Now What?

Most of you DOZEN of readers know that I like writing letters. Naturally, I enjoy writing to some more than others. But  today I got a letter that honestly boggled my mind.

I can read almost anyone's handwriting if I try. Until today.

It was an introduction letter, i.e. the first one. It was four pages of college ruled notebook paper. Both sides.

In pencil. But wait . . .that's not it.

There was not a single paragraph break--in the entire letter.

No, wait!

It did not have a SINGLE PUNCTUATION MARK.

That's right. No periods. No commas. No question marks.

One LONG sentence from beginning to end.

She did not dot her I's. She did not cross her t's.

I gave up trying to read it after the first page. I feel badly . . . . I'm sure it was a sincere letter and it took her time to write it, but . . . it was absolutely illegible. How do I tell her this?

I wrote a polite card and will hope I didn't offend her. But goodness. . . she is the daughter of an English teacher. How can you NOT USE PERIODS?

Okay, rant about done now. Thanks for listening. I just don't get this . . . .

Keeping Up!

If you've read many blog posts here, you know that I tend to ping pong between a lot of different topics for my writing assignments in any given day. Let me give you a glimpse into what I will be doing this week, for example:

1. Attending TWO phone conferences, each one launching a new project. I will have to get up to speed on their unique templates, guidelines, and requirements.
2. Writing a 4th grade passage about Arthur Conan Doyle.
3. Writing 15 PRE Kindergarten items on inferences, analogies, and classifications.
4. Writing a Power Point module for employers about disabilities in the workplace.
5. Researching and writing a book about walking sticks (the insects that is.)
6. Writing 54 items over a children's book.
7. Researching the life of Hilary Clinton for a book.

Yes, that is THIS WEEK. In between them, I will make some mail art, write 8 or 10 letters, video chat with my far away daughter, help my sons in whatever they need, IM with Amimental, spend time with Joseph, eat an occasional meal, read a few more chapters in the three books I'm reading and, if I'm lucky, shower and sleep (not simultaneously, I hope).

I'm tired just thinking about it. Better fit in time for some coffee!

Time Keeps on Slipping, Slipping, Slipping . . .

(Did you finish that lyric in your head? If so, you must be around my age or have someone in your life who plays hits from the 1970s. Yes, I will hold on while you Google it to see what the rest of the line is because you are too young to know it or so old you forgot it. You're welcome.)

So--life is good here, but running me a little ragged trying to keep up. I've had a pretty nasty back and leg issue since mid-August, necessitating a cane most of the time and a walker if I'm walking around for more than 30 minutes. I hate, hate, hate it. Makes me feel 110 years old, despite my sweet kids naming the walker "Pippin" just to make me feel better. Please love me, but don't send me a long lecture on why I should go to the doctor for this. I know I should but it is much more complicated than that. For now, I will continue to ice it, wear a Tens unit, take OTC painkillers, limp, and swear a lot. Oh, and keep thinking that if I wait long enough, IT WILL HEAL on its own.  (Did you just compare me to an ostrich? I could hear you from here.)

Kid report--all are doing great. Nicole has been in Australia for over a month now. She has had such fun already and this week, she moves into her own apartment. We talk daily, since we can choose from IMing, FB chat, email, Skype, or cell phone. (Ah, the wonders of the modern world.) She is deep into her Nanowrimo novel, and going to tons of fun write ups with others in Oz.

Caspian--he may be leaving us soon too, for an internship in Connecticut at the American School for the Deaf. He has been wanting to learn more ASL and get "immersed" in it and we found this opportunity. He is waiting for the final "yes", but it is looking like he will leave in January.

Coryn--working full time at the airport and still grinding his teeth over the early hours (as are we, since we provide morning transportation). For the first time, I saw him look at possibly moving up in the company in a few months time. That could be interesting--would love to see a job shift more into a career. He is only 18, so has time, but still!

Joseph--preparing to drop the engine in the VW bus again. I am pretty sure the man could do it blindfolded by now. Just as he does NOT understand a number of my personal passions (mail art, letter writing, PURSES!), I cannot fathom why anyone would want a vehicle that demands so much time, skill, money, and knowledge to get it to run. Same with this vintage audio equipment he is collecting fast and furious. I don't get it, but since I'm 55 now, I am just grateful he is into vintage! :)

Me? My back and  leg are kind of awful and make moving anything from uncomfortable to agony, so I pick and choose carefully. Mostly, I sit in this chair and type, type, type. Work is rolling in as fast as I could ever want it to, and I am always so grateful that I have managed to create a business that is successful, can be done from home, and puts my best skill and interest to work. I may not always enjoy my topic, but I virtually always enjoy the process.

Overall, I am feeling quite blessed with my family, my friends, and my work. And if my back and leg don't heal up soon, I may go all postal on it and cut it off, thus losing a lot of weight very quickly and creating a better reason to keep that walker handy.

A Message from the Land Down Under

Gee, what does the daughter from the other side of the world get her parents for their anniversary? A post that makes both of them cry, of course! Enjoy. 

Happy anniversary lovebirds

I usually do this earlier. I usually do it better and longer and with more forethought. I usually do it from my Portland home and I usually start thinking about it months in advance. All of those things changed, so why not the theme? I once celebrated my mom and dad's anniversary with a blog post featuring, not only profound words and flattery, but also pictures of my parents over the years. In order to not repeat myself, (perish the thought) this time I am including a collection depicting our family.



You know how you can visit a city you've been to before and think it's gorgeous? You'd never get tired of those mountains and you'd go to that beach every day and you'd go camping every weekend. Then there are those days when you realize that people look at YOUR city that way and for just a second, that light bulb that lives between our ears bursts into Frankenstein life. (It's ALIVE! It's ALIVE!) All of a sudden YOU are looking at those mountains, that beach and those woods and wondering how you'd possibly forgotten all that was there.



The answer? We get used to it. You think everybody who lives in Hawaii must spend every day swimming, but there are many islanders there that never dip their toes at all. You think the cornstalks of Indiana are boring compared to the lumpy, mountain-strewn Midwest? Live there awhile and you forget those distant peaks. Your vision ends at the edge of your car, your fingers, your cell phone......

Until somebody turns on your light-bulb.

It is a cliche that kids go out to their friends houses and come home wishing their parents were more like their friends parents. "Why don't you let us watch TV all the time? Caleb's mom lets him!" "Why can't we walk down to the park by ourselves? Lucy's mom lets her!" It happens. I've seen it happen to my sister and I've seen it happen to my friends. How many times did I have people over and they saw how laid back my mom and dad were, how they put on awesome movies, ordered pizza, ran and got bagels the morning after sleepovers? They saw this and then they went home raving, yes, raving, because it wasn't just the food or the movies. My parents treated everybody that came in the house as equal to themselves. They asked questions. They showed interest. They joked around with them where they could. They made each and every friend of mine feel like they belonged at our dinner table, that they were welcome.

I can name three friends off the top of my head that went home to their parents, (whom they already had difficult relationships with) and wished they were still my place. I felt sad for them, but grateful for me and mine. Never once in my life have I wanted any parents but my own. They've shaped me and with the exception of a few pounds here and there, I like my shape.

I think my family had our light-bulbs turned on a couple days ago. My parents and my brothers went to see the first ever documentary on homeschooling. It inspired endless conversations, debates, predictions, and eve thank you's from the children to the parents. The film got us looking in at ourselves through a window made up of social conventions, had us wiping away the silly cultural definitions of "family" and seeing us for what we are.

Not lucky.

Special.

I say "not lucky" because I don't believe in luck. Our family is what it is because of the people who are in it. "Luck" may have played a hand in my parents meeting, but that's not what had them calling each other and saying all the yes's that then domino-ed to the creation of me. Luck did not give my mom the guts to call my dad. Luck did not urge my father to say "okay, I'll bite" in response to the suggestion of a date. Luck isn't responsible for the closeness between my brothers and I, that's homeschooling and love, two things our parents dished out. Luck didn't give me my best friend of a mom, who I would go running to no mater what chased me, be it a Huntsman spider, a nightmare or future-inspired fears. And damn right that luck isn't to be thanked for my mom and dad still being together. THEY did that. They are STILL doing that. I don't know how they do it, but I know "special" is the sticker that should be slapped on it.

Being on the other side of planet earth, I get to look in at my family from afar. I get to see, just a little bit, what they look like to the rest of the world. You know what I see?



We're a little nuts.









Alright, maybe we're an entire handful of nuts.









Okay fuck it. You could make an entire jar of peanut butter out of us.

But we like it. You only tease the ones you love and in this family, we adore each other. We're friends. How many families can say that? Maybe not all of us are best friends and maybe some of us don't spend as much time together as we used to. Maybe there is the exception of my sister and maybe there my travels to consider. We're still special. We're still amazing. Ask any one of us and we'll all tell you the only place to be for Christmas, the only RIGHT place to be for Christmas, is home.

They say home is where the heart is. Nope. Home is where you are loved and you know what I know without a doubt? My siblings and I were loved before we were named. We were loved before we were ever held or our genders known. We were loved when all we were, were kicks and heartbeats. We were loved when we were just a realization and a light in a couples eyes. We were loved before that even, when we were just a figment of the future, to marvel at and dream about the same way teenagers do getting their license or buying a drink. How amazing and sort of ridiculously weird is it that we kids were loved before we existed?

It's a crazy kind of magic is what it is.









Because if we've always been loved, we've always been home.

And if we've always been home, we've always been loved.







And you could attribute that magic to so many things. You could link it to homeschooling. After all, consider all those hours spent together rather than at a desk in a school. Consider being taught by your brothers and your sisters as much as your mom and dad. Consider the lack of bullies and humiliation, the absence of clicks and social ranking and having the opportunity to build who you are with the people who saw you start at square one. You could also link our special magic to both parents being at home most our lives, which would be educational for the children entering into the age of job-hunting and life-managing. You could link it perhaps to living in Portland, the land of the open minded and the all-accepting.

 But you know what we kids attribute it to? What Caspian and Coryn and me all think when it comes to how we are the way we are? Why our window is so much nicer to live behind than others? Why our friends peer in and wish they could turn thief and steal the glass? Want to know what the boys and I think is responsible for our lives, our childhoods, and thus, for the way we intend to craft our own children's lives?

Yep, you guessed it. I know it really wasn't very hard.




Mom and dad.

I remember taking this shadowy photo. It was at Maupin this year. I was coming back from the restroom and saw everybody grouped up around the lantern, reading. The combination of the books, the grouping close together, the lantern-light and the dark....it was too magical not to capture. And even though it goes against what I was saying earlier, I was absolutely overwhelmed by the feeling of being lucky.

My dad, a true atheist and evolutionist at heart, has stated many times that humans weren't meant to give birth alone, grow up alone, live alone or die alone. Humans were meant to live together, mostly for survival, true. With my family though, I felt like we were our own clan.


Mom-you're my best friend in the world. You're one of the things I am most proud of. I hold you right up there with my having self-published books, published a real one and having traveled the world. That's how high you are on the list of My Living a Happy Life. When I had that nightmare a few days ago, there was that inevitable few seconds when my eyes opened and I wasn't sure it wasn't true. For a flash, for a second, for one tick of eternity's clock, I thought the world existed with me in it and you not. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my lifetime, but once I heard your voice, the world was okay again. I don't know how you do it, but you always manage to make everything okay. Is it too sappy to say you're the North Star that keeps me from getting lost and always steers me back? It is? Okay, then let's just say I want to be the kind of mom you are and were, but with you standing at my side just to make sure.

Dad-you know how worried I get about finding a man who can be my husband, who can provide and protect and father. I want you to know that I blame you for the bar being set so high! I need my husband to take care of me the way you take care of mom, the way you hold her and make things better, be it pain of the skin or pain in the thoughts. I want a husband with your kind of heart, who sees the good in people FIRST. I want a guy who sees a human in need and rushes over with jumper cables because that's who you are. I want a husband that if one of his kids is nervous or upset, he hugs her and there is nothing safer than those arms. You are the most human man I know dad.

 Know one thing I would never say about my parents? I would never wish them the fairy-tale ending of riding off into the sunset. If you've met my parents, if you've even just seen pictures of them together, you know that they're getting their sunset every day of their lives.

T Minus . . . too little time

Not feeling particularly clever and creative today. Down to the last 24 hours before she leaves and it is a little bit too real. I know this is a good decision. I know she will have a wonderful adventure. I know she will make memories she will cherish for the rest of her life. She may find her future husband. She will see sights and parts of the world I certainly never will. Being happy for her and this opportunity isn't a problem. She has worked hard for it and I am beyond thrilled that she is grabbing this chance and going out to explore and discover.

But it is hard.
And I spend many quiet moments crying.
Because I will miss her more than words can say.
YES, I know we have Skype and email and snail mail.
YES, I know she is 23 and she is an adult.
YES, I know I will have Joseph, Caspian, and Coryn.
YES, I know I will adapt to her being gone.
I know all this and it really doesn't help a bit--not right now when I have to say goodbye.
Nope, not right now.
Send hugs.

Ambivalence, Thy Name is Mother

Today I will spend almost every waking moment cleaning. We are hosting a potluck/Bon Voyage party for Nicole today as she leaves in just over a week for Australia. I will make grocery lists, make food, put away endless STUFF, greet people, smile, have a good time seeing friends and meeting my kids' friends--but inside there is a little war going on between Good Mom and Bad Mom.

You see, I am THRILLED that Nicole is going back to Oz. She has made some incredible friends there--some of the best in her lifetime. Even though it has been two years since she went the first time, these friends have reached out across the miles during that time and listened, laughed, supported, shared, and kept in contact. Really great people. And it totally makes sense that she wants to go back and spend time with them.

She has worked full time plus for more than a year to raise the money for this. She has saved her tips and spent money carefully, frugally. She bought her work visa, and her tickets. I am so proud of her.

And I WANT her to go. It was ME who originally threw out the suggestion months ago. Hey, you had so much fun there, why not go back? It started the ball rolling.

But oh my, I do NOT want her to go. My husband adores me. My sons love me. My daughter GETS me. She knows how I am doing from the way I sigh, my tone of voice in a single word, or the way I move. She is almost telepathic in how she knows exactly what I am thinking. She also makes me laugh harder than anyone I have ever known. We share hobbies--spending hours crafting together and writing letters and reading.

And letting my daughter go thousands of miles to the other side of the world, you got it. Opportunity, adventure, excitement, friends, all of it. Letting my best friend go, however, not so easy. Who will search the bottom shelves of the thrift store on my favorite aisles for me? Who will squeal at a great finding and hug me? Who will sit at the craft table with me and show off her current masterpiece and then oooh and aaaah over mine? Who will make me say and sing and do incredibly stupid stuff just because she asked me to? Who will I buy Minions for and hide them around her room? Who will know, without my saying a word, that I am struggling and come over to hug me? Who will tear up at poignant scenes in movies with me? Who will wrap Christmas presents with me the day before Christmas, listening to music and laughing too much to do a decent job?

Ah yes, ambivalence . . your name is mother. Because I am sitting here helping her pack and prepare, and internally wanting to super glue her to her room. Because seeing her go off into the world full of excitement and enthusiasm and independence means Joseph and I did something very right with her, and I guess, the intense pain I feel at our separation means the very same thing. Sigh.

But it ain't easy.

Too Fast, Too Much, Too Loud

Life is flowing past me a little faster than I would prefer. Ha, hence taking this long to post again! I can't seem to hold onto time the way I want to these days. It just slips by, and I feel like I am running after it like a pet owner who has dropped the leash and is scrambling to get it, but the dog is hell bent on running for eternity. Yes, you're welcome for the incredibly odd metaphor.

August just . . . flew. We had a houseguest--Joseph's youngest brother rode his motorcycle here from Indiana, as he did last year, and spent 5 days visiting. I think he had a good time--at least he had a more comfortable bed this year, and he got to spend time with each of the kids since all were home.

In early September, we went camping at a local campground. How in the world you can go from being in the busy city to the deep woods in under 30 minutes, I just can't understand. I felt like we drove through a portal of some kind while I was blinking. Suddenly we were surrounded by 80 foot tall pine trees and moss and ferns--and the sounds of birds, and wind--it was wonderful. We are pretty experienced at setting up camp, so within an hour the five of us had three tents, two tables, six chairs, and a kitchen all set up. We spent the time reading, napping, talking, laughing, and relaxing. No work. No phones. No computers. Just nature. At one point--a little too much nature as a deer came wandering into our site, stood three feet away from me and munched on some of our trash. I chatted with him a bit before he wandered off. A few hours later, he returned with a couple of friends and they tried to take ALL of our groceries--Nicole stopped them.

Now fall is already sneaking in on chilly breezes and dropping leaves, and I am not ready, never ready. I love summer and it is hard to see it go. October means Nicole is leaving again as well--she is returning to Australia to live with the friends she met there last time. She has her work visa and places to stay, and this time, I suspect it will be six months or more before she returns. Coryn is planning to "join" her in January when he flies to New Zealand. Suddenly the house sure will feel emptier. I suspect a great deal of time will be spent on Skype.

This morning, along with wishing I could make time SLOW DOWN DAMN IT, I also wish I could turn my hearing off. You know--you climb into bed and close your eyes so vision stops. Why can't we do the same thing with hearing? Just close our ears? We have a snoring dog that has ruined many a night for me . . . I usually foist her off onto one of the kids, but since all three are working full time at the airport and have to be up at a ridiculous 4:30 A.M. to get there, I just can't do it. I've tried putting the pillow over my head, playing music, and yes, even kicking the dog. All to no avail. The couch was bed for me all night last night. Good thing it is a fairly comfy couch!

Work was slow and intermittent and then WHAM! I have been deluged with ongoing assignments that--thankfully--give me job security for the last 2-3 months--a rarity in the freelancing world. I won't be sitting around twiddling my thumbs any time soon . . . . No, I will be the one chasing after that leash and hoping when I catch it, the dog doesn't start snoring.