Re-posted from my site the parenting advice-o-pedia, Minti.

So this morning I was going to write some advice down about dealing with the morning get-to-school rush, when my own cleverly orchestrated morning came crashing to a complete stop. Cate wanted to wear a dress that was slit up to her waist (the slit had torn to immodest proportions.) When I said she had to pick something else, it turned into a full blown tempter tantrum complete with “I wish you were not my mother!!!” and “I wish I’d never been born.” This was followed by her older sister waking up and immediately crying because, “There is no peace in this house and I need a peaceful morning to get centered!!!”

Needless to say, my girls are emotional.

Because I’m the proud mother of a couple of psychic-sponges, I’ve amassed a lovely collection of picture books that help children deal with emotions. In fact, I quoted from the first one to help Cate when I dropped her off at school. “Today was a hard day. Tomorrow will be better.”

Hope these books make your today, and your tomorrows, better! Read the rest of this entry »

Aqualung: Strange and Beautiful
Dreamy, melodic…makes you want to be melancholically in love with someone so intense you forget to eat anything other than artisan bread and strawberries.

The Dante Club: A Novel
Okay, so I had to to take notes on the back page of my paperback in order to keep track of the broad cast of characters , but now I’m so into it I can hardly put down this sophisticated literary mystery.

The Piggle I’ve started this and torn in out so many times I’ve probably knit three of these puppies. A knitting pal just told me how to string a “lifeline” thread through each set of lace repeats so that if I make a mistake I only have to unravel a few lines. Phew! Catie better wear this hat every day for a year!

It’s nearly the end of March….how’s the body love month going?

For myself, I’ve had a hard time remembering to use my mantra, “I love my body as I love my child.” I usually only remember when I’m doing something heinous, like eating a hostess cupcake (100% artificial ingredients!) It doesn’t stop me from eating the rest of the creamy filling, but it is making me pause and think about how I treat my very self. I don’t expect to keep up all the habitude practices I try on this year, but I will keep working on my mantra.

I can’t let a month of body love go by with out kibitzing about my very favorite girlie products. So here’s a list of things I love, just for the record.

MISO PRETTY CASSIS BUBBLE BATH. Oh so luxerious! Mounds of fluffy bubbles with a distinct but not overpowering scent. I love gazing at the bottle which has some of the best art graphics around these days. (The artist has a big new gig–the spring displays hanging all around target.) This is just one great product from the kitschy and empowering Blue Q.

BURTS BEES Grapefruit & Sugarbeet Conditioner. Keeps this natural redhead (wink wink) moisturized and shiny, with natural ingredients to boot.

ZIA MOISTURIZER with Sunscreen. Just a tiny bit spendy, and available at most whole foods type grocery stores. The non-sunscreen one is too heavy — don’t buy the wrong one. Feels so good on my no-longer-twenty-something skin.

ALBA LIP TINT in Sienna. The Magpie Girl doesn’t go anywhere without it. I’ve got one in my the pocket of my vintage car coat, one in my Queen Bee satchel, and one in the pocket of my favorite jeans. A glorified lip balm with just the right amount of color.

AVALON ORGANICS BODY LOTION. Such great scents and really creamy with a quick absorbtion. My favorite? Lavendar or peppermint. I’ve got a bottle on my desk right now!

Much love to all you in body recovery! Stay tuned for next months habitude…I’ll give you a hint, it will save you gas money

Take a look at this picture. Okay, ignored the permmed mullet for a minute and notice the size 5 body. This is me at about thirteen. I thought I was fat.

For as long as I can remember my body has been my enemy. It was what got me molested. (I can remember trying to wear shirts that buttoned to the neck to that the person who molested me wouldn’t be tempted by my developing breasts.) It was what made me attractive (or not) to boys. (I started dieting when I was 13 because I thought I should stay a size 3. Tiffany Frank figured out how many sit ups we’d have to do to burn off one of the chocolate caramel bars we were selling as a school fundraisers, and we’d eat them at break then all do sit ups in the empty classrooms.) It was what made me a hip, powerful woman — or not. (Hip, powerful girls played sports – girly old fashioned girls sucked at sports and were doomed to a life involving home ec.) I shoved it into pencil thin jeans, laying on the bed to zip them up; filled it with chocolate chip cookie dough binges when I was sad; and forced it to keep achieving and achieving by fueling it with diet coke through riduclous extracurricular activities and late night study sessions.

As I grew older, I became more sophisticated about how I talked about body image, and diet, and the insipid consumer culture that said happiness was a size 0 and plus size was a size 9. Still, my body was foreign to me – at best silent, and at worst a conspirator for my own unhappiness.

When my first child was stillborn, and my second delivery required an unplanned c-section and resulted in a child who lost weight and wouldn’t nurse, I became convinced – my body was out to get me. The separation between mind/spirit and body that had started as a necessity to survive the abuse had morphed into a permanent division that ruled a very large part of my world. The diagnosis of migraines as a chronic condition just confirmed my early assessment. The evidence was undeniable, my body was conspiring against me.

I am rarely happy with my body and I am appalled at how much time and creative mental energy I spend on this issue. Food is always on my mind. My weight is a near constant disappointment. I feel guilty all the time. I never go through a single day where I don’t feel bad about something I’ve eaten, some exercise I’ve not done or not done enough of, some item of clothing that I can’t wear. For instance, every day on my way to work I walk by this adorable boutique and think, “I can’t wear a single item in there.” They stop at size 9. It’s not a shop for petites or anything, it’s just a regular Seattle boutique. (I’m a size 12.) Or here’s another, today I lifted weights and walked on the treadmill, but I’m going about my day with this thought hovering over my head like a cartoon dialogue balloon: “Maybe I should have done yoga instead.” It’s mentally exhausting and embarrassingly ridiculous.

Last week, in yet another show about dieting, I heard Oprah say that she had wasted a large part of her 30’s worrying about food and weight. I’m thirty-seven. Only three years to go before I am undoubtedly, irrevocably ‘grown up.’ Will I still be carrying the neuroses of a thirteen year old? Will I still automatically convert calories into sit ups? Will I still waste precious minutes feeling guilty? Will my body remain my enemy?

I am so tired of being stuck in Jr. High.

A year or two after I was diagnosed with chronic daily migraines (status migranosis) a new friend, Christine Painter, recommended that I read Voice Lessons by Nancy Mairs and What Her Body Thought from Susan Griffith. Mairs taught me that I do not have a body. She writes, “I have a body. I am a body.” Griffith reminded me that “My story is immersed in my body.” (p. 7) This is not a gnostic exercise I cannot separate my “self” from my physical being. I am my body. If I hate my body, I hate myself. If I love my body, I love myself.

I am nearly 40 years old and I still do not understand this. “I am a body”. It’s is a thought that echoes with truth and memory. It shimmers like a mirage just out of reach. I’d like to get there. I’d like to understand. I’d like to bring my body back to myself. I’d like to be my body, and to love my bodyself as I love my motherself and my creativeself and my womanself.

That’s the habitude for the month, I think. Love your body. How shall we proceed?

Update: to find out how this experiement went, follow along by reading posts about body love in the Habitudes category!

Good Morning Body,

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….

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

“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.

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!

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.

As you may know by now, Jen and I are constantly in the current of an on-going mutual love fest. Today she posted about the life-changing ‘writing’ retreat we embarked on last Summer. It’s fabulously written and you really must go over and have a gander. But the main reason I’m waxing poetic about Jen today is that I just got her amazing Zine in the mail. Beginnings is a full-color, hand-drawn, wisdom-and-wit-drenched glossy piece of goodness guaranteed to inspire the most stuck amongst us. Go order right now while you still can!

Without giving too much away, just let me say that one of the big themes in Beginnings is to dream big…Mondo Beyondo big. I tried very hard to be a good little girl and make my Mondo Beyond list last night – but I fear it might be a little tame in comparison to Jen’s heart-stopping list here. But still, it marks where my dreams are at in this moment, so I’ll Polaroid that here and now for future reference.

MONDO BEYONDO 2007

LIVE in Italy long enough that it feels like home.

TRAVEL each year to a far off destination until we feel like international pros.

SPEAK-TEACH in venues all over the place about art, spirituality, and all things Magpie-y and Urban Abbess-ish.

GET OVER my body issues and be at healthy weight once and for all. (actually this feels the most beyondo)

KICK ASS at being one or all of the following: Surfer. Pool Hustler. Yoga Guru.

SING my lungs out in front of a big crowd (and sound fantastic…maybe a little like her or her.)

GAZE out my apartment at Central Park before going to the Met to spend a day writing in the café overlooking the sun-filled sculpture garden.

FIND my long lost friend gay-best-guy-friend from college and be deliriously, platonically in love again.

INDULGE one week a year in a fabulous all-by-myself (or with one perfect partner) writing/creating retreat.

BE FEATURED in one fantastic interview with Ira Glass, or produce one fabulous story with him and the TAL crew.

EAT fabulous all-organic high-flavor food with Anne Lamott and a gaggle of girlfriends on a regular basis.

WEAR only handmade orginals like this, or this every day of my life.

ADOPT one fabulous child (or better yet a set of siblings) from anywhere improvrished and scary.

What are you dreaming about today? Put the link to your Mondo Beyond in the comments!