Now is all we have, don't wait.

Most days we all gallop along at breakneck speed attempting to keep the basic order of our lives in place. Normalcy is a lullaby that rocks us into believing that we are in control, that our calendar dictates what will happen, and makes small annoyances seem bigger than life.

But for each of us there are moments when the solid ground we have built our reality on gets rocked. The earthquakes vary in size and impact, but I feel each has something to teach me. This last Friday my Issaquah family experienced a very sudden and heartbreaking life earthquake.

A dear friend of so many people that her reach is beyond comprehension, passed away quite suddenly. I saw her on Thursday morning full of the lively spark she always emitted. 24 hours later she was no longer with us. Our brief 3 minute conversation full of giggles and mutual love will remain a gem in my pocket whenever the sadness rears ups and my eyes well with tears.

Life can change in an instant. And as I have been reflecting on this change, I realize I have so many questions for her. I wanted to hear her opinion and get her advice on a large list of items--I thought I had plenty of time. I am also acutely aware of how grateful I am to the incredible friends and family in my life.

Speak up and tell people you love them or thank you for being in your life. Take the time to get together. Cherish one another.

Liquid, liquid, everywhere!

So there are some days at the end you think, hmmm let's not do that again. Today is turning out to be one I kind of want to start all over. The dog woke me up at 5 by starting to vomit. Not my favorite graceful way to wake, but it turned out ok and I got him to the bathroom floor. It wasn't a big deal and after clean up I crawled back in bed.

About 6 Aresa came in to use our bathroom. Over the next hour I got up three times with her to help her deal with the runs. Apparently part 2 to her throwing up episode on Wednesday after Girl Scouts. That too was gross, but manageable and I crawled back into bed for half an hour before Eliot woke me up by using me as a climbing wall and I was forced to get up. The silver lining so far is that I have a warm bed.

So we get up and moving. Alex goes down and starts coffee brewing while he takes a shower. I putter downstairs to get him a cup to bring up, just to be sweet. I get downstairs and something has gone wrong and over half the pot of coffee has flowed out all over the counter, floor, and saturated the tea drawer. No big deal, right? Just mopped things up. The second half of the pot was apparently tasty and we moved on to the morning's main event--IVE Holiday Choir perfomance at Barnes and Noble.

Aresa has a great time singing with the choir, we get to hear our fantastic principal read, we wander up and down every aisle at least twice. A consensus is almost within our grasp. We are grabbing a gift for a friend and about to head to the cashier about 2 or so hours after arrival, when Eliot falls to his knees and vomits. All over the aisle, twice. He is covered, the floor is covered, my coat is covered. Oh yah. Split second of severe horror before my brain kicks into action.

The staff at BN was so kind and helpful. The folks from IVE were so nice too. All things considered everyone was wonderful, but UGH. So we can cross vomiting inside at a public place off our bucket list. It happened, we survived.

As all parents know this has altered today's agenda and after a few tears of disappointment we have resigned ourselves to the change order. I hope you all got a good chuckle  and that this is the last of today's minor liquidy dramas!!

Clip what you wanna clip

Each October I have a Saturday morning full of panic as I scour blogs and sites for something I can make for everyone in my family for Christmas. It has to be something I can do without too much trouble and has some usefulness to at least the women in the family.

I don't consider myself crafty, though I have recently realized I am in denial. That I am much craftier than I would have ever thought possible - let that be inspiring to you. If I can do it, you can too.

This year I made fancy chip clips. I bought 200 basic wooden clothes pins for under $5 from Target. I searched for oversized clips but wasn't able to find them in the short amount of time I had. I had not originally planned to paint the clips, only to add decorative paper. But painting them added a lot. I took the first 10 apart, painted them and then tried to reattach the metal spring, this proved very difficult and scraped the paint. So I ended up clipping the pin to a double stack of cardboard to open the mouth a bit and painted what I could get to.

Next I mod podged the paper strips (I precut them to fit) to the clip and added a layer over the top. Once both sides had pretty paper I sprayed them with a sealer spray. I ended up making about 160 of them in 8 or so different paper designs. I made cards with each person's name on it and clipped their clips to all the edges. One of my future projects is to make a word out of wire and let that serve as the home for all my clips. We'll see.

It was fun to do and they have a ton of uses. I made a batch of them with holiday paper to hang up holiday cards. You could glue on magnets and use it on the fridge. One of my sisters just liked them for decoration and clipped them to her candle centerpiece.

Tweezing My Slugs

Gloves? check. Headlamp? check. Tweezers? check. Slug hunting is serious business at our house. At least once a day, I (and often the kids) can be found out in the yard picking over my plants in search of slugs. It must be birthing time as my veggies are covered in tiny little ones. So I gently pick them off the leaves and stems and then either squash or salt them. I do wish they were smart enough to see me coming and find another yard, but so far not so much. I don't bother with beer - the dog drinks it and it rains a lot. The wheatgerm has shown moderate success when said puppy isn't eating it. And all the other slug stuff makes me too nervous to have out and around.

I try to make peace with other garden/yard challenges. The cedars are acidic, I can work with that. The potato bugs don't seem to cause any trouble so I leave them be. The 6 month old jack russell terrier who is entertained by ripping my precious plants out of the ground, he is really cute and I am hoping will grow out of this amusement. But slugs, I have yet to determine what positive contribution they make. Maybe it is keeping gardeners on their toes? Or a way to get folks into their yard on a rainy day?

I find the search enjoyable in an odd sort of way. I am motivated to go check on all the plants almost every day and it is usually a quiet time to let my mind wander. That said I wish the little buggars weren't so ravenous, and where do they manage to hide?

Thanks Mr. B

There are so many people who help each of us in life. Some we see for the angels they are at the time, and others it isn't until much later that we can see how their influence changed our lives. In middle school I had the same teacher for 3 classes in 6th grade, and 4 classes in 7th. Mr. Birkeland taught us english, math, history, health and likely many other subjects, my memory fades. I didn't realize at the time that Mr. B was an art teacher, that is where he true passion was.

He read to us each day after lunch. This was my favorite part of the day, I remember him sitting behind his podium reading Watership Down to the class. I remember the lilt to his voice, his smile, and I always felt secure in that classroom. The 25 to 30 of us in those block classes were thrown together most of the day and he led us through the unsettling middle school years. Possibly, looking back, he had a better understanding of how awkward and uncomfortable those years can be than i ever imagined. I did well in his classes. I recall working hard, but not being overwhelmed or struggling.

The more I reflect the more I see how clueless I was as a young person. One is so self centered in those years (or maybe just me??) and you miss so many things. I realize how little I knew about the man even after spending so much time in his presence. What I do remember is that he was kind and patient and a true blessing my me. At the time I had no idea.

In the Spring of my 7th grade year he had me take a special math test. I don't remember much about the test except that I was one of only a few kids in the class pulled out to take it. And the following year I was place in the upper math class. Getting thrown into the deep end of the pool for math was the key to my being put in the classes that would lead to AP in high school.

I had only just begun to notice that there were different curriculum tracks. I just went to the class they sent me to. I knew there were classes with the "smart" kids but I don't recall thinking much about myself being in those classes or not. I had only transferred into district 411 in 4th grade. So all the sage type things were already set from my vantage point. Mr. Birkeland saw potential in me I didn't know was there as I muddled my way through. It was his hand in getting me into that high level math (my favorite subject) that completely shifted my trajectory and my confidence.

By the time it occurred to me to look him up and say thank you he had passed away. Even so, thank you Mr. Birkeland for seeing me and re-aiming the arrow of my education. I wish I could have told you in person.

Life's Little Hives

I have had a great day. The sun is out, I ran 7 miles this morning, I "played" at the school for a bit, hung out with my kids, an amazing family brought me dinner just to say thanks for being me.... Overall I am content and loving the quiet mellowness of the current reality.

And yet I have a couple little life irritations, their like a minor hive break out. I know not to "itch" the things that are making me annoyed because that will only make the rash grow and the situation worse. And yet it is there nagging at me.

Usually the things that get to me are inconsistencies with people I spend a lot of time with that I don't feel I can air out with them and have been building for a long time. For example, my professional committment to a friend is almost complete. It has been 5+ years of breathing deeply through some quirks that really push my buttons. But as we reach the end of our time together I find myself tired from carrying my suitcase of frustration.

Set it down, you say? That is a good idea. How? It's petty, I realize that. It only harms me to carry it around. And I don't see the value in opening the suitcase and showing it to the other person. They aren't going to change, and really they don't need to. Either way I only have a little while left, but it would be nice to release it now. So how do I let it go? Have I not really found the root of the pent up hostility? Is it about something else?

I guess I have to make peace with disliking the way certain things are and realizing that I am tolerating them because the benefits are greater than the weight of my suitcase. I can dislike something and choose not to change it. This is how it is, I don't care for it. It will soon change and I will enjoy that. OK, that feels better somehow. Let's see if I can build on that and truly find peace on this issue.

Ewok monkey business

My little boy just turned 5. He recently saw Return of the Jedi and fell in love with the Ewoks! So I wanted to share what we did because another blog about an ewok party was inspirational and instructive in putting together Eliot's ewok party. It was great, we had a lot of fun and Eliot was over the moon.

When each kid walked in for the party we gave them a pair of Ewok ears. I got plain plastic headbands from Michael's craft store. Then I glued strips of fuzzy brown fabric onto the underside of the band and then wrapped the fabric around and whip stitched it in place. The glue just gave it stability. I cut out the ears and then stitched them together. Once the ears were formed I put half a pipe cleaner inside to help it stay standing up.

The Ewok cake was just a double layer round cake with some cupcake sculpted to be ears. We used chocolate and coconut pecan icing with some red icing and a chocolate for the nose!

The little ewoks wanted to hunt for storm troopers! I spray painted galvanized buckets white and used a sheet of black duct tape to make the eyes and mouth. This worked as a great holder for all the kid's take home goodies. We hid them around the house (outside would have been better but the weather wasn't onboard) and the boys each found one and stopped the baddies!

And my daughter made coloring pages full of ewoks and their cohorts. Princess Leia, Luke, and an ewok on a speeder. So cute! So I copied them and she turned the pages into coloring books for each kid, complete with cover. The kids had a blast!