About that picture

This past weekend we made another visit to our favorite orchard. This orchard has a pond with a massive willow tree. When we went under the branches, Punk found that someone had woven a willow crown and left it behind. I put it on her head, and she played fairy princess for a few minutes. Then she put it on my head and said, "You're the NATURE MOMMY!"

I was chasing her out from the tree when K's mom saw me and said, "DON'T MOVE!"
Once upon a time it would have been a posed shot. But this one just happened.

That sums up life these days fairly well.

Wishing. I try not to do too much wishing. It seems like the opposite of gratitude, like the opposite side of regret. But with that disclaimer... I'm finding this season of motherhood frustrating. The girls' schedules are staggered in a way that keeps things from being too overwhelming but that leaves me very little time to myself. Which in turn means no writing. This is a bit maddening, as there are a number of things I would very much like to be writing. But between the littlest's sleep issues and Miss Three being three, I haven't been able to simultaneously carve out the time and the energy. So I find myself wishing for a tiny corner of quiet in which I can spend time with my imaginary friends.

But this too shall pass. One day I will have plenty of time to write, and wish to trade it for a lap full of punks. So instead I will wish for patience: with myself, with time, with the seasons of my life. And for the imaginary friends to be patient too, until I can get back to them.

Stitching. More than ten years ago I bought an Erica Wilson needlepoint kit of the Met’s "Unicorn in Captivity". It has sat untouched for an unforgivable length of time, so now I have pulled it out. It's perfect for me right now: large, rewarding, soothing, and can be done when I'm having difficulty with brain fog, a common affliction among the spoonie tribe. It is easily picked up and set down, so I am keeping it threaded and ready in the living room for when I have time for a quick few stitches.

Watching. Teen Wolf. Hooked. So completely hooked. Haven’t been this hooked on a  show since the first two seasons of True Blood. HOOKED. And in spite of the title (Yay, teenagers… and, uh, wasn’t that an 80s movie?) and the station (remember when MTV showed… uh… music videos?) I’ve been consistently impressed by the quality of the story telling. The scripts occasionally clunk, as do they all, but there is an awful lot in the series to be excited by. Not least of which is a commitment to actual historical research that means the show has yet to make me want to slap it hard.

That doesn’t happen ever.

Waiting  I am trying to let the seasons turn on their own, but late August makes me itchy for cool weather, apples, cinnamon, shorter days, apples, sweaters, and apples.

Our favorite orchard

...The orchard opens next week and I’m excited, ok?

Preparing Punk starts daily preschool the week after next. I’m excited for her, I’m excited about the program, I’m excited about having an hour a day to myself and an hour to spend with Punkina one on one. But I’m also a bit saddened, and trying to pull apart all the pieces of that one. There’s a whole essay in it, so we will see what happens.

Listening Welcome to Night Vale. Give it a shot. You will thank me.

Apparently, I'm terrible at blogging.

At least blogging regularly.

Part of it of course is the first year of adjusting to having another little one. And a new dog. And a new job and new schedule for K. And what I now know is an inevitable postpartum flare that took a long time to shake off.

And part of it is looking at the blogs I follow. They're all incredibly good photographers who spend a fair bit of time documenting their day to day lives, and every post is gorgeous.

(I did not take any of these pictures. They're all the work of my amazing sister-in-law, Christy.)

But that's the problem right there, isn't it. One of my favorite quotes is "Comparison is the thief of joy". I have often thought of several essays I would like to post, but I've never written them out of a fear that they won't look, sound, be as good as others. So I rob myself of the joy of having created something.

Comparison has become the bedrock of our culture, I'm sorry to say. Advertising thrives on comparison in order to create the desire for more things. A twenty-four hour news cycle holds up fearful images of how other people live and act in order to feed fear and envy.

It's not that there aren't real horrors out there. There are and always have been. But when someone is making money off of showing them to us, you can bet the image is distorted.

What saddens me the most, however, is the way in which blogs have brought this phenomenon into Christian life. We are commanded explicitly not to do this, to look at the log in our own eye before the mote in our brothers'.

That doesn't mean we toss out our brains or make a vice out of discernment. Instead, I think it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. To build instead of tear down. To take your own corner and make it grow as best you can.

To create, for the inherent Good of creation, and to make beauty wherever it will blossom.

And smile, whenever you can.

Day 19

Today, I'm deeply grateful for my diagnosis.
Not for the illness itself (although that has its gifts as well) but for the simple knowing of why I spent years feeling sick, sore, and bone deep tired.
The diagnosis itself was disheartening: there are no cures for autoimmune disorders, and even the known treatments can only improve symptoms, not clear them up.But after literally decades of thinking I was lazy or over-sensitive or God knows what, at least now I have a name to put on the problem.

Day 16

Nyquil.

Day 15

Having a chronic illness, I possess a complicated relationship with my body.

It is literally out to get me.

But I'm not alone in feeling that way.

While I, as a general rule, strongly dislike the line of thinking that over-identifies your state of mind with your health (your attitude, for example, has no impact on your actual state of health or illness, cancer patients with crappy attitudes survive at the same rate as those who 'stay positive', and thyroid problems have nothing to do with self-repression), I am also struck by the fact that women are so often afflicted with auto-immune disorders in a culture that constantly tells them to loathe their bodies. American culture encourages an antagonistic relationship between the self and the body: whether it's a fixation with skin or weight or hair or teeth, there is an entire industry dedicated to making certain we are unhappy with ourselves.

Contented people don't shop.

But if I am going to live in this body, and heal it to the extent that I can, I have to change the relationship I have with it. After all, this body, with all its problems, has also conceived, given birth to, and nursed two beautiful girls. So today, and from this day forward, I am cultivating gratitude for this body, with all its flaws. I will seek not to change it but to really communicate with it, to nourish it, strengthen it, and cherish it for precisely what it is.

Day 13

...and some days, you just thank God for a sense of humor.