Yours for the joyful (busy & messy) revolution. Life on the frontlines of motherhood and activism.

It's been a whirlwind week, and I'll recap by sharing a slightly modified version of the email note I sent off to the grandparents and siblings yesterday afternoon:

Dear all,

Great to hear from everyone recently and more on that soon. Will do a quick quick update on us, then move along.

I’ve got a needy / super snotty boy at home with me today—he’s already thrown salsa and juice all over the floor and emptied a large canister of sea salt all over the dog bed and all over the living room. With suitcases and duffel bags and baskets of MAU stuff everywhere, it sort of looks as though a bomb went off in our house. I’m loving up my boy as much as I can today, then trying to regain some sense of order to more rightly align my own sense of balance.

Did I tell you that he grew half an inch since his birthday? Crazy, huh?

We have houseguests coming this weekend – two co-founding Mothers Acting Up arrive Thursday night. We're so excited! While I've had the experience of knowing someone from phone and online prior to meeting them in person (My Beloved Mister knew one another this way for years prior to hanging out live and in person), I've not had this particular experience professionally. I'm so excited to finally meet Beth and Joellen, and look forward to meeting Anjali and Juliana, too (in February when I'll go to Boulder). Beth, Joellen and I will work press and go to meetings on Friday during the day, then Beth does her one woman show (M)other that evening, followed by a discussion and snacks. I’ll be making some. refreshments for post-performance, as will a couple other mama friends. Saturday morning will be the three hour activism workshop for mothers, then the Girlcott action at Bongo Java. Mama Loca and her kids are coming to town, too!! Hoorray!!

I met a gentleman named Joey King from Veterans for Peace (Nashville) at our Memphis hotel—he was giving a talk about counter recruiting at the youth arm of the Gandhi King Conference and he invited me to speak to their group in early November about MAU. At the end of that week I’ll be going to Norris to present MAU to the state Church Women United conference. The following weekend is the Mamamade (which I did last year), where I’ll be selling MAU handbooks and Nashville MAU stuff, too. There's a Michigan visit with the Babcock and Christenson clans near Thanksgiving (can’t wait!) and the following weekend I have an invitation to present a MAU workshop to the Cookeville Friends (Quaker) meeting, and the weekend after that (should our proposal be accepted) I’ll be passing out handbooks at Dan Zanes concerts in both Knoxville & Atlanta. I may actually see if I can present to the Friends meeting the weekend of the 16^th instead, so I can have one non-working weekend with my boy…. he did great all weekend, despite a very nasty cold, and even went with me (and his wonderful dad!) to the studio very early (drive time) this morning when I was on the Liberadio! show at Vanderbilt (the show will air again on both WAMB and another AM talk station later this week). When the podcast is up, I’ll send it along. By the time we got to Mother’s Day Out, poor Ziggy kind of fell apart and I recognized his need to be home with me today.

We had a most amazing family trip to the conference and in Memphis in general. We spent Sunday at the Riverwalk Park at Mud Island, which I can not recommend highly enough. We loved it, and Ziggy is still wanting to ride the monorail again. MBM was super helpful during all my conference working, including carrying all the heavy stuff and even manning the Mothers Acting Up table in the auditorium and just being so good with the babe and with helping me stay focused. The boys had a great time together running up and down ramps and playing all over the beautiful Christian Brothers University campus and they even went to Graceland (“Elvis’ house,” Zig says) together. We had a great fifth anniversary, including a delicious BBQ supper during which our child slept through the whole thing—we hadn’t had a meal together just the two of us talking and visiting in what? Two years, maybe? Really. It was kind of great. Later that night, MBM left me and the snotty sleeping boy at the hotel (with my full blessing!) to go see a band he wanted to see. I was really pleased that he did something like that that he enjoys, and honestly, I was glad enough to rest up for presenting my workshop the next morning.

I wish I could write a better, chattier, less direct note, but my own cold is fanning the flames and supper needs to be cooked and the aforementioned messes need attention and my boy needs some snuggling before I work more tonight when my man comes home, so I must off for now.

More another time.

Love to all.

XXX

paige