She Laughs at the Days

And you are all grown up. This last week has been peppered with phrases like, "But I'm eating my dinner Mom because I'm six, and six year old boys know how to eat their dinner." This of course is said in great seriousness while you are polishing your halo so that I notice the brief second during which you are better behaved than your sister.

And while you are grown up enough to do your own school work and put on your own shoes, and bathe and dress and, I still enjoy this one, wipe your own bottom, and wipe up the puddles around the toilet and get yourself your own breakfast, though I don't know if scarfed granola bars and the occasional secret scoop of ice cream you try to get away with instead of muesli really count as breakfast, you still need to sit in my lap sometimes and get hugs and kisses. It's so strange to hold your long bony muscled body that smells of sweat and faintly of pee and remember the tiny baby who stole my heart 6 years ago.

I'm sometime…

There, the view from my door, do you see those? Those are real clouds in the sky, not smoke. And notice also that everything is still standing. The ash has been washed away and life continues as normal. Except we're all exchanging stories of our adventures this past week running from the fire.
This is rain. It's been raining. Happy day. The air still smells of smoke, but it's more like what it smells like when you are camping, instead apocalyptic type ash blotting out the sun. The kids can play outside again.
I didn't even think to take a before picture when I was cleaning up my patio. It was a huge mess. But I can now say with authority that mint does not like hot dry conditions and no water for a few days. That used to be a full pot, and now it's mostly dead.

We came home on Friday, and I've been busy putting things right, and wondering how a whole week could disappear like that out from under me. Today we went to the beach after church and spent hours just play…

Last night before we went to sleep the wind was calm, but we could see red glowing all along the horizon. (The genius husband informs me that I am an idiot to think that Santa Ana comes from the ocean when it's a desert wind. But it still smells like ocean to me, how weird is that?) We woke this morning to a smoky haze and ash raining down on us.

A neighbor who works at the nearby fire station called to inform us that we were about 1-2 hours away from an evacuation notice. Beema started loading the cars, the men pulled out chainsaws and started cutting back everything growing near the house, and I made chocolate icing.

The freeway heading north was closed yesterday. We joked that the Boy's great grandparent's would have a great excuse to miss his party, what with a brush fire between us and all. But this morning the freeway was open once more, the fire had burned out during the night. The air grew thicker and thicker as the guys cut back more trees and shrubs. Such pretty vi…

The wind started late in the day, wild and smelling of the sea, though we are miles inland. We walked in it, reveling in the warm power. It was exhilarating.

At midnight we went out again to smell it, to feel it's warmth push against us in the cool night. Gusts pushed in against the windows, rattling the blinds. We left the windows open to let it in.

I lay in bed listening. Like the distant ocean that sent it always changing, shifting, swirling, in new directions at every breath it blew around us. I feared the wind, it's whisper, "Change is coming, change is coming."

"I'm not ready for change," I thought. "I'm just getting to know this place I am in."

I thought the change was one that we have been discussing, another move, a new direction. I finally fell asleep to the restless shifting of the Santa Ana.

This morning, 7am, two babies asleep on me and the doorbell won't stop ringing. It is the wind, so strong it' s ringing all our bells. …

Once upon a time, a little over a decade ago, my little sister and I used to sing together. We used to busk at street festivals and events as a sort of fun way to try and pick up cash; sometimes we did, sometimes we didn't. One of the things that people singing together do often is use their facial expressions to talk to each other while their mouths are otherwise occupied with making the right sounds some out. For example if you are singing with someone and it seems to you that they are flat, you might arch your eyebrow at them to make them think higher, you might smile when things work well, and out of a performing habit, and you might scowl if the other person is making mistakes. One fine summer afternoon next to a booth that was selling dresses made from old saris I noticed that my little sister seemed unusually surly. The short version is that she didn't want to sing with me anymore because I was always giving her The Look of Death, a phrase that we had just coined. My r…

I am fascinated by your sounds. You've taken to chirruping around making little trumpeting noises and blowing raspberries. It's adorable. Your daddy said a while ago, wistfully, "She's gonna grow out of that someday."

And you will, your a baby on the cusp of toddler hood, thank heaven you're so tiny and like to snuggle still.

You love to go outside, you love to run away from home and you are really fast now, scary fast.

You charm everyone you meet and you continue to be full of smiles and delight. Oh my goodness how did two such pessimistic people get such a happy baby? You are always happy, it's fun.

And you adore your daddy. I'll have you almost asleep and he'll come home. You'll wake up at the sound of his voice and then yell when he walks away from you until he comes back to play.

You think your big brother and sister are pretty cool too. They carry you around and make you giggle and you get pretty cranky sometimes when you can't find them,…

Show us what your slings look like. And so I dutifully went through the pictures I have and found this one, which isn't a very good picture at all, and it's of the first sling I ever made and use every day, and never finished sewing the pocket in because, well, I use it every day.

So in response to the tyrants, I mean lovely internet friends, hi Jody, wow it's good to hear from you, I decided that today I would make the sling that I owe to a dear friend and then take pictures of that to show you. But I have this really cool idea for a pocket that is reversible and that turns into a bag that you can tuck the whole sling into when you're not using it. In my mind's eye I would show it to you and you would all say wow, what a great idea, I want one, and I would say, why thank-you, and you are looking very pretty today and what fun this all is. Only I hadn't actually made one yet, only planned it in my head, and the fabric I'm using for my friend isn't the ki…

I am launching a new venture that involves selling the slings I make, instead fo just giving them away to friends and family, which I am happy to do but the GH thinks I should be trying to make money with this, and I agree that there is some potential. I'm actually really excited about this. I've been in contact with some women in Thailand that are from a Karin village in the North where all of the ladies hand weave wonderful bags and shirts and such, and they are going to send me some hand woven samples in the right size for slings so if all works out in addition to the kind I already make, I'll soon be able to offer a line of handwoven slings that will help out the village as well.

So, I have a lovely and talented graphic artist friend who is designing a logo for me, hi megan, and I'm working on business cards as well. It turns out it's really hard to make a logo if you haven't decided on a name yet, which I haven't so here are the top of the list and you …

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
Bertrand Russell
(1872-1970)

Well, back to the regular everyday of life. The booth is down, my laundry patiently waits to be folded. No matter how badly I neglect it it always waits faithfully for me until I can attend to it, like a dog that follows you home and refuses to leave. A half sewn pinafore sits at the table for a birthday gift tomorrow. Three year olds dressed as princesses, it doesn't get any cuter than that.

I had three things on my mind today to blog about. The first was the arrival of the pretty, pretty, pretty, stroller. I love it, I took pictures. The second was idiot drivers who don't look for pedestrians before making right turns, or left turns. I am that woman standing in the middle of a cross walk and yelling at the drivers while pulling up suddenly to keep the person who tries to sneak his turn in before we're across from taking …

If you want to feel like a total idiot, you may want to take a walk with your kids to a vacant treed lot at the far end of the street you live on and pick up dead trees and put them in your shopping cart. That doesn't make you feel like an idiot, because you know why you are doing it and your children love you and haven't yet reached the age of mockery. But the part where you try to pull the extremely heavy cart through the soft dirt of the new construction going on between the lot and the road and get very stuck might, especially when the guy in the truck stares at you quizzically as you struggle to the sidewalk. The stares from people as they pass you in their cars might too, especially as you have to push this awkward and over loaded cart down the center of the road so as to not get stuck on poles and scratch cars.

Then you could try stalking the landscaping crew where you live for several days and pounce when they trim the palm trees, asking them if you can keep the trimmin…