The return of old favorites

Poker (Jesse, i.e. "Lord of Diamond", got some help with his poker face):
The heirloom tomatoes with basil and buffalo mozzarella:Cucumber salad, this time made by Nicolas, with arugula, feta cheese, pine nuts and parsley:It cured me of my chronic fatigue blues last night. Well, the salad and So You Think You Can Dance.

Jesse is nine

In honor of Jesse's birthday, a game! It is in the spirit of his game, Creative Titles, in which everyone titles a picture and a judge gets to pick their favorite title.

So, here is the picture (just stay focused on what is in the plate):At least you don't have to eat it. ;)

Believe it or not, this is probably the hundredth cake I've made in my life. My concept may have gotten away from me.

Here was Jesse, on his birthday eve, at the end of their third performance that day of "Beauty Lou and the Beast". He is dreaming of the southern food he's about to eat at The Blue Willow Inn.
After a big southern "supper", Nicolas and Helen (who have been awake at this point since 4 am for the farmer's market) are dreaming of bed.
So is Jesse:
He is having a relaxing birthday today.

A day with Jesse

Gillen spent the day at the farm with his friend Jack so it was just Jesse and I for the whole day. I really like the one on one time with both boys.

We read The Golden Compass. We created our own Bananagrams word game with tiles from an old scrabble set that belonged to my parents in the sixties. We are now seriously addicted to this game and can't wait to play with more people again. We made banana bread, to eat while playing Bananagrams, of course, and ate most of it. I watched Jesse practice baseball. I am so lucky to be this yellow-Croc-wearing, super talkative, baseball-loving, game-creating, tender hearted guy's mom.

Still white

It's been like seeing snow for the first time. I feel like a hobbit, buried cozily under so much white.


This morning, Tuki was so excited to discover that Jesse had also come outside for a walk in the snow.

Play

Last night, I found Jesse creating a stage for our resident head panda, Rosalinafini, and an auditorium for her audience. This set-up changed rooms a few times.
At the park the other day, ready to take on the monsters of the lake after "spreading" the water with pine needles to be able to allow them to emerge.
Lately, Jesse seems to be entering a new lighter, less serious and intellectual stage. Where he has always been called "old" for his age, into reading long book series and doing difficult puzzles and philosophizing about everything, lately he is all about silly jokes (the more pointless the better) squeaky, grandiose complaining (gotta have the ying with the yang ) and he is even more into imaginative play with his friends. He picked out a Charlie Brown DVD from the library a few days ago. We all giggled through it together last night. I hope that Gillen and Jesse will always keep their love of play and will mix in the innocent old favorites as their lives become more worldly and responsible. I remember how scared I was, on my tenth birthday, that being two digits now meant that I had to give up playing with my dolls. My mother answered my fear with the reassurance that I could play with my own kids someday. While I have loved playing with them, I hope that they don't ever feel like the time has come to "put away childish things" for a more mature perspective, on hold in terms of free play until the next generation comes along.

While excitedly waiting for the big snow storm...

that isn't going to arrive here after all, we got a surprising break from the cold weather. It was a small preview of spring.Nicolas and Gillen were inspired to go out and do yard work. Here they are pruning the grape arbor.
(If you look very closely to the right of Nicolas' head you can see the Confederate flag - one of two- that hang boldly from the home across the street. This flag is one of many reasons for our tall Poplar tree, our untrimmed giant Azalea bushes and our full grape vines that create obstacles, when they are in season, to the view of our neighbors. )

Ground was re-broken, around the beautiful thriving onion trees from Sandra, for a future Spring bed of vegetables. There will be many more beds this year, in our backyard farm. I want in on the action too.
The biggest sign of spring around here - the daffodils:

Last night, I was sitting with my laptop in the living room thinking about doing some writing but really just exploring facebook when Jesse walked in and sat down next to me.

"Do you want to write something and I'll type it up for you?" I asked, having neglected to do this for a few years now. He used to write great stories this way. But he writes plenty on his own. As much as I like to think I inspire them to do things, Gillen and Jesse do find all kinds of inspiration on their own - like this morning when I found Jesse writing a letter to a panda we know in Australia. It is difficult for Rosalinafini to write to her sister Louisafini with such big paws (not to mention new glasses) so she asked Jesse to write the letter for her.
Though it is good that I don't suggest too often (with my kids, this can be a way to get them to leave the room) I am glad that I asked last night. Here is part of what he wrote:

Candles flickered in the dim light of May. All was quiet. The children were fast asleep. The flowers whistled in the moonlight. The dog paced back and forth. A single light was lit in the kitchen...

And indeed, the flowers must have whistled in the moonlight because we seem to have woken up to a unexpected day from May. Nice. Though we'd still like one snow storm.

Treno

Back in March, Jesse decided that he wanted to make his own card game. He asked me to cut out cards from card stock and once in a while asked me how to spell something. He would put the cards away for weeks at a time and then suddenly make them every day. Every once in a while he'd ask for new colors of card stock.

About a month ago, Jesse thought of selling these cards at the Live and Learn Conference untrepreneurial fair. This gave him a deadline and he started working more quickly. As of today, the game is officially complete.

His game is called Treno. He has created four different decks of 35 cards each. They are called: Rainbow, Sea Serpent, Light and Earth. I picked one card from each deck to post here.
He came up with very clear and interesting directions (it's less complicated than yu gi oh, so even I might be able to play). He is decorating containers for the decks.

I hope he sells a few at the conference. They are pretty darn cool - not that I'm objective or anything.

Phobias

Jesse has a horror of thunderstorms. It started when he read the Magic Tree House book about a tornado (he will forever be able to quote which number - #23) on the same day that he read the one about the earthquake (another number etched in his mind - #24). This was a few summers ago, on the fourth of July. That night, we took my born-on-the-fourth-of-July father to a Braves game. A big thunderstorm erupted in about the fourth or fifth inning with giant winds and the drama of people running all around us for cover under the awnings. Jesse has never been the same since. We live in Georgia. Big thunderstorms are a part of summer here. There have been three short ones just this week. Jesse and our dog, Tuki, have both been shivering phobic sad sacks. I was thinking that he managed to overcome his fear last year, as I didn't remember him reacting this way. But then I remembered. Last summer there weren't many storms. We were in a drought. If we had any, the intensity of our family joy over rain for the vegetables may have kept Jesse from having room to be afraid, or we just over powered the thunder with our screaming?

Jesse's fear of storms had developed into a dislike of regular old rain. Then he saw a picture of Logan (a much older unschooling boy who taught him to play yu-gi-oh at an unschooling conference four years ago and is still thought of as a hero). In the picture, Logan is outside in torrential Florida rain. He looks so happy. He is loving the rain. Plus he happens to be next to four very cool looking girls. Jesse saw the picture and announced, "I don't think I'll be afraid of rain anymore." He was right. Here he is, outside in the rain, a few days after that:

But he is more afraid of thunder and lightning than ever. : (

I know irrational fear. When I was in fifth grade, my best friend at the time, Sally Solomon, brought me to her mother-the-scientist's laboratory, at Boston College. She had a very large rat in a cage. In my memory, it must have been four feet long. I have had a big fear of mice and rats ever since. This week, when Gillen had a chance to learn how to feed wounded wild animals, with Pete - one of the cool wildlife guys at Charlie Elliott Nature Center (something Gillen has been wanting to do for years) my seemingly insurmountable fear of mice had to go away. I had to be there. There were lots of frozen mice and rats to be weighed, and then fed to assorted snakes and birds:


It was fantastic how quickly I let go of my fear of flying too, when I had to fly with my own little people and didn't want them to be afraid.

I'm not saying I'm over the rat and mouse thing. The rodents this week were frozen, not to mention dead. I am going to pretend to be over it and see what happens the next time a live one is in my vicinity. I sure would love it if Jesse didn't have to wait until he has kids (or a girlfriend) to get over his fear. I was thinking of having some kind of ceremony to help him let the fear go and let the thunder in... Anyone have any better ideas? Or experience with phobias?

"One Local Summer" Challenge

Jesse was responsible for the most innovative contribution to this week's all local meal. He has been wanting to cook lately, but rarely from a cookbook, usually only from his head. This time his idea turned out to be delicious. He talked all week about stuffing burgers with vegetables. On Friday, I helped him do it. He searched through the fridge for every vegetable he could find, all of which came from the farm, so it worked out well for the challenge. He found parsley, chives, English peas (which he shelled), and carrots. There were big, beautiful sweet onions but he wanted nothing to do with those. So I chopped those up and mixed them with leftover farm potatoes and broccoli into something like hash browns. These onions, cooked, make even the oldest leftovers taste good.

We used ground pork for the burgers. It was from Riverview Farms.

We also had a strawberry smoothie this week made with local frozen strawberries and local milk and we had our first blackberries of the year.The most exciting new farm vegetable (ok, fruit) that ripened in time to appear at our local-only dinner was the Heirloom Black Krim Tomato!

Jesse

I should be plugging away at the book, since I spent the past many hours hanging out with my kids instead of writing, but I am feeling sentimental and have to write a tribute to Jesse before I can go back to my story of the bees.

Eight years ago today, I was talking to my second babe, who was still in the womb. I was telling him that this might be a really good time to get this show started, to begin the moving and shaking that would commence his natural descent from my body into the world. As with his brother, I had reached that doctor deadline of two weeks past my due date the day before. I had a nurse-midwife and had thought that she would be more flexible. But instead, she scared me with her fear. She talked about the possibilities of there not being enough amniotic fluid and of all of the things that could go wrong should I choose to wait for contractions to begin. I agreed to allowing something to be placed near my cervix over night, to soften it. Nothing happened, other than some reactions of the staff to the funny heart rates Jesse showed on their monitors. I was bullied into another c-section. At least this one wasn't preceded by four days of labor. I set a precedent at the hospital by taking a stand about the nursing. I made them agree to holding Jesse next to me, allowing him to nurse while they sewed me up. My arms were pinned down so I couldn't touch him but it made such a big difference having those moments with him, feeling him successfully drink my milk, before being wheeled off to recovery, away from my baby for the next two hours.

This boy is uniquely wise. He is a story teller and game creator and a seeker of magic. He is passionate about what interests him and sensitive to others' needs. He is honest and thoughtful and curious.

I love you more and more Jesse. Happy Birthday.

Jesse's Birthday Party

Jesse turns eight next week but will be in a play that day after doing a theater camp all week. His schedule is packed this month! So we celebrated him, with three other families, yesterday.

He wanted no theme this year, just milk shakes and cup cakes. Half the cup cakes had chocolate frosting and half had vanilla. We bought lots of candy with which to decorate them. For a bit, while the candy was still intact in bowls on the table, the cupcakes were laid out and I had the vanilla, strawberry and chocolate milk shakes shaking, I felt deliciously special, like an oompa loopa in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. There is nothing like a strawberry milk shake made with local, fresh strawberries, or an unexpected mojita made by Mindy with mint collected from the neighbor's back yard. Our time together was so sweet that we all were still hanging out at 11pm. We toasted Jesse for bringing us all together. It was a good day.

Here's the birthday guy after showing up to his party with Claudia and her family. She took my boys fishing all morning so I could bake and clean. He and Gillen jumped right in the pool with their clothes on. So far, it's been the hottest June I've ever known.

Notice Gillen making plans for the candy.

There was a spontaneous Pokemon card hunt at one point. Jared found a horse shoe which inspired a game of horse shoes for the dads.

Gillen and Sophie exchanging jokes at 11:00. Sophie is wearing a hat identical to the one I wear when I write. I sent her home with this one. I had two and was glad to give it to a fellow writer. She too is writing a book. The day after, I've just gotten my coffee and Nicolas is already vacuuming. I am so lucky. I do know this.

Inspired by :

-Molly's lemon-dill salad dressing, which I have been making every other day for a few weeks. It is unbelievable that a salad dressing can be so life-changing.

-Danielle's farming blog which has finally pushed me to join the summer eat local challenge. It asks you to eat one all-locally produced meal a week and then post about it on your blog. We eat mostly local meals so it's time I learned how to take pictures of a few of them (I am challenged by food pictures) and share some recipes here - not, Farmer Nicolas, that I am not hard at work on a farm website as well. I am, in my mind, conceiving all kinds of brilliance with all of this inspiration.

-Next month (gulp), inspired by a tiny germ of an idea I've had in my mind for years, I am taking on the National Novel Writing Month Challenge. The challenge happens, with lots of support from the website and from fellow participants, in November. But June is the month that my kids have chosen to attend lots of day camps so that is the month when I will have hours of uninterrupted time in which to procrastinate write. I do wish that I had fellow writers to do this with. Anyone else want to join me?

-Jen Lemen's blog where she is recounting her soulful (Stephanie's apt word for Jen)and successful attempt to raise money and cards for girls in Rwanda. She is making the trip to Rwanda this month and has created a zine that is beautiful. There is so much more to the story. Check it out.She and Stephanie (and Danielle) inspire me to think and create with a world-view, and/or to support those who already do.

Tamar's comment on this recent, somewhat self-deprecating post of mine. She talked about how an accessory or style choice can make you feel great, just as Gillen's new cowboy hat had him walking tall last week. That comment helped inspire my newest hair accessory, which I purchased yesterday while shopping with my sister. It was also inspired by my love of a Wedgewood China ashtray we had growing up, by how awesome my mother looked in head scarves and by how good I feel when I wear Julie Person's hair accessories.

Lastly, I am inspired by Jesse's peace post to live in my peaceful "yes" and fight to control the dramatic "no" demon and reactive witch who occasionally also inhabit my body.

Anyone out there inspired to write 50,000 words with me next month (while living peacefully and eating locally of course)?

Those only inspired by the farm photos - they are coming! Taken by my photographer sister, they are amazing.

Six Word Memoir Title

Deanne tagged me.

1. Write the title to your own memoir using 6 words. (I did see this)
2. Post it on your blog.
3. Link to the person that tagged you.
4. Tag five more blogs.

I didn't have trouble with the six words but came up with too many titles. I guess my memoir would be a series. What an interesting tag. Thanks Deanne.

Speaking of tags, a tag that I wanted to do but never got to (which is true of so many loose ends to which I later return) provoked my first title:

Still haven't done Sandra's winter tag.

Effervescently joyful though too often tired.

Touched by everything yet seriously silly.

I tag:

Angie
Rue
Mindy
Jesse I asked him what he would do and his answer was the best mother's day gift I could ever want. I'll let him post it. Of course, it could always change by then. But it was about living peacefully with his family. (Later - he did it. I swear he came up with this. He did add, as he wrote, "sometimes Gillen and I aren't so peaceful on the trampoline" but he insisted that peace was the word he wanted as his blog title.)
Gillen

Jesse's Broken Heart

It is the end of a long afternoon of tears. Gillen went to the farm after lunch so Jesse and I were here alone. We were in the kitchen. Jesse, in his footed polar bear pjs, sat on a short step stool that we have in there and asked me, "What is life? What is the reason? Like before all of it, before the big bang?"

History was repeating itself. Immediately I was with my mother in our kitchen in Boston. I was about seven, like Jesse, and was sitting on a tall stool asking her about life while she cooked. I remembered how she had laughed but had tried to answer me.

I didn't laugh. I told Jesse that I had the same questions at his age and asked him what he thought life was about.

He said he thought it was about magic, and then he thought to himself for a bit.

"God is not something that you can see."

I nodded. "Those who think God is real know him because of faith," I said. Faith wasn't an entirely new concept to him.

"I think that Santa is a God," he said, very seriously. "We do know he is there, and is magic, so he is a God..."

I stopped him there.

"Jesse, I have to tell you something ."

And while explaining the reality of Santa, I watched the magic and faith seep out of Jesse. He was devastated. Gillen hadn't been, when he was told the truth by his cousin a few years ago. I know that a lot of kids take it in stride. But it had been hard for me. And it was so much harder for Jesse. He has been going back and forth between anger and sadness for hours. Several times he has screamed at me, "It is all about a lie! How could you do this..." his eyes showing how betrayed he feels. He said that we should have told him long ago while he was still young enough not to really get it (meaning not yet believe in so much imaginative detail, I suspect).

I didn't try to excuse the lie or to fix what he was feeling. I just tried to be there for him. I apologized. He didn't want me to be too near, but he did keep coming back to me to cry and talk out his feelings. He talked about how much it had meant that Santa was proof that there was magic. : (

I know that he will find magic again in his life - a first kiss, or a miraculous encounter, or witnessing his child's birth. But right now, I feel like I personally slayed the big guy. I wish that I could take it all back.

What a Valentine.

Later: Jesse and I managed to end our day with giggles and more deep conversation about magic. He talked about specific characters he has made up from his Fight to the Finish game but that they aren't "magic". I tried to explain that yes they are because he is the magic. He is going on a "magic expedition" tomorrow with a magnifying glass and binoculars (because it may be really, really small, or far away).

Along with Santa, the tooth fairy and the easter bunny (I hadn't thought he still put much stock in that one) died today as well. What a lot to lose.

Many mountain moments

I love the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Australia. I won't say that I love them more than the mountains of North Carolina, but I did feel extremely at home there. I was taken in by the smells, the light, the large number of artists who live there; even while knowing how many venomous spiders and snakes Jesse was hunting down.

As is true whenever we go away, I want to move here. This time, it's because the people are so unbelievably friendly and positive (maybe that gets old? I don't know), and the birds and trees and flowers are so colorful and strange, and I can speak the language but am still in a somewhat different culture (that last one is about my fear of learning Spanish at this late date if we do indeed follow Nicolas' dream of farming in Central or South America). I know that at some point in the rest of this life, I want to live in a wooden/stone green (environmentally green) cabin/cottage on a mountain with all the smells that entails. While I'm ordering up my dream cabin, I'll also ask for a creek that I can hear from my bedroom window.

We got back from the Blue Mountains this afternoon to much more heat, but lots of good reuniting with Zoe, Kenneth (sick with a sinus infection and not even whingeing about it) and Naomi . To get here, we drove (Nicolas was awesome at adapting to the other side of the road, not they I ever had any worries ;), took a fast ferry, and then one more slower ferry. How cool is it to use ferries as your public transportation?

My favorite part of the Blue Mountains experience were the beautiful hikes we took. One was called "Darwin's Walk" (Charles Darwin himself discovered it) and another one took us deep down into a rain forest. On this walk, the kids found some kind of iron-ore rocks - like those used by Aboriginals to do their art, to this day, with which they painted their faces.

On Darwin's Walk, the draw was a magnificent waterfall, the flowers and the birds.





On both walks, the ongoing, Jesse-created "Fight to the Finish" game was continued, now including sticks for bows and wands. Jesse supplied a running commentary about his game the entire time, with occassional shifts of attention to lizards, birds or some plan of his for the future. At one point, when we were all walking up the final hill of a walk in Katoomba, he listed all of the occupations he would consider having in the future - including things like historian and psychologist - which I'd never known he knew, and finished by announcing the career he won't pursue - he will never be a dentist.



We were really happy with the isolated, simple, solar-powered cabin that we rented. It was filled with information about living more greenly, and also filled with lots of good books, games and tea. There were magnificent green and red parrots and huge doves in the woods, right outside. They would come for food every day and they even ate out of the kids' hands.
The only challenge was the night when Nicolas couldn't sleep due to a smell in our bedroom. He couldn't figure out where it was coming from, nor how I wasn't bothered by it (who me? I don't whinge:), so logically assumed the smell must be me. : > / It turned out to be the smell that is put off my some kind of Australian ant when it is smashed. He realized this upon smashing one the next day so I was off the hook.

One more thing that sold me on the Blue Mountains - when we did go out to eat, they had loads of gluten free meals, everywhere we looked. I was able to eat pizza at the pizzeria!! They must have a wheat-intolerant government official, or rich resident.

Having a second summer is grand.


We never did see a Koala, in all of those blue Eucalaptys trees. There are only 100,000 Koalas left in all of Australia, which is really not a lot. We did get to see many Australian animals at a zoo on the way back to Sydney, but that will fill up another post...I've already shared too many photos as it is. It is very late here. G'day to you, up over.