kids

Thankful

Posted on November 27, 2008 by Debora

I can’t remember a Thanksgiving that I’ve greeted with as much joyful gratitude as I do this one.

There have been happy Thanksgivings, hopeful Thanksgivings, and always, always many things to be thankful for, but this year is so different on every level. I feel like I’ve been lifted out of a dark, tangled mire of pointless struggle and set in a warm sunshiny place where life is peaceful and beautiful and shining with happy possibilities. That heady sense of a wide-open future…how long has it been since I’ve felt real pleasure at the thought of whatever may lie ahead? I can’t even remember. I’m an optimist by nature, but it’s been a long time since life has felt like the grand adventure it should be. Now it feels that way again.

So very much to be thankful for right now. First and foremost, for God’s infinite love and grace. There were moments in the past eight months when my own reserves of strength and courage ran completely dry, and the only thing that got me through was prayer. I have felt His comfort and guidance and providence so vividly through all of this, and my gratitude is boundless.

I’m so thankful for Luke and Elizabeth. They are the cure for loneliness, the antidote to self-pity, the opposite of dreariness. They keep me from getting lost in my own head for too long, and their laughter and creativity fill our house with life and light.

I am thankful for my home. Especially in light of the current economic meltdown, with people losing their homes and their jobs and their pensions all over the place, I am so incredibly grateful to be in this place of relative security that allows me time and space to parent my children and grow healthful food and enjoy the quiet beauty of nature. This is such an enormous blessing.

I am thankful to all the people who have offered their friendship, their company, or even just an exchange of stories for the span of one conversation in a supermarket. In the first dark days of the separation my need to verbalize my pain and confusion was almost desperately compulsive, and I’m so grateful to all the kind and patient souls who understood and listened and advised and bore with me while I struggled to make sense of it all.

I’m very thankful to the people, some of whom I barely know, who have brought me firewood simply because they heard that I needed it. What an incredible feeling of being part of a caring community.

I’m thankful for the half-a-steer that came to my freezer last Sunday. And I’m thankful for this week’s rain, which makes it possible for me to continue to raise my own beef for that much longer. I could never afford to buy hay for my half of the herd; if the pasture goes my cows will have to go too. So I thank God for every drop of rain that falls.

I’m thankful for Mrs. Mouthy’s Pear & Gorgonzola Pizza recipe, which I just tried for the first time last week and it was crazy good and Elizabeth had three slices for supper and two more for breakfast and she doesn’t even normally LIKE pizza, and I think that’s the only kind I’m ever going to make again.

I’m thankful for…um…this year’s amazing bumper crop of pinecones. They’re so pretty and they make the best kindling.

I could go on, but I’ll stop now. Happy Love Thursday everyone, and Happy Thanksgiving, and may the spirit of thankfulness remain in all our hearts long after the last of the turkey and cranberries are gone.

Categories: Family, Friends, kids, Life, Love, Love Thursday, NaBloPoMo | Tags: | 3 Comments

Still Wordless: Which Way To the County Fair?

Posted on November 26, 2008 by Debora

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Categories: Family, Friends, frugality, Gardening, Health, kids, Life, NaBloPoMo, Nutrition, Self-Sufficiency, Wordless Wednesday | 2 Comments

Wordless Wednesday: Rack’Em

Posted on November 26, 2008 by Debora

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Categories: Family, kids, Life, NaBloPoMo, Wordless Wednesday | 3 Comments

Sew Me A Sail

Posted on November 22, 2008 by Debora

Thursday an even bigger bunch of us got together for another karaoke night, this time at a Mexican restaurant/bar here in Anza. We’d gone up to Idyllwild last time because an old mutual friend of ours runs the karaoke setup there, and she joined us when we checked out the local place.

It was a lot more crowded, which was fun but not as cozy. Also the sound system was not quite as good and there was an odd echo on the mic. The general consensus in our group was that the local place is fun for hanging out and socializing, but for serious karaoke-ing we’ll still be heading up to Idyllwild.

But fun was had. Luke got up all by himself this time and sang Day-O with heartwarming confidence, Jamaican accent and all. It was a hoot, and he got the loudest applause of the night, by far. Anyone who could listen to his earnest eight-year-old treble impersonation of Harry Belafonte and not want to offer encouraging praise is a soulless commie and dead inside. There were none of those in Casa Gamino Thursday night.

And then Elizabeth went up and ROCKED THE CASBAH with a MASTERFUL rendition of “I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight.” I was freaking amazed. Seriously, next time I’m bringing my camera and getting video. She NAILED that song.

Steve wandered in at some point and hung out at the bar for a while. He’d missed Luke’s song, but saw Elizabeth’s. Then he wandered back out. Poor guy, having his kids there probably put a serious crimp in his pick-up action.

There are two billiard tables in Casa Gamino, and I’ve realized that next on my list of parenting goals is teaching my kids to shoot pool. I used to be pretty good back in the day, but I gave up the game when I was dating Steve because he used to accuse me of cheating whenever I beat him. Which was almost every game. Apparently I was moving the balls around when he wasn’t looking. Whatever. Anyway, Luke and Elizabeth were goofing around with one of the billiard tables Thursday before the crowd showed up, and it hit me how remiss I’ve been. They should TOTALLY know how to shoot pool by now. Honestly, where have I BEEN?

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In other news, I was planning on seeing “Twilight,” but it’s getting dismal reviews over at Rotten Tomatoes, so now I’m thinking I’ll wait for the dvd.

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Today’s Fun Image: 404 — page not found.

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And here’s a little children’s poem that captures my mood today:

Needles and pins, Needles and pins,
Sew me a sail to catch me the wind.
Sew me a sail strong as the gale,
Carpenter, bring out your hammers and nails.
Hammers and nails, hammers and nails,
Build me a boat to go chasing the whales.
Chasing the whales, sailing the blue
Find me a captain and sign me a crew.
Captain and crew, captain and crew,
Take me, oh take me to anywhere new.
–Shel Silverstein

Categories: Family, Friends, kids, Life, NaBloPoMo | 2 Comments

Contributing To The Geekiness Of Minors

Posted on November 20, 2008 by Debora

star-trek-inspirational-poster

One of my very favorite times of day has always been that magical pause in the evenings when the kids and I snuggle up on the sofa for storytime. This has been a treasured part of my life since Elizabeth was a baby and we used to curl up every night in the big cozy rocking chair together and read Babybug magazine or one of her chunky board books.

Alas, time marches on. My kids are eight and ten now, and no longer content to let me read a story to them chapter by chapter. We’ll start a new book — say, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — and I’ll read Chapter 1, and they like it…so by the time the next night rolls around they’re both halfway through the book and fidgeting restlessly because they’re way past the part I’m reading to them.

As much as I love storytime, even I finally had to admit that maybe they’ve just outgrown it.

But how to get my nightly fix of snuggle time without sharing a book? I pondered this dilemma and realized that I didn’t necessarily have to give up storytime. Stories come in many different forms, after all. On dvd’s, for instance. I’d shared most of my favorite childhood books with them, maybe now it was time to start sharing my favorite old tv series, one episode per night.

So then it was just a matter of deciding which show to start with. I can’t wait to introduce Elizabeth to the Gilmore Girls, but she’s a bit too young to really appreciate it yet. Same with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Veronica Mars. Luke will LOVE The Wild Wild West (the original series, not the lame movie)…in about five years. So where to begin right now?

You know where this is going. That holy grail of geekdom: Star Trek.

I actually gave some serious thought to whether I even wanted to introduce them to this show at all, ever. I mean, in this day and age it’s tantamount to making your kid take accordion lessons, right? Just give him a bad haircut and a pocket protector and be done with it already.

In the end, I couldn’t help myself. Resistance is futile. The next generation must be assimilated into the collective. I added The Original Series to my Netflix queue and when the first disk arrived we popped it in.

Observations:

1. It had been more than 20 years since I’d seen a full episode of ST:TOS.

2. This was the cheesiest. show. ever.

3. Both kids are mesmerized by its colorful, hypnotic cheesiness.

4. It helped that they were already familiar with the basic concept thanks to our fabulous deck of Blogography playing cards.

5. The kids’ preliminary consensus is that Captain Kirk is “tricksy.” And they’re fascinated by the fact that the turbolift can move in any direction.

6. Shatner’s line delivery is hardly mockable at all in these first few episodes. I guess it wasn’t until the show gained an audience and success went straight to his head that he started milking every syllable for all it was worth.

7. I’m glad I decided to do this. I mean, sure, I’m dooming Luke and Elizabeth to a desolate existence on the geeky fringes of social acceptability, and torpedoing any chance that the cool kids will ever talk to them, but hey, that 45 minutes of basking in the warm glow of nostalgia every night makes it all totally worth it. You know, to me. They can thank me later.

Happy Love Thursday, everyone. Live long and prosper, and don’t forget: infinite diversity in infinite combinations!

Because popularity is totally overrated, right?

Categories: books, Family, kids, Life, Love, Star Trek | 5 Comments

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