Right now

But for the summer buzz of crickets outdoors and the sound of Tuki's sighs at my feet, it is quiet. Nicolas took Gillen and Jesse to the horse auction down the street (with a detour to the farm to clip the wings of young turkeys; they were flying over the fence and into the green houses).

We had Kelli and her family here for the last two days. SO nice to be with them. They were our second family from Gainesville this week. Wendy and Shelby visited for dinner on Wed.

Before we can get too lonely, Mindy and her family will be here tomorrow night and the next day. They're going with us to an unschooling not-back-to-school party at a local state park lake and beach.

But for now, in this vast, still moment, it is just me, Tuki at my feet, Fracas in the art room and the baby Carolina Wren in the bike helmet, right on the other side of this window.

This silence makes all of the laughing, screaming, jumping, debating and dancing that is our normal life that much better.

Retreat

This week, Jesse is in a long awaited video game creating camp. Gillen is in a CSI camp. They are in Roswell at Nicolas' sister's house, swimming in a big pool every afternoon and loving their camps.

I am on retreat from my normal routine, savoring this opportunity. I've de-cluttered a closet (it took three hours), meditated every day, exercised, scrapbooked, read and written.

I'll get a date with Nicolas tonight.

Shaking up the routine makes me really happy. And, I'll be really ready for the joyful sounds of the boys to fill the house again.

To Bee or Not to Bee

I'm really pushing the Hamlet word play this week.

A year ago, while the boys were in day camps, I wrote the first draft of a novel. It is called The O'Riley Bees and is 50,000 words long. I mentioned here that after six months of letting it sit, I read it to the kids and they liked it. I marked this month, in my mind, as the time when I would write the second draft.

This morning would have been the beginning of that endeavor.

Last night, instead of preparing, I used many words becoming more transparent here on my blog. This morning, I took yet more pictures of flowers at the farm and visited with the many workers (Nicolas has four additional helpers today, so I can't use farming as a way to get out of this).

Procrastination may clean my house or inspire a dance (I am alone after all), or too much blogging.

I like my protagonist - fifteen year old Finn. I like the girl he falls for, Bea. The Irish ghosts are fun. It's just hard to cozy up to the bees. You know?

It's time to go clean or something. I definitely need to walk away from this blog.

My Weekend in Boston

Though rain had been predicted, instead it was one of those perfect, soft May weekends, with Cherry trees, tulips and every other spring-thing in bloom. I got loads of city energy from so much people-watching and from seeing the buildings of my childhood. I also managed to appreciate the subway all day Friday, and then to be off of it before there was a serious wreck on it that evening.


Boston is so pretty.I took the subway from Logan airport to Boylston Street, near where my mother's ballet school used to be, and then walked to the Public Gardens. I saw the Swan Boats, the Frog Pond and the statues that had been part of my childhood from the time I was seven.

I ate at a cafe on Newbury Street. It was one I'd been to before, but with another name (both mine and that of the cafe).

Walking to the Boston Public Library, I saw that the building where we'd performed when I was with Boston Childrens Theater had now become an H&M clothing store.

In the middle of the giant Boston Public Library is a courtyard, with tables and a fountain. It feels like an Italian Piazza, without the good coffee and loud voices. I sat here for a while.
The sun moved in and highlighted the girl to the right of the fountain, and I thought of my childhood friend Ruth, and how we had shared a love of books, of writing and of our own unique whackiness, at Park School, at the library and at (what was then) Newbury Street's Harvard Bookstore Cafe. This girl looked so much like her.
Ruth couldn't make it to the reunion.

But, it was so great to stay with my first best friend - Sally Solomon - and to see so many others.

See how giddy I am? See what the old friends are thinking? "Barbara" really needs to get out of the boondocks more often...We all immediately slipped right back in synch., connecting as easily as we had back then. They all now know about unschooling. I learned a lot too. They remember lots of fantastic stories, even ones about my childhood home and family, that I had forgotten! I'm blaming it on moving around so much and not getting back in touch sooner. Or, I just live in the moment too effectively. Yeah, that's it.

It's nice to think that these memories were stored with old friends. Maybe I'll be able to hang on to a few of them now. Periodically, I'll have to record some here.There were other highlights :

- Going alone to a Coolidge Corner art house movie theater (where the popcorn was organic and the butter was real!) to see a film, "Every Little Step" about the making of A Chorus Line (a show that my mother and I loved and trudged through the blizzard of '78 snow to see).

- Sharing a Turkish brunch and deep conversation with my stepfather.

- Browsing through a great independent bookstore for an hour and then buying a book I've been waiting to find for months, that was now available in paperback - Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri.

This next one really needs it's own post. Remember the picture (you three regular readers ;) that I posted of myself in this post? The fireplace remains the same but everything else has evolved.
To be continued.

Back to Back Bay

I am going to Boston in the morning, without Nicolas and the kids, to see friends I haven't seen for thirty years. It's been so much fun reconnecting with them in cyberspace. I know it will be even better in real life. As a bonus, I get to see my stepfather on Sunday.

I've packed my clothes in Gillen's small red backpack and I'm bringing a purse. That's it. Tomorrow I plan to wander alone through old favorites - the Boston Public Garden, Faneuil Hall, even the Boston Public Library (a sacred second home for me as a youngun'). I want to eat in a cafe on Newbury Street and take the subway. Maybe I'll take a ride on a Swan Boat.

I was planning on making this a day alone with my camera. It's supposed to rain so I'm bringing the tiny point and shoot. I know my back will thank me at the end of all this wandering. If it really rains - who knows - maybe I'll go to Coolidge Corner, on my way to meet my friends in Brookline and watch a movie!

The rest of the weekend will be filled with reunion but tomorrow it's just me. (Because the kids are getting to see visiting family from the north here this weekend and are excited about that) I can't wait.

New 'do!

The boys went to the farm to work in the rain with Nicolas so I had a few hours to do all kinds of productive or creative things, many of which I thought about doing, for a few minutes. And then, I got on the computer and went on a facebook journey, reconnecting with friends from thirty years ago. I can't believe I'm going to get to see some of these people in person so soon.

Maybe this set me up for the next spontaneous act. I called down the street to see if I could get a hair cut. On the way there I worked up the guts to get radical - six inches off and straightened (wonder how long I'll keep up the straight bit).

Reinhabiting my shell

I have a pretty great family. They're funny, direct, creative, helpful and honest. I always come away from full family reunions a bit more self-aware (did I mention our honesty?), and grounded and happy for having laughed so much...and sick. When I am hosting, I always end up sick.

This year was going to be different. I was organized. I made lists of menus and decorating ideas and then willingly threw most of them out. I didn't do too much - well, there were the three parties to be hosted but I had help. I let my pregnant sister cook and clean for God's sake, a lot!

And still, I got sick. Annoyingly, lingeringly, still not over it sick. It started with a bad cold and then a feverish chilly flue and now it's a cough, rash, stomach ache and week-long head ache. In addition, over a week ago, with lots of possible good playing with Zoe days left, I broke my toe.

I have been feeling so pathetic, and insubstantial. I am ready to move back into this too skinny body and fill it up with passionate eating, with dancing and new art projects in our newly finished art room! I want to take long walks with the kids at our local nature center. Right now, I'd be thrilled with a walk around the neighborhood with Tuki. But instead, I will try to embrace this forced time of inactivity and just be still. Just be. Still, I sure do wish this all meant that I was due a rain check on Zoe time and that her parents had to bring her back sooner than later.

A reveal

This is the corner of the kitchen where our refrigerator usually stands. Nicolas realized that it was leaking and we moved it outside (where it now no longer leaks) in order to pull up the linoleum, dry out the floor and then re-glue it all back to normal.

Moving the fridge meant removing part of the wall, which meant revealing dingy, tired (and filled with some tiny shells of dead animals) insulation and revealing decades-old paint colors that don't match the rest of the kitchen, to our visiting friends from MN (well, originally) who, last Sunday, were coming to call.

As if they cared. They were too busy being cool about the fact that Kyra's arm had gone straight through a cracked window in our door. Thankfully, she only had a small cut on her elbow but I sure would have preferred that we'd fixed that pane before their visit.

Actually, we had a great day. They may even return. ; )

I only bring this up to reveal a corner of my home and life that is far from perfect. I have many. I usually don't dwell on these corners. I'm pretty great at finding the pearls. But today, despite laughing boys playing with their visiting friend all day and lots to keep me looking up, I got stuck in my head for a while. You know, that self-indulgent, no-real-reason-for-having-emerged mood where you want to shut the door and watch old movies all day, alone.

I didn't.

The tile is back down and the fridge goes back into place tomorrow, with lots of leverage under it to keep it from leaning on our sloping floor. I too am feeling myself pulled back into balance.

Every once in a while, the cobwebs need to be seen. Don't you think?

Words

Shanna, an artist, created this silhouette of me and I created the background. This was a few weeks ago when I was first thinking about the novel writing challenge. I realized today that it is an accurate visual of who I am right now (including the horn at the top, which is also the curl on the top of my forehead). My head is filled with broad strokes, small moments, Irish music, the bees of my story and the somewhat neglected bees in my yard, exciting storms and passionate chemistry, too much chatter and not enough silence.

I've written ten chapters and over 18,000 words in the past 12 days but am still 2,000 words behind where I'd like to be by now. But that's O.K. While getting behind, I was discovering a wonderfully useful but horrifically true article about GMOs, about the Irish potato famine and about bees, all of which are in some way in my book. Doesn't it sound like light reading? The article is not, but I am hoping the book will be.

I met a really interesting columnist the other night at the GA Organics event. She is wonderful with words. She writes a column called woman to woman that compares a conservative woman's point of view on a topic to that of a liberal woman- the woman I met - Andrea Sarvady. We talked the other night about how unusual it is for women to get into it with other women about politics or religion. Men are much more likely, in person, to duke it out and try to convince the other guy that they are right. Women do it more anonymously I think, via blogs or email.

Lastly, I saw a film last night that was very quiet and moving called The Secret life of Words. Tim Robbins is in it and he is so different than in anything else I've ever seen him in. I liked it a lot.

Madnowrimo

That is the way in which my friend Helen referred to this crazy lone-wolf pursuit of mine to write a novel in thirty days. It isn't really nanowrimo, as I am not doing it in November with all of the good support of the usual national novel writing participants.

It is Madnowrimo - meaning one of several things, depending on the hour:

1. Madeline's novel writing month
2. Mad (as in utterly insane) for choosing to write a novel this month
3. Madly (as in obsessively, but with a joyful skipping-through-the -flower-fields-and-glens feeling) novel-writing this month
4. Mad for not writing in the same month as inspiring people like Alecto and Jessica.
   
5. Mad no wri' mo'!
   

So far, in the brief four and a half days I have been doing this, it has mostly felt like #3. But there have also been moments of #2.

I read that the first week is always a breeze compared to the rest of the month. Once I am in week three I can imagine being reduced to a blubbering, barely audible #5, all of the words I have heard of in my entire life having been used up in the previous days' word counts, my brain a warped, gray, plastic tub of sour grape jelly.

As for the story, I usually don't know what is going to happen next and that is exciting. So far, the book is about a fourteen year old, Flogging Molly-loving farmer-boy named Finn, a somewhat bewildered Irish ghost who starved to death in the potato famine of 1849, and a quest to find Finn's missing father who may have the answer to the bees' Colony Collapse Disorder, but could also be the reason that the African bees were released in Brazil, thus having caused the beginning of Aricanized killer bee colonies that have reached the United States.

I am writing while Jesse is in day camp, for several hours every day. Yesterday, with Gillen gone those hours as well, I stayed at the computer and forgot to eat anything but chocolate and was a depleted mess by dinner time.

The writing is so much fun that I could imagine doing it on a regular basis, even if just to then read it to my children. But with them around, the words don't make themselves heard so loudly. The words don't like interruptions. So I am enjoying this now for all it's worth.

A Flickr Meme

1. madeline in london, 2. Lobster time.., 3. Booklet, 4. reaching out ........., 5. ewan-mcgregor-04, 6. The Intoxicating Allure of Indigo Booze, 7. Stretching... ♫♫, 8. Crème Brûlée, 9. What does the future hold?, 10. laughing children, 11. Prenent un Bany. Taking a Bath., 12. Mosaic Plant

The concept:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker.

The Questions:
1. What is your first name? Madeline
2. What is your favorite food? lobster
3. What high school did you go to? BB&N
4. What is your favorite color? Periwinkle Blue
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Ewan McGregor
6. Favorite drink? Dirty Martini, up (I only drink it about once a year, but mmmm)
7. Dream vacation? Bali and Japan
8. Favorite dessert? Creme Brulee
9. What you want to be when you grow up? Fearless
10. What do you love most in life? children's laughter
11. One Word to describe you. Interested.
12. Your flickr name.


My friend Helen passed this one along. Since I had fulfilled my 1660 word count for the day this was a fun change of pace the first day of the writing challenge. It was excruciating finishing my word count last night. I was using chocolate not as a reward at the end of sections but rather as a way to keep me awake. I get to start earlier today so it shouldn't be so challenging. My pink crown, green plastic bracelet and blaring writing soundtrack will keep it fun.

If you do this meme (anyone know what meme means?), please post about it so that I can see your results.

Procrastination

Tomorrow is:

-the first day of counting the words I write, towards 50,000 words by the end of June.
-the first of my One Local Summer blog posts about eating a meal made up of all locally produced food.
-the annual, local Hummingbird Festival.

I had imagined knowing many more details (at least the middle and the end of the story) about my novel, by today, the day before I start this gargantuan undertaking. I have an image. It is a picture of Gillen at the farm looking, from a distance, like he is talking to the vegetables. My idea is that he is actually answering some humorous ancestral ghosts who are going to get him to help out a relationship that is in trouble...or have him find the treasure that will save his family... or set him straight about life and the pursuit of happiness, or all three. I read the book that Chris Baty, the originator of nanowrimo, wrote, which is filled with hints about how to succeed. Once I had read that too much preparation was a big mistake, and that giving myself the right music, lots of snacks and much caffeine could be helpful, I knew that this was the right kind of writing project for me. I need pressure, and crazy small goals, and delicious incentive. I will be telling myself that I can have that Green and Black's chocolate at the end of one more page, or that I can run screaming into the night and onto the trampoline, or, more likely, pass out on the nearby bed only once I reach the day's word count goal.

I wrote my high school senior paper, a loooong one that we were given half of the school year to work on, in three days. I was doing a lot of theater and had a job and "Dynasty" was on tv. This was, of course, way before computers. No rough draft. Lots of white-out. I fell asleep on my typewriter before I'd hit the finish. My glorious mother, I kid you not, lied to the school and told them that her mother had died (her mother was not part of our lives, they were estranged, but still...) thereby buying me a few more hours. It provided just the extra hour or so I needed to reach deep and come up smelling like roses, even though I had red ridges and wrinkles on my face from the typewriter keys and seemed strangely O.K. for having just lost my grandmother. I got a B+. I don't think that my ultra-serious high-school prep. school, whose graduates mostly ended up in Harvard, Radcliffe or Yale, graded based on sympathy votes. But, I really could be wrong.

A dangerous precedent was set.

Audition preparation in NY, college papers, birthday cards, handmade gifts, even going into labor - nothing gets my creativity and productivity moving like being on the deadline.

I shouldn't make light of this major character flaw. It quietly concerns me when one of my children shows signs of being the same way. But it's too late to change it before this latest endeavor. Plus, the same trait has produced amazing results for my successful siblings ...

Hopefully, I'll just post a few hummingbirds and local food pictures tomorrow and will save my words for the novel. If I am writing here, it means only one thing - procrastination. Tell me to go clean my refrigerator.


I have wanted to write a book ever since I was seven and wrote stories on yellow legal pads at our kitchen table. I need to remember that. This is supposed to be fun. It will be fun. Maybe I can make it to the thrift store today and find a hat that makes me feel like I did at seven.

Long Way Round

We have started watching this documentary about Ewen McGregor and his friend going around the world on their motorcycles. Apparently it was shown in episodes on TV at some point. We rented it from Netflix. We are only two episodes into it and I am hooked, and I think that the crush I am developing on Ewen McGregor is only part of the reason.

It has me thinking about risky decisions, about passions, about the balance between purely personal pursuits and serving, being with family - how these intersect.

Giving myself hours to write, next month, is my motorcycle trip. What's yours?

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

New 'Do

I like my new hair. It is still long but has layers. "Frank", Christine's hair stylist, also straightened it for me. I will have to start working out and build up my arm muscles for that endeavor! But on special occasions I might work up enough patience to take out the blow dryer.

New 'do, month-old stye, which is seriously highlighted by the setting sun in this picture. It's doing a good job of keeping me from thinking I'm "all that" with this new silky, straight hair.

A need for chocolate

Like a lot of others, I am sometimes melancholy during January. I can blame the post-holiday dead trees everywhere, the lack of light, and the frigid breezes blowing through our old house. It may have something to do with missing my mother. Her birthday was Dec. 30. But I don't know. There's no need to analyze it too much as it isn't crippling. It just quiets me.

This January, surrounded as I was by Sydney summer sun and my new niece's laughter, I thought I'd taken a year off. There sure wasn't much melancholy in Australia.

It's happening this week, instead. No good reason. There's just a bittersweet filter on my lens that is making me want to stay home and absorb those around me rather than make big energetic movements into the world. I want to listen and read more, take stock, drink lots of tea, catch up on our netflix queue and eat chocolate. I am using up my store of organic cocoa in the creation of hot chocolate and cakes.I hope that Jesse and Gillen don't notice any blues, just the sweetness of more rich brown in the house. They are more energetic, productive and talkative than ever. It seems it's ok for me to slow down.

This is my favorite chocolate cake to make. It is in a few of the Moosewood cook books and is called the six-minute cake. So easy, no dairy (if that is an issue for you - it isn't here but the cake is great regardless) and I just discovered that I can make it well with gluten-free flour. The glaze topping is just melted bittersweet chocolate (I use Ghiradelli or Belgian) mixed with some hot water and vanilla. I used coconut oil for the vegetable oil which means it is fighting off viruses as well as any blues.
I'm off to play chess and eat cake with Jesse. Bring on the endorphins.

Seven Random Things Meme

Rachel, a funny, local unschooler with an amazing cat who I recently met here tagged me for this.

Here are the rules:
1. Link to the person’s blog who tagged you.
2. Post these rules on your blog.
3. List seven random and/or weird facts about yourself
4. Tag seven random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
5. Let each person know that they have been tagged by posting a comment on their blog.

I'll be brief, I hope, since I did this one about six months ago and how many wierd/random things can you bear?

Here are 7 more, briefly:

1. When I was a kid, I used to torment myself over which Q-Tip to release from the glass jar where my mother kept them. I was freeing one from it's prison. I had a vivid imagination, clearly, and must have thought my ear wax was pretty brilliant.

2. When my boys put on the song "Roses are Red" by Aqua, I dance all over the furniture with them. I also danced all over the furniture, actually doing grand leaps from furniture on one side of the room to the couch on the far side, when the Red Sox won the World Series three years ago. The kids were speechless. This past season's win, I was more contained.

3. I love peanut butter, mayonnaise and banana sandwiches.

4. I used to direct plays at a theater in Atlanta that my brother and I started and he ran, called "Barking Dog Theater".

5. I was a shoe model, years ago in New York, but not for long. You had to wear a size 6 shoe and I was a 7. My bunioned, dancer feet (now they are bunion and corn free and completely out of shape) could only bear that for so long.

6. I have a grandmother that won't talk to me. We have not seen one another since she and my mother became estranged when I was seven. I am in contact with her sister who arranges for her to send me some money every few years (like now, for Australia - huge help) but I would much rather have her in my life. I keep trying. Now, she is starting to develop dementia so I could possibly visit without her knowing who I am.

7. I love to play with numbers in my head - creating patterns. Like right now, I am about to turn 44 and Nicolas is turning 40 on the 4th of January so I am playing with 4s. We have all kinds of 11s in our family when you use numerology to find "our" numbers. I don't go any further with this, it's meaningless number doodling. I do get a bit into the meaning of astrology, especially seeing how much kids resemble their signs.

Wierd enough for you? I was also tagged for a meme by Schuyler so will have lots of people to tag this week. Beware...

For this random/wierd things meme, I tag:

1. Jessica at Joyfully learning
2. Schuyler (HA!) at Warts and all
3. Mindy at Dancing Chickens
4. Abbi at Exactly Abigail
5. Rue (who probably won't do it but I'll try anyway ; ) at Another Roadside Attraction
6. Tamar at Only Connect
7. Rachel at almost always hungry

I am hoping that some of you read here and get your tag as I have to go do a delivery and can't play tag until late tonight. I'm actually going out tonight with local good friends! I'm looking forward to a girls' night.

Back to Reality

I got back last night. It was a long journey that had me delayed in MN (I thought of the very special bloggers I know there) and later circling Atlanta for almost two hours while waiting for permission to land. I was glad of the extra time to assimilate all of last week before reentering my normal life.

What I loved: the endless Montana skies; the crisp, clean air; yellow leaves highlighted against snow-capped, gray mountains; Magpies - who knew they could be beautiful; going to bathe in the Hot Springs and then getting to spend time alone with my sister at her magical home; being "shotgun sally" - fastest sharpshooter in the old west, in a skit; doing art with happy children; reconnecting with amazing friends; meditating every morning; following rather than creating the schedule; listening; and learning. As if that weren't enough, I also really loved the way my hair acted in the dry climate. :)

Arnaud Desjardin is a brilliant, wise, inspiring spiritual teacher, who is now eighty-one years old and still tireless. What inspired me the most was his joyfulness. I highly recommend his books, in particular the book, Jump Into Life.

We have a full house - my sister in law, Christine, is here from NY with her fabulous kids. It is good to be home. I missed my guys.

Congregating, without technology

The above print is by the artist Nikki McClure. I have reproduced it here with her permission. She creates her pictures by cutting from paper with an x-acto knife. Amazing. I have her calendar and each print in it has been powerful. But this one really struck me on a personal level because of the timing. It is the October picture and this is the month when I will be congregating, in just this way - taking my shoes off as I enter the building where I'll be for a week, gleaning wisdom and community from wise friends and spiritual teachers in Montana. No phones or computers or television. Just working alongside inspiring people and getting back to the reality that comes from sitting on a pillow for hours.

I know I just said that I am hoping to help Nicolas find more fun and less work this year, and leaving him alone here with the kids and the farm for a week seems like a strange way to start. I know. It does to me as well. But this opportunity was given to me as a gift (free flight) and I hope to return more grounded in service to both he and the boys. That's usually what happens when I go to this place. Plus, I get to see my sister. That's reason enough for this journey.

When I first looked at the above picture, on my calendar, I didn't see it as being about people congregating without their shoes in a sacred space. I saw shoes, in rows, and thought - Nikki McClure loves shoes as much as I do (not that I get to fully act on this love) and has celebrated the sight of them congregating together. I have no idea what she really meant, but I doubt it was that. I saw the deeper meaning when the picture spurred a memory of my last trip to Montana, when I was going through security at the airport in order to fly home. After taking off my shoes for such long periods of time for several days, I was used to just leaving them behind once they were off. So I did just that. I picked up my purse from the conveyor belt and walked towards my gate, shoe-less and without a clue.

I look forward to re-congregating here a week from Tuesday. Nicolas said that he may come through with a post or two here while I am gone. Wouldn't that be fun?

Facing me

Stephanie took this one of Nicolas and I yesterday. We had a wonderful day spent here and at the farm with she, her son and Tamar. She blogged about it so beautifully, seeing corners of my home in a poetic light that didn't get overshadowed by our home school clutter and cob webs. Her post made me appreciate our simplicity and how grounded we are. Stephanie's a good writer and an inspiring woman.
Blogging sisters - me, Stephanie and Tamar at the farm.

These last two were sent to me by a photographer who takes pictures at our farmers' market. I'm glad to have evidence that once in a while I am truly a farmer's wife.

These photo gifts of the past few days, coming all at once, have made me decide two things - to get more pictures of me up here(when they happen)to help tell the story; and to embrace growing older - but without so much dependence on the pony tail. I love the party in my hair, brought to me by Julie Persons, but it is only a party if you indulge in it sporadically, right? For day to day, I need a change. A cut maybe? I might pull out the hair iron and make-up more often. Any makeover ideas would be greatly appreciated. This vanity is inspired not only by pictures but by hearing, indirectly, the phrase "aging hippie" last week. Yikes.