What I'm doing this week:

Reading: Rat Queens (a fun, feminist dungeon-crawl-themed comic)

Listening to: my "Copacabana" station on Pandora

Watching:  Going back through early seasons of Top Chef and Top Chef Masters on Hulu

Doing: Finishing up the school year with 2 weeks of End of Year Awesomeness -- a contraptions day, an afternoon feast (cheese tasting and make your own nachos), a field trip to the lake, a glee club concert, an end of year party complete with loads of messy outdoor play (elephant toothpaste, face painting, tie dye, foaming dough, oobleck, water pistols).  And now, in this moment, transitioning into summer vacation.  *aaaahhhhh*

Eating/Cooking: An afternoon tea party for Sarah's family birthday party -- botterhammen (just a fancy word for open faced sandwiches) with hummus, egg salad, cream cheese, and soy-onion-lentil pate as the choices for sandwich spread and loads of accessories (tomato, cucumber, scallions, radishes, arugula, olives, avocado, pickles), vanilla cake, scones, pastry cream, caramel sauce.  We've still never gotten around to lemon curd.  

Something that went particularly well this week:  Glee Club concert.  We rocked.  We sang Me and Bobby McGee, Thinking Outloud, and Take Me To Church.

Something I struggled with: I wasn't nearly as organized as I'd wanted to be, for the messy outdoor play and the rest of the End of Year Celebration.  Or for Sarah's birthday tea party.  Also, my water heater stopped working, which has been making cleaning up at home much more complicated.  I feel like a prairie denizen, heating water on the stove in order to do the dishes.  Not a great combination with the tea party.  

Something I'm looking forward to: Summer Vacation!  

I was pretty pleased with how this went last week.  I can't seem to find a way to do rambly lowkey domestic posts on FB in a way that works for me, and it seems as if this might be a good fit.  I think I'd like to reacquaint myself with how to include photos and videos before starting to post here and then just share it to FB.

What I'm doing this week:

Reading: Hawkeye vs. Deadpool.  I absolutely loved it.  It made me laugh out loud at least a dozen times.  

Listening to: Sweet and The Ramones.  A little Jim Croce.  

Watching:  Avengers Age of Ultron (which I loved, if possible, even more than the first.  I most especially loved the hints of team history we got (it really did feel as if they'd been fighting and snarking together since the last movie), and the luxury of having more time to get to know the characters (instead of just being busy introducing them and then tossing them into a fight), and getting to watch them having downtime together -- first right before the main conflict of the film began, and then during an interlude when they retreated a bit in order to regroup)

Doing: Played in our RPG this weekend (very pleased about how I've finally settled into my character, and into the Fate system)

Eating/Cooking:  leftovers.  Best part about having company all weekend!  Well, no, the company of friends was the best part.  But starting the week with a fridge full of leftovers is a close second.  :)

Something that went particularly well this week:  Our Free Comic Book Day after-party.  People sat all over the place  -- reading comics, talking about comics, exchanging recommendations, talking about the Avengers, eating and laughing and just hanging out.  It was exactly what I'd hoped it would be.

Something I struggled with: Ugh.  The traffic this morning.  I sat in traffic, then got off the highway to try to get around it, drove around getting further and further lost for 20 minutes, found my way back to the highway in order to get right back into the traffic.  Wound up being half an hour late for work.  

Something I'm looking forward to: a quiet homeschooling week.  Maybe a little gardening.  

Hmm.  Let's try this again.  Last time I was here I was just taking my first steps out of a rough Autumn and into what turned out to be a not-much-easier Winter.  The Spring, though, has been much gentler and more energized.  Everything's feeling a little less weighed down and exhausting.

I'm decluttering this week, and was thinking about letting go of some of my online accounts.  I'm not quite ready to let go of this one, however.  (Especially since several folks have commented on how much they appreciate being able to stay connected via Facebook, which I'm seriously considering limiting my use of)  Instead I'm experimenting with different possibilities for how to use this.

What I'm doing this week:

Reading: comics, mostly.  Rereading Matt Fraction's Hawkeye run, reading all the Lumberjanes up to this point (with the exception of #10 which we put in an order for at the comic shop, this morning), rereading Secret Avengers.  Rereading _The Second Greatest Invention_.

Listening to: my roadtrip playlist.  Lots of AC/DC, George Thoroughgood, a bit of Indigo Girls.

Watching:  Joe and Sarah are introducing me to RWBY, which I'm thoroughly enjoying.  Also watching lots of Rosemary and Thyme.

Doing:  Decluttering.  The diningroom is nearly decluttered, for the first time in years.  Today we're letting go of the desktop that was the only Windows box in the house.  I used to watch Netflix on it (when that was only possible via Windows or Mac) and IM with friends late at night and occasionally save homeschool curricula or unit studies or educational games, but I haven't used it for anything but itunes in years (it's the only thing in the house that plays CDs).  The room isn't the prettiest thing, but it feels indescribably good to have so much free space.

Eating/Cooking:  Blackbean meatballs over spaghetti and herbed focaccia.  Last week we triangulated in toward a pretty decent baked pakora.

Something that went particularly well this week:  Having finished processing and decluttering 5 years worth of old papers.

Something I struggled with: how to hear and process some not-so-constructive criticism at work.  Sticking to my exercise plan (I got in 3 solid days, and then skipped 4 in a row onaccounta exhaustion, minor congestion, busyness).  Sticking to only one thing for this category.  :)

Something I'm looking forward to: our comic book party next week; planting seeds; continuing with the decluttering

Re-entry

Wow, it's been a long time since I last wrote, here. The fall was mostly about grief, in one way or another. The first month was just grief, and rawness, and rediscovering how to be in the world with part of my foundation missing. And then there were weeks of slowly getting back on track, trying to catch up on all the things that fell by the wayside during that first month. And then it was Thanksgiving, all wrong, because so many things were different. And then it was Christmas, all wrong, because so many things were different, and we did hardly any caroling at all (normally the center of our Christmas visit) because 3/4 of the songs had landmines in them.

And then January was going to be about crawling out into a new year, and focusing on new things. But on January 3rd the CO detector went off, which led to needing to replace the boiler, and needing to remove some asbestos we didn't know we had, and having no heat for a week while the overnight lows were in the 6-15 degree range, all of which led to burst pipes and holing up in the bedroom with an electric heater for a week, putting on our jackets to come downstairs and make food twice a day. And spending $3000 in repairs, ignoring the $8K boiler which we financed with PSE&G. So we're spending the rest of the month eating beans and rice and hoping no one suddenly needs new shoes or a dentist visit.

And so 4 months go by (I know I was sort of here 3 months ago, but not really. I wasn't really anywhere, that first month).

I've been doing a terrible job of keeping up with my friends' journals, although I did finally unsubscribe from most of the communities that were clogging up my feed.

I'm thinking about what I want this journal to be, and whether it makes sense to pick it back up.

I'm also looking to find out where more fannish conversation is going on, these days, as my old online community seems to have dried up/moved. I know there's some on tumblr, but the site doesn't much appeal to me (although I'll adjust if I need to). I often read fanfic while drinking my tea in the morning (because bite sized, lighthearted stories are exactly what I'm looking for in the morning) and I came to the end of every available story on AO3 in a particular fandom, this week, and found myself having no idea where fans might gather to say things like "okay, I've been immersing myself in this fandom for the last two years. This is what I love about it. Sell me on a different fandom, and some of your favorite stories in it". I've started writing again, and I have an AO3 account for when I start posting, but I'd also like to be connecting conversationally.

I'm also looking to connect with more pagany folks, locally, because I'm missing the community I'd been part of, but they're centered in MA and between the cost of attending their events and the resources involved in having to travel that far, it's not gonna happen. I could start back up with the various gatherings I'd been hosting but most of my friends are more pagan-friendly than actually pagan, and that's not really what I'm looking for right now.

 

I'm engaging in lots of avoidant behavior, recently. Having trouble writing back to all the folks who very kindly, sweetly expressed their sympathies about Grandpa, because... I guess it's just too hard to sit with the thoughts long enough to write something, so I just keep putting it off. Watching a lot of TV. Eating a lot of carbs (potatoes and rice, mostly -- I'm not that big a fan of sweet stuff -- but today we're having a Fry Day, complete with donuts and apple fritters). Wishing that I had the same sort of cozy online community I used to, in pre-FB days (some mailing lists, some earlier blogs).  It seems when I come here, half the time there's a problem with the system so it can't show me the journals I've subscribed to.  I'm not sure how to recreate that coziness.

The home improvement project is proceeding slowly but steadily. We have a work day planned on Saturday (Linda and Joe are really awesomely organizing it for my birthday), so we're working on prep for that today (and, really, all this week). The first step has been getting things back to civilized in general, in the house. I hear that it's pretty normal for housekeeping to fall by the wayside during grief, so I'm not beating myself up about it, but I'm very happy to be getting things back to civilized. We picked up supplies at Home Depot, yesterday, and today we're deep-cleaning the kitchen, doing some yard work, and doing a solid block of decluttering.

 

Home

There are other things on my mind, which I'm sure I'll find the words to write about, soon. But today what I want to write about is this:

I don't love my house. I love coming home because of the people in it, and because of what it represents -- a space set apart just for us, for our little family -- but the house itself... Stresses me out. That fact has been bothering me for days, weeks, months, years. But it's weighing on me especially heavily this last week or two.

My Grandpa died on Friday. I know I've written about him here at great length. He was... When you do metta meditation, you start by sending good stuff, good thoughts, to yourself, and then you send good stuff to people who are easy to love (before moving on to send good stuff to neutral people, and then more challenging people, and then the whole universe). People who are always on your side.  People to whom your compassion flows without even conscious effort. When I do metta meditation, after Sarah and Joe, Grandma and Grandpa are always the first people I think of. The first ones to whom my compassion and love flow without any conscious effort on my part. I value my parents so much, and I appreciate so much of their legacy and so many of their lessons to me. And my sister and aunts and uncles and cousins and my entire extended family. So many rich traditions and loving connections. But my grandparents are in a class by themselves. Have been in a class by themselves.

I grew up around the corner from Grandma and Grandpa. They watched us before and after school every day from Kindergarten through 5th grade. Eating farina or oatmeal in the morning at their diningroom table; doing homework after school; watching The Amazing Spiderman or Grandma's shows after school; having chicken noodle soup or stuffed shells or a casserole for dinner while waiting for our parents to get home. Drawing on the scraps of blank newsprint Grandpa would bring home. When I walked Patches at night, from the time I was 15 until I left for college, any time they were out in their yard I would stop for a bit, sit on one of the folding chairs and have a glass of iced tea and listen to the radio with Grandpa, or walk further back into the yard with him so he could show me the stars, and tell me about the planets that were visible that night. When I was 19 he taught me to drive and in return I started mowing their lawn every week. A job that remained primarily mine until just a few years ago (I took a break the summer after Sarah was born, and the last few years the job has fallen to other family members and neighbors, but most summers for the last 23 years found me in their yard every other week, mowing that lawn under Grandpa's watchful eye). After Sarah was born, she and I fell into a tradition of visiting Grandma and Grandpa once a week. The years we've been involved with one school or another, our visits fell to one every month or two. But for most of the last 13 years, it was every week like clockwork.

He advised me, over and over through the years, to pray for my vocation. He talked about how lucky he was to stumble across the job he held for most of his life, as a typesetter for the New York Times. He never said it explicitly, but he made it clear through the life he lived that a good job is one that gives you the time and space and resources to make a good home. To have a place and have the time and the resources to focus your life on friends and family, music and good works and a connection to the earth and to, as he would have put it, the Good Lord. A connection to the Universe, to the Divine, to your best self and the highest good of those around you.



Turns out I wound up writing about some of those other things on my mind, after all.


I hadn't intended to write about it today, I didn't think I was ready to put it down in text, but obviously it's Grandpa's legacy, and his connection to his home and his land, and my connection to his home and his land, that have me feeling so deeply compelled to do something about the state of my own home and my own land.

I'd been thinking about it already, before hearing about Grandpa on Friday, that I'd like to spend the next year-and-a-litte-bit preparing a birthday present for myself, for the birthday after this one -- to make my home somewhere I actually enjoy spending time. Trying to do something, anything, toward that goal every day.

Today I spent half an hour tidying up (things have been hectic, this last week, and the house is showing the effects) and half an hour decluttering. I decided to start by focusing on the hallway upstairs, where we've fallen into a bad habit of stashing things that have nowhere else to go. So nice to see what a difference half an hour makes...

I started the following post right before school started, ran out of time to finish it, and then dumped water on my laptop turning it into a very expensive paperweight. I totally forgot that of course the site would have saved what I'd written up. So consider this the perspective of the very start of September...
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Last week was Staff Enrichment Week. We practiced mindfulness techniques, reflected on last year, went over and updated a variety of staff policies, gave each other workshops on different tools we learned about at various professional conferences last year, practiced our conflict resolution skills, planned the first week of school, discussed the feedback we'd gotten from students and parents last year, had a workshop on how to be more awesome mentors and how our mentor program will change this year... Oh, and got certified in first aid and CPR.

We ended the week with a quick and dirty brainstorm of everything else that needs to be done or decided before the first day of school, and I'm going to be spending the next couple days getting my part of that gargantuan list taken care of

Friday we managed to fit in a really lovely interlude with a group of our homeschool friends. A picnic at the park, sitting under the trees by the water -- moms at one table, teens at their own table, having their own conversation, sometimes wandering off to other parts of the park. Such a very different experience from when we all started hanging out, 8 or 9 or 10 years ago.

Saturday was a coming of age ceremony for a young friend of ours. It's the third one I've attended, and the first one I didn't lead or help lead. I love that every one has been so different, reflecting the personality of each individual young woman, and the traditions of each family.

I'm working almost every waking moment, right now. That should end with the first day of school, and I should be able to shift into the rhythms and daily routines I've planned out. I hope.

This work is... It's the thing I want to spend the rest of my working years doing. It's deeply satisfying and meaningful to me. But I'm really done with it taking over my waking hours.