April 7: Fugitive

I have had so many amazing ideas and memories that I wanted to share. And I've had zero follow-through. I'll work on that. I promise.

In the interim, enjoy some music. It's a dreary April day here. A little warm you up and get you singing along music is in order.

Indigo Girls - Fugitive

March 18: Life's a Beach

There seems to be an unspoken rule when visiting an island that the hired musicians need to play Bob Marley, Jimmy Buffett, or this guy if you are very lucky.

Jack Johnson - You Remind Me of You

March 10: Rejoicing in the Now (Thanks, Spring)

Nothing makes joy more effortless than a Spring preview day. 

Nearly 70 degrees with brilliant blue skies and a few wispy clouds 

Vacation on the horizon if I stand on my tiptoes to glimpse it.

A great song on the radio and the window down.

Yes.

Today is an absolute yes.

Echosmith - Bright

March 3: Transparency

I had a cousin recently pass away at the age of 43 from a sudden heart attack. He left behind a wife and 6 children. It's unconscionable. 

Death brought many visitors to my stoop. Regret. Sorrow. Anger. Confusion. Vulnerability. Psychosomatic symptoms. Tears. Rivers of tears.

It also brought an idea that I have been turning over like a coin in my mind's eye. 

Because our society doesn't create a welcoming space for grief, sorrow, anger...we all have learned our own coping mechanisms for how to appear "ok" when out in public. 

The other day I was grocery shopping and was overcome with a wave of despair. My eyes welled up. I couldn't hold it all in. I was a sea of emotions in the frozen food aisle, and I was doing my very best to stem the tide and pull it all back inside. Make it tidy. Make it small. Make it palatable to anyone else who might need frozen corn. 

And that's when this idea came to me.

I felt as though I were coated in gold leaf. From the outside, I appear to be solid. Luminous. Radiant, even. 

Scrape just below the surface and I am there. The true me dwells there.

She's just hidden beneath what our society values. 

Alison Krauss - Down to the River to Pray

February 14: The Human Heart

This is something I love about the human heart:

It can break in an instant and still beat on with hope and love.

Bonnie Raitt - Angel from Montgomery


Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
   - by William Wordsworth

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;—
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
Shepherd-boy!
Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:—
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
—But there's a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity;
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—
Mighty prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a master o'er a slave,
A presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest—
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never:
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

February 11: FM

Fleetwood Mac.

In concert.

I got to see them.

My cheeks hurt from smiling.

Absolutely stunning night of musicianship, passion, gratitude and wow factor. 

Fleetwood Mac - Never Going Back Again

February 4: Nowhere

Queen - Somebody to Love

January 30 Part 2: Frivolity

AMEN to this!

Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness - Cecilia and the Satellite

January 30: Better Man

There are times where the happenings of the world fascinate me. Snowflakes. The fable of Jack Frost and his artwork on my windows during these cold months. My cat’s whiskers. A leaf lilting down from a tree branch to greet me on a stroll.

Then there are times where my eyes look inward. Where everything that I seek is within me. The external world loses its allure.  

This has been one of those months. And so me being me, I look to the stars. Sure enough. It’s Mercury Retrograde time, people.

I have shared with you that I have been on a journey to teach myself love, and to be love, for the past several years. As I focus that positive energy on myself, I have been shedding some painful stories, and also been able to see with greater clarity some of my past circumstances and how I was sabotaging my ability to receive love in order to support these stories.

Allow me to illustrate with an example:

I have been in relationships with several men who had been dating or married to an anorexic woman prior to finding their way to me.

If I were to meet someone today in this circumstance, I might ask some discerning questions. How did they feel about the situation? What did they do within it? Was the woman anorexic prior to meeting them or did she become anorexic while with them? Did the man have a savior complex? Or enjoy being in a position where they were the rescuer (as they often portrayed themselves)? Did they dream of spandex and flying because I'm my own super hero thank you very much? Did they feel superior because it made them feel healthy to be with someone whose control issues were causing them to wage war on themselves using food as a weapon? Did they try to get her help? How did it change their eating habits to be with her?

There are a bevy of questions and follow-up questions I can imagine asking at this point. Things that even after years with these people I don’t know anything about.

Do you know what I did when I found out these men were with anorexics prior to me?

I felt fat.

I  evaluated my own self worth to these men by one facet of their own pasts. I deemed these women as superior to me because they were undoubtedly thinner than me. And the truth? I sort of waged a war against these women mentally. I hated that they were better than me. Thin being better. 

Forget that they had eating disorders. Forget that I cook like an Italian grandmother and honestly, who doesn’t want to eat at that table? Forget that I am a spectrum of unique and amazing qualities that go so far beyond a number on a scale. Forget all of it.

And then imagine hating on yourself because your current boyfriend had a thinner ex.

I used to sit in the car seat with my thighs clenched together so that they wouldn’t look large to my boyfriend while he drove, in case he glanced over. My stomach was tucked in, thank you very much. Chin above sea level at all times lest I have a double chin.

I shared more bites than I took at every meal. I never ordered dessert. I freaking love dessert.

I am 5’10”. These former women were petite in stature. It is impossible to be petite when you are 5’10” and not a super model (and freaking love dessert). I wore less heeled shoes. My shoulders tended to be rounded. I slouched in chairs. I wished to the heavens that I were petite.

I even dumbed myself down to insure my partner felt superior to me. Smart girls can be so threatening, can’t they?

I asked polite questions and never stopped to consider that I was never asked questions. I demurred in conversations with others. I shoved my opinions into the pit of my stomach where they swam like trapped eels, making me nauseous. I smiled and nodded. A lot.

I made myself smaller in every way possible. In retrospect, I was whittling away me. I was fading to white.

No one asked me to become transparent. I made the choice. I made it because of anorexic girlfriends who were better than me. Because I had no healthy blueprint for what being loved looked like. Because I didn’t feel seen, valued or loved as a child and thus set out to fill the bucket with the hole (that would be my heart) without a clue how that was done. Because of a thirst akin to crossing a desert and needing love more than water. Love was a thirst for me. A terrible thirst.

I clung to loving a myth of my father growing up. I stored that love somewhere inside myself that hurts to this day when I draw up its memory. Then my pre-teen years hit and I gave that “love” to a rock star. Yes, Simon Le Bon became my water. My room was wallpapered in love. He was perfect. Until he married a Victoria's Secret underwear model. Then the person who could tell me I was worth loving was any teen boy within arm’s reach. I went to college and the thirst came with me.

I could not quench that longing. Even when I was in a relationship with “I love you’s” served up hourly, I was cottonmouthed. I didn’t believe in that love. I didn’t trust it. I didn’t receive it. And it wasn’t the love I needed anyway. Not really. It wasn’t life giving. It was a placebo offered up to a girl who needed the real deal.

I was fading to white. If I were a moon, I'd say I spent a great deal of my youth waning. Becoming less and less lit from within.

I am now vivid. And well hydrated, thank you very much.

I am also tenacious as can be about remaining so. Every time a thought strays from this self love, I notice it. I reset. I love. 

I have a tuning fork inside me. It knows perfect pitch. I honor it. I live it.

If you have ever listened to this song, been brought to tears, and agreed with it…sister. I have news for you:

Yes you can. Or better yet. Find yourself. You are spectacular.

Pearl Jam - Better Man

January 23: Light

Sometimes the best way to know that you are a source of light is to be thrown into darkness.

The Be Good Tanyas - The Littlest Birds

January 13: Just This

Tori Amos - Silent All These Years

January 12: Entrepreneurial (and other) Thinking

Happy Monday!

My weekend was spent in the perfect mix of doing nothing, hanging with friends, and accomplishing just enough around the house to not feel completely lazy. If there is a pH to balance, I achieved it!

Friday evening Aria and I watched 42. Now, we are not sporty chics, but I am a huge history lover. And if I can get a version of history via a story (written or filmed), I will gobble it up like spoon fudge. 

I was so glad that we watched this movie in a way that it could be paused. Aria had questions on everything from why Jackie couldn't use the same bathroom as other people to why he'd be driven away in the night when a man threatened him. It was amazing to talk through with her. 

There are historical facts that we know. It is an incredibly different thing to experience them through our children's eyes. She could not believe that our nation would treat people that way. Which, of course, led to discussions on Ferguson and the state of affairs today, including with our immigrant population. It was a powerful experience to watch the movie with her.

I had intended to take down Christmas decorations on Saturday. If you have ever seen my home, you know this does not entail putting a tree in a box and calling it good. I bedazzle my home in holiday decor. I have an entire wall of shelves in my basement dedicated to the Rubbermaid bins and storage necessary to sustain my ornament collection. 

I also have a large streak of sap running along the ceiling of the living room, but that's a story for a different time...

So Saturday was good intentions. But then I discovered that my cable provider was offering free previews of premium channels. So I ended up toe dipping into Showtime's The Affair.

Oh. My. 

It is excellent if you haven't seen it yet. 

I got off the couch long enough to make some Nutella brownies. Procrastibaking. Gotta love it. 

We had dinner and played Clue with friends Saturday evening. (And yes, I brought the brownies with us, along with a great 2011 Joel Gott). I think one of the simplest pleasures is sharing a game with others. Cards, board games, two truths and a lie. I don't care what game it is. I just love experiencing it with others. We had a few kids and a few adults playing. It was wonderful!

Sunday was more The Affair (I didn't finish it and the free premium preview period ended - sob). I also managed to take down every ounce of Christmas from my home.

Which leads me to my entrepreneurial thinking: If a cleaning or even packing / moving business offered a Christmas special, wouldn't you pay someone to pack up Christmas for you?

You point them to your Rubbermaids and various storage accoutrements and they simply take it down?

I'd probably pay a pretty penny to avoid this task. Preparing for Christmas is magical. Selecting a tree in a snowy field. Taking out ornaments and sharing their stories. Stockings on Christmas morning.

Taking down Christmas is bittersweet. And a sincere pain in the keister. The lights are so gorgeous when I wrap the trunk with them. When I am taking them off the tree, they are serpents of doom. My hair gets caught in them (and coated in sap). I end up snapping brittle branches and needles. I teach Aria new swear words in Spanish. It is not elegant.

Anyway, if someone is seeking a great temporary money making scheme: Make an after Christmas special for un-decking the halls. I'll pay you for it.

The house is stark in its natural state. It leaves me feeling both barren and accomplished. I dwell in dichotomy. 

Happy week all!

(I wanted to share Fiona's Container, which is the theme song from The Affair. It wasn't available on Spotify but you can hear it here: Fiona Apple - Container).

Daughter - Landfill

January 8: Winter Beauty

It's so cold that refrigerators (and freezers) are redundant. 

Today I have noted people zipping through the revolving doors into the Box (my work) like refugees, the cold billowing off them in waves. I tried to reverse my thinking to imagine the heat washing them in warmth as they came in, but the cold was undeniable. 

This morning, as I was driving Aria to school, she commented that the blowing snow looks like rippling water over the roadways. 

There is poetic beauty in this cold. It's harder to see it at times. An autumn leaf demands to be praised. Budding trees wear their glory like starlets at the Oscars. Undeniably stunning. 

Whispered blessings, in all their forms, seem to be a life theme for me lately. I'm working on seeing and receiving them, even when they arrive as cold, billowing snows observed from a warm place. 

A friend shared this quote with me, and I adore it:

Wishing you blessings, whether whispered or sung.

Ben Harper - Amen Omen

January 7: Sarah Palin Walked Onto the Tonight Show...

So, last night I had this dream that Sarah Palin was on The Tonight Show with Ziggy Marley.

She was being all Sarah, trying to be serious and get her point across. He was being all Ziggy, in a likely herbally-induced chill state. Jimmy was just sitting at his desk laughing at the exchange, letting it all unfold.

Suddenly Sarah proclaimed she was a great singer. Jimmy asked that she prove herself and handed her this big acoustic guitar from behind his desk.

She belted out this one, fantastically, I might add.

Ziggy totally gave her props when it was all said and done.

Ziggy Marley: Love Is My Religion

It was a great, if disturbing, dream.

January 6: Snow

Winter has finally arrived to central Iowa. We all wished for a white Christmas, and now find ourselves with a white January instead. I am not overly enchanted.

Around 6" fell in our area. Temps are frigid. Aria awoke certain there would be no school. 

There was school.

The monsters.

She has proclaimed Des Moines Public Schools to be heartless. I'm somewhat apt to agree. The logic of getting out of school on time at the end of the year was lost to Aria this morning. Ever try to reason with emotions and they just won't be calmed? 

Yes, I know better than to try to reason with emotions. I gave her chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast instead.

I was remembering being little and the joy of snow days. We lived on a block with a church on the corner, then our home (the parsonage) and then next door was a little old lady named Evelyn.

Whenever it snowed growing up (and am I imagining things, or did it snow a whole lot more when I was growing up??) I had to shovel the church, the parsonage and Evelyn's sidewalks. 

For little legs, it seemed like I was shoveling the state of Alaska. 

I was not a Northface poster child in my youth. I was a poor little girl in a tiny town with boots that didn't keep out the wet or cold, no snow pants in sight (wet jeans - remember that sensation from your youth??) and sopping, cold mittens. Winter wasn't fancy or sporty. It was cold.

I used to complain and grumble over all that shoveling. But I always hid that turbulence from Evelyn and gave her my best smile. Sometimes she gave me a quarter. Sometimes a dollar. Sometimes nothing. I always gave her that smile.

Our worlds are so little when we are young. I don't remember anyone ever visiting Evelyn. I don't remember her ever getting out of the house. She will always be, in my memories, a lady in a door saying thanks for a service with a sometimes token of appreciation in hand. 

I wish I'd given a hug rather than a smile. I suspect she didn't get enough hugs in life.

Jason Isbell - Cover Me Up

January 5: New Beginnings

Hi all,
Sorry I went rogue. Life got busy and I was swept up in the details of living. Sometimes my soul simply goes quiet.

I missed sharing Thanksgiving and Christmas with you. We volunteered at a local restaurant for Thanksgiving, and helped serve more than 3,000 meals to those who wouldn't have had one otherwise. It was invaluable. We hosted Friendsgiving the Saturday after Tday. This included an 18 pound turkey and all the fixings, including 4 pies. It was glorious.

We watched one of Aria's besties portray Jane Banks in Mary Poppins at the Des Moines Playhouse. We shared Christmas with family and hosted New Year's Eve with friends. We even squeezed in a visit to a waterpark. You know that you adore your child when you will don a swimsuit for her over your winter break.

We live well. We love big. We have a beautiful world. The holidays only serve to amplify that beauty.

Our holidays ended on a sad note when we had to put our beloved pixie bobcat to sleep. All that lives dies. This is what I keep telling myself. Logic doesn't help heartache, does it?

I had originally intended to blog every day for 2014. I've never been great at following rules, even when I create them. I love to off-road.

I want to continue to blog and share music, stories and inspiration where I find it with each of you. I hope you are willing to receive it. 

I decided to create a new Spotify playlist for 2015. I played my 2014 songs during my NYE celebration and it made my heart smile. I am looking forward to creating more heart smiles in 2015.

I was mourning our kittie and this song shuffled across my iPod. It was on 2014's playlist, and is Aria's favorite song. I think it's a great way to kick off 2015.

Happy New Year to all!

Bob Marley - Three Little Birds