Hey

I've moved!!! Now blogging over at http://www.thinlinedesign.com/blog
See you there. Thanks :).

I miss summer

photoblogging again

Spent the holiday weekend in PA, visiting friends and family. Amtrak got us there cheaply, and others ferried us around. Good to see all.

They boys were mostly rapt in their attention on Papa reading. Fynn was the exception and distractor.

Getting old fast.

Off to nap after housecleaning as my parents arrive this afternoon and I of course feel the need to tidy up. And clean sheets were not on the negotiable list, as I can't even tell you how long it's been. We don't do sheet changing around here, sorry.

Tired more because I ran another race this morning, a 5k this time but had to run 5k to get there, then another 5k home tho I walked about a mile of that. Working on salvaging a sore/twisted back that wasn't helped by starting/stopping my run several times.

Lots of stuff still going on in my head. Depression, worry, wondering what's next, needing sun, yadda yadda.

catching up

posted over here, and over here several times. the week is sludgy feeling, I'm still in a muddle, and going and spending a lovely gift certificate over here this afternoon helped only a wee bit. perhaps when I actually make something with what I bought I'll feel better. last night involved lots of barf (d was sick), little sleep, and an fridge/freezer defrosting that was required due to our #$%#$ freezer that sometimes doesn't shut quite perfectly, gets all frosted up over the vents to the fridge part, and then the fridge gets absurdly warm as it gets no cold air. have to empty/defrost/dry out/ the whole thing about 2x a year. at least it was fridge-temp on the porch and we could park stuff out there for a few hours!

off to bed, field trip w/D's class tomorrow. that's them above. oh, had F's parent/teacher conference today which went as expected. having one for a two-year-old seems a bit silly. other than random hitting of his classmates for no apparent reason, he's doing just fine.

crafting

In an attempt to spend less time here and feel better about life, I've started bookmaking again. Coptic has been the choice the last few days, and the first two attempts are below. Very basic, two-needle stitching with soft covers. I want to get into wood covers and handmade paper, but need to learn the stitching patterns and tension and all that. These took about an hour apiece, start to finish ... Fynn's art supplied the covers, and I used embroidery thread as I don't have proper bookthread yet. Not recommended, it frays and gets snagged much too easily when you're resewing out the same holes.

I love that you can bind anything together that you can poke holes in, and it doesn't use any glue or mucky stuff like that. I hate using spray glue though it's handy sometimes. The white pages in the book in the top photo are old photocopies of michael's doodles, so there's random stuff scattered throughout.

waiting

I've been waiting a lot lately.
... to figure it out, the why-am-i-so-frustrated-and-moody-and-sad part
... to find my heart and talk to it
... to get a real winter snow
... to find more patience
... to decide what to do with my coaching and my other site
... to find some enthusiasm again
... to get my first two half-frozen-marathons over and done with
... for more sun
... for a mentoring kind of friend to show up here
... to find ways to be creative again
... to learn to slow down
... to not feel guilty
... to stop saying sorry for awhile
... to find the next roach
... to eat crab rangoon
... to go out with a friend on an alone night instead of going to the movies
... to get really grabbed by a book
... to go to bed early
... to learn coptic binding
... to not feel tired or caffeinated
... to hear about M&B's twins
... to post pics of D's robot creation

I've found some of the answers. Some I'm waiting for no discernable reason. Some I'm getting clues about.
I've been posting more over here than I have here. I'm glad it's February. I'm glad the sun is still slanting across the streets when I'm bringing the boys home from school. I'm glad they both performed at school last Friday, and enjoyed it. A reading in class and a song on stage for D, a guitar solo on stage of Jingle Bell Rock a-la-Cobain by F, so said the witnesses. I'm glad I have two boys. I'm glad I spent half an hour in the park alone late last night, thinking and making a butt-tingling snow angel. I'm glad I'm ready to crawl into bed.

You know you're my kid when ...

You have a 50/50 chance of being the one who was dutifully picking up the raisins you spilled this morning, and then screamed in fear and dropped the large wiggling “raisin” with antennae you found under the desk. You now fondly refer to this as the “raisin-bug” incident, and mom refers to it as the “time to have the landlord call the exterminator again” incident. Enough said.

You have “just a minute” on the list of your first words.

You know that mom CAN be silly, but doesn't really like to be, and that she gets cranky when you're silly most of the time.

You hear “come Here if you want help!” from the time you can walk. Unless you're screaming bloody murder of course.

You know “you'll be ok” because mom tells you that all the time. For now you believe her.

You have climbing into a warm bed with two in-denial-about-the-clock adults down to a science. You know that a sure way to get them up, and get in trouble, is to dig your elbow into a bladder or an eye.

You know the intense pull of a book, ANY book, and the frustration of being dragged away from it. You know mom understands because she does the same thing, but it doesn't seem fair at all.

You know mama runs a lot, and you have an inkling that sometimes she's running away. She always comes back though.

You still think home haircuts are cool. Or you don't know what a haircut is yet, and eat your hair as much as your food.

You understand guilt well, and are able to use it to your advantage, long before you know what the word means.

You know how to hold grudges, and long to be teased out of them. You often are. You learned from a master sulker.

You feel frustrated by how much is going on in your head, and never have enough time to get it all down/out/explained.

You talk early, and often.

You eye doctors with curiosity and awe, but believe almost all medicine comes in spoons, eyedroppers, and teas. You don't know yet this makes you unusual.

You get frustrated very easily, especially by things that don't work the way you think they will. You express this vocally and loudly.

You remember every promise or implied promise, and are devastated if mom doesn't.

You love unconditionally.

You're a lightweight who'd rather snack all day than waste time at the table eating a meal.

You love to make gifts and give them to your parents.

You expect to understand things and be able to figure them out. You also expect to be able to do them well right off the bat. You don't get “having to work hard for something” very well yet. You're learning though.

You know mom putting you to bed means a storybook, and dad putting you to bed means a homegrown tale of mystery and intrigue. You still fuss when mom says it's her turn.

You have Alone Time down pat, and don't mind your parents taking it as long as you get full attention from whichever parent is home. You know both are more indulgent when the other isn't home.

You dream big. You are beautiful. You are stubborn. You are creative. You are intense. You are dramatic. You have dancing eyes and a ready laugh. You hardly remember life without a brother.

Your mom expects you to need therapy when you get older, and is coming to terms with it. You don't know this yet, but you do know she expects a lot of things of you. She's sorry for it. She expects the same things of herself.

You remember Farmer's Market Saturdays, the big rock at Fort Greene Park, summer sprinklers, water balloon fights, quesadillas, the Co-op School, kombucha, Sunday night singing, visiting cousins and family and the ocean, petting Dominic, Mister Charles, having housemates, Chinatown afternoons, the Brooklyn Bridge, the lego stash at Aunt Ruths, and fireworks in Prospect Park.

You are amazing, adored, humbling, frustrating, mirroring, stretching, and mine to raise.

-----------------------------
cross posted over here. yes I've been quiet lately. chewing a lot on my faith and how I show/share/feel about it.

another random

for good measure

happy thursday

He also loves to play and sing ...

he looooooves to draw

Good Enough

This post has been brewing for a couple weeks, and is part of the silence. I had a conversation with a friend about 2 weeks ago that touched off something in me that I was totally unprepared for. A couple of comments were made questioning some things I'd decided to do, which made me angry. I let that be known, and then a couple other things were said that made me feel incredibly sad, but I had no idea why. It had to do with my writing and ability to share feelings, but my reaction was utterly out of proportion to the comments made. I melted in a puddle, got off the phone, and proceeded to mourn for 24 hours. I felt levelled, flattened, and broken. I finally got a handle on what I'd 'heard' (not what was said, but what my brain filtered it into) and came up with "you're not good enough". I of course added "nothing you do is ever good enough" to that from my own well of feelings that I think go back to early childhood.

Once I labeled what had triggered the meltdown, I started to try to figure out where the feelings came from. They go WAY back, but not quite as far as I can remember. I've almost always felt I had to please everyone, and in order to do so I had to do whatever was "good enough" for whoever was watching. For whoever I thought was watching. Teachers, parents, meeting, family, friends. My measuring stick was based on other people's expectations, not my self-confidence (which wavers wildly, and mostly is much much lower than it appears to be to most people) or my "best" really. Just what was expected of me. I didn't give too much thought to what God expected, not really having a clue as a kid what that was, though I assumed he expected perfection and not much else.

I've known for eons that my standards for myself (and immediate family, sigh) were never ever high enough, and if I'm in danger of satisfying them, I raise them. I'm never good enough for that consortium of ridiculous expectations, so just keep trying to do better and just keep feeling guilty. I feel horribly guilty if I disappoint anyone. More so if it's family or friends, but pretty much anyone counts. I'm good at imagining disappointments. I had a client awhile back who I felt like I wasn't really able to help much at all, and given the averages of things, having a client like that once in awhile isn't really all that surprising! But I felt awful for weeks. Low, guilty, burdened, like I'd done something wrong. Not good enough. Nothing worse than not being good enough.

I'm rather sick of holding myself to other people's standards. I grew up with several sets of standards, which didn't help the issue. The home/family standard, the school standard, the grandparent/laborer standard, the meeting standard ... you get the idea. The rules were not all the same, and I became pretty adept at switching gears, but it helped me wander pretty far away from being me and working with God, and knowing why I chose to do what. What was good enough to keep all the judges satisfied with me? I saw them all as judges, keeping me up to par and holy enough, smart enough, and submissive enough to pass muster.

My confidence seems based on whether or not all judges/observers are happy with me. Whether I've done what I promised or more realistically what I think they expected me to do. I learned a looooong time ago how to fake it. How to pretend I was confident, feel entirely unprepared or able to do something, but started out on it anyhow in the hopes that the ability/road would appear under my feet. It often worked, and masking my fear and trembling would turn into genuine confidence once the thing seemed solid enough or close enough to being finished to be trusted. I approach almost everything that way. It works, but it makes everyone else think I'm more confident than I am. I deliberately sign myself up for things I'm scared of (public speaking, running 26 miles, etc) and know that the shame of 'failing' at it or disappointing someone will be enough to keep me at it until I think I've conquered it. Bloody expectations.

I'm tired of the expectations game, but have no real idea how to stop playing it.

expectations

Happy weekend between Christmas and New Year’s! Things have been all over the place here, meaning very little has gone according to plan or expectations, but we’re moving right along I'm trying. Both boys woke up several times in the night before Christmas, and so none of us slept well. Douglas woke up Christmas morning with a huge barking cough, a fever, a super sore throat, and the desire to do nothing but lay on the couch and sleep and whimper. Poor kid, he didn’t enjoy much of anything that day. I stayed home from the Christmas dinner we were to all go to, at the house of one of his best friends, and we got cozy and watched The Polar Express instead. His presents were opened sporadically throughout the day, with a couple smiles but no enthusiasm. I confess to being pretty irritable about it, feeling a bit gypped myself. I ended up falling asleep at 8.

Friday was good, and I’d arranged a few days before to spend the night w/a girlfriend whose family was out of town. We were to hit a movie, have some wine, and stay up late talking. I’d planned to come home in the morning after my run and a swing past the farmer’s market. As I was walking out the door after dinner I discovered that my dear husband had forgotten to tell me that the job he’d started that day was a rush one and they’d have to work right through the weekend. I had to be home by 8am. All of a sudden a relaxing night with no real deadlines turned into a ‘get to bed at a decent hour so I can get up and home’ kind of night, a whole other thing to me. My expectations had to be reset, and it wasn’t easy. I ended up ditching the run and market, and getting 5 hours of sleep. It was still great to get away, but somehow it seems harder and harder to reset my expectations as I get older. Why is that so hard? I really count on those few hours away to balance out my time at home. I hadn’t really taken time away, except for errands a couple nights, for a month. I hate that my balance is so fragile that I start to fall apart if some bit of me-time disappears, or social time with other adults gets removed. I hate that I even have those expectations and needs, but I do. There’s guilt attached, a lot of it. Guilt for needing to be away from my kids. All that. I tell myself I should be grateful he's got a week of work after two months with none, and I am. But it doesn't cancel out my need to be alone at times, and that feeling increases when it's vacation and I have both boys 24x7 for two weeks.

On the other hand, I had one strange but certain expectation fufilled, and it was fabulous! I had Douglas enter a coloring contest online, and when I downloaded the sheet for him to color I had a 98% sure feeling he’d win. Totally random drawing, no way I could be sure, but I had that insane certainty. Sure enough, I looked online Christmas day and he’d had his name chosen as the winner of a new scooter. I told OMSH, who ran the contest, that she and God made a great team :). Unreasonable expectations that were competely met! It’s only happened to me a couple of times in my life, but each time it’s been right. He was delighted, and it means that he can throw out the old partially-fixed one we’d salvaged from the neighbor’s trash last year that never worked right. I’d call that a blessed Christmas!

(mostly cross posted from over here)

Updated to add as of Sunday: Fynn and Michael both have the fever/chills/hacking thing going on now, and D is better but still hacking a lot. At least I managed to get a run in before M left for work, only 45 min but I did more exploring of a new 'hood and stopped for a couple minutes in what's becoming my very favorite place to talk to God ... the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge. I even had it to myself today which was even better. I dragged the hacking boys to the store to stock up on juice and lemons and a couple other things, then worked on D's puzzle with him and then played Candyland before sending him to bed with a book and a flashlight. Did I mention it's 63 degrees here today?!

a step in the right direction

Made this yesterday as part of a prize package. My 2nd ever sewn binding, and the first 'exposed' one with the stitching showing on the spine. I love making books. Michael got me a ream of paper and a paper cutter for my birthday, and also ordered me a book on bookbinding techniques (Vol II from this set). I want to get the whole set eventually. D is going to get a couple handmade ones for christmas, for his inventions, recipes, and songs. he loves making his own with staples, just like i used to with stickers and paper and twist ties while hiding under my chair during meeting.