We’ve had some snow here. 30 inches or so. It’s, well. Insane. Insanely awesome. Some photos…
There is a car under there...
That's my car, under that pile of white.
The backyard... see the trash can for scale. It's about chest high to me, and I'm about 5'9".
The other side of my hopelessly snowed in car.
A healthy dose of mixed feelings today…
…happy to have time to catch up on orders and supervise train making…
….tired (so tired) of breaking up fights between cabin feverish siblings…
…still feeling so behind in so many areas. Frustrating…
…worried about starting yet another elimination diet, but feeling the need to commit fully to see if I can solve some of my physical problems…
Such are my snow day feelings today.
Here, in no particular order, are some of the tiny people I’ve been hanging around with lately:
My little sis and her little man
I was honored to be present at this little angel's birth!
Dear sweet babies,
Keep coming. I love you so much.
NOM NOM NOM NOM,
Aunt Heather
I was honored to be interviewed by my long-lost (although I know she loves her new city!) friend Mary Beth of Supafine fame for an article she wrote at Meylah about balancing kids and creative work.
And just to juxtapose this perfectly… I’ve been passing this post over at Illuminated Mind on to every creative person I know- I think there is a lot to be said for going with your creative urges, even if it means being out of balance for a time. If you’ve been to my house, you know that I’m much more likely to spend hours working on a creative project than keeping my house perfectly clean. I’m more likely to spend hours on anything, actually. Even dental work.
Well, maybe not dental work.
Here’s a gratuitous photo of poor Sage, who broke her arm in 5 places this past Monday, trying to hurry down from the top bunk. We’re still fine-tuning the design for her cast embellishment.
So, internets. I’m having some blogblock. It’s happened before, certainly, but this time is different. This time, as in most things lately in my life, I’m taking the time to try and figure out the reason behind the problem, rather than trying to fix it by making some sort of deal with myself, which I will of course, break. Deals, they are for breaking.
I think my blog is having an identity crisis. ”Am I a craft blog? A special-needs Mommyblog? A Baltimore blog? A natural parenting blog? A music blog? An art blog?”
And of course, the answer, up until now, has been yes. Resounding yesses to all of the above. Obviously, I want to write about different topics now and again, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but I am easily overwhelmed by all the possibilities that exist up there in that list. And right after the overwhelmed part comes the not writing part. And the dusty blog part.
I feel as though the bloggers I admire combat this (partly) by devoting certain days of the week to certain topics. You know, Mosaic Monday, Thrifty Thursday, Wordless Wednesday, etc. I can’t tell if this would help me or make things worse. I tried a while back to do a podcast, which I think would have helped this problem, but I can’t get it to work without paying, which I cannot do.
I’m considering some different options. I guess this post is a request to bear with me. Or, more accurately, continue to bear with me.
Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you here again.
How, exactly, is it halfway through November already? Yeee-ikes.
At least Thanksgiving will be low-key around here- no gluten eating people to try to impress, just my kids and me. I think we’ll dig out the Christmas decorations and the Sufjan Stevens CD set and do it up right.
Meanwhile, my hands are flying through some new projects. I’m making work for our upcoming mafia show- Holiday Heap, some projects for Sage’s birthday (seven years old, my lands!), and of course, the ever-lengthening list of handmade Christmas gifts. How is it that I can never learn to shorten that one? Nope, too easy. We have very limited funds around here, but (thankfully) plenty of fiber. That means a lot of all-nighters for little ole me.
Now, where’s that 4:30 pm coffee I was making?
Sage, in a borrowed store-bought Indian princess costume, and Zander in a homemade dragon costume…
Acrylics + pumpkin + six year old =
Happy Birthday to me! Yesterday!
I gave myself a pretty major present:
It’s Orion, and I’ve been carrying around the drawing, and even drawing it on my arm in sharpie to test it out, for 13 years.
I thought it was high time to take the plunge. Orion is kind of like a compass to me, in literal ways (as in, it’s easier to find than any other constellation, and if you follow the lines, you can easily find other major constellations), and more ethereal ones (I always would gaze at it when driving back to college from the town where I grew up, and it would keep me awake. I also can’t usually see it in the city, so it sort of reminds me of home, too). I also love that there have been more stories from more ancient cultures that explain this constellation- and they’re all so different! There is an aboriginal explanation that talks about fishing for forbidden fish, and the fishermen and their canoe being part of the picture.
Tonight at dinner, Sage was asking me all about it. She said, “that’s a cool tattoo, mom, what is it a picture of?” I explained that it was stars in the sky, and that people a long time ago used to make up stories about the shapes they could see in the stars. I showed her Orion’s belt, and she said, “no, that’s the necklace.”
If you look at it this way, you can see Sage’s bird:
And the belt, in this case, is the bird’s necklace.
I love this kid.
