Dinner & A Movie

Tonight was date night with my favorite brunette and blonde. Josh is gone for the evening at a work event, but how could anyone be lonely with two warm little bodies snuggled up against you?

Dinner: Spaghetti and turkey meatballs. Ellis helped me cook when I could tear him away from reading Wayside School is Falling Down by Louis Sachar - "Just let me finish this page..."

Movie: The Iron Giant. If you have not seen this fantastic adaptation of Ted Hughes' story set in cold war America about how we are what we choose to be, you absolutely must check it out. If you don't cry at the end, your heart is a tiny cold stone. Movie night would not be complete without stove-popped popcorn (why would anyone eat microwave popcorn at home?) and frozen fruit bars for dessert.

I don't know how many days I will have of the three of us sharing a blanket on the couch, but I try to store them up like sunshine for the future when I am no longer the most important person in their lives and they have better things to do than hang out with their mom.

Old Wood

First Ride

Today marked my first bike ride of the season and Charlie's first ride in the Burley. Usually the first ride is a bit of a struggle after a winter of reduced physical activity, but not this year. Thanks to all that time at the gym, I am stronger than I have been in a long time, maybe stronger than I've ever been in my life. We made it all the way to Crosby Farm and it felt like flying. As for Charlie, despite having occasional difficulties with his "hat," the overall verdict was "Whee!"

Doing it anyway

I love my job - the one that I do for pay. I'm good at it and it's easy to feel like I'm good at it. It's the grown up equivalent of being a straight-A student. It comes naturally to me.

Then there's gardening. Having grown up in an apartment, I always had dreams of working a piece of land and making it beautiful and productive. I also had to start from scratch as an adult learning how to do it. I am certainly years away from getting the beautiful thing down, but in the last couple of years I've made pretty good strides in productive. I've started saying that we have more of a farm than a garden because it's certainly not orderly or manicured, but it does tend to yield at least some good things to eat. I love to garden, I love to grow things, and a lot of times I feel like I'm incredibly bad at it. I do it anyway because not doing it seems much sadder than struggling with my self-esteem issues. I am prone to just do things that I'm immediately good at, and if it weren't for gardening, I would never grow beyond this. I would never know that failure is not the end of the world and that hard-won successes are sweeter.

Then there's parenting. My childhood is rife with examples of what not to do as a parent, but it's very hard to be constructive if you only do something in opposition to something else. Perhaps because I've always longed to have children and being able to do this well is so important to me, it's very easy for me to feel like I'm falling short. The critic is loud, but I do it anyway because I love my children and I love being a mom.

There is bravery that happens in response to a dangerous circumstance or an external threat and then there is the bravery that is marked by standing up to the enemies inside you - fear, self-criticism, doubt and all the other mean voices in your head. Bravery in this case is doing it anyway, loving something anyway, inhabiting your life rather than always observing and judging what you do.

Red Light, Green Light

Loamy

Planted today in the main bed an assortment of early crops just ahead of the rains coming this week:

• Peas
• Carrots
• Swiss Chard
• Radishes
• Turnips
• Spinach
• Lettuce

Meanwhile, the asparagus tips are poking up and we are excited because this is the first year we get to harvest them. Good old rhubarb, herbs, berries, and other perennials are embracing the early warm weather and growing like crazy.

And indoors we are trying our hand at starting seeds for the favorite summer crops: tomatoes, peppers, basil, and (a new one) ground cherries.

Each year I hold my breath disbelieving that anything will grow. The plants and seeds ignore my lack of faith and my low self-esteem as a gardener and give us so many great things to eat. Good thing they are in charge.

Spring Green

It's been a great couple of days on spring break with the boonies. It came at just the right time for me because I was having this jarring feeling of not really belonging to anyone. Two days of bubbles and chalk and time spent outside walking around with these two has gone a long way toward making this feeling go away. It's great to know when you feel wrong that love is right there waiting for you.

My Cubs