far too long . . .

It has been far too long since I paid any attention to my lonely little blog. *pats blog on head* Life has just been insane. But I've been happy and well.

We had a nice Halloween

and the kids got absolute gobs of candy. It was literally insane and, for the first year ever, I felt compelled to buy it off of them to spare their poor teeth.

Now we're gearing up for Thanksgiving next week:


Homeschooling has kept me very busy, but the girls are thriving, making it so very worth it.

My own schooling has also been stealing away my hours. Even painting class has been a source of some stress this semester as I have struggled to find myself there.


I don't even want to try to go back over the past several months and play catch up, but I do want to try keep up, so I'll let go the past and make that my goal.

Knits amid warring hummingbirds

I knit. Not spectacularly, but I can putter my way through simplistic projects. I'm not picky about fibers or about notions. My current small work of mild wonder, this HipToBeSquare blanket (from ravelry), is cast with synthetic baby soft yarn on my thrift store scavenged aluminum needles, the blue rubbing away on the tips.



Knitting gives me fantastic feelings of warm fuzziness, and not just from petting all that delicious yarn. It feeds my artistically driven need to create, watching lovely patterns emerge from my clumsy old hands. Not that my creations are flawless; far from. But even with the missteps along the way, the beauty of the pattern shows through in the end.



There is also a meditative stillness in the act of knitting that is hard for me to experience in any other way. My mind is an insistent multitask-er, nearly always fretting over bills not yet due and highly unlikely catastrophes on the horizon. As I sit and work at knitting, counting away the stitches and rows, my mind is often able to let go of things. My other creative outlets give me no such relief; they often make me think too much. Knitting provides a much needed release of thought, the dialogue of my mind ceasing, or slowing down to a dull murmur."When walking, walk. When eating, eat." When knitting, knit.

mmmm...tea.

Mud Beach

A trip to the beach morphed my children into "mud monsters" this week. It was quite a terrifying experience.


Who knew the beach could be a bog? This goopy clayish 'sand' provided literally hours of entertainment for my disgusting children. And just a dip or two later . . .



and they were more or less clean.

Let's just keep soaking up these summer days. It is flying all too fast.

Hummingbird warriors, beware.

So this little guy seems to think our hummingbird feeder belongs only to him.

He (or she) guards it for hours at a time, chasing all of the other hummingbirds away. (Ever seen a hummingbird battle? Ever experienced a hummingbird battle inches from your face? You really don't want to.) Kind of stingy behavior I think and not really something I want to encourage on my own front porch, but what am I gonna do? It's a bird eat bird world and I don't wanna get involved. (Did I mention how fierce and CLOSE TO YOUR FACE hummingbird battles can get?)

But, a word of warning to any bird who claims territory here . . . you may well get yours.

So watch your back.

It was another ordinary day here, and each one is so precious. I am so wickedly blessed that I get to live every day with the most extraordinarily lovely people. I can hardly believe my good fortune some days. I dreamed I was a very old woman today. It was a terrifying place to be in and I remember feeling some hopeless frustration in forgetting things I should have known and in not being able to move myself properly or clean myself properly. But there was a comfort with me because my daughters were there, caring for me, loving me still. I can't think about that place and time yet, not really, the end of all my things as it were, but I dreamed of it and everything was alright and that is a comfort because it didn't feel like a fantasy or *just a dream* to me. Things are alright and things will continue to be alright as long as I have the ones I love with me, and they will always be with me, even if not physically.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP-r-_pzqwo&feature=related

Wherein it all revolves around me.

Or perhaps evolves. One never knows.