sistermama gets real

Do it now

I went to my cousin's memorial on Saturday night, she died unexpectedly about a month ago.  The service was really moving - her sister made a lovely tribute to her, her father (my uncle) wrote and shared a beautiful poem and her niece sang "In the Arms of an Angel" by Sarah McLaughlin.  The song could have been written about my cousin.  Her niece wasn't able to make it all the way through the song and the most beautiful part of the evening occurred when most of the people in the room picked up the song when she was not able. 

I am so sad to say that, although I lived in the same town as my cousin for the first time in 20 years, I hadn't seen her in over a year.   She was about ten years older than me and was always one of my "cool" cousins.  I couldn't be around her without laughing hysterically about something.  We shared a very similar, sarcastic sense of humor. 

As I sat at the memorial, I looked around the room taking stock of the people I hadn't seen in a while.  It is slightly macabre, but I did wonder how I would feel if one of them died and once again I hadn't connected with them in ages.  Were they all my "immediate" family?  Or even first cousins? No, not necessarily.  But they are people with whom I share a bond of family.  What can I do in the coming year to nurture that bond?  In times like these I am constantly reminding myself that all we really have is each other.

I can't instantly mend every fractured relationship in my life, or somehow carve out time to dedicated to every person I miss, but I can be more deliberate in reaching out.  So, who haven't you spoken to in a while - out of "busy"ness, or even anger? Give them a call, write a letter, email them.  Please share any ideas with me about how you manage this in your life.

funky smell = yummy dinner

 

When I came out from my attempted nap yesterday afternoon, the first thing I noticed was that the house smelled really funky.  Kind of like onions, but in a weird way.  John HATES onions, so with much disbelief in my voice I asked him, "Were you cutting onions?"  Nope, but Jack had found one of our first real signs of spring - wild chives.  Although we collected lots of them last year on hikes, I somehow missed that our backyard was full of them.  Omelets for dinner? Perfect since I had nothing planned plus we are going out of town next week and I'm trying to eat down the fridge and pantry.  I also had some asparagus, so roasted it up my new favorite way.  We eat LOTS of eggs since we get high quality eggs from a local farm at such a great price.  Eggs plus veg is one of our most frequent go to dinners, just behind brown rice plus veg!  We made the omelets with the chives and some raw havarti from Hawthorne Valley.

If the chives are up, we need to start looking for the ramps along our bike path as well.  They come up early and I learned the hardway that I need to mark them as soon as we see them, because as soon as the other underbrush greens up  I will never find them again!  The ramps are so yummy in this soup.  I love finding food.

Roasted Asparagus

asparagus

parmesan cheese (you don't need much, so use a good, hard variety)

balsamic vinegar

olive oil

salt / pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Snip the ends off of the asparagus.  Drizzle a little olive oil on the asparagus and toss to coat.  Spread asparagus out on a cookie sheet, single layer, top with a bit of sea salt and black pepper and bake for about 10 minutes.  Remove the asparagus and put in serving dish.  Sprinkle a little balsamic vinegar over the top and use a vegetable peeler to add curls of parmesan.  This dish is delicious served warm or at room temperature and is also an easy, different dish to bring to a potluck.

Songwriter

While I was cleaning yesterday I found this song written by Jack last year.  A few times a year he'll ask me to take dictation.  Influenced by the Waldorf songbook much, ya think?

Where do all the flowers go in the wintertime
Under with their little pillows
Snuggle up in their little sheets
In the wintertime that is where they go

In the springtime they always pop
Ducks are back
Frogs are back
Everything is back
And all the grass grows green again
Snow has melted
Its time to play outside in the springtime air
Yay!!!

Happy Spring to you!

Spring Nature Table

It is so cold today that our spring table feels a bit early, but at least we don't have any snow on the ground.  Jack and I have been telling ourselves that having the table switched encourages the spring to come faster - it has been very sunny out, even if it is freezing.

Now that I'm my third year of creating nature tables, its so much easier since I already have lots of stuff on hand.  I keep most of in a drawer right below, so I don't have to search for much.  Playsilks are too precious in our house to be trapped on a table, so I usually use cheap "silky" fabric from the craft store.  It looks less shiny in person, I don't think it is meant to be flashed upon!

Do go see Catherine's nature table as well.  She has lovely ways with wool, check out the picture on the wall!  Try using google translate if you would like to read her blog. Works well enough, although it is often comical.

Spring Cleaning

We started spring cleaning today.  I've been putting off actual cleaning since January, since we at some theoretical point will have a closing date set for our new house and I figured why not just clean once at the end?  But then I got to thinking... have you ever moved and been pretty disgusted / embarrassed by what was found under your furniture.  Case in point (this was after I removed a pair of boy's underwear with a banana peel on top of them):

I can't feign complete innocence on my part, I do see a Hagen-Daz wrapper in there.  And yet somehow beneath all the mess and under the couch, I found this sweet little thing.

In between trashing the rest of the house, the munchkins were very helpful with polishing furniture, washing windows and mopping the floor.

The most bizarre episode today is that my vacuum cleaner somehow managed to suck up a whole, unblemished mechanical pencil all the way to the entrance of the vacuum bag.  And on the subject of vacuum bags, whoever decided bagless was a good idea?  I don't want to see that nastiness and sure don't want it all blowing up in my face when I bang it out over the garbage can.

The room feels so much better, all spring cleaned and empty of the sluggish winter energy.  For once I love that I can sit in it and not see a single other room in the house.  Maybe if I wish really hard I'll walk out of the room and the rest of the house will match.

I love this girl

Lucy has a wild sense of style.  Our little city has a very recognizable woman.  I've always assumed she was homeless, but don't know for sure.  I've seen her many places, often arguing with people, etc.  She wears really outrageous outfits - lots of animal prints, feathers, I think maybe those carnival roach clips in her hair.  We saw her at the library last weekend and Lucy whispered to me, "Mommy, isn't she BEAUTIFUL!"  My jeans and black tshirts must be really disappointing.

Warrior princess in tree pose.

The girl can be pretty kick ass.  She yells at neighborhood bullies if they try to mess with her brother.  She attacks that same brother even though he is double her size.  She loves so intensely that she grits her teeth when she hugs.  She sings little made up songs when she thinks no one else is listening.

And yet there is this need in her that I worry about filling.  Because, good Lord, does she ever need me.  Some phases are better than others, but I feel overwhelmed by it right now.  I weaned her last year thinking that it might help abate this some.  Nope, not so much.  I worry that somehow she knows that I didn't want to be pregnant with her and that it took weeks (months?) for me to bond with her.  I took good care of her (I take really good care of other people's babies).  I want to fill up this need I sense with great big buckets of love.

Welcome to spring in a still coldish and blustery type way

Happy Vernal Equinox!  We have officially made it through our second winter, although I learned the hard way last year not to put the snow pants away until June.  We had a week in the fifties and now its colder again, but the sun is strong and bright, the ground is squishy and the bulbs are starting to bloom.  Jack and Lucy are happy to be outside again for large chunks of the day and I'm surely not complaining. 

We had friends over on Friday, painted flower pots and planted marigold seeds. 

Then last night after the kids were asleep, I took down all the winter stuff in the house.  John had already cleaned up basically the whole dirty house that the kids and I had abandoned in favor of potlucking  - yay for husbands who clean up even after long days at work.  He even dug out the little box of easter decorations.  I switched the place mats on the table, gave each kid a flower, small bunny mug (from last year) and bubble necklace.  Left the box of decorations on the table so they could find it in the morn.  Even banished King Winter from the nature table (I'm sure a little prematurely) and switched it all about.  J and L were pleased as punch when they woke up this morning - don't think Jack even realized that we have disabled the TV (sneaky one that he is!).