meadowblue

     I am so bummed that I haven't been posting!  We got really busy with celebrating Christmas for the first time...and I was starting to get really down about not having a plan for leaving Evansville.  Aaaack!  For now, I'm just going to post some pictures and make a few cryptic remarks before Kirk and Tashi get off the Wii (Christmas gift from my parents) and I need to start getting that boy to sleep so I can be with my love.

     Here are some pictures to sum up our last month or so:









Kristin the hairstylist extraordinaire transforms Indigo's hair.  This was on Monday...what a great day.



Tashi, Parker and Lucy drawing.






Kirk's rescued kitty who still doesn't have a name.  Today her name is either Burrito or Lula Belle.




Early January - strawberry shortcake for breakfast.



Our lovely Aloe playing with some wood.
 

My girls' night with Indigo in her new scarf and hat from Uncle Mike and Aunt Barbi.



Indigo bought high heeled shoes with her own money for the Kalahari dance in February.



Tashi and the night time Milkfur routine.




The Daddy loves his boy!!




Kirk with his finished product - Tashi's lego starwars toy from Uncle Mike and Aunt Barbi. 






This is a picture of me nursing my little Tashi boy when he was just a month old or so.  This was my Facebook profile picture for a few days in late December when Facebook was deleting accounts for posting breatfeeding pictures.  I still got a little protest in me somewhere!  :)




Indigo has been taking a lot of self portraits lately.  I love her style!





Indigo fell in love with Vermeer.



The beloved child, Freya...who loves ONLY Indigo.





Indigo was called Penelope for about 6 weeks.




Christmas pictures:




















Earlier in December:






Kirk and Indigo snuck into the bathroom and shaved off his beard.  It was a fun surprise.





Teruvina's 22nd birthday - December 12.



Another one of Tashi's fantastic drawings.



The new green scarf bought at Grace's sale - early December-ish.



Early December when we were still in our jello phase ~ Tashi and Parker drawing together.  We are ever so grateful to have the Ehmens in our life now!!  When I called last night, Grace told Kristin that her twin was on the phone and that made me smile.  It IS SUCH a comfort to have found someone here with whom I am SO comfortable and share so MUCH in common.  Sigh.
 

     I haven't posted in a while which makes me sad.  I just haven't given myself the time to do it.  What I often do in my actual paper journal when I feel so behind, is just make a list.  So!  After I recount the hilariousness of what just happened, that's what I'm going to do.  I'm "supposed" to be getting the checkbook caught up and writing our little holiday letter (that's what I'd planned anyway...).  Oh well.



     Kirk is gone tonight so the kids are sleeping in the big bed.  I climbed in there with them and read a bunch of cool stuff about the Yeti and Bigfoot from one of Tashi's latest monster/creature books and then read a few chapters of MossFlower.  Once I turned out the light and snuggled in with them, we started talking a bit about the music from the concert we went to tonight.  Tashi had thought that "Feliz Navidad" was actually called something like, "Shemons Day Duh Park."  Once we finally figured out what song he was even talking about, the laughing had started.  We sang a few lines, making Penelope (yes, that is Indigo who is now wanting to be called Penelope) wince because she "hates that song" and then started wondering why that saying, "from the bottom of my heart" isn't something more like, "from the middle of my heart" or, "from the top of my spleen" which led to all kinds of punchiness.  To make a long story short, this conversation morphed into our realizing that at that very moment, there were actually THREE SPLEENS in our bed which morphed into singing a bizarre version of that song about monkeys being in the bed and the little one said...roll over!  Only, we replaced the word monkeys with the word spleens.  After awhile, Tashi had been singing it for far too long and the laughter had died down - at which point Penelope quoted the movie, School of Rock (with just the right accent), saying..."I hate you, you have body odor."  And THIS morphed into our laughing quite hysterically about those stinky spleens!  WHAT the heck?!!  I'm telling you people, NO ONE really NEEDS drugs or alcohol to have a good time...just a warm and cozy bed late at night with people you love...and the word SPLEEN.

     Now, on to my list:

*  Penelope loves to make stuff, rig stuff up, do big projects...and wear curlers in her hair.







   This is Penelope making recycled candles.  At one point, a bunch of hot wax spilled on the floor.  It took Penelope, Kirk and me 2 or 3 days to really get it all off of the floor.  Still, we had some new/used candles, didn't we?

*  We had a great little Thanksgiving all by ourselves.  Julie (old neighbor from Tennyson street in Denver) and I talked on the phone that morning and somehow her saying, "we have a lot to be grateful for, Meadow...like our men.  There are a lot of men out there who are bad news...and we've got good ones"...just snapped me right out of my lonely funk.  I'd been sad that Teruvina and family were in Alabama but that phone call was the magic that I needed and we had the sweetest time together with all kinds of gratitude.












*  I wanted really badly to go to Denver for a week or so right around my birthday but decided that we couldn't afford it.  I'm glad I never spoke a word to the kids.  I was disappointed enough just for myself.  It would've been so great to see Hannah and Benji dance in the Nutcracker and to stay up late talking to Miryam with popcorn and soda.



My birthday cake!



I'm 39!!


*  We've been hanging out with my new friend Kristin and her 3 kids.  I can't seem to totally let go of this feeling of wanting to kick myself for not having jumped all over them back when we originally met...last spring?  You see, I found out that they were Christians and I just kind of backed off...mainly because I have gotten pretty tired of Christian homeschoolers giving ME the shaft when they find out that we do not share the same religious views.  I didn't really DECIDE to blow her off, it just kind of happened.  I can't tell you how many times I got the cold shoulder in Fort Wayne when people would overhear me saying paganish things (and we're not even pagan) or when I would point-blank announce that we're not Christian (thank you, Jill for inspiring me to just come out with it and hold my head up high...not an easy task here in Indiana).  Frankly, I'd gotten used to feeling judged and I've really shut down somewhat in the last 3 years - in terms of making friends.  So, here I was being the one to give someone the shaft when Kristin totally reached out to me...more than once.  SMILES.  She and I exchanged a few refreshingly honest emails and decided that as fellow unschoolers with kids the same age, religion didn't need to be any issue.  We gave it a try and I'm oh so happy that we did!  One really great thing about her (and there are many) is that she loves natural and beautiful stuff!!  Like, Waldorfy stuff!  I haven't really met anyone else in Indiana who truly loves that style like I do.  Yippeee.  So much for this being a list!  I'm going to try to get back on track now.



The plastic toys battle it out with the Waldorf toys.  Remember when I wasn't ever going to HAVE plastic toys?  Tashi was my karma on that bit of dogma!  Its so much more enjoyable to go with the flow.  That tempered with my passion for natural and handmade toys makes for a nice balance.


*  I recently read Dragon Slippers out loud to the kids and loved every minute of it.  Its one of my very favorite kids' chapter books now!

*  I love knowing how much Sara loves Christmas.  Speaking of that, we decided this year to actually do some more Christmasy things than we ever have!  The kids love the music and the decorations of Christmas and they've outgrown the FANTABULOUS Winter Solstice tradition of the Owls (capitalized out of respect...when asked what we'll do about the Owls now, my pragmatic son said..."we're giving the Owls a 50 year break." hahaha).  We bought a real live tree and have been decorating it and the rest of the house.  I still have my gnomes and crystals and little wooden pine trees set about but I'm loving our new additions to our celebrating this best season.  We even hung stockings and my mom is going to send all of my old ornaments and my old stocking that she made for me when I was little.  Ah...such goodness.  If our atheist friends in Colorado can "celebrate Santa," I figure we can do whatever we like, damnit.  I feel more and more free the older I get.






 

*  I love MilkFur.

*  Kirk brought home a kitten the day before Thanksgiving that he'd had his eye on for months.  The little critter (along with its mom and litter mates) had been living under some THING behind a Mexican Restuarant in Boonville, Arkansas since summer.  Slowly but surely, all of the other kittens and the mom had disappeared.  He'd been seeing this one skinny little greasy mongrel for weeks...and bringing it food when he remembered to...and he finally just couldn't take it anymore!  He drove 10 straight hours with it in his lap and surprised us with it.  We have been totally rehabilitating it which has been quite satisfying...she has improved dramatically.  We even thought early on that she might die!  But alas, she is alive and soft and plump and flea-free thanks to the miracle of poisoining your pets...Frontline.






My husband attachment parenting his new kitten.


*  I can't wait to give Teruvina the photo album that I made for her...she turns 22 on Friday.

*  The wind is actually howling around our house!  Makes me wish Kirk wasn't in Oklahoma at the moment.

*  Spending time with the Catalpas is feeling more and more urgent and precious.  They'll be gone by early January at the earliest and late January at the latest (what a mouthful!)  Waaaa!












Here's Aloe chewing on one of the cards from our new favorite game, Apples to Apples.


*  I feel pissy that it is snowing lots in:  Northern Indiana, Chicago, Denver and Missouri (where Kirk was yesterday)...but NOT here in the hot zone of America.  It was like, 52 degrees and raining today.  Ugh.

*  Jill has been reading 1-2-3 Magic and gave me detailed instructions on how to use it with my kids.  Thanks to her and to Nicole's ever-present help to, as I put it, "be like a tree" with the kids - life has been especially peaceful around here for the last few weeks.

*  We feel really poor right now!  How did this happen?  Last month I had to pay TONS for Kirk and me to see and doctor and to get our blood drawn for our thyroid levels AND I had to pay my stinkin' speeding ticket that I got in August.  Oh, back when I got it, I had JUST been bragging to Teruvina about how I NEVER get pulled over and how I haven't gotten a ticket for like, 7 years (and I do speed when we're on the highway...hence the speeding ticket).  Anyway, I paid it just a few days before it was due because...well, YUCK.  $152.00!!!  Those extra expenses coupled with the rising cost of food have put us behind...just in time for the holidays!!!

*  Tashi is a wonderfully creative boy.



Tashi spends hours a day drawing, making elaborate battle scenes with legos and blocks and little animals and people...painting, working with clay and generally just being in his imagination.

*  I love MilkFur.

*  I finally got to see a picture of Jeff's papito, Mario!!  Hot stuff, brotha!  I LOVE to see my Jeff in love.  LOVE IT.

*  Penelope is OBSESSED with the mango sorbet that Kristin introduced us to.

*  I love my Kirk more than ever.







Here we are painting our salt dough ornaments for our tree.


*  I am nearly finished with the Outlander series that I've been reading for over a year!  I am savoring these last hundred pages or so.  Sigh.

*  Tashi and I have been about 98% wheat-free for about a week...we spent 2-3 weeks weaning ourselves which I think really helped make it easier.  He seems VERY different.  I mean, wow.  I feel VERY different.  This subject needs to be a whole post really...someday.  I'm super glad we're doing it.

*  I love snuggling up to my husband under our 3 comforters in our chilly house at night.

*  We're missing the Grundners crazy much.  Its sick.

*  Penelope got a facebook page and she is so into it.  This morning she'd been on it for nearly an hour and when I told her that I missed her and would like to BE with her, she said dramatically, "but Mama!  I'm having contact with PEOPLE!!"  My poor extremely social leo child.  Are we fitting right into that homeschooler stereotype now, or what?

*  I'm feeling guilty that I am procrastinating about the checkbook so I'd better stop this.  Oh, and I love MilkFur.



 

     Okay people...there is a level of excitement around here that we haven't seen in a while.  Why, you ask?  One word:  JELLO. 

     Ever since Indigo was 4, I've eliminated food coloring from our diet by about 95%.  I read an article in Mothering magazine on it and that was it.  That stuff is BAD...I mean, really bad.  It is literally poison...causing all kinds of things like infertility (in men, in particular) and colon cancer.  I make exceptions for Halloween and road trips and parties.  I am NOTgoing to be one of those moms who brings her own cake and candy to some kid's birthday party.  Anyway, jello has naturally been off limits for the last 7 years or so.  If we were still vegetarians, I suppose it still would be.  The kids had jello once at some GAWD-forsaken buffet type place where Kirk insisted that they would live if they had some damn jello.  Being children, they thought the stuff was manna from heaven and have been literally jonesin' for it ever since (and its been like a year).  So!  I was looking at the jello at the regular grocery store AGAIN, just hoping that I would suddenly see dye-free jello when I came upon the little boxes of plain knox gelatin.  On the back of the box was a recipe for making your own jello with juice!  Well, howdy do!
     We have had so much fun buying different flavors of organic juice and making jello in the last week.  The kids are all kinds of blissed out about this...and it pleases my Mama heart to be able to give them jello.  Sigh.




     This is our lemonade jello.  We've also had cranberry/blueberry and orange/mango.

     I also had a really good night with Tashi last night while Indigo was at...wait for it...*gasp* a FRIEND'S house.  Yes, we have made friends finally with another unschooling family with kids just the right age.  This is a whole post in itself which I would very much like to write sometime when my lovely, fresh-from-the-shower husband is not pickin' on his guitar right behind me...just tempting me away from a long post.  But I wanted to remember how I made Moosewood's vegetable stew for hours while Tashi hung out with me in the kitchen talking and talking and sharing his mind with me as he played with little people and foil and paper!









     Here are a few other pictures from the last few days or so:




     The addition of some old-fashioned slinkies from Cracker Barrel and the re-emergence of paint (not used for weeks for some reason) have been good things.  We're in one of those wonderful phases where it seems like the kids are always keeping busy and mostly happy.  I think the new friends have really helped lift our spirits!  That and the cool temperatures.  


 

     I made cranberry/orange muffins tonight with my new silicone muffin cups!  OH. MY. GAWD.  I cannot say enough good things about my $6.00 splurge.  NO MORE paper muffin cups that stick to your otherwise delicious muffins!  The joys of a housewife.  Oh, and I did not put those swords in those muffins.



     Here are the kids attempting to run down the hall with their ankles tied together while they were supposed to be settling down for the night.  I couldn't help but think it was cute.  We finally settled in and read some more Dragon Slippers which is so good that I'm reading it slowly to make it last.  Its a one-in-a-thousand books that I love to read out loud as much as they love to listen.



     And finally, just to make myself drool, I came upon this picture today as I was looking for an envelope.  Its Benji, Gavi, Indigo and Tashi in the spring of 2005 in our kitchen in Denver.  I just took a picture of a picture so its a bit blurry but oh how it makes me sigh.  Indigo talked for a while tonight about how she misses our long days with them...as she put it, "sharing food, playing and playing...making up games and snuggling and then sometimes just falling asleep together for the night...like REAL cousins."  DAMN!
     Okay, I'm off to my husband with the softest hair in the Universe...now smelling like Burt's Bees shampoo.  Another happy sigh.

     Here's Indigo having her first real piano lesson yesterday!  It was so funny how we just asked Kristin if she knew anyone who offered piano lessons (cuz she's from here and I knew she gave guitar lessons), and she was like, "yes...me!"  So cool how that worked out.  That little sprite with the gorgeous red hair is her daughter Lucy, by the way.



     Remember light bright?  Kirk scored one for free at a yard sale and the kids have been groovin' on it.



     Indigo's sweet little kitty went into heat for the first time last week and was acting like a total freak.  Indigo was feeling pretty sad that her furry friend was being so distant.  Well, today she seemed to come out of her hormonal frenzy (unlike some others of us around here!), and was all snuggly and back to normal with Indigo.  Yippeee!




     Okay so you can decorate your table all pretty and Waldorfy but it still ends up looking like this most of the time.  Note - MilkFur is where ever I am.  LOVE HER. 



     Oh and the next LONG post after this one?  I got interrupted about 600 times as I wrote it...just so ya know.

     Okay, so yesterday we spent the afternoon with our new friends - Kristin and her kids, Grace, Lucy and Parker.  So great.  Kristin gave Indigo her very first real piano lesson (which Indigo loved) and we ate pumpkin bread and cookies with chai.  So yummy.  We also just talked and talked...getting to know each other.  At one point we were sort of swapping blogs with each other...meaning, showing each other some of the blogs that we like.  One of the blogs that she introduced me to is called www.soulemama.com.  I spent quite a while reading it today and I've decided that if I don't write about this, I'm just going to pop.
     Where to start?  There is soooo much to say.  Well, some of you may know that I used to be involved with our friends' project called www.iamproject.com which is basically a collection of nude photos of women of all shapes, sizes, colors and ages.  To sum it up ever so briefly, it was started by Joe and Koren to sort of counter-balance our society's obvious distortion of women and of what beauty is.  The whole concept of the beauty myth has been a passion of mine since I was in college.  I went through years of trying to conform to America's crazy expectations of how women "should" look.  Like most women I know, I did all manner of unhealthy and dehumanizing things to attain the right look when I was younger.  THEN, I went to college and took a lot of sociology and women's studies courses which opened my eyes and mind to just what I'd been spending so much of my precious time and energy on for the previous ten years of my life.  Ever since my late teens, I've worked hard (kind of ridiculously hard) to overcome my early training and to see well beyond the beauty myth crap both in myself and in everyone else.  I could go on and on about all the various details of this journey and of how important it has been and still is now - as I mother the next generation, so to speak.  Let's just say that "battling" the beauty myth has been somewhat of a focal point of being me for the last few decades.  That said, I want to to move on to what I believe is just another weird-ass layer of this...this...THING that plagues and opresses women:  a new version of the beauty myth which is perfectly encapsulated in the blog called soulemama.com.
     Soule Mama blogs about her life as a natural mama...which has somehow become quite chic amongst the educated and the wealthy...as well as the die-hards like myself who -to put it bluntly- have been doing it since before it was cool or even considered to be sane!  She is a stay-at-home, home-birthing, unschooling, breastfeeding, natural food-eating Mom of three who is expecting her fourth soon.  Her blog is so popular that she has sponsors like Nova Naturals catalog and many others.  In a word, she gets paid to blog.  Yes, I am a bit jealous...this I am aware of.
     HOWEVER,  her blog literally looks like a catalog.  It is filled with gorgeous pictures of her children frolicking on the beach and in the orchard.  More gorgeous pictures of her spotless home, beautiful expensive-looking furniture, pounds and pounds of naturally dyed wool yarn with which she is busily knitting socks and hats and sweaters and scarves ALL THE TIME.  Yet more gorgeous pictures of expensive art supplies carefully and artfully scattered on a quilt or a crumb-less table that were just HAPPENED UPON and a photo was snapped.  Other lovely shots of hundred dollar felted wool slippers adorning every last toe, endless jars of homemade tomatoe sauce, and piles of top-of-the-line cloth diapers and covers just waiting for baby.  HM!
     Now look, I personally HAVE a lot of the pretty things that I see on her blog.  I have expensive taste...I do!  We've been known to take chunks of tax returns and spend them on a German-made dollhouse, wool dolls, colorful slippers.  I admit that I've often bought the best cloth diapers or the expensive beeswax crayons instead of investing in an IRA.  We all make our choices, yes.   I too pushed my babies out ever-so naturally in the comfort of my own home and thought it was somewhat easy (for birth!) and lovely.  I spend a lot of time with my kids playing games, exploring nature, reading out loud.  I have a fairly clean and appealing home full of the kids' art, handmade things, plants, and warm wood floors.  I say all of this to make a point here.  The point is that I know what ELSE I have in my home and I KNOW how challenging it is at times to have the life that we have.  It is NOT easy, it is NOT supported by society at large and it is NOT always pleasant.
     We have no savings and very little expendable income because we choose to keep me out of the workforce so that our kids can be unschooled and kept with their actual, real family.  I do piles of laundry every week, dishes three times a day, and spend inordinate amounts of time picking up random things from the floor like a penny next to an action figure's head next to cat vomit.  I probably spend at least two hours a week just juggling our money, picking up fur, and doing things like shaking out the rugs, rinsing hair off the walls of the shower and feeding the fish.  It takes A LOT of time and effort to have a house that looks like soulemama's unless you have paid help.  It does NOT just magically happen.
     And another thing...its not always easy to choose homebirth...what with your mother or your husband telling you how dangerous it is and your neighbors eyeing your swollen belly suspiciously.  Choosing not to vaccinate is often accompanied with accusations of neglect and selfishness.  Leaving your son's penis intact can be an uncomfortable topic of conversation.  Unschooling is certainly not the rosiest of paths to choose when you have to jump through other people's hoops about how to educate your child or navigate a visit from social services.  And there are plenty of natural moms who may have actually grown 90 pounds of tomatoes but just can't afford the canning supplies this month.  Many of us are not artistic or organized or thrifty or loaded enough to have the things that others of us have.  These are the unmentioned aspects of the natural family lifestyle that for most of us may be largely insignificant...yet they're there and they play a part in the big picture.
     When she says that she's been just sitting in her sheepskin-lined rocking chair for hours knitting...what she DOESN'T mention is that she wasn't simply sitting there for hours without moving.  In all reality, she got up at least 10 times to make someone a snack, wipe someone's booty, help a screaming child who has fallen and smacked their cheek on the floor, move a spider, feed the meowing cat, stop someone from hitting someone, move wet clothes into the dryer, insist that a child wash their hands before eating and proceed to have to HELP them wash said hands, answer the phone, clean up the spilled noodles from a child's fridge free-for-all, admire a drawing, answer a spelling question or 12, sharpen a pencil, and take a pee!
     In my opinion, viewing this type of blog is akin to viewing page after page of digitally altered models in Vogue.  It is a disservice to all the natural moms out there searching for some community or a role model or some support via the internet.  Mothers in general tend to worry about their mothering...and I suspect that us natural Mamas tend to be, on average, more searching, careful and self-critical than most.  How is it right - in any way - to present your life as absurdly lovely and nothing but giddiness and kisses and coziness?
     Now I'm not a total buzz kill.  I am ALL FOR focusing on the positive and GETTING how much we have to be grateful for.  I am fully supportive of people inspiring others through their blogs.  It is RIGHT to get to see how wonderful natural parenting really is and how fulfilling it is to be truly connected to your children.   I also think its right to present a full and balanced and HONEST picture of what a crunchy Mama's life really is.  I might mention too that I have no desire to read a blog that is just a bitch fest!  Its balance I'm after...and authenticity. 
     Back when I used to consume a lot of mainstream media, it never really helped me feel good or genuinely inspired to see all the media's images of women who appeared to be flawless...no acne, no stretch marks, no unsightly moles and certainly NO cellulite.  I just felt inadequate...bottom line.  Yes, I had all kinds of weird and dysfuntional family drama (especially with regard to body image and sexuality) which surely intensified my personal reaction to Seventeen magazine and yet I've known A LOT of women who come from a jillion different backgrounds who all have their own version of this feeling of inadequacy!  I'm sorry people but I have come to understand that this is NOT natural.  I know from seeing my own daughter grow up virtually free from all this crap.  I SEE  how natural it is to actually just love the hell out of yourself and to think that you are groovy just the way you are.  We WERE all duped and cheated out of our natural self-esteem, to some degree or another.  I've had to fight tooth and nail to get back to a place that just vaguely resembles what I see in my daughter.  Yeah, I'm proud of the work I've done...but I sure wish my natural confidence and self-love had been left alone and I'd been able to focus on other endeavors rather than on scrabbling my way back to balance.
     Needless to say, I am NOT happy about seeing this mythical woman thing in my own backyard...in my precious niche that I value so deeply.
     The other disturbing thing about Soule Mama is that it kinda feels like one big advertisement.  I mean, she does actually just blog about her kids and her pregnancy and what she's up to (if its pretty and positive, that is), but its highly interspersed with references to other sites...mainly sites where you'd be sorely tempted to spend money.  Again, HM!  What is my world coming to?  I'd very much like to have a hand full of my Mama friends read her blog for half an hour and see if they don't all end up thinking something like, "why is she so much better at this than I am?" 
     Well lovely women-oh-mine, she's NOT.  She has a million blessings and beautiful, healthy children just like you do.  She has times when her table is covered with goo and crumbs, her hands have baby poop on them, and her husband is PISSING her off.  She giggles at the funny and adorable things her kids say, she lets out sighs of utter contentment and her eyes tear-up just listening through the open window to her children playing outside.  She says the wrong thing, uses mean tones of voice and refuses to see the good sometimes.  She worries about money or her parents or her child's new and somewhat disturbing quirky behavior.  She wishes she had more sex or less sex, she screws up that knitting and tosses it to the floor in frustration, she gets tired just LOOKING at all that messy artwork left all over the floor and she cleans out the litter box.  She feels overwhelmed and procrastinates and then gets stuff done.  She hugs her children and loves them and aches for them JUST LIKE YOU DO.
     SO THERE.
    

     So it seems that a lot of change is in the air...in the world and in my own life.  I spent a few hours over at the Catalpa's house today talking with Teruvina and Ben and munching on Aloe.  She told me that they are moving to Denver in January when their lease is up.  They'll be living rent-free with her mom until mid April when they will head to Sitka, Alaska.  They have a volunteer position all lined up at one of the state parks there and are expected in May.  Ben recently lost his job - again.  The poor man has had NINE jobs since they moved here just over a year ago.  He and about 1000 other people in Evansville got laid off about two weeks ago.  He'll very likely be able to find a decent job in Denver and they'll be able to save enough money to get them to Alaska.  It really sounds like a fairly good plan.

     Here's Ben and Aloe about to go for a walk while Teruvina and I sit and chat about all of their exciting plans:




     And WE seem to be submitting once more to the ever-present magnetic pull of Colorado as well.  No, not Denver.  NOT Denver.  We're feeling good about Pueblo and Colorado Springs as our second choice.  If all goes as planned, we'll be there by March.  We'll get to have a few weeks here and there with the Catalpas again which is nice...not to mention all of the other perks of being back in Colorado (who knew I would ever be saying this?).  As much as we were interested in Ohio, Kirk's extensive research has revealed Ohio to be a bad choice for us financially which is ultimately the most important factor.  For anyone who may be reading this and finding yourself surprised, here's briefly what I've got...in Colorado we will have:

* Three families we are close to...one of whom has unschooling kids the same ages as our's.  We also have serious family-like history with these people and share all the same basic, core values.

* Two thriving unschooling groups - that I know of, so far.

* Little to NO MOSQUITOES.

* NO FLEAS - I thrill to think of all the money we'll save on frontline now that we have 5 furry creatures in our family...and maybe another one once Teruvina leaves.

* NO HUMIDITY which means at least 9  months a year of hiking and outdoor living for us...which is really possible now that we don't have little kids anymore.

* Rocky Grass, Boulder Creek Festival, Colorado Renaissance Festival, Folks Fest, skiing, hot springs, sand dunes, Telluride, crystal clear rivers...

* Actual natural foods stores.

* The ability to just road-trip down to Sedona to see my parents once in a while.  This is feeling more important now that my dad doesn't seem quite as okay as he used to.


   And here's what I'll miss about Indiana:

* Kirk's three-day-a-week job (that pays enough for us to be okay yet doesn't provide health insurance).  Four days off a week together is fan-freakin-tastic!!!

* Nicole and her entire extended family, Jill, the Albrights, Sara, our lovely new friends here in Evansville (Kristin, Meghan...) - note, all of those first people mentioned live far, far away.  We hardly EVER see any of them so...

* This sweet house we've been renting for the last 15 months.

* The trees in fall.

* Being close enough to Michigan to be able to go there once in a while.  We LOVE lake Michigan so much its stupid.

* Being close enough to Ohio to get to go to the UWWG at the Kalahari every year.

    Well, I know I've got hours' worth of writing in me but Kirk has gone to the library with the kids and I'm about to take a baked potato out of the oven and do some serious reading while the house is quiet. 
     Oh yeah!  But I have to mention just a few things that I don't want to forget...like our celebration hike at Audubon Nature Preserve in Kentucky on Wednesday afternoon.  To borrow from Koren, we were having an Obamabration.  We also went for an AMAZING hike yesterday over at Garden of the Gods in Illionois - a place we've been meaning to check out for over a year.  Indigo is going to start Piano lessons tomorrow with my new and way cool friend Kristin too.  Lots of good stuff right now.

   Here's Tashi and me on our walk Friday night.  Kirk and Indigo were out having pie and I had the boy all to myself:



   Here's Kirk's giant gnome slippered foot sticking out of the covers as he napped on Thursday:




   Kirk on a gigantic rock at Garden of the Gods yesterday:



   Indigo out at Audubon on Wednesday:



     One more thing...a few days ago we were in the van and were somehow talking about how the name Jesus might have been pronounced when he was actually living over there on the other side of the world.  This conversation naturally morphed into other things and at one point we were saying how Jesus is pronounced "Hey-soos" in Spanish, at which point this was said:

Tashi:  Hey-soos!  But Hey-soos is a drug!

- Confused pause by all other members of the family -

Finally, Me:  No, HASHISH is a drug, Tashi...not Hey-soos!

Hahahahahaha........I LOVE my family so much.  CRAZY MUCH.  AND I'm so damn happy that they're all at the library right now without me.  I'm off.

     I have so many tidbits that I want to remember.  I think I'll start with some pictures...since I love them soooo much.



   Here's the night when the kids made dinner and decorated the table and all that good stuff...the night I'd been so upset and lonely and wondered if their doing this wasn't some kind of dysfunction.  The truth is that after all those years of therapy and journaling and talking with oh-so dear friends and having my husband to anchor me for the last 16 years (phew!), I STILL just have no perspective sometimes.  I know that when I was a kid and I went out of my way to be nice to my mom, it was often from a place of feeling like a bad kid and feeling like I needed to win her over so that she would be nice to me.  Ugh.  I need to get it through my head once and for all that I am NOT parenting my kids like my parents did (duh...big DUH) and that their reactions to me are NOT coming out of fear or self-loathing or guilt.  My kids love me fair and square and they like to be kind and comforting to me when I've had a bad day because that is what people who love each other do.  So there.



   During that sweet dinner together, I was playing with taking pictures without the flash and I got this one of Tashi which for some reason just touches me.  He looks so young and vulnerable -  like a little boy.  He is so very big for his age.  It really is hard for me (and loads of other people) to remember sometimes that he is only 7.


  
   Gosh, every once in a GREAT while, I let MilkFur be where she is not allowed (like, every day...the creature is completely and utterly indulged).  Hm.  I don't think I've loved a cat QUITE like this since Shmumper (RIP - November 2002).



   Now THIS picture is hilarious for so many reasons...first off, check out Tashi's look of total bewilderment mixed with indifference mixed with "aw Mom...do you HAVE to be doing this?"  Then of course there's me looking totally normal.
   We went Halloween costume shopping (because I am NOT one of those moms who dutifully makes/creates/sews a costume) three different times because it was extremely frustrating for Indigo.  This was our first trip during which time Tashi quickly picked out a storm trooper outfit complete with a helmet and felt happy as a clam.  Indigo was a different story.  First off, she was all happy and roses.  We were playing and trying stuff on and laughing really, really hard...see?


   
   But THEN...she started looking in earnest for a costume and became so disgusted that she stormed out of the store.  Why?  Because my eleven year old girl now only fits into the teen girls' or women's costumes and all of them at this particularly HUGE store were, quite frankly, SKANK-O-RAMA and she knew it.  She was like, "Mama, how come there are lots of cute and cool costumes for boys of all ages and little girls...and all the women's costumes are so skimpy?"  How does one answer this question when one is surrounded by hot and stinky masses BUYING said costumes?  Well, she smelled a rat and I am proud of her that she has no desire to dress up like a Cheetah girl or a French Maid.  Sheesh.  We literally couldn't find a single costume in her size (other than the boy teen's or men's costumes...but she's girly enough that she doesn't want to be a ninja or a blood-stained doctor) that wouldn't have made her look like a call girl.  Even the freakin' FAIRY costume looked ho-ish.  ANYWAY, kudos to Target which is where we eventually found her lovely snow queen dress - which she has renamed something like "my evil icy queen outfit" because she wants to look "scary."  Not an easy task for my Squidgy.  My warm and squishy kitten girl is so not scary.



   How annoyed am I that I cannot for the love of Yoda figure out how to get this picture flipped the right way?!  Sometimes my utter cluelessness with computers gets really frustrating.  Well, this is my Jumby in his perfect costume that he wore for 3 days straight.  I finally had to wash it because it was covered with spaghetti sauce, chocolate, and good-ol'dirt...not to mention a hole in the crotch.  It is somehow white again and ready for Halloween.  Will I get around to sewing up that little hole?  We'll see.



   One day we went to Old Navy to get Tashi some long pants and Indigo kept herself busy by remodeling the boys' mannequin thingies with girls' clothes and purses.  Somehow no employees noticed her doing this (or cared) and we got a good belly laugh out of it.









   We've started going on our hikes again now that it isn't FOUR HUNDRED degrees out.  We love exploring the outskirts of the USI campus. Yesterday we went out to some trails near Angel Mounds (thanks to a tip from Teruvina). 




   Tashi (with Kirk's totally sweet and patient help) has been experimenting with Kirk's electric guitar.  Apparently Tashi has also been helping himself to experimenting with all manner of assorted cords and plugs as well... without Kirk's help...yikes.  I feel bad about this because this extracurricular cord play was happening on some of the days that Kirk is gone and I was completely oblivious.  His guitar gear is sooo not my department.  I could have been WATCHING Tashi screw up Kirk's equipment and I wouldn't have known it.



   We've also been decorating for fall, playing D&D (well, I haven't), watching our fish, Phoenix lose his appetite, listening to lots of George Winston, listening to Indigo practicing on the keyboard, putting Tashi on and off of cat bans, eating lots of salad, reading lots of good stuff (I am so renewed by having gotten the latest Chinaberry catalog!), doing puzzles, playing with clay, drawing (Tashi), going to bike club at Patchwork and missing Indigo who has been talking on the phone with Sutton and Griffin for about 15 hours a week.

   I personally have been chatting on the phone with Jill, Nicole and Miryam (we had an awesome hours-long talk one night), plugging away at my latest Diana Gabaldon book, missing Kirk 3 days a week and thrilling that we have him with us for the other 4, looking at facebook way too much, cleaning and cleaning and cooking and cooking, volunteering for the Obama campaign, getting all teary at the thought of actually seeing someone so much like me/my family in the white house, doing laundry, baking, organizing our trip to the Kalahari in February (we get to share a suite with Rya and her girls plus Mary Ann's daughter Eddie - yippee!) and going to the el-cheapo (but quite nice) clinic to get my thyroid checked...what a relief to have found an affordable way to see a doctor!!

  On the weekends Kirk and I have been perfecting the art of getting our children to bed at a decent hour.  Well, Indigo doesn't go to bed at this decent hour but she's in her lair and she's all set up and happy to leave us alone.  After a mere 11 years, we are finally getting a grasp on this one.  We have this whole routine with Tashi which usually starts off with either chamomile tea or a bit of skullcap in some juice then includes teeth brushing, hands and feet and face washing, reading and maybe playing UNO (or some such...) and then snuggling him off to sleep.  This whole process takes anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half.  I don't usually mind it.  In fact, I really love it sometimes.  I LOVE getting under the covers with my boy and spooning him and telling him (or singing) that its time for sleepy sleeps.  Once we get to this point, he drifts off to sleep so easily and peacefully.  Sometimes I fall asleep too and Kirk has to come and get me.  Often (no, usually) this initial sleeping arrangement ends with Indigo crawling into bed with him late at night or both of them shuffling to the futon next to our big bed at some point in the dark of night. 
   Anyway, once we're alone we like to do obvious loving adult things...plus we've been into reading from the Sun magazine to each other, listening to the funny CD's he gets from the library, looking at the internet together (especially realtor.com and google earth and youtube) and watching movies.  Although I hate it that he smokes, I also love going outside with him and sitting in the beach chair and talking to him in the still, quiet (and now mercifully cool) night air as he does his dirty deed.




   Typical activity around here...the kids draw on each other and do all kinds of other weird and endearing things.




   Teruvina and Aloe and I went out for lunch last week...just the 3 of us!  What a great treat.  Aloe reminds me a lot of Tashi when he was a baby.  She's the kind of baby that will just sit in a highchair at a restaurant for like, over an hour...just happy to look around and chew on various things that her Mama hands her (like ice wrapped in a cloth or a wooden block that her daddy made for her).  Indigo was the kind of baby that would sit there for 10 minutes and then demand to go and see and talk to all the people and excitement around her - such an extrovert from the very beginning.  I remember trying several times to go out to a restaurant with Indigo in her first 18 months or so.  I would end up eating alone while Kirk walked her all around the restaurant...then we'd switch roles.  I so cherish now being able to go out and have uninterrupted adult conversation.  I also really enjoy going out with the kids now.  SIGH.



   Back at our house after lunch.  Mmmm...we all just want to eat that baby up.

   On Friday, we went to the Oaklynn libarary to vote early.  See, Kirk is going to be on the road on election day...plus we really wanted to vote together.  We'd gone to vote two times before and the lines were so long that we decided against it.  Finally we concluded that we had to bite the bullet and just wait in the damn line.  We waited for nearly 3 hours.  Seriously.  Whoa.  The kids played games, got on webkinz, stood around and moaned, got snacks from the vending machines...and we read magazines and talked to each other and to the people sharing the experience near us in line.  It felt SO good to get up there and VOTE for Obama.  So good.  Afterwards, we decided to celebrate by going to Hacienda (the favorite restaurant of my childhood).  We had a great dinner there together and then Indigo got to talking to Kirk some more about french.  This is what she wrote on our to-go box: 


  
   We are really such weirdos.  I love it.


   
   Also this weekend (and our "weekends" are now 4 days long...so unbelievable) Tashi made up a fantastic game that he taught me.  First we each had to create seven clay ships and then our respective fleets went to battle.  He had devised this system involving dice that was so much fun.  It took us nearly 2 hours to play and he won.  He still had one complete ship when he sunk my last one.  Its funny because as he was telling me about this game and trying to convince me to play it with him, I was feeling so hesitant...feeling sure that I wouldn't like it and that I didn't want to spend hours of my evening like this.  How wrong I was.  I enjoyed his company and his game so immensely.  Why is it that I sometimes resist such authentic experiences with the people I love most?
   His ships were named:  Bronzehead, Panther, Bulkhead, Ethelton, Raven and I can't remember the other two. 
   My ships were named:  Pink Panther, Pink Buddy, Robin, Leprechaun, Fixer-Upper, Dangerous Red Pickle, and Bulldog.


 
   Yesterday we made Tashi his favorite dinner and a cake for his half birthday.  Ever since the kids were old enough to care about halves (like, 4 years old?), we've done this little ritual on their half birthday.  Note he's wearing the costume again.  I am remembering now that I've actually had to wash it twice.




   And today we went to a beautiful little farm up on a hill to get our pumpkins.  There were cats laying around amongst the gourds (Kirk named them Buzz and Buddy) which sealed the deal for us.  Really, if there are cats involved, we like it.  Tashi carved one of those itty bitty decorative pumpkins.  So cute.  We're going to carve the big ones on Wednesday night when Kirk gets back.
   It is now about 1:30am...Indigo just came running up from her room to give me a hug.  She is so lovely.  It will be nice to sleep with them again tomorrow night.  I am so happy having snuggly kid sleeping some nights and Kirk and Meadow sleeping other nights.  I get the best of both sleeping worlds!
   Speaking of sleeping, I can barely type properly anymore.  I'm going to go snuggle up to my warm and snoring husband and sleep until he wakes me up in the wee hours and I make his trip food and take him to his truck.  Yawn.

I forgot to add the picture of Tashi's new and very first room of his own!

     I have never been so lonely in my entire life.  I have never been someone who struggles with finding friends...never!  And yet - in the last 13 months I have managed to make ONE friend here who I don't have a ton in common with because her kids are SO young...we are just not in the same boat.  So, day after day the three of us seem to grow more and more depressed.  Ever since it got massively HOT (about 5 months ago), we have grown more and more dependent on renting movies, playing on the computer and watching online TV.  It just wasn't so bad before the heat hit...we were outside a lot and feeling energized back then, even though we were alone. 
     When Kirk is home, its a somewhat different story too.  We tend to go places and take hikes or explore...we build things, play games, etc.  But when mom, the softy, is the only adult around - and we're in the lonely FUNK together - its like pulling teeth to get the kids to do their chores or to get some exercise.  Hell, its hard for ME to get motivated just for myself!  And to top it all off, they are in one of those phases typical of all unschoolers where they just seem stalled out on a lot of things that used to excite them.  Actually, I really don't know if this is depression of some kind or if it IS just one of those pesky phases.  DAMN! 
     I tried and tried to get people rounded up for us to be with here...some of them we just didn't click with.  Every single one of them knows how to get in touch with me and they just don't.  I am sick of trying.  I wish soooo much that the kids could hang out with the Albright kids for the day or that we could have one of our marathon days with the Grundners...including popcorn and Buffy.  I'd like to sit and talk for hours with Kristi or Jill.  I'd like to hang in Nicole's kitchen just eating and laughing.  I'd like to have another one of our Denver potlucks where 80 people show up and the kids all end up naked in the sandbox that Kirk made...NOT being chewed up by mosquitoes.  I'd like to stay up until 2am talking with Jeff.  I'd like to have another sleepover with Sara and go out for dinner with Jennifer.  Sigh.
     Honestly, I have never, ever had a period in my life quite like this one.  I have always been surrounded by friends and I've always had at least a few friends with me who I am CLOSE to...what the hell is going on?  Was moving here just some kind of gigantic mistake?  For the first time in our lives, we were putting money first when we chose to move here.  We thought we were finally being responsible.  Okay, so we're not freaking out about paying our bills now.  THAT is a grand thing that I do not regret.  And YET...this loneliness is becoming unbearable.  I just spent 20 minutes on the phone with Kirk...I was crying the whole time.  I feel like a gigantic failure.  Why can't I do this right?
     Now Indigo and Tashi are making dinner and decorating the table.  I - of course - have to see their doing this as some kind of failure on my part, instead of seeing it as great that they're feeling motivated and helpful.  I have to worry that its some kind of weird sign of dysfunction...they see Mom sitting in the van alone talking to Dad and Mom is crying and crying.  How screwed up am I?  I don't even know.  I feel like Indigo is acting like a little Mommy and that she's HAVING to because I'm not.  I talked to her about this just now and she referenced Laura and Mary (I've read the series out loud 3 times to them) and how they did things like this every day at her age...so why shouldn't she?  She's right.  I just have so much guilt oozing into every bit of me right now.  I feel so incredibly guilty that I have my children in this life that is now so very lonely.  We really MUST fix this and that IS going to require moving - AGAIN - because I will NOT live another summer in this crap ass climate.  Really, I had a milder summer in AFRICA.  Ya know, I would have been okay with just staying here and making the most of it!  I really would've found a way but this summer pushed me to my absolute limit.  It would be like Teruvina's mom (the coldest person I know) trying to live in Alaska.  It would be pure, unadulterated torture for her.  THIS heat has been so bad for me...so very bad.
     Anyway, I wanted to add some pictures of our day spent in New Harmony last weekend.  I also don't want to forget what a great time Kirk and I had celebrating our 16th anniversary.  I LOVE him sooooo much.  I really miss him right now.



Main street in New Harmony, Indiana.  We ate a late lunch at the sweetest little pizza place/soda fountain - complete with a working juke box.



We bought whistle pops for the kids at this really old-fashioned store (Indigo says it was "really moldy").  The whistle pops were colored with BEET JUICE and they were extremely LOUD!



Tashi and Bela in front of one of the beautiful old houses in New Harmony.  We were taking turns going into the New Harmony library (cuz sweet little Bela was not allowed in) which has been their library since the 1830's!!  It is the oldest continuously open library in the state.  It has this really cool and OLD little museum on the second floor that included siamese twin calves from the 1800's, snakes and other reptiles in jars, and musket ball fragments from the early 1800's.



My people at the roofless church where there had just been a wedding. 



Definitely my kind of church.



Kirk decided to soak Bela in this fountain at the roofless church because it was SO HOT and STICKY (have I mentioned that these are my very favorite weather conditions?) that he just felt sorry for the furry man.



One of the two labyrinths that we walked in New Harmony.



My beautiful man on our anniversary date.  He's holding up the pretty thing I made for him to hang in his truck.  The bottom part is a shrinky dink that I made...a traced picture of a squirrel in a tree that turned out ridiculously cute.  The guy loves squirrels.



One of Tashi's many, many lego creations.



Indigo is on the phone with her friend Sutton (Kalahari friend who lives in North Carolina)...looking at a picture of Sutton.  :)  They talk on the phone almost every day, sometimes for hours.  I would really hate to think how Indigo would be fairing if she didn't have Sutton.  Notice the curlers in her hair.  She is soooo into this "old fashioned" look (as she puts it) - which I believe is sort of a 40's look?  1930's?



Here she is doing her thang...she's got the dark lipstick on and the curled hair and the pose.  Beautiful girl.
 
     Alright, I also wanted to note that lately Tashi does the weirdest thing when talking to me...sometimes infuriating and sometimes adorable.  He says, "Mama?"  and I say, "yes?"  and then he says something like, "can I tell you something?" which requires me to say, "yes" again.  Then he'll finally get to what he wanted to say in the first place.  This is just a quirky thing that I didn't want to forget.  He does this ALL the time.  Okay, I'm going to go join reality again.  I could write about a hundred different things still (like Jill and how she saved my ass and so much more, like Obama and the whole election climate, like where oh where we should go when we move, like Indigo concluding that she really doesn't want to go to school at all, like Jennifer calling to tell me about the moon and the moon song she needs to teach me for Indigo's first blood ritual, like the emails between me and my brother, like Nicole keeping me on track...AAAAHH!) but I MUST go and mother my children and remember how MUCH I adore them.

This is the blog post from my friend Joey that's been rocking my world.

I would REALLY like it if any of you reading this would take the time to read Joey's post, including her link to penknife's journal...who really spells out exactly what the differences are between how gays and lesbians will be treated under an Obama administration versus a McCain administration. This is serious, people. I have gay/lesbian people in my life who are precious to me - you probably do too (whether you know it or not, as the case may be). I think it is VERY important for people to educate themselves on the discrimination that they may or may not be voting for.