Like crushing grapes

I feel myself doing the same thing I always do. Like a rodeo pony at the gate, my entire being bucks up against the process of sitting down to write about the things that matter most to me: about trying to make a life. Invariably this work always takes me to the brink of what […]

Incoherent

Feeling wiped out tonight after a ten hour day, and an open house. Freshly sharpened pencils. Smiling until my cheeks ache. Wishing I’d stopped at Starbucks for an iced latte. Trying to make every parent feel like I will be teaching for their child alone.
The past few days have been rocky, not because of the […]

Synchronicity – events that seem related but are not obviously caused by one another

A week ago I saw a flyer advertising baby sitting and took down the number. DH and I had been talking about how we’re finally ready to start letting someone take care of Bean for a couple hours during the week while we work together on the house, so we called. She was wonderful, and […]

Words that fill me up

Blue Poppy calls it molting, and the gawky, awkward, half-feathered stage of creative flux is a bit like that, I think. This week I’ve begun to realize just how easily I allow myself to loose sight of the deeper currents in my life. How I smear over them with surface stuff, act overwhelmed, or antsy […]

Artist’s Way week 3

I’ve been meaning to check in about The Artist’s Way, which I’ve taken up along side a hundred or so other bloggers, with encouragement from the wonderful Kat, but I never had a moment’s pause. Today however, the rhythm of things seems to have settled somewhat, and I returned to writing morning pages (I did […]

House work

In a new book by William Stafford that I picked up on my artist date last week I read: “…The process of writing is kind of a trusting to the nowness, to the immediacy of the experience. And if you enter into the artistic endeavor with standards, already arrived-at ideas of what you want […]

Delight

In the Artist’s Way this week it says: “The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight.”
Here are my reasons for delight:
*I went on an artist’s date to the grocery store last night and let myself revel in the scent of mangos, the big glass jugs of milk, the ripe avocados. […]

Some days feel like the top of the mountain is always just a little farther

Yesterday I woke up with a sore throat and spent the day mostly trying to sleep with an almost-toddler who wanted to mostly NOT SLEEP. This involved several low points in parenting, including DH and I getting on each other’s last nerve, while Bean pulled CD after CD of the shelf and let it go […]

Finding what it takes

Running along the lake in yak tracks, the late sun on the horizon above the lake looked like someone spread apricot jam across a rent in the clouds. Snowflakes hit my face. Ice below the snow along the path was slick and see-through. The lake waves cut up onto the cold pebbles of the shore, […]