Gaia Community: Debi's Blog

Support your local farmers' market

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:28:08 -0000

Just a reminder to everyone out there who lives ANYWHERE where there is ANY available local produce to go there, buy some, hang out, create community, and SUPPORT IT however you can. Our neighborhood market on Wednesday evenings can currently boast the following:

Three farm stands
Monthly (sometimes more often) live music
An adjacent playlot for the kids
Space for picnics
A bimonthly knitting circle
Weekly informal potlucks of the neighborhood elementary school's families

What it cannot boast so far :

Financial success for the farmers

If we want this market to succeed, we have to keep buying things there. The same goes for your local markets!

Mint as far as the eye can see!

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:46:20 -0000

Our garden is a jungle of greenery these days, with mild weather and tons of rain. Everything is so tall that I can't even see what could be a weed and what might flower gorgeously later in the summer. It's chaotically gorgeous, and so I think I'll just give up, happily, and marvel at it.

We have several species of wildly proliferating mint and oregano growing there, and so especially in that back part of the garden pictured in the post below, the whole place smells like spicy mint. It's invigorating and lovely, but I am intimidated by the volume. I harvested a handful of stems of oregano and mint last week, sitting amicably next to Doodlebug in the yard as we pulled leaves into piles on the picnic table, but it's all dried now and ready for winter, and there is easily twenty times that amount left in the garden. Any locals reading this can come get whatever they can use!

We also have a good crop of anise hyssop, identified after two consultations with an herb farmer from the local farmer's market and a detailed web search, and then verified by our receiving another bunch of it in our CSA box last week (I traded it in for some extra chard). This is an absolutely delicious herb, making the most fragrant and naturally sweet tea I've ever had the pleasure of creating myself. I'm drying a big bowl of it in the kitchen now, and that little corner now smells delightfully like black licorice and sunshine.

This is all coming as I read the fascinating book Animal, Vegatable, Miracle by novelist Barbara Kingsolver. It is the story of her family's journey to eating only locally grown/raised foods, most of them so locally grown that she grew them or raised them herself! It makes me want to grow more of our own food next summer, though truthfully that has been my goal for several summers. For now, we're growing the herbs mentioned above, plus dill, thyme, basil, raspberries, and two struggling little tomato plants. I meant to do more, but our spring weekends got so busy that I lost my opportunity. I've often wished I had a "Gardening for Dummies" book that would tell me, step by step, what to do and when. Maybe next summer I will. For now, we're getting almost all our produce from the CSA or from the farmer's market, and even though it's pricier, I agree with Kingsolver's questions about that: essentially, how much is it worth to you to have tastier, gentler-on-the-environment, and kinder-to-the-farmers produce?

In any case, more rain is on its way this week. Wet mint, anyone?

Summer Goals

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:37:07 -0000

Bike as often as possible (a.k.a. Avoid the CAR!).
Visit the beach as often as possible.
Eat 90% of what we get in our farm box each week, and either freeze or give the rest away.
Be at peace with being dirty most of each day.
Try camping with the kids.
See or have outings with friends at least three times a week.

What's your guiding question?

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:43:06 -0000

And then what will happen?

I am always thinking about the effect my actions have on myself, the universe, the people around me, the community, my family, energy/light/g-d. It doesn't always mean that I have to change what I'm doing, or that what I'm considering is a bad or a good idea...just that everything has an effect, and it's worth pondering what that might be.

The shorter story

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 16:34:35 -0000

This song was shared with me by my dear friend Dan, who I visited last month for the first time in five years. He has beautiful taste in music -- not always convergant with mine, but we worked hard for an evening at finding things to introduce to each other, and this one was a jackpot for me. I hope he's found some equally moving things in the CDs I shared!

The lyrics here are not transformative, in themselves. In this case, it's the performance and intensity that get me. The video above captures the total surrender of deep love, and, interestingly, I feel it much more closely captures my feelings about my daughters than it does about a more romantic love. I can feel my heart swell with the music. These little people command my every inch of love and devotion. I am powerless, and the tide that sweeps me along is magnificent. It is as terrifying as it is beautiful, and perhaps each of those things inspire the other. What can we do with something so powerful and glorious in our lives but watch it, appreciate it, and send it beaming out in front of us as fully as possible?

I can't take my eyes off of my daughters sometimes. I can't take my mind off of them, ever.

No, really, they ARE made with love

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:15:22 -0000

I promised a while back that if anyone wanted to hear about our recent forays into new and exciting vegan recipes, I would share them. Well, one person did ask, so I'll go ahead and share. However, there are a million beautiful and detailed vegan food blogs out there, and all of them totally dedicated to the genre. I won't try to talk technique or recipes here, but just talk about how my family has come to this place of having Adventures with Food.

I grew up in a home where the focus was very much on what was HEALTHY. By healthy, I suspect strongly that my mom meant "low calorie." Like many, many women in this culture, she was terribly concerned with being overweight, and when I hit puberty, she became very concerned with me becoming fat. She told me quite often that she had been heavy as a teenager, and that she did not want me to go through that. (Side note: I recently had the opportunity to spend a few hours with my mom's first cousins, who are younger than her, and when I mentioned this to them, they looked at each other, puzzled, and said, "We don't remember her ever being overweight.") I remember distinctly being told to watch what I ate in the months before I had my Bat Mitzvah, so that I would not be fat and pimply for the occasion.

This sounds horrible and scandalous to almost everyone, and in many ways it was, but I can also see the side of my mother who really did find being overweight to be a traumatic experience, perceived or real though it might have been. She wanted to spare me that trauma. Instead, though, she created a different trauma, where I looked in the mirror and saw a skinny kid, and wasn't sure exactly how many cookies it would take to make me otherwise. Was it two? Was it four? I didn't want to deal with the comments about what I ate, so I often biked to the gas station a couple of miles away, bought a handful of candy bars, and ate them in the bathroom sitting on the toilet. Years later, I still associate solitude with an opportunity to eat junk food. It's an association I would love to break.

My mother made healthy, really delicious food, though, and she continues to be a phenomenal cook. She enjoys the process, and this is something I'm happy to have inherited. The difference is that I want the healthy food to taste good more than I want the healthy food to be low-fat or low-calorie. Sometimes it works out that way (big wonderful salads with hearts of palm, fresh peppers, and balsamic dressing; vegetable soups) and sometimes it doesn't (fried corn fritters, macaroni & cheez). I've had to force myself to disassociate "unhealthy" and
"fat" as it relates to cooking. It's something my mother has never been able to do, though she has finally relaxed her eating habits to include treats without too much guilt.

So now here I am, finding myself the cook in a house with two daughters. I really was a little chubby as a teen and remain so now -- nothing truly unhealthy, but certainly on the soft and cushy end of the spectrum -- and I honestly don't care if my girls are X pounds above or below the norm, as long as they're healthy. It is much more important to me that they are aware of how GOOD non-junk food can taste, and how important it is for our bodies to eat a variety of foods, including some junk food just because it's fun. Neither has mentioned people being fat or food being fatty or anything like that yet, but I absolutely know it is coming. It's too pervasive in our culture. I just want to set them up with a good base of knowledge before that hits.

That's a long road I just took to get to what we've been cooking these days -- but it's worth telling, because it explains the variety in our diets in a way that a list of recipes and photos could not. So here we go! If anyone wants the recipes or info on the cookbooks where we got them, let me know!

Pumpkin & Carmelized Onion Baked Ziti with Sage Bread Crumbs - holy shmoly was this a pain to make, but it was the most delicious thing we ate in the last two months.

Leek & White Bean Cassoulet with Biscuits - this might have been Shmoo's favorite. The biscuits get baked right on top of the beans & leeks...so downhome good!

Crock Pot Seitan Pot Roast -- this was pretty, and the flavor was spot on, but no one liked the consistency of the homemade seitan. Bummer. We'll have to try a different recipe.

Corn Fritters -- this wasn't vegan (three eggs), and it probably was a little too greasy to be called healthy exactly, but these fritters sure were delicious. Shmoo almost snorted them through a straw!

Miso Soup with Udon Noodles & Chickpeas - This will be an absolute staple next winter. We made it with some mushroom boullion, and that gave it a hearty and rich flavor that had a friend of ours swooning in the street outside our house, where she ate a serving of it out of a washed-out yogurt container I had on the counter.

Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies - I made these for Doodlebug's birthday party, and they were not pretty, but everyone raved about them so much that I had to make them the next weekend for a graduation party too. They are vegan and none of my meat-eating, milk-swilling in-laws noticed!

Chickpea Cutlets - these are so fantastic I can't even begin to explain it. They are quick to make, the kids love them, they make good sandwiches or pasta toppers or eat-em-cold-out-of-the-fridge food.

Garlic & Sesame Sauteed Purple Cauliflower -- I don't know how they grow purple cauliflower, but thank goodness that they do, because the kids think it's magical. Cook it in a frying pan with sesame oil and garlic, and everyone will eat it gleefully!

Oven-roasted Kale - This is simple, and basically makes kale chips that melt in your mouth. My kids won't eat anything that looks like leaves, usually, but Doodlebug told her friends at school the next day that she ate "cracked kale" and it was "so so so so so so good!"

Boston Creme Pie Cupcakes - Yes, they were vegan, and even better, True spent four hours making them for me on Mother's Day. The poor guy is not, at heart, a cook, and he was flustered and overwhelmed when I found him in the kitchen that morning. Despite all that, the cupcakes were delicious. Really! REALLY, True, I'm not just saying that, THEY WERE WONDERFUL!

Tonight we're getting take-out food, though!!!!!!

'Tis a gift to be simple

Fri, 30 May 2008 19:01:40 -0000

Yesterday, I received my Reiki II attunements. It is something I've been wanting to do for quite some time, but even so, I did not do very much to make it happen. I had made arrangements with my dear friend and teacher, Andrea, to do some web design work in exchange for the attunement and instruction on how to best use the gifts it would bring. Between delays on both of our ends, it took many months before we set a date, and all that time, I kept wondering why I didn't push harder to get to that point.

However, I think it all had to happen as it happened. Instead of getting the attunements early on, I spent the last several months doing more work on Andrea's web site, this time with her as a "paying" client. At first, I treated it like any other job, and paid attention mainly to the technical aspects of getting it up and running. I seldom really read the content I was posting, and gave only the most cursory glances at the newsletters she sent. It occured to me on more than one occasion that I should be reading things more closely, that I should be preparing for the attunements I would eventually receive. I knew that simply *thinking* about Reiki as a result of working with this content would make it flow through my hands, but I think I was somehow just not open to its gifts during this winter. An attunement during this time might not have been right.

A few days ago, I finally truly read through all of the Reiki newsletters, reviewed my manual, and began memorizing the symbols Andrea had left in an envelope on my porch, but even yesterday, I went into the experience feeling like I had to do it, it was time already, I had put it off long enough, and on an intellectual level, I wanted to do it. On some levels, though, I was making myself go through with it. It was not something I felt elated about when the day began -- I was distracted and feeling open in a very passive way, as though my mind was saying "Well, it can't HURT to do this -- you may as well, right?" Not the right frame of mind for receiving a precious, sacred gift!!!!

So, while I was straightening up my house in preparation for Andrea's arrival, I decided to gather my thoughts about me and muster up more enthusiasm. I opened all the curtains and decluttered the spaces I thought we'd use. I stepped out onto my back porch and breathed the cool air out in my garden, and I peeked in on my dill plants, which had finally sprouted. Those plants, sprouted from seeds I had scattered in a pot with little hope that they'd really grow, had become fluffy little sproutlings, destined now to give us real live dill in the next few months. I decided then to let this attunement and teaching be like another live thing I plant -- to sprout in hope that the universe will care for it. I know the reiki energy to be real and vital no matter how able the gardener. As I stepped back inside, the doorbell rang, and there was Andrea.

When I saw the face of my friend for so many years, my partner in parenting babies, the person who was to share with me a gift she held so dear, I knew it was just the right time. She was so happy to be there, and as we spent the day together talking through what I needed to know and what I wanted to know, I found myself relaxing and enjoying the sensation of having no expectations and no responsibility to make it happen. This energy would come to me, ancient and eternal, to use as I want and need.

As I type, my hands are glowing inside. I lay them on the keys of my computer and feel the heat come back at me, wafting between my fingers and reminding me of the only responsibility I have ever really had in this regard: to be open to possibility.

Happy birthday to us!

Fri, 23 May 2008 16:21:03 -0000

It's been a busy half-spring, here, and between fun things and not-so-fun-things and vacations and a funeral and the adventures of Life on Earth, I've neglected this space. I'll try to be better, especially since I feel like I have a lot to say right now. For today, though, I'll focus on something wonderful and wonderful and more wonderful:

My Doodlebug is six today.

It is 11am as I write this, and six years ago right now, I was struck with the fact that I had just become a mother. My little bundle of girl, tucked into a blanket with a pink and blue striped hat on her head of jet black hair, came to me hot and smelling like iron, like earth, like my own womb. She had a round face like a penny, and she squeezed her eyes shut and dug into my chest. She woke slowly from her jaundice, and then, once awake, cried for five months, took a big, deep, breath, and let the sun completely into her heart.

She is, without question, a great love of my life. I could hold her in my arms forever.

My doodlebug, my little love, my princess when I am the queen of her world, my friend, my adventurer, my giggling companion on walks, my dear dear child resting her head on my shoulder...my darling, darling one. I was saddened last night as I wrapped her gift that six is a big girl, no more baby, really this time, not like four and five when I said she was not a baby anymore, but REALLY now not a baby.

But then I went to her room to nuzzle her one more time before I went to sleep...and I found her lying horizontally across her bed, blankets kicked off, curled like a newborn, thumb in her mouth. I lay down, wrapped myself around her, and breathed in the scent of her little girl hair against her little girl neck.

"I carry your heart with me...

...I carry it in my heart."

Name that green thing!

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 19:04:24 -0000

I'm not kidding. Can anyone tell me what any of this stuff is, and how to take care of it? Please?

It's chives, right? If not, it's good in eggs anyway.

This seems to be tulips. I brushed the leaves away. Now what?

This is the cutest thing ever. There are millions here. Any ideas?

Only partly green, and there are a multitude. Are they claws? Are they plants? Will they come for me in the night?

Technically not green, but still, it's on a bush. It has lots of friends. Please help me not kill it!
You can post your help in comments, or private message, or if you know me, come over and take care of these pretty things in person before I mistakenly do something dangerous to them. "George, the rabbits are so soft. I didn't mean to pat so hard. George, the rabbit won't wake up! George? Help!"

With silver bells & lots of weeds & things that I can't identify

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:31:37 -0000

Our beautiful garden is starting to come to life. Wide green things are poking through the ground, and things that look like asparagus tops in several shades, buds like these in the picture there coming out of bushes, and little blossom-shaped clusters of thick green leaves in mounds -- all of them seeking the sun with optimism and enthusiasm.

The poor things, they don't know that I am a gardening moron. The previous owners of this house were genius with the garden, planting things that would come back and setting up clever landscaping. We managed to put some mulch down once we weeded last summer, but that's about it. To give you an example of my lack of knowledge, earlier this week, I was walking with some friends home from Doodlebug's school and pointed out some green leafy things coming out of the ground in big clusters in someone's garden. "Hey," I said, "I have a ton of that stuff coming up all around my garden. Should I pull it out?"

My friend looked at me kind of funny and said, "Debi, those are tulips."

I was incredulous! I didn't plant any tulips! Don't you need to plant those in the fall? Aren't they bulbs? My friend tells me now that they will come back every year. Wow. Who knew? OK, don't respond to that last question; apparently the answer is "everyone but Debi."

So, we have some work to do in order to avoid killing everything that's coming up. I've brushed the dead leaves off the shoots I can see, and I've pulled out all the big tall dead brown things in the ground. I walked around the rest of the garden and shrugged a little. That's as far as I've gotten; check back with me for Mother's Day weekend, which I've designated as official gardening time.

There are some other little things popping up around here now, too. Our Shmoo finally had that growth spurt we've been waiting for since October 2006, and my relief isn't even a bit dampened by her constant requests for snacks, all day, constantly, and everywhere.

And Doodlebug, coming off her amazing performance of the hit tune "See Saw" (lyrics: "see saw, see saw, I like to ride on my see saw") at her first fiddle recital, has made some important decisions lately. She is going to grow her hair long, marry her friend Zora, and figure out how to pick her own first grade teacher in the fall. So there!

And me? I feel sometimes like I'm being dragged in the wake of all this renewal, that I'm watching miraculous transformations all around me while I stay in my holding pattern of "doing ok." Nothing's wrong, but I'm a little bored, a little stuck, a little unsure of where to put my energy and my interests. I'm trying to invest more time in my music, and finally get those reiki attunements I've been planning for two years, and finish the darned C25K program that I've started and stopped five times in the last year (week 8 AGAIN, and holding). I've been cooking a lot from Veganomicon and other vegan cookbooks; I have some neat photos of great vegan meals, so if anyone who reads this wants to see them, post a comment and I'll blog about them. My days lately are a lot of "keep my mind busy while everyone else grows." The kids are in a constant state of growth, as kids always are, and True is searching for meaningful work, and even my parents are reinventing themselves as retired. We'll see what spring brings for me.

Between the white earth and the black night

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:55:39 -0000

I made this still-art-with-music the other day. The photo is of the adirondack chairs and wooden barrels on my front porch the last week in March. It snowed fiercely that day, but the sun came up to melt it all on the next.

Those chairs and barrels sat on my parents' front porch for more than twenty years. They didn't fit with the southwestern aesthetic they're cultivating out there in the southwest, where they've retired, so we inherited them. The song playing in the background is "Like the Snow," by Kristin Andreassen. The lyrics seem to fit, somehow, with my feelings about my parents' leaving, and how I imagine they feel too.

Like the Snow
by Kristin Andreassen / Yellowcar Music, ASCAP

It was a warm love in a northern town.
It was the right time for settling down.
It was a storm brought me to your door.
I didn’t ask for your love, but I couldn’t ask for more.

I saw the sun come out yesterday.
I felt our love melting away.
Believe me when I say I’m gonna miss your face.
Walking away I wonder, do you know this place?

Between the white earth and the black night,
When a love’s going wrong but it’s still all right.
If only half of me wants to let go,
Can I go and come back like the snow?

They were good reasons I became your bride.
It’s nothing you did wrong, that’s not why I cried.
The pressure here, it’s in my own heart.
It’s beating me up, it’ll push us apart.

Because I’m not the same girl as when we met.
I know I’ll change again, and yet...
What if I come to miss your love,
All through the rainy southern winters, I’ll be dreaming of

Chorus

Does only half of you want me to go?
Can I turn and grow back like the green leaves turn yellow?
Can’t I lift and fall back like the snow.

Channeling Dooce.com

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 15:29:40 -0000

Me: The fifteen phone calls you made from the grocery store to ask questions were not enough to get you fired from grocery shopping forever, but the fact that you bought COTTON CANDY FLAVORED YOGURT did the trick.

True: Hey! That's what she wanted!

Me: Did you also buy some Pringles-flavored canteloupe?

True: No. Too salty.

Me: How about some Cheetos-infused organic cheddar?

True: **sigh of lust** Can you imagine how good that would taste?!!?!!

Barely outrunning the Yetis

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:49:10 -0000

I can't believe it's snowing again here in the Chicago area. It's not fair. By way of Dooce.com, I'll let a Canadian columnist say it best: What's Eating You, Mother Nature? Is It Us?

And we just keep going

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:23:46 -0000

Shmoo has been home from the hospital since Thursday, and she'll be staying home all week, recuperating and eating soft foods and being told, over and over, not to jump on the couch or she'll tear a hole in her throat. If you need her, she'll be watching Dora the Explorer.

The surgery itself was a success, I'll admit -- her tonsils and adenoids were deemed "impressive," meaning that they were absolutely blocking her airway. It's a darned good thing they came out, since the bronchoscopy the doctor did at the same time determined that her airway itself is still very much compromised. Before her big surgery in 2006, her trachea was 70% constricted. We were told that the surgery would all but eliminate the constriction, but it didn't. She is now 65% constricted. She also has signs of acid damage to her airway, an indication that her reflux is worse than it was before.

What to do with this information? The knowledge is new, but the truth is not -- and so, do we treat her differently, knowing how precarious her breathing is? Do we seek more opinions than this one, which was something of a "yeah, bummer, isn't it?" prognosis? Truly, what now?

I'm tired, and I'm feeling momentarily defeated, but the beat goes on. Shmoo's health will be something to watch closely all her life, and I can't burn myself out too quickly. In the meantime, I'm not sure how much navel-gazing I want to do. I may be quiet for a bit, here.

Here we go...again

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:34:58 -0000

Well, our health trials with Little Shmoo aren't over, though we hope this next one is easier and less dramatic than the last one. Wednesday she'll go in for a tonsillectomy, adenoidectomy, and another bronchoscopy to see why her colds still make her upper airway rattle so loudly. We are hoping the "ectomies" will resolve her snoring, apparent apnea, and put an end to the constant stream of sinus infections that have plagued her this winter.

She's a little person now, no question about it, and that makes it harder and easier at the same time. For her big surgery in October 2006, she was still truly a baby, and we couldn't explain any of this to her. When we sent her into surgery then, we sent a little ball of unexpressed emotion with very little ability to participate in the world around her. Goodbye, critically ill constantly unhappy crying baby. Have a nice surgery. Hope we see you again when it's over.

This time, we're sending one of our fellow adventurers in there. She tells us she loves us. She says it, on her own, along with a lot of other things, like "I want to watch Dora" and "Mommy, I'm still coughing, I need to go to the doctor" and "We have to go to school to pick up my sister" and "Please can I have more mango?" She is proud of her big girl bed. She can put beads on a piece of lanyard. She can sing the alphabet song, and she can hop like a bunny, and she can hold on to my neck all by herself while I swim a full length at the pool. She could help me save her life, if we ever needed to. On Wednesday, we'll get to explain the basics of her surgery to her, and wait for her -- our funny little daughter, deeply beloved -- on the other side.

Wish us luck.

Found some!

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:49:48 -0000

The discontent of our winter

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:03:17 -0000

This has been a hard winter, physically. Life in the warmth of our house is brighter, and in the cocoons of home and school and the homes of friends, but almost every excursion outside is grey.

The snow has frozen into the alleys and unsalted sidewalks, making treks perilous and startling. Walking in the tire tracks is a recipe for disaster -- only dirty, uneven snow allows enough traction for anyone without spiked shoes.

Even deep into bushes and the branches of trees, winter has a strong grip. It's exhausting, all this grey and white. I find myself wearing the brightest things I can find, more jewelry than normal, drawn closer to the television and the computer, where colors flash provocatively if artificially.

Said simply: I've got to get out of here. We're making a break for the desert of Nevada this weekend, where recent surprising rainfall followed by bright sun has created -- oh, to see them in person! -- flowers!

I'll report back from the world of color late next week.

Stories of instinct

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:24:06 -0000

I have been brewing over this post for a long, long time.

In my journey with Little Shmoo, our fight to find out what was wrong with her, my arguments with doctors and others about my gut feeling, and in our final validation of my deep fears, I often asked myself what I was supposed to be learning. I spent a lot of time sitting in hospital rooms with my baby on my lap, wrapped in IV chords and monitors, staring into the green glow of the room and trying to figure out exactly what I was doing there. What was the lesson to be learned?

I had read about the concept of drawing experiences to you, spiritually, for the lessons they would bring you, and had a friend who told me, over and over, that the universe would send me answers if I would phrase the questions clearly and listen quietly. I even had a therapist who I sought in desperation, and her advice was similar: this is your path. Why are you on it?

In the end, I know that I have years of thought to process regarding these experiences, but a word keeps coming to me when I ask the universe for an answer. The word is "instinct." I had instincts regarding Little Shmoo, despite my feeling somehow disconnected from her for longer than I'd care to admit. Couched in all sorts of other terms: "a gut feeling," "a strong suspicion," "I have trouble believing that...," "I just have a sense," "something tells me..."

Something was telling me. It got louder and louder and louder. It kept me up at night. I listened to Shmoo cry and felt scraped raw inside. I said to my parents once, "What if there's something really big that we've missed? What if she has some kind of problem that we don't know about, and she's hurting?" I felt so physically ill when she cried that I began, unknown to everyone, digging my fingernails into my forearms, leaving pink crescents in them, keeping myself from screaming along with her. The universe was trying so hard to send me my answer. I just didn't know what to do with it.

For those of you who have not read the whole "Woah Baby" set of blog posts in 2006, it turns out that I was unquestionably, frighteningly correct about my instincts. Shmoo had an undiagnosed congenital heart condition, easily resolved with surgery, that likely had caused much of her sleeping trouble and almost all of her respiratory trouble. We discovered it in September of 2006, when she was just over 13 months old. I was right. I was RIGHT. I WAS RIGHT.

I WAS RIGHT.

This brings me some solace, but not a lot. What can I do with this information? What can I do to heal from the trauma of being right and ignored? It seems this is a recurring theme in my life: "you're right. so what?" I want to answer that last question. So, here's what I've been thinking...

Does anyone else out there have a story of instinct to tell? Have you ever been right when no one else could imagine it so? Would you be willing to talk to me about it? I have an idea, but I'm not ready to share details publicly yet. Let me know. Pass this on to people. You can write to me privately here via Gaia mail, or at my email address: debi at jebraweb dot com.

Must be a pretty big bus

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 13:50:39 -0000

Shmoo and I were walking from her school to Doodlebug's the other day, singing "The Wheels on the Bus." We were making up verses, and I was asking her to fill in the blanks. This became a challenge for her when I sang:

"The hippo on the bus goes..."

She thought for a second, and finally said:

"Hip, Hip, Hippo!"

Who knew that was the sound they made?

The hippos on the bus go hip, hip, hippo
Hip, hip, hippo
Hip, hip, hippo
The hippos on the bus go hip, hip, hippo
All through the town

So, today's lesson is that the most obvious answer might be the best one, too!

When I became a person

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 23:59:20 -0000

How many people in the foreground of this picture have valuable opinions that count?

Most of you out there would likely answer "two," counting the toddler and the adult to whom she's speaking. I think, even on a few moments' reflection, there would be very few who would say "just the adult." The thing that frustrates and saddens me most in the world of parenting are the numbers of people who don't ACT that way.

I live in a house with three other people. I don't live with one other person and two walking baby dolls; I live with three people. Doodlebug and Shmoo won't suddenly become people with opinions that matter when they get jobs or have children or pay taxes or vote; they are people with opinions that matter right now. I like them. I think they're interesting little people, and I want to know what they're thinking and how they feel about our world, the one that we share, all four of us, here in this house where our adventures are based.

Of course I have more knowledge and experience than them, but the jury is still out on whether or not I have more wisdom. I know how to do more things, but I might not know all of the important things. I have a responsibility to keep them safe and offer them as much guidance as I can, but in the end, these are little humans who will grow up to feel that they are as wise and important as I give them reason to feel.

That picture up there? That's me, around age two and a half. I was in there, in that little head of curls, in that cute little face, figuring out the world around me and how I felt about it. The worth of my opinions did not suddenly grow exponentially when I was able to express myself clearly. For my children, I try to remember that, and to treasure their feelings as I treasure my own. Try as I might, I cannot understand those parents who don't feel that way.