Posts from — February 2007
I wanna a guy, just like the guy, who married dear old mum.
On this, the last day of our February habitude I would like to extend a little love to my dear old Dad.
John Mee started working at Peterbilt Motors when he was in his early 20’s. It was his first white collar job, and his second job after high school. His first post-high school job was as a quality inspector at a factory that made cans. He could do his job in about 15 minutes out of every hour. The rest of the day was just wasted away. This was back in the 60s when some living in the San Francisco bay area could work a blue collar job and buy their first home. My parents first mortgage payment was $220 a month! When my mom’s job went sour, they decided she would quit working and he would get a better job. Time to move up.
Peterbilt started John out as a junior draftsman. Over the years he produced good-quality work, and steadily improved both his skills and positions. When I was in my later years of elementary school, my dad went back to college, working full-time and attending classes on nights and weekends. Some of his course work could be waived by writing long papers showing he had equivalent “real-life experience.” In order to complete his degree more quickly he wrote a number of these on one of the early versions of a home computer, the screen glowing with green letters late into the night. I remember the paper he wrote to fulfill his ‘art’ requirement was a history of stained glass — a hobby he did in his ‘free’ time. It is a matter of great pride to me that my mother graduated from college the same day I graduated from Jr. High and my father graduated from college the same year I graduated from high school. (1987)
Over the years my father has worked at a number of jobs in three different states — but they have all been with Peterbilt Motors or its parent company, Paccar. Today, on his 62nd birthday, John Mee retired from the company he had worked for his entire professional life.
My Dad at his 40th Wedding Anniversary vow renewal party with my brother Johnny (the third).
So Dad, on this your big day, I send out all my love to you. Thank you for doing the job that clothed and fed me, that got me the black terrier-poodle mix when I was seven and taught me to ski when I was 12. For drawing truck parts, first by hand, then by a room full of computer towers, and then on a laptop until I got to see the Grand Canyon, Old Faithful, Disneyland and every Redwood and beach in California. Thank you for the projects that bought me my first car (a white VW bug) and the second one after my sister totaled the first (a virtual tank — a ‘57 Ford Fairlane. Safe-T!) Thank you for putting up with good bosses (Hi Virgil!) and hard bosses (who shall remain nameless) until you got me a Summer job in the filing room via your influence, and a college degree via your earnings. Thank you, Dad, for all your years of dedication and service. Some will say it was to Peterbilt, but I know it was really to us.
All of my love,
Rachelle
P.s. I know my Dad will see this because he reads my blog everyday! I love you Dad!
Free Love to Me
Good Morning Body,
Welcome to the day! I love you very much and I think you are sultry and curvy and beautiful. I really want to treat you lovingly and with respect. I want to take good care of you today. So, there will be water and enjoyable exercise, fresh air and fresh food. I wont make you feel slugish with or lousy with too much sugar and caffeine. I will respect your words when you tell me you are hungry or full. I will be a good listener. and when you are tired I will let you rest.
I love you.
Rachelle
I’m not sure what all this is, but I think it might be a clue to next month’s habitude.
And so may this:
Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works
I’ll let you know….
Things I Like
A little bit of joy in our entryway.
Daily Quote
My favorite of the the favorite quotes listed in Where Women Create. This one from an artist who wears a construction tool belt while she works, Jill Schwartz.
“The barn’s burnt down. Now I can see the moon.”
-Masahide
Time to Light Things
I had to go to the ER yesterday for a migraine. I’ve only had it get that bad once before, but it’s very very scary. The morphine didn’t actually make the pain go 100% away and I’ve still been achy and in bed all day today. … and did I mention afraid? Definitely struggling with being afriad…as in “what if this doesn’t go away?” afraid.
My neighbor, who makes chocolate among having other amazing and love-worthy traits, Elizabeth, took me to the ER yesterday. She says I have a lot of amazing red priestessy in my head chakra and that there is dark energy trying to hold it back. She says the old days aren’t working any more. She says I need more “F-You’s” in my life and it’s okay to tell people to go away and shut up. She even said I could say F-you to her if what she was saying wasn’t making sense.
It does make sense.
I just don’t know exactly what to do about it.
Anyway, prayers and lighted candles and all manners of helpful energy sent my way would be very VERY much appreciated.
Did I mention I’m scared?
Creative Spaces
“I am complete mistress of my domain. I walk into my studio sometimes just to take a deep breath, and I feel anchored to my earth.”-Anna Corba
mixed media/collage artist
I’ve been slowly making my way through Where Women Create: Inspiring Work Spaces of Extraordinary Women, a beautiful and helpful book about women artists.
The photographs are average, but interesting. I always like peeking into someone’s creative space. But it’s the words of the artists that make it such a helpful and encouraging read. Some of the women are still doing all their work in the kitchen and putting away their art each night in order to make dinner! And many of them, who now have lovely studios, reflect back to the times where they found their creative voice while working out of a tiny plastic box that they moved from place to place. One even keeps her art supplies in the dishwasher of her and her husbands tiny city apartment!
In honor of places women create — and in deep thanksgiving for the privlidge and a dedicated work space — I’ve added some pictures of my studio on my flicker page. If you watch it as a slide show, it looks nicer but you miss the handy quotes.
If you click on each one you’ll find some quotes from the artists in the book as well as some quips from me about why I love the room I call my own.
Killer Hill 2007
The weekend before last we decided to haul our coughing crew up to Leavenworth for two days of snow play. We booked a room at the Best Western and the kids immediately went gonzo over the charm of the ice machine and the joy of a pool that’s housed for the winter under a giant steamy tent. Already our mini vacation was a hit and we hadn’t even left the hotel!
Now, when I was a kid “playing in the snow” meant driving up a mountain in our camper and spending a few days hiking up ice-slick hillsides, then hurling ourselves down the mountain on an over-inflated inner tube or one of those maddening plastic disks that spins around like the teacup ride at Disneyland. When I was a small child, I enjoyed this very much – probably because my parents hauled the sled up the hill for me. But as I got older the inevitable crashes became more painful, the thought of the church youth group watching me climb up the mountain in padded snow pants became intimidating, and finally, my dad and I crashed the toboggan at “killer hill” in Lake Tahoe, requiring a trip to the ER and a leg brace (for my dad, that is. He ripped the tendons in his leg.) To top it all off, I fell down a granite hillside while hiking and developed a pretty resounding fear of heights. (Paul would like me to point out here that when you are inner tubing down the mountain you are actually only six inches off the ground, but I call it ‘heights’ because you are FLINGING YOURSELF DOWN THE SIDE OF A MOUNTAIN. )
All that to say that the whole “let’s take the kid’s sledding” thing was a parental obligation and not something I was wholeheartedly looking forward to.
When we got to the inner tubing hill I realized that times, they are a ‘changing. No only were the inner tubes decked out with slings so your but didn’t drag in the snow, but they also had handles to grip on to, and the best part of all…wait for it…was a rope tow that hauled you up the mountain while you sat back on your tube and chilled. Needless to say, I was considerably shored up by knowing that I wasn’t going to be hauling tubes up the hill for four hours, but I was still nervous about flying down the hill. The first run quickly dissolved this nervousness as it became apparent that the gentle slope had been carefully engineered to feel fast and scary, while in fact being perfect banked for safety and an easy slow down and dismount at the end.
So about my sixth time up the mountain, I’m kicking back in my inner tube as the rope tow is hauling me up the side of the hill and I’m thinking about what a great post this is going to be …all about the The Three-Martini Mama way of taking the kids sledding and how you can practically sip a hot toddy while you are enjoying the scenery and being pulled up the slope. I’m literally writing the post in my head when I hear the kids who run the rope tow say something like “I’m not really liking how this dismount slope is working.” No sooner are the words out of the kid’s mouth than my inner tube hits the edge of the slope, flips over and deposits me head-first onto the smooth concrete-hard surface of the ice bowl that is the end of the tow rope. My head makes a resounding crack and everything goes black, and then stars, and all I can think of is what a mother of a migraine I’m going to have. The rope tow kids, who are bored stiff with running the tow line on the kiddie hill, are STOKED to have an injury occur on their shift and are suggesting that they call Ski Patrol when I finally get my wits about them and beg them to put the radio down, because the last thing I want is to be hauled off the inner tube hill on a stretcher behind a snowmobile with my big yellow neck brace proclaiming ‘biggest dork in the world.”
I spent the rest of the day taking pictures of the kids going laughingly down the hill with their dad, while simultaneously popping Tylenol and doing gentle neck stretches to see if I could still move my head. (Answer: not so much.) When we got back to the hotel, I tried to book a massage, but it was the Interdenominational Christian Ladies Retreat (I kid you not) and needless to say the massage therapist was booked. Thankfully there was the hot tub, and lots of hot water in the shower, not to mention the teeniest tiniest gin and tonic followed by one or two demoral and maybe a shot of rum in my hot chocolate.
It’s only been a week and look! I can almost turn my head!
(I would like to take this time to apologize in advance to my children for having two of the most athletically inept parents in the world. When you’re dad’s claim to athletic fame is a year of squash during grad school and your mom gets injured on the sledding hill, you really shouldn’t bank on sports scholarships for college.)
Mid Winter Blues
I have not written for many, many days because at least one person in my household has been sick, or in pain, or both, everyday for the past three weeks. Most the time this was me, because my botox wears off two weeks before the FDA will let me have another round and because I got the flu. (Really, there’s no one wimpier in this house than me.) Cate got the flu too, and managed to be cute and flushed for 48 hours before completely recovering. Eden got it twice and on the second round she spent a full four days lying on the couch. And did I mention that it’s mid-winter break, a random week off from school that our district uses to torture working mothers. Arghhhhhh!
Look, February is a hard month, especially in the Northwest, where the sun tends to hide until the end of March. It’s grey and it’s wet and the wind is blowing and you’re definitely sick of the sweater you got for Christmas and you start to think in vain of your every-so-easy flip flops and the sweet little swishy skirt you bought last August on close-out at Old Navy.
When I moved to Washington from California my college orientation leader told us “never change your haircut, your major, or your boyfriend in February.” It’s good advice.
So what can you do during the end of winter dull drums? Here’s my favorite list:
1) Get thee to a tanning booth. No one will judge you if you get a little sun kissed and feel warm for 15 minutes a week.
2) Priceline a hotel. I don’t know about where you live, but in Seattle $80 will get you a five-star hotel with a hot tub, an indoor pool, HBO, a very fluffy bed, and the Sunday paper.
3) Use a lip balm that smells like pina coloadas. I like this one in Coconut Cream“> from Alba.
4) Ditch your regular body lotion for sunscreen. MMMMmmmm smells like Summer!
5) Turn on all the lights in the house whenever you are home. While you’re at it start swapping regular incandescent for full-spectrum light bulbs.
6) Reserve a campsite, yurt or cabin on-line with your state park. Look forward to June! We’re going here in August.
7) And my very favorite….run the tub with lots of Bliss Bubbles“>, put the laptop on the toilet seat, and watch your favorite TV show online. Most of the major stations have streaming video of their top shows. My favorite? Bones at Fox on Demand.
Happy surviving!
This is for all the single people…
A blessing today from my other life as the Urban Abbess. Happy Valentine’s Day!
Givin’ it up for Lisa Loeb
Today I had to pick up Eden mid-day to go to the orthodontist. I was gearing up to be grumpy about leaving the studio mid-project, when I remember that it’s the very first day of the Free Love Give Away habitude. The anticipation of giving people little surprises every day for a month perked me right up! I immediately started scheming what today’s give away could be. (To read more Free Love Give Away Stories, click on the pink heart in the masthead above.)
After a long Apple vs. Microsoft debate, my hubby the Microserf gave me a Zune for Christmas. I immediately subscribe to the all-you-can-eat monthly service and downloaded approximately 5,300 songs. Last night I spent some precious free time shuffling songs around and creating killer playlists. Thankfully, my car has an mp3 jack built in, so I plugged in and started grooving. When I got to the school it dawned on me that a good Free Love Give Away would be to let Eden pick the music for our cross-town trek. This wasn’t too self-sacrificial as the girls have a pretty killer playlist just for them, and it has some sweet tunes like Better Together, quirky numbers like Stickshifts and Safteybelts, and even some hunkering-down-for-a-good-time riffs like Anything’s Possiblefrom drool-fest Jonny Lang.
Eden opted for none of these. She chose Lisa Loeb.
Now normally, Lisa Loeb would seem like a fine choice. I loved her in grad school and once sat close enough to touch her at a Vancouver concert – seats Kami had scored us by standing in line all day elbowing people out of the way and quite possibly promising the doorman something special if he opened up our side first. At the time my own Lisa Loeb devotion was so severe that Paul would only let Kami and I put on her Tails CD’s if we promised not to sing along. But Eden, well Eden has taken that devotion to a whole new level, listening to The Way It Really Is is on the kind of permanent repeated usually devoted only to preschool obsessions with The Wiggles. On top of this repeat issue is a small problem with the age-appropriateness of the lyrics. I’m just hoping that Eden isn’t picking up that the first song isn’t really about returning a red dress after wearing it once, but is really an extended metaphor for getting used in a dating relationship.
With self-discipline usually reserved for making myself get on the treadmill each morning, I scrolled through my 10,000 adult-bearable song offerings and found Lisa, offering her to Eden with a smile and cranking up the volume.
She sang all the way to the orthodontist.
Chalk on up for the joy of a Free Love Give Away!
P.s. In case anyone is in doubt of Eden’s older-soul tendency toward the melancholy, this is her favorite song. Why couldn’t she have fallen in love with Lisa’s kids album, Catch the Moon? Here a little sample of it here.
