Run run runaway

Back in college, there was this hill on my regular run - one of those hills that stretch forever upward. It was a long slow climb, steep enough to make your quads scream but not steep enough to justify walking.

I used to set myself these little goals to get myself up the incline:  "Just get to that little pothole - you can make it to there." Then, once I hit that, I'd look for the end of the pub fence, then the bumper of that red Fiesta up there, and so on.

Then, finally, the crest of the hill would come into focus, and often my running partner/steadfast friend Xander would dare me to sprint the last 100 feet.  And most times, I could do it:  with long strong strides,  I could spy the roundabout that marked the turn onto a long gorgeous straightaway through the village.

Well last week was the mothering equivalent of that hill.

I had a sick toddler, who apparently had nothing but a severe cold, but who constantly needed to wipe her snot fountain on my shoulders, constantly wanted to be held, and spent at least 4 nights waking up every hour, on the hour, and crying inconsolably until Mommy - of course only Mommy - would hold her and help her get a drink.  Her siblings, her father, her grandma - none were to touch her, none were to help her, or they'd be subject to the bloodcurdling wails of "noooooooooooooooooooo!  ONLEEEEEE MOMMMMMMEEEEEE!!"

Every morning I woke up more shattered than the night before, and encouraged myself just to get everyone off to school.  THEN I could catch a nap.  I slouched over my mid-morning coffee and told myself I could totally get through lunchtime, and then the baby would nap and then maybe I could too. Except that there was always laundry, always bills to pay, always One. More. Thing.  And then she'd wake up from the nap after 40 minutes, weeping from her own exhaustion and stuffy nose, and as I held her I'd promise myself if I could just make it through bedtime, I could go to bed early.  Of course I never did.

Which is all to say that this past weekend was my long glorious straightaway sprint.  It was my birthday, you see.  We had a long-postponed inn reservation in Annapolis, and plans for a quiet dinner.  Not fancy, not exotic, just...... away.

The drive away from my parents' was quiet - Torbjorn seemed to understand my need to sit without talking.  And then, in a sprint all of its own, my inner dialogue spilled out, for the rest of the forty mile trip.  It was a stream of consciousness brain dump, filled with all of the half-thoughts that had flitted across my mind all week.   Gently, cautiously,  my husband unwrapped the crazy talk, tried to make sense of it,  offered hilarious commentary and generally filled in as Best Guy Ever.

We checked in at the B&B, and changed for dinner.  I had time to put on makeup - even the frou-frou bits like [gasp!] concealer.

 This is a shot of our B&B, from the steps of the Maryland Capitol Building.

We ate at Level - A Small Plates Lounge.  Silly name, the small plates thing, but what a place.  All the menu items are sourced from local farms/fisherman, from the crab ceviche to the buffalo statay to the goats' cheese risotto.  They even make their own tonic for mixers - amazing.  With no rush, no sitter to return to, we savored bits of rice and chorizo, we toasted with a lovely Viognier, and we so enjoyed ourselves we didn't even bother with the Banana Dark Chocolate Bread Pudding with Vanilla Creme Anglaise.  (Not that I minded skipping it.  At all.  And not that I woke up thinking about it. At all. )

We then spent the evening wandering the brick-paved streets of Annapolis, under shadowy branches of blooming cherry and dogwood.  Then - guess what we did?  You'll never guess, I'll just tell you:  we went to sleep.  The week was that bad, people:  all I wanted for my 37th birthday was to go to sleep.

Well, to go to sleep, wake up at 7am - listen for the toddler wail, not hear it, decide I'll never sleep in again in a hundred years, and then wake up again at NINE. O. CLOCK.  Out-freakin-rageous.

 To make my twenty-four hour escape magic, all you had to do was top it off with diner coffee, Belgian waffles, a side of bacon, and watching sailboats on the harbor.  And that, my friends, is exactly what we did.

that's me, enjoying the silence, in the middle of a busy diner

I just might make the next leg of the run after all.

Baking with The Boy

I'm told its a good thing to bake with children.  Apparently, it's what some of those crunchy types would call an Educational Opportunity.

I guess they don't have children whose single greatest joy is smashing eggs, and then egg shells, into smithereens, or measuring flour at warp speed 'cause that's a lot cooler, Mom.'   I'm not sure at which point in the sugar explosion you take the time to elucidate the concept of fractions, or when exactly the slick of melted butter stops being a lesson in 'solids to liquids' and starts being tonight's stain removal exercise.

You know me, I like to pretend I'm one of those crunchy types from time to time, usually when I've had a little too much flaxseed in my diet and a vague success with teaching someone letter sounds.

So yeah, yesterday we attempted a baking project.  Lars really is my best baker - he at least enjoys the process, instead of whining about not making it from a box like everyone else's family, or putting his entire face down in the bowl like his baby sister.

I read this amazing book last week, A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg (also of Orangette blog fame).  Its the sort of book filled with short essays about life, food, family and love and... well, I guess just about everything else that makes my existence worth living.  She includes recipes.

Banana Bread with Chocolate and Crystallized Ginger was the recipe that Lars and I attempted (minus the ginger, only because I didn't have any) inspired by a bunch of black bananas in the fruit bowl.   I'm afraid you'll have to click the link, because the recipe is just too much to get into one blog post, but I really encourage you to head on over and get to know Molly and Orangette.  And in the meantime snag a seriously addictive banana bread recipe.

Turns out my Able Baker Lars wasn't so impressed with the finished product, and neither were his sisters, so Torbjorn and I have single handedly attacked the loaf with a - dare I say - dedicated focus.

A Happy Place

I do love a fun blog. You know the kind, where you happen across their latest post quite by accident, and find yourself deep in the archives an hour later, wondering if the writer would find it weird if you emailed an invite for coffee?

The Painted House is one of those places.  Angela at The Painted House is an artist, a foodie (a vegan one at that!) and a decorating geek.  Does it get better than that? (Well yes, I suppose it does if you're an unattached network engineer who enjoys Star Trek and LOST and t-bone steaks. Anyhoo.)

I believe this is one of Angela's own pieces. (Illustration from her site.)  Pretty, no??

Angela took a break from blogging for a few months, and I'm delighted to see her back. She's kicking off her return to the blogosphere in big style, with a new look and a great giveaway - I'll just whisper Williams Sonoma now, and watch you all scamper away to visit her....

Full of it

My wedding ring has the words Semper Fidelis engraved on the inside. So does Torbjorn's.

Of course I knew this was the Marine Corps motto when we picked it.  I so *totally* knew.

But I digress.

What amazes me, fourteen years later, is that the phrase 'always faithful' would strike us - so young, so clueless! - as the words that would define our marriage.  I like to think of it as further evidence that even at the tender age of 23(!) we had some instinctual knowledge of what it would take to make a marriage work.

These days, with the Tiger Woods and the Jesse James stories breaking big in the headlines, the notion of 'faithfulness' is getting a lot of lip service.  But the word faithful means so very much more than simply 'not cheating on your spouse.'

Take faithful, and take it at face value:  let's look at it as literally being full of faith.

Faith is the belief in something unknowable, something for which you may not have proof.  Faith is saying, despite all evidence to the contrary, I believe that this is a good thing.  Faith, be it a trust in a Higher Power or a trust in your spouse, relies upon a willing suspension of disbelief.

Because we are humans.  We will screw up.  We may make the wrong parenting decisions, we may make really ill-considered purchases (I'm just saying!), we may say or do incredibly hurtful things.

But a relationship full of faith means that even the worst days are better together - better than a pretty good day alone.  Living faithfully means that even in the midst of anger, in the midst of hurt feelings, in the midst of deep disappointment, you have faith in this person beside you.

You have faith in their ability to come back to the negotiating table. You have faith in their ability to see the funny side of it (eventually.)  You are full of faith that the time and energy and love invested in this relationship will be the foundation of your marriage and that that is solid enough get you through.

It is really the only way to live in relationship with anyone (spouse, partner, friend, or fellow Marine, even) - if you can't live full of faith, if you can't be faithful,  then all you are left with is the suspicion that around every corner is disappointment.   Surely this is an impoverished way to live.

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This post is linked as part of Bridget Chumbley's One Word at a Time blog carnival. This week the topic is (obviously) Faithfulness.  I'm post #41 - that's a lot of writing about Faithfulness!

And it was all YELLOW

I hate the color yellow.

Sure, go on about how cheerful a color it is, how it brings sunshine into your life, how it automatically makes people feel all rainbow-y and unicorn-y.

Hate it.  99% of the time, it trends towards mustard baby poop yellow (lighter and darker shades thereof) or ooey gooey baby-nursery-yellow (lighter and darker shades thereof).  Our house, lovingly (and creatively!) named The Yellow House, is one of the ugliest shades on the planet:  the color of congealed banana pudding blended with stomach bile. 

Fine:  yes it is a signature color of both Cezanne and Matisse, it evokes the baking heat of Southern France, and one could scarcely make a dijon vinaigrette without it.

Yes, and now you mention it,  the memories of vast fields of rapeseed in springtime England, with bright flowers transferring their glow onto your t-shirt and winter-pale skin DO stick in my mind.

On one of our college-era adventures.  Somewhere in the wilds of Berkshire.

 Oh.......... and the daffodils.

In the ugly pseudo-modern planned community of Bracknell, some bright minded bureaucrat (probably quite junior) came up with a plan for establishing huge swathes of daffodil fields on the roundabouts, on the embankments of council housing and even in the grim town center shopping district. Sheer genius:  paint the town with the shade of sunshine, and they'll never notice they don't have any.

I might not make it through March without the daffodils.

Just when you think you Will. Not. Survive. one more cold gray day, you notice a small bunch of narcissus at the grocery store checkout.    The yellow of a daffodil works its way right into your cold gray heart, and promises the thaw that's coming. 

This has been a particularly bleak March - full of gray days and lots of storms, both inside and out.  I have never been more grateful to welcome a little bit of yellow back into our lives.

Patrons with Beer and Chili

I am not famous for my artistic abilities.  My Drawing 101 teacher was polite about my efforts, and in Painting 101 was...guarded about my self-portrait in oil. My college poetry is cringe-worthy, and let's just say I've never tried acting because I'm not even a good enough actor to be a waitress when I'm not acting.

No.  My unique gift seems to be finding & keeping as friends amazing artists of all varieties.

I have friends who are authors, painters, filmmakers, actors, designers, glassblowers and all-around-crafties.  These days I can't turn around without one of my peeps launching something amazing.

This past Friday we had our lovely neighborhood happy hour (Paradise:  where the kids are happy but the parents even happier!) and at our table we had not one but TWO Smithsonian exhibit designers (married! how cute does it GET?), and they were full of excitement about projects launching this week. 

Clare is the exhibit designer for the fantabulous new display "A First Lady's Debut," at the National Museum of American History.   She had to remain very close lipped about the details as of Friday, but now that the exhibit's opening tomorrow and the First Lady's gown is safely ensconced, maybe it's ok to namedrop? OMIGOSH MY FRIEND CLARE WAS THE DESIGNER OF AN EXHIBIT OPENING WITH MICHELLE OBAMA TODAY! CHECK IT OUT!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And Jer was equally excited about an exhibit he's worked on for almost a year, slated to open March 13 at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery:

An extraordinary Buddhist shrine room will be on public view for the first time at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery from March 13, 2010, through July 18, 2010. "The Tibetan Shrine from the Alice S. Kandell Collection" will offer visitors a unique opportunity to encounter superb works of Tibetan Buddhist art in the sacred context in which they were first created and displayed. The shrine room is considered to be the only one of such magnitude and artistic quality in the United States. [To read the rest of the press release click here.]

And then, the Happy Hour crowd got to quiz our favorite photographer Dave K Cooper on his latest occupation - filmmaking for Embarq - a group of people working to promote sustainable transport on this little globe of ours.

I am so genuinely excited for all these amazing people.  I went to bed that night bubbling over with enthusiasm for their projects, and their successes this week.  As we curled up under the duvet, I exclaimed ooh, honey - you know what we're like? We're like patrons - our house is like the salons of Paris in the 1920s!

An exhausted Torbjorn rolled over, and here's the last thing he said to me:  Kirsten. To be a patron you have to have money. I think we're the only patrons in the world who support with Beer and Chili.

Heaven in a bag

It is hotter, said my husband.

If this is the highest compliment you can offer your morning cup of joe, my friends, then you probably should just walk away, towards a nice cup of Earl Grey or something.

Here's the thing: coffee and I have this completely co-dependent relationship.  Co-dependent in that IT depends on me to drink it, and I depend on IT to complete me. Yes.  Coffee, you complete me.

We've been experimenting the last year or so - for a while we were brewing coffee in one of those sweet little Italian stovetop espresso makers, and steaming our own milk in a separate saucepan.  The theater and drama of said preparation was remarkable [for example, the time Torbjorn put it on to boil with no water. Cue fumes from melted plastic handle for days.]  After that episode, we were obliged to switch to regular drip-method coffee, and I have explored Trader Joe's vast array of different coffee beans which you can grind yourself in the store.   I tend to stick to the fair trade and organic varieties (try reading Animal Vegetable Miracle and not feeling that compulsion), and have found a few that we like just fine.

Then, brewed nirvana presented itself on our doorstep.  A little bakery opened up in our town, a little joint called Atwater's.  They sell phenomenal bread, lovely homemade soups, and scones that my children will stomp each other to obtain.  The bread is really their 'thing.'  But their coffee. Oh! THEIR COFFEE.  They serve - and sell - Counter Culture Coffee, which, if I had a bag here I could tell you more about.   But I will say this:  drinking that inky goodness brings to mind notes of chocolate, cherries and a little tar and angels and heaven and Oh My.  

We finished our most recent purchase of Heaven in a Bag yesterday morning.  And let me just tell you, HiaB does not come cheap - you don't just stock up on 14 bags of the stuff.  We found ourselves without any ground coffee at all today. 

Instant.  Instant coffee is what laid in our bare cupboard.  (My husband may or may not have called me Old Mother Hubbard.)   We bit the bullet, boiled the water, and brewed up the liquids necessary to Get Mommy Thinking. 

Well, it is hotter,  he said, grimacing. 

I'll be at Atwaters first thing in the morning.  I do believe they open at 5.

The End of the Experiment

Oh hey!  Is it March already? 

My kids have been counting down to March 1st since well, February 1st.  You see, today's the end of our Great TV Experiment.  (If you missed it, you can read about our kickoff of the Experiment here.)

Today I'm guest posting over at Classic Play, where I share all the deeply scientific data we collected in our month-long experiment.

We are celebrating a entire month of TV-free living with -ta da! - yet another sick day where my patient wants to do nothing but lie on the sofa and watch Bugs Bunny.  And I'm ok with that.  With warmer, healthier days just around the corner, I think the occupants of this house have figured out that life without TV is no tragedy, and the outdoors is sounding its siren call.

Embracing Abundance

Dear readers, you might not know that it was my lovely husband who was the start of NilsenLife - way back in 2005. He is my most faithful editor, and an incredible sounding board for my crazy ideas.  Today I invited him to guest-post, on a topic that is near & dear to both of us.  I give you... The Dad of NilsenLife!

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Yesterday I spotted this simple Facebook update: givers never lack.

I'm quite certain that there is no such thing as an unwitting conspiracy (which was my immediate facebook response to that update), and upon reflection what happened will need to be chalked up as synchronicity.

This gets a little complicated, so bear with me in piecing it all together, but on Thursday I listened to an interview with William Hurt. The particular thought that stayed with me was a tangent off the main theme but the quote I loved was that his mother's grandfather 'had a reputation for poverty and for hospitality.'

Last summer a sermon opened my mind to a radically simple insight on the Bible's miracle of the loaves and fishes: The real miracle is a changed perspective. The miracle was introduced through Parker J. Palmer's quote: “in a universe of abundance, acts of generosity and community become not only possible but fruitful as well.”

Embracing abundance is central to Nilsen Life -albeit something we struggle with- but really, once you start looking, encouragement is found everywhere:

In January, the world was entirely absorbed by the earthquake in Haiti.  Give it a couple of weeks - the cynic in me speculated - and this will all blow over. People will start thinking about all the other worthy causes of charity that are missing out because the Haitians are 'taking the limelight.'

Two weeks later, with my cynical prediction about to come true, I heard this incredible story about the Port-au-Prince restaurant co-owner Gilbert Bailly's response to the disaster and the fact that his upscale restaurant was sitting on a big inventory of foodstuffs: instead of losing the food, we said let's cook the food and give it away to people that need it. And then two days after, we were running out of diesel, running out of gas, running out of food. We had people that had businesses who started to bring food to us. And we are doing that since.

I mentioned this story to Kirsten as I arrived home that night, but in all the excitement, and children, and supper, and bed time, the information all-to-predictably slipped through the cracks...

So it's with some amazement I hear Kirsten return home last week telling me about an inspiring near identical story from another radio program, where the other co-owner of the same restaurant, Muncheez, elaborated on how the food is made available: Well, you know, something funny, every other day when we think we’re going to run out of food, somebody comes by and drop a couple bags of rice.  Somebody would come by and drop a couple cases of spaghetti.  It just happens like that.

After thinking all this through at the end of a tough week, I meant to publish this last night. But I lacked the "relevance angle", and I wasn't able to wrap it up before falling asleep.

Waking up this morning to the news of a massive earthquake in Chile coming in over the wire, I am reminded yet again of the imperative to live with a sense of abundance - of an ability to share and to give - not a sense of scarcity and its consequent fear.

Oh Lookee Thar, she's posted

Hey.

Guess you're super glad you signed up to follow me during my Lenten Facebook absence.  'Cause there's just been some crazy mad blog-posting around here, right?

**crickets**

oooh, was that a Bugs Bunny-esque tumbleweed I just saw?

Yeah.

Suffering some pretty major blog-istential angst over here at the Yellow House.  And yeah, for those blogs in the world without a 'theme', per se, that means minutes/hours/days pass with incredibly unhelpful inner dialogues like this one:

oooh, I know, Self.  You could post about this!  This would be a great post! 
Yeah.  But.... no.  The Bloggess already posted about that.  And it might be a little irreverent.
Ok.
[10 minutes later]
oooh, I know, Self! [cue even perkier, more enthusiastic tone] What if you finished up that great pulling-in-history but reflecting-on-future post that you were noodling over last week?
ooh yeah! Oh. No.  It's a little ... self indulgent, isn't it?  I mean, who wants to hear just about me me me all the time? I guess Mommy Bloggers are really more the 'thing' nowadays. I'm not so good at that. Hmm, but not that good at any theme, come to that.
[heavy sigh] Right. Well.  Didn't you JUST post on how you've gotten too serious?  Can't you just do a silly funny post?   What about your kids?  Haven't they done ANYTHING funny in the last week?
Yeah. Well.  I think it isn't very nice to read a bragging-disguised-as-funny post.  I mean, that's just so bourgeois.  I want to be, you know,  real.


At this point, Perky Encouraging Self gets completely hacked off with Negative Angsty Self and huffs away, leaving NAS to its own (non-productive and self-defeating) devices.

This is all way before we get into the late-night questions of What To Call Blog Should I Ever Post Again, and Why Am I Taking This Non-Paying Gig So Seriously? (Especially when there is a big huge OTHER non-paying gig called Mothering that started, oh, an hour ago and finishes in, like, NEVER.)

I woke myself up last night with these ridiculous questions, and laid in bed trying to think of a post, ANY POST, that would get me over the hump of Amateur Writers Block without sounding completely whiny and self-absorbed. I ended up putting myself back to sleep thinking of synonyms for Self Absorbed. [FYI: egoistic, narcissistic, ooh, and my favorite:  vainglorious.]

Hmph.  So I'm headed off to my first blog conference in just over a week, and I will be turning up to network with 100 other women about a blog that 1) has no recent posts and 2) needs a good name-change/reason for being. Hmph.  Sounds like a totally productive social media event, dontcha think?

Of my many personalities, you get to meet Sourpuss Kirsten this evening.  So, that was worth doing, right?  Just check with Torbjorn, he'll be full of jolly examples to back up this particularly joyful aspect of Life With Me.

And just because I love to spread rays of sunshine wherever I go, I will leave you with that.

[ok, so the only Official Sourpuss photo of me I could track down was from Junior year. But believe me, I'm pissed off waaaaay more often. Just no pictures. Really.]

Special Kind of Kindness, revisited

Today, as part of Bridget Chumbley's One Word at a Time Blog Carnival,  I'm reposting my story about a -ahem- unique path of Kindness that I found myself pursuing last December in the first of Baltimore's many snowstorms.  Darling son has been in a few snowball fights since then, and typically comes out on the losing end.  Still doesn't make this story right...

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So I've been focusing on kindness in recent months - not just the idea of kindness, but really the practice of kindness.  In fact, I went as far as to make it my specific goal for this Christmas season - to find ways to extend kindness at a time when people are so, well, unkind.  (Imagine the parking lot at the mall, and you get the picture.)

This was my Facebook update yesterday afternoon: "who can explain to me why kindness is such a hard concept for people to embrace?"

Not three minutes after I posted this query, my four year old came banging in the front door.  His cheeks were bright pink, and he blurted out Mommy, the reason I had to come inside is that there are bullies - two big boys - outside throwing snowballs, an' one hit me in my face! 

A half-second later I was out on my front porch scanning the street for suspects.  I saw two pre-teen boys ambling up the path next to our house, and I demanded if those were the boys.  When Lars confirmed that yes, 'dose are the guys',  I tore down my front steps and out to the street without taking the time to change out of slippers.

HEY!  I shouted.  Are you the guys throwing snowballs at four year olds? [cue vague grunts & mumbling denials.]  I SAID, are you the guys who were down the hill there throwing snowballs at little kids?  Because I want to know IN WHAT WORLD is it ok for kids as old as you to throw snowballs in preschoolers' faces?  How OLD are you anyway? [uh, 13.]  AND HOW ABOUT YOU? [uh, I'm 11.]  SO REALLY?  YOU THOUGHT IT WOULD BE COOL TO THROW ICY SNOWBALLS IN MY  KIDS FACE?!?!?!  

At this point they tried to argue it wasn't them throwing the snowballs.  They tried - weakly - to suggest that my kid had thrown snowballs at them.  Both tacks, whilst perhaps inspired defenses in the 'tween mind, served only to fuel my indignation and wrath.

So I dropped my voice down low (an old cheerleading trick, much handier in parenting than it ever was on the sidelines.)  And here is what I said:

Listen - and listen good:  If I EVER see you NEAR my child, or my home, or if I EVER even HEAR about either one of you coming near my child, I will PERSONALLY make sure that you are VERY VERY SORRY.   Do you get that?  Get away from my house, and get away from the kids in this neighborhood. NOW.

Now, not only have I been 'choosing' kindness this year, not only have I been pursuing ways to be gentler with those around me, I also fancy myself as a bit of a cool customer when it comes to parenting.  I do my best not to freak out when there are injuries (real or imagined), I work hard at accepting all the outrageous things kids do without judging them, and I certainly never planned on screaming at preteen boys in my fake fur slippers.

If you'd asked me, maybe presented the above scene as a 'theoretical' to me, in the days before I became a parent, I would say maybe that the kids needed to figure it out.  I would say that maybe the four year old instigated it.  I would say that overreacting would only make the incident worse. 

Oh, but the white-hot fury.  The absolute primal reaction of a parent protecting a child - of wanting anyone, be they thirteen or ninety,  to know just how wrong hurting little people is?  Well I took myself by surprise. 

Seems I'm not quite as evolved as I'd imagined.  But with 24 hours to look back at the scenario, I still have the same reaction.  I will be as kind as I am able - just don't touch my cubs.

Flashback Friday

Hey people!  Today I posted my Connections story over at Mylestones, as part of her Flashback Friday series.  Love me some flashback stories.

The Best Season

You know me, I just love a juicy instance of synchronicity.  I came across this quote yesterday:

Ten thousand flowers in spring
Radiant brilliance in crisp autumn air
Warm caresses from the summer sun
Winter's deep stillness on moonlit snow

If your mind is not clouded by unnecessary things,
This is the best season of your life.

Looking forward to enjoying the best season of my life.

Making more room

Franciscans use the term 'detachment': the less that 'stuff' preoccupies your life, the more room there is for God, as well as for yourself and for other people.

As if I needed any confirmation that I needed to make more space in my life for God, myself, and my family, I came across Layla Grace's blog tonight: about a family losing their two year old to Stage 4 Neuroblastom.  They will lose her soon.

I go upstairs and I watch my two year old's sweet cheeks squish around her eyes, just like mine do when I sleep.  I smooth the growing-out bangs away from my big girl's face (an outrage she'd never let me perpetrate in daylight hours).  I lift Lars from his perpendicular position on his bed, and re-cover him with his favorite blanket-that-was-Daddy's-once. 

How is it possible that I have ignored their growing moments?  What would I change if I knew there wouldn't be endless days of sibling battles, lunch preparation, and carpools?

Here's what I would change:  I would be more present.  I wouldn't turn away from their bubble-blowing triumphs, their Lego creations, their requests for WeedWe? [translated:  Please Mommy will you read this to me?]

With this in mind, tonight's post is to say that I want to live with some more intent.  With more awareness. With more....... focus.  Tomorrow is the beginning of Lent, and what I'll be doing is offering some intentionality to my household:  I'm giving up Facebook.

Woo hoo, the crowds say.  Big deal, FACEBOOK.  For the casual check-in-every-three-days-or-so Facebooker, this will make no sense.  Surely, surely it must be trickier to give up dessert. Chocolate, at least.

But for me, Facebook is the thing that diminishes my focus, distracts me from my daily rhythms (to the point of being my daily rhythm!), and yes, sometimes even keeps me from writing a blog.

So in exchange for the absence of scintillating hourly updates from the Yellow House, what I can offer you is blog posts for Lent.  Hopefully, they will be posts with some intentionality, some awareness, some focus.  (They may, however, just be posts begging to know what's happened on Facebook.)

Valentines, Yellow House Style

I've mentioned before how much fun we have here at the Yellow House marking the seasons, and taking time to celebrate the small joys and bright spots of our days. Valentine's Day is certainly one of those chances: we've had a table full of felt, googly eyes, ribbon and construction paper for weeks, as we each worked on projects for friends, far away family, and for each other.




(Doesn't mean that kept me from staying up until 1.30 the night before glueing together the kids' Valentine's cards, or from resorting the the card aisle at Target for Torbjorn's. Sigh.)

I limit it to a box, one storage container. All things hearts cupids and luuuurrve that can fit into the 32 gallon container make up our Valentines Box, and it's heralded with great joy each February 1st.

We repurpose a few old Christmas lanterns still hanging about, and make dinner time special with candlelight.



This year, we had a fancy Valentine's Tea Party with five of Cecilie's friends. Our guests were asked to bring valentines for each other, and to wear pretty dresses. They crafted sparkly butterflies, they curled their pinkies around their tea cups, and swirled colored sugar into their peppermint tea. It was all very grown-up, and very sweet indeed.

Happy Heart Day

I heard a lot of harrumphy noise out there on the internets this week, about the crass commercialism of Valentine's Day: how it is a "Hallmark Holiday," how silly it is to have a day to celebrate love when its something we should do every day.

Ahem. I take issue. Internets, I TAKE ISSUE!

Since when have we spent enough time telling the people around us that we love them? Whether or not there was a Red Hot Lover in your life this Valentines Day, it is a very poor life indeed when you look around and find no one who needs to know you love them.

The smartypants answer is that the problem lies with the limitation of the English word, love. The ancient Greeks, of course, had four words for love (heck - any Greek scholars out there to let me know if they still use all four?): agápe, éros, philía, and storgē. Without boring you excessively on their meanings, these words cover all the different ways we love one another - as friends, as family, as community, and yes, with passion. (Rawr.)

I'm certainly not trying to convince you that loving the way the grocery guy bagged your bananas is the same as having a wildly romantic date in Paris. All I'm saying is that this horribly commercial, crass and over-sentimentalized holiday does have its redemption, and the redemption is in the discovery that love, actually, is all around us. (Why is it I'm hearing Hugh Grant's voice? What? Oh....)

You get what I'm saying. Go, get on the phone, or that crazy Skype thing, or even right there on your Gmail account, and let someone know you love 'em. Maybe even make a run down to your supermarket and tell that kid you like his way with bananas.

As for me, I spent my Heart Day with my peeps: chocolate boxes at our breakfast plates, cards for each other, and heart-shaped cinnamon toast. I kissed them, I told them I loved them, and I reminded myself that I need to keep it up, every day of the year. (Just click right here, ladies and gentlemen, to get photographic evidence of our luurve. )

The Snowy Day

Someone commented to me on Facebook this week: Now admit it -- aren't you just in awe of your sense of timing? Two major snowstorms smack in the middle of "No TV month?"

True confession: the very first thought in my head on Tuesday morning - in the midst of the second blizzard - was 'what's a graceful way around the no TV rule, so I can let them watch all morning?'

My innate obstinance got the better of me, and I refused to crack. I just kept telling myself that we'd gotten this far, and surely it was foolhardy to back down now. But still, the long cold blustery winter days stretched long and dark ahead of me, and I will absolutely cop to feeling many wavering moments. As all of us know, however, you have to hide this ambiguity, because if the children sniff out your doubt, they will surely pounce with great force and furious whining.

So. This is what a snow day without TV looks like in 2010.

Morning spent in Valentines crafting activities :  above, our results. Below, our process.

Tea with extra sugar

Shoveling with Dad

Working out with mom

Reading without mom. (Without mom!!!!!!! tear...sniff...)

Nighttime party with neighbors

Jedi with light saber


the house is a wreck, the sink piled high with dishes. But happy tired kids, a dusty television, and a resolution intact. I'll put that in the success column.

Patience, My Patient

At first it was a stretch: I just couldn't quite see the connection between dry heaves and patience.

But I knew that somewhere, deep in the miasma of this hideous stomach bug that made my entire body ache and my throat burn and my head feel that it was about to pop off my neck and go spinning into the atmosphere....somewhere, there had to be a story in this.

It's one of a mom's worst nightmares, to be completely incapacitated by sickness. Most moms I know operate on the assumption that the entire circus, of which we are each ringmasters, would grind to a halt completely should we become so sick that we wouldn't/couldn't be directing the next Act.

Yet incapacitated I was.  Flat out on the couch.  The slightest movement brought on waves of nausea, and I didn't want a single thing except to lie very very still and be covered by forty two blankets. 

I suppose I was lucky:  I was laid out on a weekend, better yet on a weekend day with forty inches of snow on the ground that meant 1) lots of outdoor distraction with Daddy and 2) school was definitely canceled, so I wasn't facing a clean clothes/lunch packed/the BUS, MOM!!! kind of deadline. 

I laid on the couch, vaguely listening to the hum of activity around me:  breakfast served, cleaned up, snow clothes on and off,  lunch served, cleaned up, a grocery store run to get ginger ale and bananas, the usual sibling battles. 

But I also began to register newer, unfamiliar noises: my four year old periodically stopped to kiss my cheek, and whisper I love you Mommy into my ear.   My two year old brought over a hairbrush and did her best to make me 'pitty'.  My eldest wouldn't come within three feet of me, for fear of catching germs, but she never took her eyes off me, and spent the day asking if she could get me anything, and caring for her siblings if her own life depended on it.  I'd sort of assumed hell might freeze over before I witnessed a seven year old take her baby sister to the potty, read books to her the whole time, and then help her climb in bed for a nap - but happen it did. 

The thought began to whisper itself quietly in my feverish brain:  Patience.  Patience.  Patience.  (It might have been flu-induced delirium, but I like to think it was that still small voice, the one that shows us wisdom in the face of life's absurdities.)

I began to see that, unlikely as the circumstances might be, we were all learning patience.  I was forced to be patient with my body while it healed.  Patient with my family as they muddled along (quite successfully) without me.   They were patient with each other:  allowing for misunderstanding, imperfection, tantrums, and messes.  Most miraculously, they were patient with me:  there were no demands for shoes to be tied, noses to be wiped, lunches to be made, fights to be resolved.  They offered the patient their patience. 

(But lest you worry about this perfectly patient family of mine?  Mom is back to 90% health at least, and the kids are back to normal - I'll just go pull them off each other's throats now.)

Connected

M'kay, so remember a while back I was going on about how connected we all are??  Some of you Facebookers may remember when I posted "does anyone ever think about how connected we all are?"

Well do you?

Do you think about how connected we are, I mean?

I got a little story for you tonight.

Long ago, waaaaay back in 1986, I was yanked out of my small-town Junior High School and my family moved into the city.  Instead of transitioning to a huge new public school, I was transferred into a teensy-tinsy private school:  one so small that my seventh-grade class had exactly 4 girls and 5 boys. Yes indeed.

Our newly-built house in our new-ish suburban neighborhood was still characterless, and I missed my friends from Virginia.  I missed my life from Virginia:  summer days at the pool, winter days on the abandoned farm behind my house.  In the new neighborhood there was a pool, though, and to ease the transition my mom decided my younger brother and I would join the swim team.

Now I didn't know a soul at this pool - imagine the sheer joy of a thirteen year old in the midst of a traumatic growth spurt (seven inches! in six months!), asked to go & make friends whilst wearing a really unflattering swimsuit.  I did make a few friends, I hung out a little at the pool that summer, and made it through all the meets with a measure of success.  (Being the tallest 13 year old in the county did have its advantages when it came to a 50m sprint.  Just sayin'.)

I remember the day of the swim team photo:  my mom wouldn't spring for the team suit because I'd made so much noise about hating to go.  She wasn't sure I was in it for the long haul.  So I had to wear the team suit from the year before.  No biggie, right?  I'll let you be the judge of that:

SO?  Can you spot me?? Um, yes.  That would be me, the Amazon in the back row WITH THE BRIGHT KELLY GREEN SUIT. [Just double click the photo if you want to get the full effect.]

Now.  Fast forward twenty three years (twenty three years!!!!!) and you'll find me sitting like a nice suburban mom in my nice suburban church, just barely hanging onto my sanity and my three small kids. I meet another nice suburban family, also with three kids, and in chatting with them find out that this nice couple grew up in my neck of the woods.  "Oh yeah? Silver Spring, huh?  Small world." And we leave it at that.  Because Silver Spring is a pretty big suburb of a kinda-big Washington DC.

But my husband has this niggling feeling he's met the husband before somewhere.  Weird.  Then one day I chat for two seconds longer, and find out that not only is the husband - Eric - from Silver Spring, he's from Colesville (the sub-suburb).  Oh yeah? Where?  Such & such road.  Oh, that's where I went to junior high! [name check teensy tinsy private school.]  No way, he says. Do you know Hollie McDowell?

And with that, my brain matter starts liquifying.  Haven't heard Hollie's name since high school - haven't seen her for much longer than that.  She was two grades behind me in the teensy tinsy private school, and she ended up marrying the Senior I had my locker next to as a high school freshman. And then this guy in Catonsville Presbyterian Church just asked me if I knew her?!?  (Turns out Hollie went from small private school to large public high school, and was BFFs with Eric & his wife there.)

I do know Hollie.  And I do know her husband.  Her husband who plays poker with this guy in church. And my husband played poker one time with the husband-that-I-had-a-locker-near-in-high-school and Eric-that-we're-chatting-with-in-church.

And then, just to bring it all freakin' FULL CIRCLE, once we all get together for a summer supper and a glass of wine or two, Eric and I start chatting about the good old days. The summer days in Colesville.  The ones we spent swimming: at Robin Hood Swim Club.

Yep.  That's Eric - the sweet kid on the far left of the third row, behind the ladder railing.  That's his brother standing right behind me. His sister & his other brother are in there somewhere.

Just don't forget people.  We're all connected.  Somehow, somewhere - we're all connected.

Stuff stuff stuffity stuff

Did something radical this morning.  School started 2 hours late, which meant that there wasn't much time in my morning before I'd be back for pickup at preschool.

So: 90 minutes free, a minivan full of gas, and just one kid in the car??  Most suburban moms I know would think the same as me:  TARGET.

Then I stopped for a minute. (Stupid red light.)

I remembered the kitchen floor strewn with baby doll clothes.  I remembered the dirty dishes left on the table, on the counter, and in the sink.  I thought about the piles of laundry that lurked in all four corners of the laundry room.

 

Full disclosure here folks:  I would like to pretend that the background mess is atypical.

And I turned the steering wheel towards home.  Crazy, I know. I came back to the Yellow House to spend some quality time with my mess. Messes.

It's so much STUFF:  stuff for putting away, stuff for cleaning up, stuff to keep track of.  And the solution to the stuff is to run away, into the safe welcoming arms of my Target and buy....... yep: more stuff.

I don't have a big house, I don't buy super-fancy things.  I don't often spend on big-ticket items, I don't spend hours shopping online.  And yet the stuff creeps in. 

I set out to keep it simple.  Straightforward: easy to find, easy to use.   But here's this little hole punch that will help me make homemade valentines with the kids, and then 4 boxes of store-bought Valentines I got on clearance last year.  There's this 'green' cleaning product I can use to cut back on toxic chemicals, but also a bottle of cleaning product that is perfectly good so I'd better keep it to use up before I switch to the green stuff.   There is the baby doll which cost too much, but that had a sweet face, and then there's the baby that looks like a sex toy [sorry, it does] but was a gift from a really well-meaning family friend. There are the beautifully handmade doll clothes, and the doll clothes that are hideous but trendy. (Guess which ones the American Girls end up in?) Oh wait, and here is the small plastic green safe that came with the Lincoln Log Bank Set - you know, the safe that was forgotten the day the box was first opened, but that you've kept in a special drawer because its Just So Wrong!! to break up a set?

What this is, is psychic filth.

If it were actual hunks of dirt hanging around this house, I would have hauled the wet mop out ages ago, and given the place a good scrub-down.  (Yep, even me, the Worlds Worst Housekeeper.)  But somehow the sentiment creeps in, and the small pieces, the useless bits, the sheer excess just hangs around, waiting for someone to decide its fate.  Or, more likely, waiting for someone to forget about it, so that it can claim its place in the Pantheon Of Junk.

So who knows the trick for me?  Who can tell me what to do with my sentimental, pseudo-organized psychic filth?    Answers on a postcard please.  Oops, no - make it an email so I don't have 3x5 cards floating around the house.

S'wonderful, s'marvelous.. It's Classic Play!

Do you remember your first love?  That kid who sat next to you for circle time at preschool? I sure do.  It's that time of year, where we start thinking about luuuuuuuuuurve and all the sweet things associated with it.

The astoundingly creative minds over at Classic Play are celebrating the release of The Love Issue by launching a bright shiny new blog to showcase it.

The writing is beautiful, the photography stunning and clearly, so much thought has gone into the design of the entire site.  Run run run and check it out right now!  While you're there, you'll find a few words from yours truly about my First Love, along with great craft projects, Valentines to print out, and lots of other cracking articles.

Here's a little sample of the Family Date Night photo spread: 

Sweet girls, a sweet idea, and a wonderful site to bring it all to us.  Hip hip hurray for Classic Play!

The Experiment

My kids are addicts.

TV addicts, that is.

We don't have cable - on purpose - in a misguided attempt to avoid the electronic babysitter.  There is not a wide variety of shows they watch:  the Nilsen kids suffer from deep seated fear of conflict and scary-sounding music, and as such shows like Scooby Doo, Bugs Bunny, and even the feature-length Clifford movie are out.  So there's a steady diet of Max & Ruby, Martha Speaks, Curious George, and a smattering of Pingu or Pink Panther when we're feeling saucy.

The rotation of shows did get a bit heavy during the Christmas break, I will admit.  And I tried to rationalize it away - it is stress management [mine], they need their downtime [coma time?], it's PBS - that's educational, right?  

But when I started getting extra kisses from my 4 year old to sweeten me up, before springing a request for TV on me, I started to get mad.  When the baby started to associate her potty time with TV watching, I started to get self-conscious.  And when an episode of Pink Panther came on and my 1st grader said "oh Mommy, you have GOT to watch this, this episode is hysterical!" I knew that change was a'coming.

Those winds of change turned into a mighty gale:  we're turning off the TV for a month. 

Hey, I'm not shy.  I'll turn my kids into a social experiment at the drop of a hat.

So if you can't beat 'em, join em: I sold it to them as an episode from Sid the Science Kid.  Hey guys!  Haven't you ever wondered what Mommy & Daddy did when we were kids and there was no TV and no computers and no cell phones?  Well, we're going to try it!  We're going to investigate what it was like to live with no TV!

We made a chart for our investigations:

 

Exceptions are noted:  Olympics, Parties and Friends Houses

Whilst I don't think the 'experiment' angle is fooling anyone, I think they are cautiously curious.  I think they are wondering just now nuts they'll have to get before Mommy cracks and turns on Maryland Public Television at top volume while she curls up on the floor, a weeping mess.

I'll keep you posted, readers.  If my post begins 'I am typing in the fetal position on the floor' you'll know The Experiment isn't going as well as planned.

Where have all the Sillies gone?

This is me at about two. It's one of my favorite photos of all time.

It looks like I'm having a whale of of time, doing whatever it is that small girls do to be silly, and really cracking myself up in the process.  (Those are, I'm told, hibiscus buds hung on my ears for 'earrings'.)

By all accounts I was a pretty funny kid.  Always full of things to laugh about, always willing to break out in fits of giggles at the slightest provocation.  Apparently I didn't worry too much about doing things right, like my older brother, and I wasn't particularly defensive about getting bossed around like my younger brother sometimes was.

So here's what I want to know:  when did I lose that?

Been doing a bit of re-reading of my posts, and honestly, they tend to be a bit........serious. I watch myself parenting my kids, sometimes, and wonder where my ability to guffaw out loud went.  I want to know where my willingness to see the silly side of something buggered off to.

Example:  out to dinner with three small ruffians who were hungry, grumpy and wiggly.  (Not in that order.)  Smallest decided to stand up on the table, and in a defensive move intended to deny such atrocious manners, I managed to knock her into my LARGE water glass, which then overturned into MY lap.  With a crotch full of ice water, I was gasping, and she looked up at me with big two year old eyes, points to her Croc, and bursts into tears.  Maaaaaah shooooooooooooeeeeeeeees!!!!!!!!!!!!  she wailed.  There were indeed a few drops dampening the rubber.

And honestly?  It took me until tonight to laugh about it.  It was really really cold! (Did not take the children's grandmother that long to laugh.  My horrible unsympathetic mother was in spasms of giggles throughout the rest of dinner.  She occasionally stopped laughing to ask if I had defrosted.)

I recently talked to my husband about someone we'd met recently.  I told him that this person was really lovely and all, but that I just couldn't put any time into building a friendship there.  You see, I'd detected a tragic absence of any sense of humor.  So my need for humor can't be that far repressed, if I still count it as a deal-breaker for a friendship. 

In fact, I can list a number of suitors through the years that I dated strictly because of their sense of humor.  Turns out, that's not quite enough to build a dream on, as the song goes, but I sure did have a lot of laughs.  The relationship that caused me the very most unhappiness was one where the guy had a -ahem- limited sense of humor, but stunning good looks.

I'm just wondering.  How much of adult life have I spent glowering about injustices, the sheer stupidity of others, the mean letters I keep getting from the MVA when I've done nothing wrong,  the dishes broken by careless dish washers?  There is so little that is truly unhappy.  So little that doesn't have something you can laugh about if you need to.

My favorite quote ever from my grandmother?  It's no laughing matter, but its no matter if you laugh.

Bird by Bird

Hey y'all.  Guess where I've been?  You know, where I've been since last........Monday?

Yup. On Twitter. 

I haven't been posting that many tweets actually.  Every once in a while I open my little tweety-beak, and RT (re-tweet) something, or comment on someone else's Tweet.  But heck - if you thought using Facebook to comment on the status of the sister-of-your-best-friend-in-junior-high was strange, try commenting on the status of an uber-blogger that you follow. 

The main surprise I've found over there in Twit-land is the sheer volume of links posted - links to other people's amazing blogs.  Links to other people's articles being published in some on-line journal.  Links to fabulous sites where the contributers write/produce/manufacture The. Most. Fabulous. Things!  Twitter can keep you clicking all afternoon long.

Great site designs.  Inspirational connections, insights, and writing - oh, the writing!  There are some amazing people crafting the language out there on the Internets. 

And with each click, with each link followed, the anxiety levels rise......rise......rise.........RISING!!!!!  Looming above me, in fact, with scary thought bubbles that say really helpful things like oh wait, what? you thought you might write a blog after reading all this? ha. HA! Or something like that anyway.

Now I know it ain't cool to whine that the cool kids say all the cool things, and what am I going to say, poor small Winona-Ryder-in-Lucas blogger that I am.  I'm just sayin: Twitter makes me anxious. 

So I'm sort of processing where I go from there.  What do I say when confronted with evidence that it's all been said before, on a site with a cleverer domain name.  Do I go serious? Get all philosophical and perhaps [gasp!] theological? Do I go funny, and talk about how my kid got a black eye from falling off the front of the toilet? Do I stay RANDOM, and leave my readers wondering what the heck is going to pop into my brain that day?

So here's the little thought I have to repeat to myself throughout the day to keep the crazy scary thought bubbles at bay and then collapsing in a heap of hyperventilation:  you're just writing. 

I'm writing because that is what I do.   I'm writing because I made a promise to myself that this little voice o' mine wouldn't get swept under the floormats like so many Goldfish crumbs.  (Remember that?)

It would be nice if my blog had a swishy design, if I could figure out TrackBacks and TweetDeck and Mr Linky.  Actually, it would be nice if I had enough content, you know - stuff to read -  that would justify all the high-speed upgrades.

I am writing because I am a writer. I will keep doing this thing, this putting one word after another here in this space, because that is what I do.  Same way as you get back to running by putting one running shoe in front of the other (preferably with your feet in them), this is the way you learn to write: by putting the words down.

It took me until this very point in the post to suddenly bring to mind Anne Lamott, and her wonderful introduction to Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life:

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was  ten years old at the time, was trying to get a  report on birds written that he'd had three months to  write. It was due the next day. We were out at our  family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen  table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper  and pencils and unopened books on birds,  immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my  father sat down beside him, put his arm around my  brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy.  Just take it bird by bird.'

And with that, I will leave you with a post about this very topic, by someone I've discovered on Twitter of all places, and who said all that I just said, right up there, a whole lot more eloquently. 

Where do we go from here?

I sat down at the laptop tonight completely overwhelmed by negativity.  (Whew, that's a way to keep y'all reading, right?)

My mind was spinning: the first email I read tonight was about a family friend who lies in a coma in a hospital in Rome.  She truly had La Dolce Vita there in Italy - three small kids, a husband who flies around the world for KLM, a beautiful jewelry business.  Then, one strep infection = bacterial meningitis = total profound coma, from which it is highly unlikely she will emerge.

I was fresh from my parents' house, reading the Washington Post and seeing this horrific picture from Haiti for the first time:

And then of course today is the Martin Luther King Jr holiday.  A day when many of us look around and ask if we are living his dream - if we are even trying to work towards it anymore?  I know that I had more than a few twinges of self-recrimination when I spent the day ferrying to and from playdates instead of making it a day of service.

I even asked my husband out loud:  so just where I am supposed to go from today?

Here's my answer for you, for today.  We go to the people teaching the adults of tomorrow.

My friend Susie is one of the world's funniest, deepest, and most lovely people you will ever meet.  She is also a kindergarten and first grade teacher.  She is exactly the sort of person you want spending the day with your six year old:  the sort of person who will take the kids outside to lie on the ground and look at clouds, and who will talk about connectedness and personal responsibility with total respect for the kids' ability to get it.

Today on Facebook Susie posted this quote from Dr King: Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

Here is a picture of Susie's class talking about this:

Susie's explanation: ...we do an activity that illustrates the concept of interconnectedness. One student holds one end of a string and then it gets passed from one student to another (randomly). Everyone has to hold on to their part of the string or it affects the whole. I think it's a great little object lesson, and such a beautiful concept. We may not choose to care for those around us, but we are still connected- that is the reality of our existence!

And here is her explanation of how this all connects with Dr King's quote: I love [his] quote because of the philosophy that seems to be driving it- it's not just 'I'm responsible for me and you're responsible for you'. It goes beyond that and says, 'Yes, I'm responsible for me, but my choices and actions affect you, so in that way I'm also responsible for you too!!' You can never be truly whole if you're focusing on just part of that equation.

I love that she is teaching the kids who will be shaping our nation in years to come.   Once they have taken this truth to heart, if more of us could own our responsibility to our community - both immediate and extended, our world would most definitely be so much closer to his dream.

Mrs Eastwood, please know that today you showed me where we go from here.

Run, Forrest, Run!

I laid in the new toddler bed at some point during Wednesday night, intending to climb out & return to my own bed.  And I couldn't sit up.  My muscles were in spasms of uselessness, having been subjected to unaccustomed workouts at Silly O'Clock on Monday morning and Wednesday morning. 

Now, I'm typically hopeless with New Year's resolutions.  (Unless, perhaps, if you count the year I resolved to start wearing more feminine socks.  That didn't last either, really.)  The resolutions for improved financial fitness in 2009 failed dramatically.  (But don't you like my new bag?  Isn't it pretty?)

But at some point in the heady, early moments of 2010,  I said to my husband "I want to be a runner.  This year, I want to be a runner again." 

Long ago, so many years ago, I ran.  I ran Track and Cross Country all through high school, for a coach whose first priority was always to show us just how much fun running was. He pushed us hard, he yelled until the veins popped out on his forehead, but if we didn't win the meet, if we didn't make our best times?  Not the end of the world.  He only wanted to know that we'd done our best.  I wasn't a great competitor and I won very few races, but oh the happy memories of running with the team on autumn-colored trails through Rock Creek Park in Washington DC. I even look back fondly on rain-soaked Sunday morning runs with Coach Paulson, my dad, my brother, and our oversized dog.

This is me c1991- the Amazon in the Winnie the Pooh shirt.  Unfortunately, the shirt is probably an indication of just how seriously I was taking the race. I was racing with BFFs Clare & Andrea.

Running kept me going through college as well.  What began as a regime to get rid of extra pounds due to dorm life became nothing less than a daily meditation, a respite from the close-quarters of small college living and an intense academic schedule.  As I hit the streets in the very early morning or the late evenings, and pounded my way through misty English villages, I'd always meant to tell Coach Paulson just how much he'd permanently changed my outlook on exercise.

Then, boring cliche by boring cliche, running slipped out of my life.  Newlywed life proved so cozy - all that cooking/eating/kissing, then our careers started to intensify, and then death knell of all death knells to exercise:  we started having kids.

SEVEN LONG YEARS LATER, there are no more kids in the pipeline. (Ooh, that reminds me, must send Torbjorn's surgeon a Valentine...)  There are no more excuses. There is some level of sanity at stake, and I think running (plus blogging, of course) will be the best way to keep us moving in the right direction.

I love running.  I love lacing up my shoes, I love getting out on the streets, and I love the sweaty feeling of cooling down from a great workout.  When I see posters of runners, when I flip through catalogs of sports gear, when I watch my neighbor sprint down the hill past my house, my feet still itch.

I went out on Friday, ditched the grocery store run and spent a happy hour in the running store buying a brand spankin' new pair of running shoes.  This year, it's my turn. It's my turn to KEEP getting up at Silly O'Clock, to put in the miles and finally get back to my Happy Place. 

Howzabout a little virtual cheerleading along the way? (Coach Paulson is way out West, you see.)