Lord have mercy, it’s a New Year! 

It's a time that always finds me in a strange place of in-between.... of trying to look back and ahead.... at the same time. 

It’s not really all that comfortable of a place to be, mentally or emotionally, but I can't help it.... I lean towards the overly analytical side of life, and I like to think I gain at least some insight from the process once it passes.

So, I’ve been trying to squeeze in a few minutes to think and reflect whenever possible over the last few weeks. But, with holidays, family events, trying to work, travels, and best of all, some wonderful winter adventures with my Fantabulous Partner and the 6 kids we have between us, well.... both time alone and quiet have been rare things.

Normally, being outside in nature is one my best thinking strategies, but the cold and limited daylight hours of this winter are making it even harder to pull off, since it’s freezing and / or dark most of the time.

Still, I’m intent on celebrating and releasing 2014, and trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t before I get too crazy in my dreaming and scheming for 2015.

So, a few things I learned:

• There’s nothing like the power of community, friends, family and LOVE. I may be fully competent to pull off all kinds of stuff mostly by my own big girl self,  but the reality is....life is SO MUCH BETTER with peeps!
  
  

Last year came with some really big and hard to deal with stuff, and I feel so blessed to have been surrounded by people who loved and lifted up me and my kids through it all. 

• 2014 has also been a year of figuring out a lot about relationships, like: 

• * How to navigate parenting teens. They’re like full size adults and totally capable of all kinds of grown up concepts and tasks, which is awesome. But, they’re still kids and have a whole lotta hormones, moods, and frontal lobe development still going on. (To be fair, I am full of hormones and moods as well, but I think my frontal lobe is as good as it’s going to get…)

• * I’m also learning how to be in a true partnership ~ as in a relationship based on both having a partner and being one~ and that’s HUGE! It requires trust, vulnerability, patience and all sorts of things that I do not find easy, but I’m also finding the benefits are totally worth it.
  

      There should really be a pamphlet on partnerships handed out with marriage applications, or better yet, given in to kids in high schools because it seems like a lot of people, like myself, make it well into adulthood with no clue as to how to do this.

• All of this relationship stuff comes with all kinds of lessons within lessons within lessons, such as:

•  * Good Communication is pretty much the most important and very best thing ever….like for real….it can get you through all kinds of hard stuff, which life is gonna give you anyway, and it’s a lot easier to find your way past when you can communicate.
  

• As I mentioned, I like dreaming and scheming~ I also like making things happen. And I've learned that brainstorming ideas and planning possibilities generally has to be followed by some action, even if it's tiny. 
  

      I might not get to everything on my list, but I’m learning to go easy on myself over that. Life happens and sometimes it's in direct opposition to my plans~ but I did manage some pretty cool stuff, and I’m convinced that if I didn’t elaborate on paper, try even when it wasn’t perfect, and surround myself with positive people, none of it would happen at all. 

I know there are about a billion and fifty more lessons, but these have been foremost in my mind. They all lead me to places I want to be, the people I want to be with, and the ways I want to keep growing in the New Year.

Now that the holiday madness is quieting down, I’m starting to see late nights with notebooks, colorful pens and my wonderful 2015 Shining Year Planner, mapping out my next schemes and ideas. I get the feeling it’s going to be a very good year.

OK, so I think I love the  Art Every Day month challenge. I'm a little over a week into my attempts, and so far, so good!

I've pretty much done something artsy-ish every day, and even completed a few things. 

Best of all, I'm having a whole lotta fun creating all kinds of stuff. 

Here are a few of my week 1 projects....

My playground has included acrylics, watercolor pencils, markers and colored pencils as well as some frou frou baked goods using apples and walnuts from my own back yard~ Those were quickly devoured. 

I also attempted some fancy ribbon embroidery which isn't shown either because, well....let's just say that learning elegant stitchery takes time, and my first attempts are too painful for public viewing.

The painting, drawing and coloring are my own designs and the mandala is from The Big Girl's Little Coloring Book. (Such a cool book~ I totally recommend it!)

While I didn't really have to force myself to make art, I did have to remind myself. I mean, life is busy, and in all honesty, without the incentive of completing a challenge, making time to create stuff may have been pushed aside. 

What's great is that the creativity seems to be building on itself because I have SO MANY MORE projects in mind! This week I'm hoping to try decoupage in a non-frilly / non-formal, non-Victorian looking usage. I've started brainstorming a holographic vision board, I have an idea for a beaded purple velvet bag, I'll certainly make more culinary art goodness and I'll most likely take another shot at ribbon embroidery in the hopes that my skills improve with practice. Oh, and I have polymer clay, and shrink plastic and........ Yep. I love this!

It's Thanksgiving Month, and while it may be a big ole cliche, I'm feeling especially blessed these days. How could I not be? 
Here are some things I am especially grateful for right now...

Life is good, indeed!

So, it's November, and while I know that the upcoming frenzy of holidays offers more than enough in the way of challenges, I'm thinking that I am up for a challenge of a different kind. The fun kind that is. 

November is National Novel Writing Month, and although my offspring and myself have thoroughly enjoyed this intense writing experience in past years, none of us are feeling at all up for pushing ourselves to write 50,000 words in 30 days this year. While I'm not up for it, I'm mentioning it because if you are ready for a kick in the pants with writing, I totally recommend giving it a go. Even if you end up with a bunch of complete nonsense, your writing muscles will be wayyyyyy stronger after all that discipline.

Buuuuut, November also happens to be Art Everyday Month~ a challenge which has some nice loosey goosey rules, which even the creator of the program acknowledges are made for breaking. Now, that's right up my alley. Yep, I'm in.

I'm a few days late in getting started, but it just so happens that I have created a few things already in the way of photography and art journal entries. That helps, so I don't feel like a total late start slacker. 

Now, for the rest of the month, I'll be consciously attempting to create something I can call "art" every day. I am hoping to do a lot more painting and drawing, taking pictures and maybe even some sculpting, but I'm pretty sure that my definition of art will end up flexible enough to include food and who knows what else. 

What's super cool is that our new house still has a whole lotta blank wall space, so this is a perfect way to make it fill it up and make this place feel even more like home.

My Girl Child is excited to join me part of the way on the journey, and I'll be encouraging the Boy in doing some form of art that is not on a screen as well. (It was much easier when they were younger.....and I at least had the illusion of having some control...sigh...)

Anyhoo, I'll be posting some of my creations here and on my Facebook page, at least the ones I feel are fit for public viewing.

If you're inclined to be artsy or writer-ish this month, I'd love to hear and see what you've been up to as well. So, please feel free to share!

Happy November!

It was nearly midnight, and my children would not stop laughing. I barely even minded that I was the source of their laughter because the stories they were telling were so darn funny (even if not entirely accurate.)

The three of us cackled to the point of teary eyed delirium as they described their versions of childhood memories.

“Remember when the biggest threat ever was that we’d have to go to school?”

They launch into a tale of me pretending to call the local elementary school to inquire about enrolling my Boy Child while they cried “No, please, Noooooooooooo!”

I don’t exactly remember this instance, although I do recall driving by the aforementioned school very, very slowly while staring at it as the two little voices in the carseats behind me quivered“What are you doing?”.

“Just... thinking……” I left a dramatic pause at the end for effect, and it worked.

“We’ll be good Mama! We promise! We don’t want to go to school!”

Maybe I’m horrible, but I still crack up just thinking about it.

Now I never told these kids that school was a bad place. They did however notice the school bus on the road at nearly 3 pm.

“Are those kids just getting home from school?!?!”

“Yep.”

“When did they get there?”

“Before you woke up.”

They had woken up when they were ready, as they did most days, climbed into a nest of cozy blankets and listened to stories read aloud until we were hungry.

After eating, they spent their day on family projects, learning about and caring for animals, and followed their own interests any number of ways; building forts and fairy houses, writing elaborate stories, making up worlds, inventing things, playing games, creating art, exploring nature in our woods and creek, and pursuing knowledge in whatever they were curious about at the time. They were often in pajamas, or just as likely in a cape or costume.

It really was an awesome childhood. They knew it then, and I’m so thankful that even as teenagers, they know and appreciate it now.

But lately I’ve found myself not only nostalgic, but lamenting the loss of those days. It isn’t so much that time has passed, although looking at them, it is clear that they are no longer children, but big teenagers getting ready to make their own ways in the world.

Knowing that they are in their last years of preparation before they fly free in the world is definitely a big thing to swallow, but even harder is the seeming lack of time and mental energy that I feel I have to spend with them now in the limited years we have left.

Thankfully, I became a single mom when they were at ages that were fairly self sufficient, but still….They may not have needed me to make them sandwiches or read them stories anymore, but I was used to being a really involved homeschool madre.

Now that I work so many hours to keep the ship afloat, I don’t have nearly as much left to come up with, let alone execute the awesome things we used to do together. I have a great job, but it takes a LOT of mental energy, and my brain feels pretty maxed out some days, and other days, it's straight up mush.

Thankfully, my offspring are surrounded by a community of awesome peeps, because that also makes life so much easier and richer, but still….I miss having the mental fortitude to come up with a bazillion project, field trip and other fun life learning ideas, not to mention the physical energy to build, craft and create all the time.

I actually started to write a post about what I missed most about homeschooling days past, but luckily, before I even got a paragraph in, I realized that I needed to tell myself to shut my own pie hole.

I’ve still got a really good deal going as far as life, and I’ve seen more and more in the last few years, that what I focus on is what grows. Instead of listing the top 10 things that are really hard about homeschooling as a single mom, or writing about how much I miss those happy days of playing, I know that I’ll probably be a lot happier if I put that energy into finding things that will work for us with the situation we now have on hand.

This morning, my giant teenagers climbed on my bed and we looked at amazing images of animals in utero on my laptop, and then a collection of before and after photos of caterpillars and moths. We were eating peanut brittle the whole time, and it led to a query on how we could make walnut brittle with our latest harvest. Yes. We’re still homeschooling.

I’ve also remembered that we have a few science kits just waiting to be opened~ why not invite some friends over to mix chemicals?

We can also plan some adventures to museums, historical spots, or even cheesy tourist traps near our out of town family and friends during our time free from classes and work around the holidays.

We have art supplies galore and a kitchen full of food~ all sorts of ingredients for exploring and playing together.

It feels a lot better and makes me a lot happier to be scheming than lamenting, that’s for sure. And I think we will all benefit from that.

Not to mention how many more fun things we’ll be likely to do if we’re focused in that direction.

Even if I don’t have as much free time or energy to put into our happy homeschool as I once did, I do still have plenty of ideas. So do my kids, and between us, we can be pretty darn creative about figuring out how to make stuff happen.

My kids are learning in all sorts of places and from all sorts of people these days, but heck yeah, we’re still homeschooling. I really wouldn't want it any other way.

Journal in my lap, coffee cup in one hand and purple writing pen in the other, I’m soaking up the quiet of a morning that feels like autumn. Even though the neighborhood is awake and chattering, all of my nocturnal household is still sleeping, so it still feels almost like silence. These moments where no one wants anything from me are worth skipping sleep for.

A friend asked me the other day if I’m still writing. As I’m randomly clearing my head on paper, trying to start the day with gratitude, and to process some of life’s questions without over thinking them, I realize that I’ve not finished, let alone published a single piece of writing over the entire summer.

I’d like to say I took a summer sabbatical. I’ve always liked the sound of that… “Sorry, I won’t be able to do that (insert whatever thing someone wants from me here)... I’ll be on sabbatical.”

Although that word does sound fabulous, it kind of implies that one is getting a paid rest. Or a rest at the least. But restful would not be an adequate description of my summer.

Time off was not on the agenda. Moving on was.

Since May, I’ve packed up my home of 11 years, the place my children spent the majority of their formative childhood years and put it on the market. I dealt with cleaning and showings and offers and counter offers and more paperwork than seems possible.

I’ve found homes for my sweet goats and chicken, some of whom have been a part of my life almost as long as my Boy Child, and all of whom were loved.

I sold our house and moved my family and their lifetime’s accumulation of stuff, driving my big 24 foot moving truck with Sacajawea painted on the side and seemingly no shocks into the night.

I’ve gone through roller coasters of legal nonsense and headaches that cost ridiculous amounts of time, money and pain.

I held our beloved dog and good friend as he took his last breath. Then dug for hours in the night, and laid him to rest by moonlight.

I didn’t do any of these things alone though. I had peeps. Awesome kids, super kind partner, loving friends and supportive community.

With them by my side, I also did lots of other things that made my life feel full, but in good ways. There were summer concerts, big & small, camping in lovely locations, water parks, meeting my partner’s parents, a couple of quick trips to pretty places with nice people, and getting settled in our wonderful new home.

It’s felt a lot like a roller coaster with highs of awesome good stuff and lows of really friggen hard things. The ups and downs can be sort of overwhelming at times, but as soon as I start to think my life is intense, I get on Facebook for 5 minutes and see that I am far from alone. Life, apparently is intense.

A friend who’s still in her 30s is dealing with breast cancer. She's not a smoker or drinker, but a homeschool mom with 4 kids. Another friend has a son almost the same age as my Boy Child, and while I am flipping out about my kid going to the store without permission and getting into tussles, her boy has spent months in a hospital bed in pain that doctors can’t fix. And then there’s a friend with a marriage that you have visibly seen the love in, who confesses that life has broken them to the point of separation.

How the friggen heck does this stuff happen?

It’s incomprehensible that the same life that hands out the laughter and friendship and smiles on the faces of our children also hands these crazy and unimaginable intensities. But whether I can understand it or not, it still happens.

So many of the things in my own little life that I pondered and over analyzed, I also started to write about, but never finished. Of the 9 drafts that I started over the summer, I only finished one, and then I somehow managed to delete it in a formatting error with no back up. Ironically, it was an essay on abundance.

But, moving on….that’s the theme here. I guess we all just keep moving on. That’s the beauty of it, and that’s the oppressive part of it. I wonder how we do it, and the only answer I can think of comes from a children’s book called “We’re Going on A Bear Hunt” which I have read aloud 9,475,682 times. (There is no actual hunting and no bears are harmed in the making of the book :-) )

“We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. We have to go through it.”

And we do.

As we were decorating the grave of our sweet old dog friend, My Girl Child pointed out how exhausting grief is, but that nothing stops~ the world just keeps moving on.

If we're lucky, we have people by our side to love us when we are grieving and who we can also love up when they need it. Having people to laugh and cry with is what keeps us moving.

I’m more grateful than ever for those smiles and laughs and all the huge love that surrounds me.

And I’m super grateful when I see the sun shining on the shoulders of a sick kid who hasn’t seen it in too long, and when I read the courageous words of a mother who is planning her scarf wardrobe to cover her head that she knows will soon be hairless (and whom I think could rock a neon pink wig) and when I see a photo of a date night with the faces of people who you can tell still love each other no matter how hard life gets.

These people don’t know it, but they are giving strength and courage and hope to so many of us who witness their stories and hardships and triumphs, whether up close or from afar. When you don’t talk or see each other on a regular basis, you might not realize the complicated ways that your stories are woven together with other people.

When my friend asked me about writing, I had been selfishly thinking that I should get back to it because it helped me heal and process. She told me that I should get back to it because stories helped other people.

And they do. I don’t mean my stories that roam and ramble and often have no discernible point, but all of our stories of being stuck and of realizing that sometimes you can’t go over it or under it~ Our universal stories of finding a way to go through it, and eventually moving on.

I woke up the other morning and learned that Maya Angelou had died. 

I hadn't even had coffee. I hadn't even gotten out of bed. Of course, I know that switching on a device and plugging into Facebook before my feet even touch the ground is not usually the best way to start a day, but I had done it, and it started the day in a most solemn way.

My foggy brain recalled that I had meant to post one of her poems back in April, but I couldn't honestly remember if I had done it. That poem, Still I Rise, is something I've repeated in my mind a lot in recent weeks, but I had no recollection of whether or not I'd written about it.

That led me to realize that I couldn't actually recall the last thing I had written here at all. 

Upon looking, I discovered that while I did post my favorite Maya poem, I hadn't posted anything at all for the entire month of May.

Oops.....

Yeah. That's a big boofah in the world of writing~ you're supposed to be regular and consistent with creating content, and blah, blah, blah. Writers are supposed to write, but life happens, you know? And I'm willing to bet most people understand that.

I did write some in my journal and in random notebooks~ just nothing that ever needs to be seen by anyone else's eyeballs. My words seemed raw and vulnerable, and they kept rollings towards a roller coaster of emotional whack-o-ness that was not fit for public display. 

To be honest, it just felt like a downer to keep going on about things that sucked~ like my words were stuck on worries and stresses and things I really had no control over. Not where I wanted to be and certainly not anywhere I wanted to invite others.

Writing can sometimes be one of the most therapeutic ways for me to process, but I really didn't feel like sharing and bumming other people (or myself) out with the hard side of life.

I realized though, that I've been capturing lots and lots of pictures of the awesome stuff that has also been filling my spring days. The good stuff, of which there is plenty.

Photos are intentional reminders of the moments I want to remember~  a symbolic way of choosing joy and love over fear and pain.

So~ this is how I missed May....