A Thousand moments

Home sweet home. We got back into town Sunday night after being out of town visiting my Old Man for the last week of his job down south. I have been trying to unpack and get back into our routine all week. We are all present, finally, work being here for at least the next couple of weeks. We have a semblance of a complete home life for the moment and I am so grateful- reveling in family dinners, nights spent together, early morning lunch box makings. 

So much to catch up on! Your blogs, my thoughts and experiences, pictures, all that good stuff. But I am rushed at the moment, trying to get the spring cleaning to the Good Will and the sideyard cleaned up (housing inspector mandates) before I have to run errands and take the dog and Babou hiking. I try to give them at least one toddler/dog led outing a week, where they set the pace and decide where to go and what to stop and look at...for what seems like forever. Wanderings, I should call them. We are going to a local lake and having a little picnic and wander before nap time. 

Anyways...I have had recent interesting thoughts on diets, conservation, and time management. These will be the subjects of upcoming posts. I look forward to catching up on my reading and writing and offer you an excerpt from my journal as my entry today... 

A Thousand Moments

Thursday May 28, 2009

I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.

-Saint Paul

I love the mornings here. Every day I wake up to deliciously cool air floating through the open window. The fog has rolled in faithfully, stealthfully, under the cover of the night, gently cooling our mornings and easing us into our days. The mountains here are so dramatic, the fog clinging to them, to the orange and avocado trees already, more permanently, clinging to their steep curves.

A cup of coffee, the crack of an egg, the chopping of the vegetables. I steady myself for the day. I love how it opens up to me like a gift, like a blank canvas I can paint as I chose. The structure may be there, there may be limits to the frame, but the colors are all mine. 

I found myself fighting my life yesterday, being dragged down by the paradox of being constantly busy and yet accomplishing absolutely nothing to the naked eye. Such is childcare. It's moments quiet, built upon thousands of moments, words, smells, influences coloring your child's world, slowly creating their childhood. The thousand moments that make a moment, a memory, a safety, a contentedness.

Today, I am intending to relax into my own contentedness. This is my life, the one that I have chosen and love. The life we are building, the family we are building. Motherhood is my first job, writing my second. Writing, my sanity. My mental framework when things don't make sense. A place to put my many thoughts. My paintings made of  words. 

❀✿ ❀✿ ❀✿                                             

The foggy morning turned into stacked clouds as the day wore on. Billowing from behind the rocky mountains, they looked more like softer cousins of the boulders that scatter the hillsides. 

We took our morning walk, rock hounding as we went. I am collecting rocks for a little rock garden I want to place in a worn spot of ground next to our front stairs, utilitarian yet ornamental. I am searching flat rocks, to make a flat surface. Easy to pull garbage cans over, easy to pull the hose around. 

But I am always searching for rocks, always collecting them. It seems ingrained in me somehow, probably through my grandmother Bertha, a woman after my own heart. When mom came to visit me a couple of weeks ago, she laughed when she spotted the rocks I had carefully placed, altar-istically, on top of my dresser. 

"You are so Bertha," she had laughed. Indeed, each rock was from somewhere special to me, my secret marker. One from a river bed in my Northern California hometown, one from the creek behind my parent's house, another from a Central California beach, coral from a special visit to Hawaii, a tiny abalone shell from my Old Man. All memories in stone and shell.

My daydreaming stopped abruptly as I looked up to see a diamond backed rattlesnake not three feet in front of us. Luckily I had LocoO on the leash and Babou holding my hand (we were on a road with few cars, but the cars that did travel it went fast--way too fast). I backed away slowly. The snake was not coiled, just warming itself smack dab in the center of the road. I swear to God my heart stopped for a second. I was almost shaking as I hurried us all back home as quickly as I could. To the safety of the cabin and PBS cartoons. The snakes down here are so lethal you have only approximately twenty minutes to get the antivenom before you die. It takes twenty minutes to get to the freeway.

Needless to say, I spent the afternoon running errands in town, picking up some fish for dinner, stopping by a little Mexican store that carried everything under the sun including a perfect little black dress for $12. That and a bar of avocado soap were my purchases although many of its trinkets called to me, the many Virgin of Guadalupe candles, hoop earrings, sheets, you name it. Babou also found many toys she liked, and a friend, the owners son, about three years old. Who put his head on her shoulder, leaned in for a hug, and stole a kiss! 

Catching up

GON OUT
BACKSON

BISY

BACKSON

C.R.
-Winnie the Pooh

Lately I have been really busy and have been having a hard time getting to my writing. And I miss it. So I decided this morning would be different and that I would blog before the day sweeps me away. I have been getting swept a lot lately!

So here I am, armed with a steaming cup of coffee, which is doing a considerable amount to buoy me through my day. From my desk window, I can see the sun beginning to warm the mountains and hills with its light; closer, I can see my garden and my new ocean and river rock border. I collect rocks, always have, and have managed to collect enough to border my flower beds and build a little cairn by the plum tree. It makes me inexplicably happy.

So where to start? I suppose where I left off would be appropriate! After the Amazing Homecoming, we got right back in the swing of things and had friends over the next night, amidst all the unpacking, which really never got accomplished because we left again the next day!

The next day was my birthday, and the Old Man flew in from southern California for the event. I picked him up at the airport and we loaded the car and headed to the foothills. The dear Mother-In-Law was left with our young charge and we snuck off to the very beautiful Sutter Creek Inn and had the most wonderful alone evening and night. Our room had a fireplace, clawfoot tub, sofa and chaise. The decor was a hodgepodge, but it perfectly suited us.


We played tourist the next morning and then had lunch at the Imperial Inn in Amador city, it was so romantic. They sat us alone out in the back garden. It was one of those soft and warm spring days. They made home squeezed meyer lemon lemonade, which was divine, and had a good selection of local wines. I had a glass of a 2007 Sobon "Old Vines" Zinfandel which smelled HUGE but was surprisingly balanced. We shared an appetizer of various salami's, greens, and olives. I felt like I had been transported to Europe and felt, very much, that I had gotten away!

The next week brought a lovely visit from Practical Sis and her entourage: Husband, boys, and dog. We had a great time, although the weather turned and it was a bit drippy and muddy. The children had much fun in the mud, as you can imagine! We had a picnic and hike by the lake one day and it it cleared enough to BBQ another. Really nice to see Practical Sis but it made me really miss her when she left.


The weekend brought a dinner with my beloved T at her house. She is an accomplished cook and made a most satisfying dinner; salmon with a warm balsamic herb sauce, fingerling potatoes, I made a salad, and delicious warmed bread and butter. I hadn't seen her place in almost a year, since she had moved in, and she has done much to make her place so inviting. T has a way of making her spaces so cozy, relaxing, and elegant in an unpretentious and intimate way.

The next day, we had plans to spend Easter with the MIL, to just go up and back the same day (about 3 hour drive both ways) and I was to bring a dessert. I planned on making Mary Alice's coconut cake and so, after I got back from T's dinner and gotten Babou in bed, I set about making the cake. I have the unfortunate trait of always waiting until the last minute to do things. I got all the ingredients together, floured the pans, arranged my mixing bowls and went to put together the egg beaters. It was then that I realized that they had no beaters. Hmmm. I had a vague recollection of Babou playing in the pan drawer and running back and forth into her little room. I checked the room and found one beater cleverly placed amongst her stuffed animals. I continued my search for the second beater. I looked everywhere. All through her clothes, in pots, I took apart my pan drawer, I looked in all the weird places she hides things, like the shower. By this time it was almost 11pm and I was tired so I took it as a sign of sorts, turned off the oven and put away the bowls and ingredients. I decided I would get up early and make shortcake and just assemble strawberry shortcake at MIL's house, maybe not the wow factor of the coconut cake but very tasty no less. SO I get up in the morning and make the shortcake. I fill two cookie sheets of shortcake and open the oven to bake them. Guess what's in the oven? Yep, the other egg beater!

Which leads me to this week. It has been a calm one, so far. I got sick and lost my voice a little bit. I got it back but sound a little Stevie Nicks-ey! I can't say I don't like it! The Old Man got back from his job for a little break, we have been enjoying being all together, cooking and working in the garden, tying up lose ends from all of our galavanting all over the place; mail, laundry, errands, shopping, etc. Settling back in. This weekend some of my oldest girlfriends are coming to celebrate our collective, spring birthdays. And I am cohosting my friend D's baby shower. I am making the cake. Any guesses?