativity and filled with a great deal of passion and love.  I was a sponge and Karl was the liquid I so desperately needed to drink up.  Days filled with jazz music and wine, cooking beautiful meals together. The days of my beautiful and sexy boyfriend who left me weak in the knees.  He was god-like to me then.

Eventually he fell from the pedestal, as most people will do.  Because noone is perfect and placing them up there is a recipe for disaster and disappointment.  You have to embrace their imperfections and try not to assume they can do no wrong.

But for a moment in time last night, I remembered whole-heartedly how good we were together at that point in our lives.  How special we were.  And how absolutely, fucking in love we were.

And it was so nice to delve into that memory for a short time.  It was truly lovely.

what??

I am sitting on the stairs of my front porch in the early evening.  The stars are already out tonight.  Our house is partially painted.  A streetlight down the street is the only illumination to pierce the darkness this evening, but my fingers seem to always find the keys I need by touch alone.  I could be in complete and utter darkness with no light from the screen and I would still find my way to a coherent sentence. 

I am waiting for something and the truth is I don't even really know what it is.  I have an idea, of course.  But, I am more than positive that what I have been building in my mind despite all efforts to not do this, is far from the reality of the situation.  It bothers me on a core level.  It makes me feel like a child and I really despise feeling that way.

Childhood experiences or things that place me back into that frame of mind are generally not the most pleasant of spaces in which to find myself.  It makes me alternately feel angry and giddy and absolutely not in control of anything around me.  It makes me feel as if the person I have become is gone and in her place we find the goofy, adolescent I always was.

Inside me, I can feel her screaming out, "But I am not that way anymore.... I am not that way.  This will not affect me the way it once did."

And yet it is.

It does.

I think the key to it is to just shut it out.  Lock it down.  Accept that there are experiences in life which will make you feel this way, people you encounter who bring out that child in you and recognize it for what it is.  Remove the situation from your life and move on.  Just fucking move on.

The waiting is ridiculous.  It ties me up, makes me feel incapable of acting like an adult, makes me grasp at things that aren't really there. 

I know I am being cryptic.  I am probably intentionally being cryptic.  There is no need to address the situation here, just the emotions it seems to draw from me because they are something I haven't felt in a really long time, so long in fact, they seem foreign to me.  And I have to wonder about that.

Why now?  And why this situation?  Am I supposed to be learning from this and if so, for god's sake... what?  What in the world do you want me to know... ?

What??

three strikes..

Dear Game-Player:

You bore me. There is nothing I despise more than people who do not maintain the sanctity of their own word.  Please take your ego-laden, inflated sense of self and rain on someone else's parade.  You struck out in a single pitch.  How does that feel? 

I'm gathering it feels like nothing, at all.  But mark my words, there will come a day when your disregard for what you offer freely and do not follow through on, will come back to bite you in the ass.

Love,
Me

In other news, we moved on Monday and I am frantically trying to get us unpacked and settled in.  Hopefully things will settle down in the next several days and I can settle into fall/winter with a renewed commitment towards writing and cooking.  I hope to be back to normal soon.

And by that I mean, I hope to be back to posting daily... instead of the sporadic posts of this summer.

I now have my own dedicated office, from which I hope to gather some inspiration and get down to business...

Yes, indeed.  Stay tuned...

why?

Why do bad things happen to the lightest and brightest among us?  Why is it that the most beautiful souls are forced to face the very worst things in life?  Shouldn't they be exempt?  I will not say much on this, except to say that some beautiful, lovely individuals with whom I am so very close are embarking on a very long, long journey, the likes of which have echoes of our journey with Max, as well as my own.  This is devastating to me in a way I did not imagine.  As I sit here and cry in great racking sobs, I am astounded at the swiftness with which the emotion has overtaken me.  I don't wish any portion of what we have been through on anyone and to witness people I love beginning to deal with issues related to health, as well as with issues related to that oh-so-crucial-and-important-organ known as the kidney, I can do nothing but grieve for a moment in time.

I'll be over it soon and then the research will begin; getting advice from our doctors, nutritionists, etc.  I want to do whatever I can to ensure they are being taken care of and that their doctors are performing the right tests, etc.

Oh how I wish I did not live so far away, though....

Crying in person would be so much more satisfying and cathartic than alone...

a thank you to confusion

Dear Confusion,

Thanks for the sign.  I must admit, I thought there was a good possibility you might be coy.  However, you stepped right up to the proverbial plate.  I am not entirely sure how I feel about what you revealed to me.  But beggars can't be choosers, now can they?

Many thanks!  My best to your family.

Love,
Me

a letter to confusion

Dear Confusion:

You have wound me up in your tangled net.  It would be oh so nice if you could let me breathe for a moment or two.  Better yet, just send me a sign.  Just one...  I'd be so pleased if you could just help me out of this state of mind instead of sending out your insistent tentacles to slowly, yet surely drown me.

Thanks very much!

Love,
Me

the door is closing

My life is a jumbled mass of kaleidoscoping experiences of late.  The past is rushing around me like a freight train in ways I never would have imagined.  We are getting down to the nitty gritty of a final move from one home to the other, which will culminate on Monday.  I am so far behind at work it's ridiculous. 

How in the hell can I manage to stay on top of work through all the hospital stays, dialysis, everything related to Max-care over the past 2.5 years and then have such a hard time focusing when things are great??

And I am serious.  I cannot focus on it.  My mind is in 50 billion different places at once and it only happens with work.  I have a database to build and it is just wearing me out to even contemplate how I am going to tackle it.  Actually, I have two to build.  I just happened to catch a break on the first one and now don't need to climb that mountain until late December/early January. 

I am more than capable of focusing on tasks at home, but work is a huge issue for me lately and I do not truly understand it.  I actually generally do really enjoy what I do.  Maybe it is a residual grudge over being forced to come in more during the week that I just can't let go of.  Or maybe it is just that I really am so very tired of working, when all I truly want is to be home with my boys. 

It's probably a combination of the two:  being forced to come in, has brought home the reality of the fact that I do still work and I do have to leave the house and the boys... even if I only to be out of the house 15 hours per week.... 15 is more than 10 and now it is 3 days instead of 1.

I know I've waxed on about his ad nauseum... so I will spare you anymore of the nonsense.

Then there's the tizzy I have worked myself into in an attempt to understand individuals.  Generally I am pretty good about reading people.  I have a sense of them from the moment I meet them.  While sometimes this does not end up being accurate, I have been right more times than I have not and I try to listen to my little intuition when it pops up and taps me on the shoulder.

But there are times when I throw all caution to the wind because I want to know and understand what makes that person tick, for whatever reason.  For me personally, I strive to be honest and as direct as possible about what I am thinking and feeling.  I don't like evasiveness.  It's only intriguing for the first 10 minutes.  After that, I find it annoying.

Say what you think.  Say what you feel.  Take a stand.  State an opinion.  Silence and inaction are unbecoming, are the coward's way out.

LIve.  Breathe.  Take a leap of faith OR for god's sake, decide not to with strength, conviction and honest communication.

When I come across people who fall into the above categories, it's like a puzzle for me.  I feel I must 'figure' them out.  They are so foreign in the way they operate that I am drawn to it like a moth to a flame, beating my head against the proverbial wall and attempting to communicate with someone who is largely incapable of communicating, at least not in the way I have learned to.

Communication and friendship is a two-way street.  I'll initiate for period of time, but when it becomes clear that the initiation is not reciprocated, than I grow weary and then I shut the door.  My life is crazy busy and I don't have the time to puzzle people out any longer.  I don't have the time to wonder and I am far too wise in the ways of the world.  If you want a friendship, you'll start actually following through on it.  If not, your loss.

And that's where I believe I am right at this moment.  The door is closing and that will be the end of that.

the spiritual vortex

The rain has returned to the Pacific Northwest once again.  In the cool, crisp early morning air, I stood on the balcony outside my office in complete darkness and looked out over the campus and the valley stretched out before me.  For a brief moment in time, the sky cleared enough to see a cheshire-grin moon and gave me a glimpse of the stars in all their glory.  I glanced up, thinking "hello there stars... nice to see you.  Have a great winter and spring.  We'll see you again in June."

My exaggeration is only slight.  There will be many, many, many rainy early mornings between now and next summer and while I feel as if I must complain in some small way, the truth is I wouldn't live here if I didn't actually enjoy the rain to some degree.

And I do.  I think everyone does, or they don't last here.

But the Pacific Northwest rain is like an old, dear friend you haven't seen in quite awhile.  When it first makes its appearance you are so excited to see it.  It is familiar.  It makes the warmth of your surroundings cozy.  With it comes indulgence in hot, steaming coffee and teas, warm and hearty winter stews, warm jackets and hats and beautiful handknitted scarves, nights spent in front of a roaring fire.

After awhile though, its irritating qualities begin to encroach upon the good and you recall just what used to bother you about said friend.  It doesn't make you love them any less, but you realize the honeymoon is definitely over and you are ready for the sun to make its appearance once again.

This generally happens for me sometime in February, though it could be earlier depending upon the length of time we've gone with no break in rain.  I believe the longest I've experienced is 28 days of straight rain.  No break.  No periods without it.  Just rain, rain, rain. 

And on this, I am not exaggerating.

When I first moved here, I imagined the rain to be a misty sort, the kind you see in Hamburg or London or perhaps even Seattle.  Imagine my surprise when my first fall and winter seemed like a monsoon.  Pouring, pouring, incessantly pouring rain.  I'll admit I was mildly taken aback.

But I adapted and eight years later, I am still here.  I can't see myself ever leaving.  Oregon is glorious, beautiful, and wild where every possible athletic activity is available year round.  Portland is weird, laid-back, cultural, green, alternative, a sea of fantastic restaurants, a microbrew and wine mecca, a haven for cyclists.

This place is often called a spiritual vortex.  Those who are lost, find themselves here.

I certainly did.

riding the wave...

I am rampant, wild, boundless energy incarnate.  I am a dragonfly, soaring higher and higher.  I am estatic.  I am excited.  I cannot be contained.  The work spreads out before me and the path towards it grows ever longer, yet my focus upon it is unyielding, unrelenting, extraordinarily detailed.  

Joyful.

It is always amazing to me, the way in which we seem to live a charmed life.  There are many things the past 3 years have tought me.  The most important lesson was to stop stressing.  Whenever things look their most dire, life has a way of presenting a different path for us, as long as we don't obsess and stress.  Layoffs, dead cars, seriously ill children, more hospital/doctor bills than we have money to pay, long and multiple hospital stays, escalating MS, reorganizations, you name it... we've dealt with it in the last 3 years.

And somehow we always manage to come out better than we were previously.

Except for maybe Max's healthcare bills.  That is a travesty of the highest nature and there is nothing to truly be done about it.

Someday, perhaps...

I just want to continue to ride the wave of goodness... continue to believe that true need is never ignored by the universe.