Mornings

{This series was inspired by my son's sixth grade english assignment

 of writing for six minutes, without edits or overthinking it.  

I'll be posting daily quick writes for the month of March.}

My mind wakes up before my body is ready.  To-do lists are drafted in my head before my feet even touch the cool wood floors.  My bare feet shuffle across those worn Douglas fir planks and head toward the living room.  I click on my desk lamp, open my computer and then take a few steps to the left to stretch my body and absorb the view before me.  

Some mornings I greet the dark and other mornings I greet the sunrise.  It makes no difference to me what kind of view is out there, I'm just happy to meet the day at its inception.  Something about this small act of taking the time to recognize the start of a new day centers me, grounds me.

Quiet blankets my home.  I rub my son's back and kiss his forehead.  This is round one of trying to get him out of bed.  My husband, the night owl, is still in bed and I gently close the bedroom door so he can rest a little longer.  

I set about making the morning coffee and take pleasure in this simple morning ritual.  Grinding the beans, filling the tank with filtered water and pressing the start button.

The day can now begin.

Shed [update]

Our funky little pink art studio

{This series was inspired by my son's sixth grade english assignment 

of writing for six minutes, without edits or overthinking it.

I'll be posting daily quick writes for the month of March.}

Shed.

Shed is the word I chose to focus on in 2015 and boy have I been shedding some stuff!

In January I focused on shedding excess from my home.  I participated in Apartment Therapy's January Cure and got really into it.  I purged spice cabinets and organized utensil drawers.  We sold our bed frame and acquired a storage bed from Craig's List.  Clothing, kitchenware and unread books were sent to the thrift stores and local library.

February has been for shedding old habits.  I gave up drinking and wheat, both huge challenges for me.  I'm discovering that I'm also shedding some old preconceived notions about spirituality and judgments of others while I'm on this journey.  Hopefully, all of the shedding will equal a few less pounds on this body - but that's not the point of my alcohol and wheat abstinence - it would be a welcome byproduct though.

Yesterday my old oven range was laid to rest and a new range installed in its place.  My oven had been dying a slow death ever since Thanksgiving and we stretched out it's demise as long as we could.  It felt good to say goodbye to the range that came with our house and usher in the new, stainless steal beauty that now sits in its place.

March will also see another huge appliance leave our kitchen - the clunky, old, white fridge that was here when we bought the place over eight years ago.  It's a total energy suck and on its last leg, as well.

There is something strangely intoxicating (to me) about taking stock of what we have accumulated over the years and being ready to say goodbye to them.

I feel pleased with the process of thinking about objects and finding new homes for them.

I feel stronger as I'm adopting new habits and rituals of my own making.

I feel like I can finally roast some freaking vegetables without it taking seven hours!

Shedding ideas, thoughts, habits, tangible items is my new thing.

I feel lighter already.

Apartment Therapy's January Cure :: Part Two

When I cannot bear outer pressures anymore, 

I begin to put order in my belongings…

As if unable to control my life, 

I seek to exert this on the world of objects.  

Anaïs Nin 

As the month of January came to an end, my list of projects for Apartment Therapy's January Cure had many lines drawn through it.   Items big and small were crossed off, a highlighter drawn over priority to do items and margin notes with measurements or notes to self for future plans.

A lot was accomplished and a lot more still needs to be done.  It was a great way start to the new year.

Grady's Room
My son's bedroom was the least of my worries this year.  That's not to say it flew under the radar during this round of the Cure, but it's good enough for now.  We purged three tsotchke shelves, tidied up his closet, purged his shoe collection, cleared his desktop and added a small chair for additional seating.  I also purged the excess linens I house on the top shelves of his closet.  We spent one hour on his room.

We will revisit his room design this summer and brainstorm new paint colors or wallpaper options.  Moving the furniture around might happen, too, and we'll need to work on sturdier hardware for his window treatments.  Also, I'm going to keep my eye out on Craig's List for a rug for this space.

The Laundry Room
This room is nestled between my kitchen and our tiny entryway.  It is a catch all for many things.  Cleaning supplies are stored in the lower white cupboard, out of sight.  Extra pantry items, as well as my cookbooks, kitchen towels & Dyson hand vacuum live in the top cupboards.

The green picnic basket on top of the dryer usually holds small gifts or books to use as hostess gifts.  Steve has an exposed cubby for his mail, wallet and other small items.  According to Apartment Therapy's guidelines, this would be considered his Landing Strip.  I know there's another meaning for this phrase, but stay with me here, friends.  Let's keep it clean.

The laundry room housed my Outbox during the Cure, but now it's free and clear of all of that mess purgatory.  The white shelf is primarily used to hold our library bags, outgoing mail or items that I need to return to friends.  I guess it's always been used as an Outbox.  The three baskets hold our dirty clothes.  Darks, whites & items to take to the dry cleaner.  I throw a load of laundry in almost every morning and this helps keep these baskets from overflowing.

The Entryway
Nothing much happened in the entryway.  Excess shoes were put away, the small rug vacuumed and the slider tracks were deep cleaned.  A few years ago we added these Flor carpet tiles and I love them.  We haven't had to replace any yet, but it would be easy to do so with the spare tiles we have on hand.

The Master Bedroom (aka - "The January Cure Project")
I posted a few before and in-progress pictures on my last past about the Cure.  This is a shot of an empty room.  I cleaned baseboards and window sills, cleaned the wood floors and said to goodbye to our old bed after a quick sale on Craig's List.

Our room is approximately 11' x 8' feet.  The new platform bed (with storage) takes up 7-1/4' x 5-3/4' - it's a tight fit, but the bed fits and we turned it so the headboard is on largest, blank wall in the room.    It looks a little boring right now, but the plan is to ditch the set of dresser drawers on the right and store those items of clothing in the drawers provided under the bed.  

I'm also toying around with the idea of wallpaper on this blank wall, bookshelves or a large piece of artwork.  These items are on my list and will stay there until I figure it out and run it by the husband.

We met with a local electrician over the weekend and she is going to hardwire a permanent set of reading lights above our bed, so we can get rid of these Ikea plug-in lamps.  Hallelujah!  I just hate the cords and funky look of these functional lights.  It feels like we're still in college with this get-up.  We use them every night, so they are important to us, but not the most beautiful option.  She's also going to add lighting to my hall clothing closet and my son's bedroom closet.  Let there be light!

We're also exploring the possibility of using stools (inspired by these) as our bedside tables, but we only have 13" to work with on either side.  In the end, Steve may just build a set of simple floating shelves for each side of the bed that can be used to store our nightly glass of water, book, eyeglasses and small electronics.

The master closet is predominately utilized by my husband.  I do have two shelves for jeans and t-shirts, but most of my clothing & shoes are housed in the converted water heater closet in the hall,  just outside our bedroom.

The simple pine racks with pegs that hang behind our bedroom door save the day.  I use them to hang our baseball caps on the upper level and use the lower rack for bathrobes, my rotating cardigan sweater collection, as well as scarves and tank tops.  It's not glamorous, but it works and it's hidden behind the door when it's open.

I had the jewelry hutch custom-made about 13 years ago.  It is a dreamy little cabinet that houses all of my baubles, plus Steve's watch collection.  I purged it and reorganized it during this month's Cure and now have an empty drawer.  I'm sure that won't stay empty for very long.

I also picked up a set of curtain rods for our bedroom this week.  I thrifted a set of sturdy chocolate brown panels by Woolworth a few weeks back.  My husband has agreed to hang them in the near future.

The Living Room
Last year I worked on my living room as my January Cure Project and accomplished quite a bit.  However, the artwork I was going to get framed...never got framed.  Surprised?  I'm not.  I'm taking the piece down down today (I hung it up with washi tape and it's been that way for 365 days) rolling it up and placing it in a cardboard tube.  I'll take it to the framer next weekend.  I promise.

I popped into Target this week to grab a few new throw pillows for the couch.  All three were on sale and I'd been coveting them since the holidays.  I'm drawn to mustards and golds lately and love the look of these on my beige couch.

Well, 106 magazines were housed in my living room, mostly hidden in the drawers of our  rehbilitated mid-century dressesr-turned-media stand that I thrifted a few years back for $3 and Steve brought back to life.  I ended up donating 72 periodicals to the local library and unsubscribed to Sweet Paul, Sunset, Taproot, Cook's and Audubon.  I also put a hold on my Sunday New York Times subscription until the end of Spring.  I have a lot of reading to catch up on and my magazine problem was getting out. of. control.

I'm on the hunt for a new side table to replace the blue one I pulled out of my bedroom during the new bed installation.  For now, it will stay in the living room until another one finds me while I'm out thrifting.

I've also asked my husband to install two bookshelves above my desk in the living room.  For a girl that loves books as much as I do, I can't believe I don't have any bookshelves in my bedroom or above my desk.  He's added this request to his honey-do list and I can't wait to fill those shelves.

The Landing Strip
My desk acts as The Landing Strip and I'm pretty fastidious about tidying up loose paperwork and incoming mail by the end of each day, as my desk sits in the corner of our living room for all to see.  I have an acrylic box that houses a few file folders for bills to be paid, tax & school paperwork and monthly receipts.  I have to start and end the day with a clean desk.  It's just the way I work.  But in the middle of the day?  It looks like this!

The Digital Dump
I got a lot done in the Digital Dump department and found this to be a good use of time during the last week of the Cure.  I was kind of over purging cabinets and cleaning my house at this point, but going through email folders and dumping old and irrelevant documents was liberating.  I also created a better file folder system for storing years worth of taxes and Grady's artwork.  There is still a lot of room for improvement, but it was a start.

The Master (aka - Only) Bathroom
Our house is less than 1,000 square feet and has only one bathroom.  We renovated this room when we purchased the house and made good use of the space.  Not a lot was done in here during this round of the Cure.  I have a cleaning lady that comes every other week and she did all the deep cleaning on my to-do list.  And, yes, I love her.

I cleaned out under the sink, ditched old washcloths, organized the drawers and went through our medicine cabinet boxes (which are housed in our slender wine-slash-linen closet just outside of the bathroom).  I found old prescriptions, sunscreens and makeup that needed to be tossed.

The Outbox
The Outbox concept is one I have adopted from my prior participation in the Cure.  It is crucial in helping break the bond some stuff has over me and makes it easier to see leave the house and, in turn, my life.

I read Marie Kondo's new book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing earlier this month.  I didn't love the book as a whole, but I did appreciate her advice about holding an object in your hands before you decide to keep, donate or toss.  I think there is some power in that advice.  Also, her question about does an item spark joy? resonated with me and I posed it to myself on more than one occasion during the Cure.

All in all, my house feels really clean and organized.  My husband was instrumental in some of the big changes and I would definitely sign-up again for next year's January Cure.

The marked-up to-do list is going to reside on my desk for the next few weeks and then I'll put it away.  I'll tackle a few more things this month.  But first, I want to sit down and read a bunch of magazines.

January :: My Favorite Month

My favorite month of the year, January, is almost over.  So much has happened these past four weeks, while at the same time I feel some of that time was paused, leaving me feeling restored and rested.  Sounds like January has a little bit of a split personality, eh?  The first month of the year holds so much promise for me.  I have consciously slowed down, accomplished several home projects while working on Apartment Therapy's :: The January Cure for the third year in a row and I made an effort to get in the kitchen and cook healthier meals at home.  Yes, a good slow-down was definitely in order.

The first order of business was to carve out more time to read the printed word (not the internet).  The holidays tend to swallow me up and my brain is so full of tasks that need to be done that I can't focus on serious reading (or even reading for pleasure).  I couldn't even read a magazine during the month of December, so I'm jumping back into the habit and catching up on old newspapers, periodicals and New York Times Book Reviews.  I just finished reading my book club selection for the February meeting, A Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes.

I found a new book that I fell in love with and I must share.  It's a graphic novel that I ordered from the library for Grady, but I was drawn in by the incredible story and beautiful, colorful graphics.  It was one of those books that I had to purchase for our home library.  Now, I'm pretty selective about what books I want to own and this one makes me incredibly happy.  I even purchased two more to gift to friends.  Funny, witty, dark, some curse words & a be-heading, but in the most wonderful way.  The Encyclopedia of Early Earth by Isabel Greenberg is a gem.  You can read NPR's review of the book here.

Speaking of books, Grady is currently reading The Fault in our Stars by John Green.  Let me back up.  We rented the movie from the mobile library a few weeks ago and sat down to watch it with him last weekend.  I prefaced the movie with a little talk about how it might be a little heavy for him - you know with the terminally ill teenagers, short sex scene and a heart wrenching funeral, just to name a few.  He said he would tell me to stop the movie if it was too much for him.

Well, it was a lot for him, for us.  We sat there with tears streaming down both of our faces through much of the end of the movie.  My son nestled into the crook of my arm and quietly sobbed.  We had a good talk about life, death, friendship and horrible diseases.  This also gave us the opportunity to talk about the pettiness of gossip, what's important in life and how to find beauty in our everyday lives.

G just so happened to be collecting change this week for a school fundraiser on behalf of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Pennies for Patients campaign.   Timing is everything, right?

The next morning we were drawing & painting in our sketchbooks and he asked if he could look up quotes from the movie.  We continued talking about those heavy themes while creating art around some of the powerful phrases from the book/movie.  This was such a wonderful parenting moment.  Witnessing my son being vulnerable and sensitive, but also knowing he's smart enough and ready to broach conversations about big topics, like life and death.  These moments are the wonderful side-effects of being a mother and they are quite unexpected.  I never gave much thought to this phase of being a parent and it's just so, so good right now.  My fears at the beginning of the school year have subsided and I'm settling into my role as the mom of a sixth grader.

Speaking of Grady getting older, I received a letter from him last week via the Tooth Fairie.  It made my heart just about burst and then put a smile on my face for the next few hours.

So, here is my tooth.  

Sorry I don't believe in you anymore (and I mean the tooth fairy, 

not you mom), but I am a little too old.  

It just happens, right?  Well, thanks for the exciting 

ride as the tooth fairy, for me having such delight 

as a kid to find out a fairy gave 

me money and for being my loyal "Fairy Bank."  

Well, nite!

The note was unsigned, but Grady is 11-3/4 years old - it was time.  The tooth fairie jig is up and it's bittersweet, but I think I'm finally ready to put all the make-believe magic behind me, too.  He lost two teeth this week.  He's growing up so fast.

This month found me looking back on my life and pondering my crooked path to the mother I am today.  I was invited to contribute an essay to the 28 Days of Play series created by the smart and talented New York mama, Rachel Cedar.  I connected with Rachel through Instagram a year or so ago and feel absolutely honored to contribute to the conversation on how we play (or don't play) with our children in this modern day and age.  I had to dig deep and can't wait to share my essay, along with all of the other talented writers, next month.  Stay tuned!

Last year I embarked on a drawing-a-day journal project that I'm super proud of.  I didn't want to commit to a daily exercise again this year and instead have decided to use both pages of my sketchbook and stretch my exercises into several days (or weeks, if needed).  

We're training for another hike up Mt. Rainier later this year.  We will revisit the part of the mountain that we partially climbed in 2011 and you can read about that wild trip here.  Steve will be joining us this time around.

We're lucky enough to only have to drive 30 minutes and arrive at the Armstrong Redwoods in Guerneville, California.  Having lived in Sonoma County for 13 years, I can't believe I've never hiked underneath this amazing canopy of giant trees.  The hike made me feel small and grateful and restored.  I love how nature can do that to me.

As always, the children lead me and my dear friend on these hikes and we quite like watching them run, jump, laugh and have fun with each other.  They are growing up right before our eyes and these Saturday morning excursions are really special.

January is my favorite month of the year because it's allows me a stretch of days wherein I can reorganize my home and mind.  It's like a month-long reset button for my life.  I look forward to it every year and get a little melancholy as we approach the 31st day.  The upside?  February is my second favorite month.

Quote in Stephen King's Memoir of the Craft "On Writing"

Well, I started this blog post at 6 o'clock this morning and since then I've made breakfast and lunch, taken my son to school, hit three grocery stores & shopped for new pillows & curtain rods at Target.  I stopped by my work office and typed up the last remaining 1099 tax forms that need to be mailed out today and came home and unloaded all the groceries.

It's 1:27 in the afternoon and sunny outside.  I'm going to grab a book, throw on a sundress and say goodbye to this freakishly warm Friday in January out on my front deck.

And, well, I've got to make time to read, so I can make time and have the tools to keep writing, right?

Happy weekend, friends.

Apartment Therapy's January Cure 2015 :: Part One

The Ponderosa :: January 2015

Just like clockwork, I'm up in the middle of the night struggling with sleep.  Every year around this time, sleep eludes me.  My mind seems filled with ideas and running to-do lists and I wake up with the need to write or put my thoughts on paper.

Organizing my home and putting things in order at the beginning of the calendar year is a big ritual for me.  I shared a little bit about my tendencies back in 2012.  Around this time, I picked up a book called Apartment Therapy: The Eight Step Home Cure by Maxwell Ryan (the founder and creator of Apartment Therapy).  The book had these great principles for organizing small spaces and it helped me with a little spring cleaning that year.  I signed up for their daily emails about designing for small spaces and that's where I learned about their January Cure.  You can read more about it here.

I've participated for the past couple of years and you can see my posts about it here and here.

This year, I sent out a bulk email to some of my like-minded friends to see if they wanted to participate and about a dozen said yes!  Accountability really helps to motivate me and I hoped it would also motivate my friends participating in the January Cure.

My kitchen (after) + My January Cure Project List(s)

The crux of the January Cure is making your List of Projects.  I modify this a bit by only making one huge list, highlighting 3 - 5 projects for each room that I want to tackle.  This list ends up being about six pages long with the categories being Living Room, Entryway, Laundry Room, Kitchen, Bathroom, Master Bedroom & Grady's Room.  I leave Steve's office and G's art studio off the list because, hey, I'm a realist.  I also know that if I added them, it would just be too much and it would discourage me before I even start.  The January Cure team encourages  you to make another project list from this list, but I feel like that's just way too many lists!  Yes, even for a list-lover like myself, so I just put these seven pages on a clipboard, highlight the doable items that are most important to accomplish and keep it on my desk for easy reference.

Setting up an Outbox is another key component to the January Cure and mine would live in the laundry room, where I would see it when I walked by and could easily add items to be donated, moved to another part of the house and/or sit here in the outbox purgatory until I decided what I wanted to do with it.  This outbox concept is key to the success of the January Cure.  It allows you to keep your focus on the daily assignments and not get stuck in the more of the details of where to put the items deposited there.  Here's Apartment Therapy's Outbox rules:

My laundry room Outbox during week one of the January Cure

OUTBOX RULES 
1. Anything can go in the Outbox
2. The Outbox is allowed to get messy
3. Everything must stay in the Outbox for at least one week
4. After that time you have several choices
a. Take anything back out
b. Leave anything you are undecided about for one more week
c. Dispose of the rest by moving to the garbage, recycling bin, or giveaway pile 
Once you get used to separating first and disposing of later, you'll find that clearing clutter gets easier and easier. 

This is hard for me because I don't want to leave a big mess out where I can see it, but it does help break the emotional hold some items have over me.  My Outbox is growing and I finally addressed some items that I knew exactly what to do with.  The other items that are in flux are still in the Outbox.

My goal project for this year's January Cure is our bedroom.  Our bedroom is tiny and in no way feels like a "master" anything.  There isn't even room for a proper dresser.  My husband's wardrobe occupies most of the closet in our room and my clothing and shoes live in a small closet he converted for me a few years ago, just outside our bedroom door.  Living in a 1950's farmhouse has its perks, but it also has many, many challenges.  Making the most of our space in the bedroom has been a conversation topic since we purchased the house eight years ago.

Queen sized bed made of hardwood (Ash, we think) sold on Craig's List in a flash!

I quickly snapped a few photos of our 15 year old bed frame (above) and it was sold to the first person who replied, a 70 year old guy named Richard who told me he found his wife on Craig's List, too.  No joke.  Long story that I won't bore you with here, but the Craig's List karma was good for this bedroom renovation and I liked that.  Plus, the bed would only really cost us the U-haul fee.  Win-win.

Works In Progress :: New storage bed with  headboard + closet purge

We've talked about getting a platform bed from Pottery Barn for years, but I just couldn't justify the $1,900 price tag.  Searching Craig's List a few days after the new year yielded me several viable options.  I was one day too late in obtaining the very bed from Pottery Barn that we had been coveting!  And, it was only $200!  This reignited my search and the very next day I found a platform storage bed with headboard manufactured by Stanley Furniture and I quickly negotiated the deal, sweetly asked my husband if he would be the manual labor and rented a U-haul for the weekend roundtrip to Oakland to pick up the bed.  I'll share the final bedroom project photos in my final post on the January Cure later in the month.

Spice cabinet purge was long OVERDUE

While Steve was driving to-and-fro last Saturday, it gave me an entire day alone (he took G along for the ride) to deep clean my bedroom and then turn my attention to the kitchen assignment.  I was a woman on a mission and purged the pantry, vacuumed drawers, deep cleaned my refrigerator and was ruthless with purging my spice cabinet & the drawers that housed my kitchen utensils - some that we hadn't used in years.   I mean, who was I kidding?  A mellon-baller?  That thing had been collecting dust since the 1990's.  Buh-bye.

It's not all sunshine and pretty pictures at The Ponderosa (yes, we call out place The Ponderosa).  This Virgo is pretty good about the surfaces looking neat and tidy in my home, but open a drawer or closet?  Oh, hell no.  Most of the time you would find a hot mess inside these drawers and cabinets...but not this month!

The rest of the assignments have been pretty easy and I decluttered a few drawers on Thursday and marked those pesky jobs off of my pending List of Projects.  Again, any place in my home where I can hide the mess - I will.  The only bright side to this is that my home is small, less than 1,000 square feet, and when I set my mind to cleaning and decluttering it really doesn't take that long.

I've set in motion a few jobs that I needed to outsource, like calling an electrician to install wall-mounted reading lights above our bed.  We also used that U-haul rental truck to load up yard detritus, a non-working satellite dish and our old set of boxsprings and Steve transported it to the local dump.  See?  I've even got him in on the January Cure.

That's it for now.  It's almost five a.m. and I'm about to tackle the drawers that house my magazines and old newspapers.

I can't be stopped.

Now.

The weeks are flying by and I've wanted to come here and write in this space, but I can't seem to sit down and do it on a regular basis.  I guess that's what summer is for, right?  Getting out there, soaking up all that life has to offer.

I love to make a list and so here are a few of our moments that are happening right now, so I don't forget how wonderful and full our right now is.

Our bi-weekly sojourn to the Marin Mobile Library in Tomales

Grady, 11 years
Attending :: A weeklong day camp where he will canoe, shoot a bow & arrow, learn new games, braid friendship bracelets and share space & stories with new friends.

Reading :: Harry Potter 6 & 7, again (oh! and now 3 is back in rotation!).

Practicing :: With his new soccer team at Ragle Park.  Our new routine will be soccer every Saturday.

Pontificating :: I like new shoe smell, don't you?  This statement upon receiving new "cool" shoes from his grandma Gigi.

Helping :: His dad water our small orchard and trim trees.

Learning :: How to drop in from his camp counselor, Zeph, at our local skate park mid-week.

Seeing :: His book list recommendations published & shared on the Mamalode.com website this week.

Dropping :: In for the first time at the skate park!  You were so proud when you came home.  And sweaty.  This was your first time doing it and you were beaming when you walked through the door Sunday night.

Manhattans :: My New Love

Us (Me + Steve)
Dating :: We enjoyed an incredible kid-free meal at one of our local restaurants, Terrapin Creek.  Every time we eat here, we say we need to do this more often.

Nightcapping :: We had the best Manhattans this week at Rocker Oysterfellers and are now on the hunt for the perfect dried sour cherries, so that we can make them at home.

Playing :: At the annual bocce tournament put on by Steve's clients was this weekend.  I did want to get on record that I beat Team Father & Son.  Beginner's luck.

Wild Fennel

Me
Reading :: I finished two books this week - Glitter and Glue by Kelly Corrigan & The Map of Enough by Molly Caro May

Watching :: The most fascinating documentary film My Life as a Turkey and Season 2 of House of Cards.

Foraging :: Wild fennel in full bloom on the roadsides by the armful for simple, stunning arrangements.  They drop seeds, so the bouquets are on my outside tables.  I can see them from my living room and they are so lovely.

Serving :: Jury Duty called this week, but I was dismissed.  There was quite a commotion with the protestors and news crews present for the DA's decision on the Andy Lopez case.  We were safely locked in a courtroom at one point, as the protestors raged outside the courthouse.

Lounging :: I have completely become one with my hammock this week.  Reading and pondering life while cocooned by the braided ropes lowered my blood pressure this week.

Creating :: I worked on several illustrations to accompany the beautiful words of poet Annie Flavin and popped them in the mail to her.

Soaking :: Up all the beautiful imagery from Matt Kish's gorgeous book Moby-Dick in Pictures.  552 pages of illustrations, collages and paintings.  I would love to crawl inside his artistic mind for a day! What an inspiration.

Enjoying :: The solitude of my home right now.  Birds chirping, bees buzzing and windows wide open until late in the evening.  We heard and spotted our first owl this summer.

What are you doing right now?

Social Media Overload

Recently, I decided to treat myself (and my family) to a subscription to the Sunday edition of the New York Times.  My first copy arrived yesterday.  Not to my doorstep, but to a small receptacle on my neighbor's property a few hundred yards down the road.  As corny as this may sound, the arrival of this iconic periodical made me feel like a full-fledged adult.  I have never subscribed to a newspaper.   I'm shamefully uninformed when it comes to politics and the stock market.  For the most part, I'm okay with that.

This simple act was actually my way of slowing down the clock in our household, making an intentional choice to read the printed word and to (hopefully) gain inspiration from the pages as I read, perused, clipped articles from and shared with my family.  Yesterday was the longest Sunday I can remember and it was glorious.

If I'm being honest, one of the triggers for me to subscribe to the paper was my recent evaluation of my usage of social media.  I'm on it.  A lot.

I recently spent a week in Portland with my family wherein I spent a few days in Powell's City of Books, thrice visited the main branch of the Portland Library, read two novels and picked up a copy of the Sunday New York Times.  I was immediately pulled in by all of the gorgeous fonts and typography.  The formatting and illustrations were beautiful.  I knew I wanted more.

In between all of that reading, I was constantly and incessantly checking my phone.  I'm totally embarrassed to write this, but it's true.  Instagram has become my social media crack addiction.  Facebook, too, to a lesser degree.

Taking pictures, posting and sharing a little blurb feels good to me.  I'm inspired daily by my friends and followers (that feels funny to type and read), but how much is enough?  Would I ever be satisfied by what I viewed or shared?  What was the value of all of this supposed connectedness?  Could I walk away from it?  I'm not so sure.

I'll tell you what doesn't feel good about the whole thing, my son saying "Mom, you're always on your phone."

Ouch.  That stung.

Conversations quickly turned around and my 11 year old son wanted to know if he could get an Instagram account.  My immediate answer was in the negative.  I didn't really even think about why, just no.  My husband thought we should discuss and give our son a reason.  I channeled my mother and father and thought it's no because I said so.  Oh, that didn't fly with my calm, level-headed, reasonable husband.

And so we debated the use of social media for our son and the pros and cons of same.  In doing this, I had to analyze my usage and what I was modeling for him.  The word hypocrite was spoken and hung in the air like an imaginary anvil ready to hit me in the head.

I am a social media hypocrite.

I had to let the weight of that settle in.

Now, I can justify it until I'm blue in the face.  The fact is - it's true.  I love the inspiration and sweet faces of my friends' children as they come across my phone screen.  I like receiving prompts to visit a new blog post written by someone I know.  I guess I'm a voyeur at heart.  I enjoy memoirs, real stories, real people and even if this is glimpsed in a seemingly impersonal way, through my phone screen, it still feels personal to me.

Two of my friends recently posted about their struggles here and here.  I've taken these words to heart and reexamined what social media means to me and how I can achieve a balance with it.

I think for me, I just need to step back and take a little break.  I'm an all or nothing kind of gal, but I want balance in this area.  I get a lot of good out of the friendships and relationships I've made through social media, as funny as that may sound to some, and I'm not ready to give them up completely.

For my first move towards a lighter social media infatuation, I decided to delete the Facebook app from my phone over breakfast.  I told Grady what I was doing and he told me I didn't have to.  I explained to him my reasoning and told him that I wanted to.  I told him I wanted to be more present and that looking at Facebook on my phone wasn't that big of a deal.

He told me that when he talks to me it seems like I'm not listening to him when I'm looking at my phone.  He said sometimes I don't even hear him.  Oh, my.

It's not only Grady that it is disconnecting me from, but it's my husband, too.  I go to bed with my phone under the guise that I check the time on it, but lately I'm on it before I go to sleep scrolling through pictures and catching up on the day of my fellow social media "friends".  I wake up in the morning and check the time and check up on what everyone was doing via Instagram and Facebook…while I slept!  Really?  Yes, really.

Instagram is a beautiful place to visit, but I'm going to try to put my phone away more often.  Just enjoy the day without needing to see what others are up to every 15 minutes.  I'm not going cold turkey, but I'm going to make a conscious effort to use it less and enjoy the beauty and solitude of my days here at home.  It won't be easy, but I don't think it will be that hard either.

So, for the foreseeable future, I will do my best to concentrate on putting my phone away and really being present for my guys and myself.  Grady is on a permanent hold when it comes to social media and I'm hoping this phase will pass or I'll be more prepared when the talk rolls around again.

Old habits are hard to break.

Wish me luck.  Or don't, if you need a break from commenting, posting, sharing, liking...

Now.

"Mom, I want to paint this."

Inspired by Nici's recent post Now about her children, I wanted to use that framework for a post about what all of us are doing right now.  I love this idea, as days and weeks go by so quickly and I want to remember the little, everyday things that bring me joy as I witness our family in this rhythm of life we are currently in.

Grady
Ripped jeans with smiley faces written on the knees in black Sharpie
Devouring author Rick Riordan's Mark of Athena
at the table, in the bathroom, in his bed, in the car
New freckles are splashed across the bridge of his nose
Fresh scratch on his right knee
End-of-the-year thank you note-writing to all of his teachers
Flipping his head to the left to get his sandy blonde locks of hair to swing across his forehead just so
Lots of looking in the mirror
Wedgie wars with his father that I'll never understand
Purple. All. The. Time.
Negotiations for more iPad time
Black, slouchy knit cap to contain his mop of hair
Plucking blueberries off our our one and only bush & eating them like candy
Sucking honeysuckle and bringing in flowers for me to enjoy, too
Watering our sunflower baby seedlings
Making his own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches

Steve
Fixing, syncing, troubleshooting all of our tech devices
Playing blackjack with G
Showing our son the Honey Badger videos on Youtube (nice, eh?)

Me
Morning doodling in my art journal
Too much coffee, always
Experimenting with embroidery
Searching for a new typewriter on Craig's List
Reorganizing every file in our file cabinets
144 pages into a 737 page book
Baking these blueberry oatmeal cookies with lemon glaze

Home
Local farmers are making hay
Grasses surrounding our home are over five feet tall
Volunteer opium poppies are blooming in the back garden
Newly planted nasturtiums bring hope for more edible flowers
I just discovered out oven has been 100 degrees off for the past seven years

Later today we will join in the celebration for the release party for the 5th volume of the literary magazine The West Marin Review.  One of Grady's watercolors will be featured and we are quite the proud parents.

Happy Sunday, folks.

Happy first day of June, too.

Home :: Ordinary AND Beautiful

Yesterday was one of those ordinary, uneventful days around here.  You know, the kind where you go to work, run errands, thrift (doesn't everybody thrift when they head into into town?), come home, throw a few loads of laundry in, think about what to make for dinner and putter around the house. Yeah, well, it was one of those days and it was really beautiful.

There was this feeling in the air that I can't quite put my finger on.  The windows were all thrown wide open earlier in the day due to the forecasted high temperatures.  The rooms were tidy and calm.

I jumped online and finished booking our flights to Alaska.  I've been working on shifting travel arrangements around all week and it felt so good to push "purchase" and solidify our family vacation plans for August.  I took Grady last year and wrote about it here and here.  This year, we're going as a family and dropping off our boy at the same week long marine mammal science camp in Homer.  We are all pretty happy about making this happen.

It was a truly exceptional mail day today when I popped by the post office.  I received my limited edition Ghost Mountain print by the talented artist, Lisa Congdon.  Her blog is aptly called Today is Going to be Awesome.  I love everything she does and will be taking a professional illustration class from her at the Makeshift Society next month.  Check her out.

Thrift + Consignment Finds :: Stripes are taking over my wardrobe

Nothing was on our social calendar for the rest of the afternoon (or evening) and that was a welcome, intentional change.  I threw on a cute new slinky dress recently purchased from a local consignment store and Grady asked me if we were having company over tonight for dinner.  We most definitely were not having people over.  I guess his line of questioning means I need to dress up more often.  It felt good getting out of my standard winter garb of leggings, tank top and ratty cardigan.  The season is definitely shifting and it felt like I could actually feel it happening in real time tonight.

Salmon season opened up a few weeks ago and so I decided to drive the curvy seven mile stretch of highway to Bodega Bay to pick up salmon for dinner.  The thermostat in the kitchen read 80 degrees and it was definitely too hot to cook inside tonight.  Steve was still working in his office and Grady was creating some kind of monster world in his art studio.  I jumped in the car, rolled down the windows and headed towards the coast.

Perfecting a new summer cocktail has been on my to-do list (yes, really) and I set about mixing up two Negronis for myself and the husband.  I nailed it on the first try and used the last of the blood oranges that I harvested from the orchard that surrounds the office where I work part-time in town.  They were refreshing and a nice change from the usual wine with dinner.

The tall weeds in our fields are reaching for the sky and most are taller than I am.  The late afternoon light setting over the hills has been a photographer's dream.  (Note to self - get out there tomorrow night and photograph your family!)

We ended the day by sitting around the living room, each of us with a book and sporadically checking our phones or jumping on the computer to look something up.  I watched a few episodes of 30 Rock and decided to hit the hay.

I shut a few of the windows and tidied up the kitchen table, wiped the counters down and went in to check on Grady and kiss him goodnight.  His room felt still and warm.  I lowered his blinds and left his window cracked open to let the cool evening air in.

Today was ordinary and absolutely beautiful.  

I climbed into bed and read a few blog posts from writers that I've recently met and smiled at our new connectedness.  I'm noticing how I'm consciously surrounding myself with all of the things that I love lately.  Good food and drink, my family, art, books, friends and nature.  I especially like when all of those things come together under one roof.  Our home.

Tonight our home felt like it hugged us and this little post is my hug back.