My son is brave, impulsive, good-natured, loving, willful, his energy ramped to 100% for every minute he's awake. I guess in reading the above list I'm a lot like him. A few episodes in our last twenty four hours:

Yesterday I am forced to truncate his dessert in a diner and take him out to the car. He's angry, yelling. I'm gentle but firm. As I straighten from placing him in the carseat and swing the door shut he looks at me with angry tears in his eyes and yells, "Everything out of your mouth is CRAP!" Of course I'm dying laughing, internally, but it's not really funny to talk to someone that way, and it's definitely not okay to laugh at someone when they're angry. The door shutting allows me to keep my smile to myself. When I come back to the car with my purse, coat, other child, etc. Nels is wretched, his face tear-stained. "I'm sorry I said what you said was crap," he mourns. I say, "Thank you for the apology Nels," and reach a hand back to him. He and I forgive one another a hundred percent and move on.

This morning he takes me on a tour of the garden. He shows me the new cucumber, the one bean on the bush (he can spy the very first new growth of anything). He remembers, in our unsorted and untidy yard, where things were planted. "I planted an apple there," he tells me. "The love-in-a-mist is blooming. Look what happened to the snapdragons!" "The tomatoes are having Good Times." (yes, he actually said this). "Sweet peas, calendula..." (both blooming fresh). "The amaranth, and..." he trails off, pointing. "Nicotiana," I remind him (a real success story - so far - as they've come back from near-death via slug).

This evening we play a game I play with my children (one he enjoys more than my daughter), a simple exercise in reverse psychology: I say, "Don't come over and push me off the chair and climb on top of me and kiss me on the lips, I'm really busy right now." He starts laughing right away, head thrown back, runs over, pushes me, and tries to wrestle on top of me. He is strong, with a spry strength in his long-bellied little boy body. What I like, what I couldn't and don't do, is that he devotes all his energy, balls-out, into trying to overcome me. And laughs and laughs and kisses me, finally, and he smells of the pint of raspberries he bought (with his own garden earnings!) from our Farmers Market, and ate almost every one in the car.

Labels: garden, hilarity, Nels, tenderness

It's almost as if I've achieved a well-orchestrated balancing act and despite my veteran status it doesn't take much to knock me off kilter. Yesterday a specialist in Seattle changed the assessment of my father's lifespan from "months to years" to "weeks to months". Hearing this today, sitting in the living room with him as he lies on the couch suffering, the worst thing is that sometimes it seems he's dead already, that the cancer or Death is larger and bigger than the moment we have. I feel double-robbed, robbed now, robbed in the future and soon.

Moments like this are the worst because they take away the most powerful truth we can live in, the moment, something we can agree on regardless of spiritual beliefs or lack thereof - something I tell myself daily and am starting to tell others:

Breathe, you are alive.

Labels: cancer, sorrows, the Ghost of Christmas Bastard

Labels: gratitude

Last night we're sitting in our favorite pizza parlor. It's so nice to have Ralph home and know he's home for the weekend. I'm feeling very proud of him as he's been riding his bike to and from work every day. In the Hogaboom driveway days go by while both our cars lay fallow as my husband, children and I use public transit and our own human power to get around. It feels liberating.

Tonight in the pizza place I can't hear it, but on the television propped up by the kitchen I see an amusing commerical featuring a duck. First the duck somehow gets its bill stuck in a mail slot. Then the duck runs inside a barber shop and stands in front of a poster such that it appears to have a professionally-coiffed head of hair. Then the duck gets surprised about something and opens its bill really wide. I don't know what the commercial is about but I like it better not knowing what I'm supposed to buy, and just watching the duck.

A party of four adults toting one baby come in. The baby is about six months old, a girl, bald, and dressed only in a little red polka dot romper. No fuss, no huge carseat caddy or special sippy cup or pre-packed little baby food containers. I like that. The adults are young and boisterous - one calls the other "retard" as the shuffle the tables around. The baby turns around to look at us often as we eat. When the baby drops her toy Nels picks it up. He keeps an eye on the baby.

A couple comes in, a few years younger than my parents. He is huge, massive, wearing a Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt, long silver-streaked ponytail, and full-arm tattoos. I actually feel very comfortable around men who look like this. They are usually very friendly, engaging guys. Sure enough, a few minutes later and he's making goo-goo eyes across the room at the aforementioned baby. I notice he and the infant have the same shade of large, blue-grey eyes.

The pizza, pasta, fresh coffee arrive and my family digs in.

Labels: babies, bike, bus, food, weekend

Today I dropped my daughter off at the last day of Vacation Bible School. Three years ago in one fell swoop I overcame my internal difficulties with sending my children to church functions; the decision was made easier by the fact my daughter especially loves, unreservedly, anything involving church. However I'd avoided this particular VBS installment - despite my appreciation for the free and, to my way of thinking, high-quality childcare experience - due to rumors of this church's recent decision that amount to politics (anti-gay) I personally disagree with. But yesterday a child who had spent the week in the day camp invited Sophie, and I decided to come off my principles a bit - principles which I'm also well aware had not been personally investigated with regards to this church.

At 9 AM my daughter is the picture of well-scrubbed simplicity, ponytail and dress and little tennis shoes and she asks me as far along as to seat her in the pew at which point the super-friendly, energectic grownups introduce themselves and I feel her little psyche pull its hand away from mine. I move to the back of the sanctuary for a moment. It's all smiles, people taking care of our children with the utmost care and perception of their interests and needs. Outside in our summer morning I see the playground across the street set up with games, balls, chairs, ropes. I step outside to head back home, glad for the Sophie's opportunity and mine.

I've been enjoying Nels so very much. Yesterday afternoon while Sophie went swimming with my mother, my son and I shelled peas from our garden together and just talked; mostly, about the things he wanted to (he has lots to say). Last night he set the table before ceremoniously laying out his own contribution to our dinner - clover, buttercups, and cherries from our tree. His knowledge of edible wild plants and flowers is merely a continuation of his gardening interest and abilities, which easily outstrip mine (Abbi would be proud of especially his foraging; she's a forager at heart as well). He gives me inspiration to keep growing, to keep learning.



Last night the boy and I shared a sundae at the deli and he repeatedly asked for "Barack Obama" ice cream; when pressed further, he grew more frustrated and said something that sounded like "Broccoli...". I finally realized he was trying to repeat Rocky Road, a recent addition to his food repertoire. We topped the ice cream with hot fudge and sprinkles - on his half only.

Labels: food, Nels, Sophie

I love to shop. I love to buy things. Being a one-income family of four I've had to adjust a bit. Mostly, I focus this pleasure of mine on the acquisition of groceries and food. I enjoy immensely learning to cook something new; to find something different to pursue, to go on a hunt for a rare item, to try a new restaurant (although mostly I limit my restaurants to our favorite deli and our local Latino fare). I enjoy buying a big or little thing for the house (last week it was two $1 prisms and fishing line to hang in our small living room windows), to clean or meagerly furnish my "nest". I've always been this way.

Our local garage sales are excellent for spending frugally, and 'tis the season indeed. Some of my best Fridays and Saturdays lately have been spent biking around Hoquiam and Aberdeen with kids in tow, hopping off at various yard sales and going though piles of clothes in hunt for our wardrobe (my children especially do not benefit from newly-purchased clothes). This weekend's garage sale expedition was largely funded by my lettuce sales at our local Public Market (oddly, while visiting my family before I left, my dad first made fun of how little money my lettuce raised, then insisted I wasted it all by driving to the Market. But in reality I haven't driven to that Farmer's Market once in my produce-selling escapades and in fact had just disembarked from my bike to share my excitement).

This Saturday for $11 I purchased the following: an evening scarf (Kelly), 2 t-shirts (Kelly), 2 t-shirts and a dress shirt (Ralph), dress pants (Nels), a pair of herringbone cotton pants (to refashion for kids), denim jacket (Kelly), hoodie (Nels), ls tee shirt (Sophie), and 2 vinyl albums ("South Pacific" for me, "If I Could Only Remember My Name", hippie David Crosby for my parents).

Labels: Aberdeen, consumerism, FOO, garden, HQX, the Ghost of Christmas Bastard

I'm a member of ten Yahoo groups (three I really need to leave), but this one sends a precious little bit of cargo my way every now and then:



My family has enjoyed the original - The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra - watching it a couple times a year for a few years now.





In other news, I have been given the honor of distributing an excellent publication, The Practical Pedal. It is one of my goals to spread the love of practical cycling (that is, cycling for everyone) in my little nook of Grays Harbor.

Labels: bike, film, GH, hilarity, HQX

It's 5:12 PM and I'm irritated. I'm irritated because it's taken us a bit longer than I'd thought to walk across the bridge. I'm irritated that despite the sign on the Public Market proclaiming hours until 6, they close down an hour earlier, and I can see the two cars pulling out and away and: I'm irritated because I was counting on some meager produce earnings from the Market to get me a bus pass because (Irritation #3) the kids and I ended up on an overly-ambitious walk (made so because of duration coupled with the amount of exercise we'd had previously this day and our lack of food and water and means to get them). Accepting our loss at least today of lettuce-money now I know that if I want to catch a bus home I have to grab the kids up and cross the street in front of blasting log trucks and wait in a chilly wind God knows how long before a bus comes along and at at that point I'll have to beg off on 15 cents I don't have to complete our bus fare (and the drivers around here might even say No - I'm serious). In this moment I notice the kids have found and are enjoying the very, very poor excuse for a playground that is alongside the Market and I know they won't like abandoning the "park" for this half-assed bus plan but neither should they have to walk all the way home and you know what? It's my decision, my responsibility, to figure out what to do.

I give into the moment and sit in the grass and let the children play. They don't know it, but it's a dismal day, the kind of grey soul-swallowing bleakness that gave Aberdeen such notoriety the Kurt Cobain set (many of them not raised here) often cite. Alongside the river and I'm walking and I know how to dig in my feet and survive, burrowing down into my jacket and being as patient with the kids as I can and hoping for a more promising tomorrow. After all, I have things to look forward to: friends coming over for dinner. The cough syrup nap at night (sadly, still necessary). A day closer to the weekend, where Ralph and I try to enjoy our time together.

This morning the first thing I did to try to make myself feel better than I had yesterday was bake a rhubarb cake and do the dishes. Housework is soothing; I'd enjoy it in perfect bliss if it weren't on a Rinse-Repeat cycle many times daily (ironically: it was having children that made me overcome my dislike of housework). We did have some excitement yesterday: the first hatchlings in our incubating chicken eggs. One died (in my hands - second bird in a month?), two have survived - we now have ten living entities in this house. I know cats and rats and chickens don't count for much by some yardsticks but feeding and cleaning up for them kind of does, especially along with my much more messy and complex (but it must be said, far more rewarding) human younglings. Our cat Harris is pleased with the chicks; he offers his nannying skills regularly although we repeatedly defer.

Tomorrow: city park free lunch program (at my son's request), a date with Jasmine, and Try #2 for gardening proceeds.

Labels: bus, garden, Nels, Sophie, walking

I would have loved to blog my vacation trip to Port Townsend - from Wednesday through Friday - with the kids. However my cottage rental had internet fits and I wouldn't be bothered. I do have a Flickr photoset available.

My living room is in the process of being painted: a deep orange and deep pink. Yeah, you heard right! It looks great (methinks), reminds me of a cantina, and I've had "Mexican Hat Dance" stuck in my head each time I walk through.

Labels: "home improvement", PT, vacation

Sometimes your day is just kind of lame and difficult, and what's worse, you are forced to realize how limited you are as a person. And it's my personal theory that when you become a parent, if you're a parent who tries your best (as most probably do), this "limited as a person" thing hits you right in the nose far more often than feels comfortable.

I head out at noon with the following bike load: myself and two children, three coats, my purse, a huge batch of library books, and a birthday package for my brother. Downtown after meeting with my parents I've relieved myself of books and birthday package but have now picked up an antique globe (yeah, yeah, WTF?, I know!) and some trail mix. On to the bus to the grocery store in Aberdeen to pick up the following: asparagus, carrots, cucumber, half a cantelope, half a red cabbage, 1 pound tofu, one lime, 1/2 gallon organic milk, shampoo, conditioner, tea tree oil, 2 large boxes baking soda, and a large bar of olive oil soap. To the feed store for bulk catnip and chick feeders.

As I suspected, putting the Xtracycle on a bus meant that one of the Transit personnel got in a dither ("Oh, I don't know if that will work..." yes it will work, I've seen it work,), fussing around and generally getting in the way of me practicing lifting the (rather heavy) load up where it needed to be. The bike is extra long so in order to fit it on a bus I have to take off the front wheel and load it on the back in the pannier - I admit it looks a bit suspicious to the narrow-minded.

I love the glimpses of people, neighborhoods, life that bicycling affords. In Hoquiam and Aberdeen we have a lot of semi-dilapidated or sometimes merely "well-worn" houses where people are just concentrating on living. In the hot afternoon I see my neighbors out on their front porches smoking, or two little girls who've rigged one of those giant trampolines with a sprinkler. People smile and stare at my bike and the large children dangling off the back. A rough-cut man in multiple trenchcoats shouts out, "Nice socks!" (they're not socks but makeshift legwarmers out of sleeves of a sweater I got off Freecycle). We see lots of kitties and talk about the names of flowers in full bloom.


(Later in the day, legwarmers and coats left behind).


Ralph took the kids to Lake Quinault yesterday. I was sort of dis-invited, but it worked out well enough for me to have some time to myself in the house.

Labels: bike, Nels, roadtrip, Sophie, X

My Etsy shop is up: surenailandfire.etsy.com.

[ yay! ]



I decided to make it cheaper to buy my zines through Etsy - because I am hoping for feedback. Rest assured I still take carefully-hidden cash, checks, money orders, favors, trades, pleading, or promises to pay in the future.

Labels: inter-tron, SNF

(Skirt handmade that day by Jasmine!). Last night even before we got back in town from the beach our daughter had fallen asleep in the car. Nels was awake, listening to the grownups (myself, Ralph, Jasmine and Randa) talk. Then he'd say quietly, from the very back of the van, "Hey, dad?" He had an idea: he wanted to go home and put bells on our door - "with a needle" (meaning a small nail). We drove to a few lookout spots and talked. I felt pretty sick from the over-exertion of the day; or, My Lung Spot Is Acting Up as I've been saying.

By the way, in the picture above it was slightly normal when we first arrived at Copalis Beach, where we thought we'd put our chairs up and enjoy a small, quaint little fireworks celebration. After we parked things rapidly got more and more pyrotechnic, voilent, and crazed - the quintessential low damp fog of this beach combining with the spent remains of so very many, many fireworks being set off by revelers in cars, trailers, trucks, mopeds and motorcycles and including one charming (= shitty) camper with a Confederate flag prominently displayed and some jerk next to us who thought we'd all like to listen to Toby Keith, full blast, out his hatchback. Still, I like people-watching and I like relaxing into these minor circles of Hell where there's way too much activity and it's wasteful and gratuitous (the only thing that really bothers me about the 4th of July is the litter) and really viewed on the whole, kind of creepy. It's also kind of joyous and hopeless too. And the final mediating factor: my children love it, through and through, and seeing their joy forces me to be a little less uptight.

We had a few dinner guests this weekend:


Of course I've been cooking a lot, it almost goes without saying.

Labels: beach, food, holidays, Nels

Last night all on her own my daughter penned and illustrated a story "The Family & The Eagle", which so charmed her father he quickly digitized it. Click the following links to:

[ read it on the computer ]

[ download in booklet form to print ]

It's a real page-turner!


Regarding the title plate: " <-- beak". Ha! ha! ha! ha!

Labels: Sophie, writing

I'm standing at the kitchen sink and have been for some time washing, cleaning, cutting, blanching, boiling, freezing. Right now I'm tenderly slicing the tops off strawberries. Some are for our dessert this evening: strawberries so tender and red-ripe all the way through such that no honey or sugar or accoutrement is needed. I just chopped and froze a mix of spinach and arugula (for use in lasagna, or calzones, or casseroles). For dinner tonight: frittata with garlic scapes, arugula, sundried tomatos diced and softened, spinach, and fresh eggs; focaccia with mozzarella and red sauce to dip.

Most of the food bounty is from our CSA share. Because we traveled to a local farm, because it is fresher and superior to the produce one generally buys, every single bit is tenderly pored over, nothing wasted (the strawberry tops go in our compost pile). Tomorrow I'm making a meatball and escarole soup, substituting our head of lettuce for the escarole. After a Monday grocery trip for staples at the Marketpace - 25 lbs. bread flour, olive oil, garbanzo beans, vanilla - it feels nice to have a full larder.

For some reason, despite a day of doctors and cross-town errands, and the repetitive nature of doing dishes again and laying out strawberries on a baking sheet to freeze and having a messy house (I scrubbed the bathroom and washed the table and windows and vaccuumed but it's the paperwork piles that frustrate me the most!) I feel oddly content at the sink. I'm in a work trance; tired but soldiering on. My son flits by, singing to himself about Framps - significance: birthplace of eclairs* and croissants, the latter of which we finished today - and baby peas. Earlier today he found the first pea to go from flower to peapod and has asked each family member to come see, including my mother when she visited. So as he comes by this time I ask if he'll show me and it's a request that makes his day.

We walk out and the pea vines are frighteningly large, jumbled. I can't tell where the pod might be as it looks so much like the leaves. Nels finds it though. I smile and look to him and he's watching my face, beaming. I pick him up and we wordlessly hold one another as I carry him back inside. I feel oddly light-headed, slightly drunk on the cool summer night and The Boy and our bounty, only bathtime and bed ahead of us before kisses and legs kicking at blankets and soft, solid bodies and nighttime.

* Nels pronounces them "Maclair", we joke like a Scottish clan.

Labels: food geekery, garden, Nels, tenderness