Self care.

This has been a tense, busy week already and I need a good cry.

I just want to focus on good lovely things. Like steaming cups of cocoa and clean sheets.

I’m going now to cuddle up with my son and read books and crawl around on the floor with trucks and fire engines and cars. Cook some supper, and go to bed early. I feel emotionally drained and need to regroup to start fresh tomorrow.

Goodnight.

The truth about marriage is that it is sometimes a wholly lonesome road. Isolating, bruisingly cool.

Tonight, our small home felt over-full of sourness.

Ziggy and Bert the Dog and I went for a walk after a supper no one was properly hungry for. We looked at the moon and cars and dogs and flowers and the houses around the block. Upon our return, I bathed Ziggy, brushed his teeth, and we snuggled in for nursing and books and the intense closeness my child requires.

Ziggy took me by surprise in popping off the breast to coo at me, "Night-night, Baby."

Such sweetness.

Coffee Kitty.

Today I asked Ziggy what he wanted for lunch.

"Coffee," he said, without hesitation.


He's been feeling punk & puny and his normally healthy appetite can be whet with little. A "Newton" (fig, that is) is at the top of the "want" foodchain. Even the usually tempting homemade vegetable soup that he told me to make for supper didn't hold appeal. That could, though, have something to do with eighty five degree weather (it's March, for goodness sake!) and no A/C and hotter in the house than out of doors.

The pollen kicked into high gear last week and the cough it produced for Zig led to infection. Shutdown Day(s) was not spent as happily as hoped, but tending my irritable toddler who sported a fever greater than one hundred and refused to wear clothing much of the weekend. The naked highjinks that ensued (climbing up and down the Learning Tower, jumping from the wooden Coca-cola crate, thrashing about with discomfort and dissatisfaction) led to a frighteningly lurid bruise which his pediatrician prounounced this morning a not uncommon "straddle injury."


We're all a bit crabby this evening. The babe and I have been up, save for a highly coerced nap late today, since about 3:30 this morning. Before the sun was fully up, we all three, plus Bert the Dog, took to the streets and went for a walk in answer to Ziggy's cry of "Side!" That helped dispositions quite a bit early on today, and while walking up Chapel Avenue mere blocks from our home, My Beloved Mister pointed to a porch on a lovely expansive home. Mewing there quite loudly at us was our dear Junie Moon! Our half feral mama Maine Coon, who's been missing since early January, despite our looking and posting notices and several false sightings.

Junie followed us about halfway home, then stalled out.

I reckon we'll be seeing her regularly and she may or may not determine to come home. My relief at knowing that she'd not been hit by a car was enormous.


Coffee. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

(That's cocoa in the picture, by the by, after a cold afternoon of outdoor play some weeks ago.)

Shutting Down.

I’m going to participate in World Shutdown Day and turn my computer off tonight at midnight for twenty-four hours, and if I can stay unplugged through Sunday, I’ll do that, too. I’ve been in front of this blasted machine waaaaaaaaay too much.


I'll be joining people across the world in saving no small amount of energy by shutting down, and investing time and energy in other activities that build community, intimacy and goodness. Instead of spending time on my computer this weekend, I'll be:

• painting and drawing and reading books with Ziggy
• cooking and eating and organizing in the kitchen
• cuddling and sleeping and kissing and making love
  
• listening to music and dancing
• working in and on my yard and garden areas
• writing handwritten correspondence
• taking walks with my family, including Bert the Dog
  
• visiting with Mama Loca and her girls
  
• talking and reading and playing a boardgame with my Mister
• sitting on my porch, doing nothing other than watching the birds and pink light at day's end

I've been working very hard the last few weeks, something I enjoy greatly, but making little time for play. I look forward to achieving greater balance and I feel certain that my family will appreciate some less divided attentions. I, too, will appreciate some of my very own differently industrious company.

Will you be shutting down, too? Let me know.

Nashville Mothers Acting Up: families for peace.

Bagels for peace.

Mini MAUs for peace.

Mother: acting up.

Rising Up to Meet the Great Human Family.

On Saturday, Nashville's Peace Coalition-- of which I was a founding member back when I was single & childless and available for meetings every day of the week-- held a peace rally, march and a Walk In Their Shoes event. Folks gathered at Owen Bradley Park by the Demonbreun Roundabout and the Musica statue for speakers and music.

As it was also St. Patrick's Day, and an Irish bar is on the other side of the Roundabout, the Demonbreun strip and its attendant unauthorized parking area on a muddy stretch of land nearby was an odd mix of Raging Grannies, Green party members, Code Pink folks, Vandy fraternity boys, round bellied Paddies in their cups and once wholesome girls next door with their knee socks and skirts so short their heinies popped out.

It was a sad and somber event juxtaposed with party revelery, and then, too: a celebration of life, and of peace, and of colorful street theatre & activism. A core part of our Mothers Acting Up community made its presence known with our babies and children, and on the march to the Federal Building, Kate and I spoke with wonder and deep emotion, in recognition of our own anniversary. We'd met exactly one year previous, at this very rally and march. It was in front of the Hippodrome building that Kate told me about having read MAU co-founder Beth Osnes' chapter in Code Pink's Stop the Next War Now, and how these Mothers Acting Up, of whom I was not aware, encouraged communities to hold Mother's Day reclamation parades and other events, and to serve free cake to all. We formed a bond that day, we straggling mama marchers with our small children in tow; all Mickey Rooney / Judy Garland, we got swept up in "Let's make a parade!"

So on Saturday, as we marched, this time with mamas and daddies and children from the MAU community we've co-created here, we were stunned at how much changes in a short year's time and moved by how much we value the changes. We pulled off Nashville's First Mother's Day Peace Parade last year, and we're hip deep into the planning of this year's. Our children are bigger and more greatly aware of their surroundings-- they know one another and are tender and kind in play. We have a real community of families here who Act Up together and gather regularly for weekly playgroups, monthly potluck socials and salons. We've participated in actions like Chalk for Peace and Stand Up Against Poverty. And I make my living now doing outreach and organizational work with an AMAZING team of women as a Mother Acting Up, supporting a network of mothers from New York City to Charleston, to Minneapolis-St. Paul to Austin and Los Angeles in building their own communities and hosting their own Mother's Day reclamation parades, tea parties and cake walks.

In the face of world unrest, we have created for ourselves and each other, a safe place to call home. We take what we do beyond our four walls, to honor the promise of our children's lives as part of a magnificent revolution. I am so very very honored and grateful to join with Kate and these other families near and far in doing good work, in becoming engaged with the world we find and visioning it as we want it to be on behalf of our children and those everywhere as part of the great human family.

Sprang.

First day of Spring.
Crab apple tree is budding.
Baby growing: eighteen months old this Sunday.
"Go away," he says. "Love you!"

Tonight, Bert the Dog killed an opossum in our back yard.
Sadness.

MBH on Mothering chat in April.

As of Wednesday, April 11th, at 1 p.m. Eastern, I'll be a monthly chat guest for Mothering Magazine’s “Mommy Chats.” I’ll be representing Mothers Acting Up, entertaining topics about mother activism including Mother’s Day reclamation events, the Mother Agenda and community building.

Read more about it here by scrolling down the page a bit. At present, there are two MAU chats listed on this page with links to as-yet-to-go-up calendars with topic descriptions.

If you are so inclined, come chat, or just send good vibes. Tell your mama friends.

The Milk Memos.

The following came to one of my work email addresses and sounds quite wonderful! It could very well be a good resource for you new mamas who plan to work outside the home and pump.... And an affirmation of current or previous experience for so many of y'all. As my pumping experience has been limited to the very occasional circumstance, aside from after Ziggy's Ladd's Procedure, and I've worked from home or with babe in tow, I so greatly admire the dedication and fortitude of women who've pumped exclusively and / or while they worked away from their child(ren).

Dear Fan of The Milk Memos,

The moment has arrived: our book The Milk Memos goes on sale TODAY (nationwide and online)! This note is going to our friends, family, colleagues, and the many others who have touched the book in some way. Thank you.

We would be grateful if you would forward this to any new mom you know who could benefit from our book (and/or anyone you know who might know new moms!).

Thanks for spreading the word.

Best, Cate and Andrea

Cate Colburn-Smith and Andrea Serrette

Authors of The Milk Memos

www.milkmemos.com --- info@milkmemos.com

P.S. To our Colorado friends:

We would love to see you at our upcoming book reading/signing events:

Boulder Bookstore, Thursday, April 5, 7:30 pm

Tattered Cover, Highlands Ranch location, Saturday, April 28, 3:00 pm

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The Milk Memos: How Real Moms Learned to Mix Business with Babies, and How You Can, Too, by Cate Colburn-Smith and Andrea Serrette

This one-of-a-kind guide to balancing motherhood and work is based on actual journals kept by a group of IBM women during their visits to the company’s employee lactation room.

To learn more, or purchase the book, please visit www.milkmemos.com, which also includes helpful resources for new moms, such as Pump-at-Work Essentials, Tips for Increasing Milk Supply, Twenty Questions to Ask Child-Care Providers and Breastmilk Storage, Thawing and Warming Guidelines.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Marian Wright Edelman speaking THIS MORNING.

I have just learned, thanks to the good folks over at Tennessee Health Care Campaign that Marian Wright Edelman is speaking in Nashville THIS MORNING at 9:30 at War Memorial Plaza Auditorium. I have a very full day planned already, but Edelman is a wonderfully inspiring figure and I'm loathe to miss the opportunity to hear her in person.

We will throw soft wonderful things at Phyllis Root's house.

Our dear friend Mace (Ziggy's name for her) hipped us to our most recent favorite book, Big Momma Makes the World, by Phyllis Root, with illustrations by Helen Oxenbury, whose Tom & Pippo books have been well loved in our home.

We read Big Momma anywhere between three and six times a day, whenever Ziggy cries out, "Baby!" (his name for the book, despite his Daddy saying to me this very morning, "The Baby's not even really all that a much a player...?") and commands, "Read!" as he did recently to a special family friend and supper guest. Both reverends, the reader and his wife, have a teenager and therefore hadn't yet come across this book, published well after their own boy held them joyfully hostage to towers of read-alouds.

A creation myth to appeal even to the secular humanists among us, Big Momma Makes the World is warm, folksy, spiritual without being preachy and sings from every page. It can't hurt Ziggy's love of the story that his own Mama Booty bears a strong resemblence to Oxenbury's images, and I love that-- it helps me celebrate my own roundness. My Ziggy, a baby not unlike Big Momma's, settles into the crook of his father's neck or twining round my bosom to hear it again, telling us, "Comfy."

I've been so tickled by my son's gentleness, his sensitivity and passion: he's a hugger like no baby hugger anyone knows. He REALLY hugs. Tight. He kisses. Hard. He lives with such gusto, laughing and cutting up with pure joy, and is in possession of a tenderness that melts me. Just a few days ago, while visiting Diggy, I stood in her kitchen, secretly watching my boy love on a doll that belonged to my sister when were small girls. He held her, put her thumb in her mouth, rocked her, kissed her.

I want to tell everyone I care about to read Big Momma to their children. To their lovers. To their workmates. To the folks with whom they knit or read or used to fight or attend church. To the people running for office in their districts. I found this wonderful interview with Ms. Root in which she expresses, "What if people came and threw things at my house because I had portrayed God as a single mother?" Upon reading that, I wept and laughed both, and want Ms. Root to know that Ziggy and his own Mama Booty will throw things at her house like sunrise muffins and Gee's Bend postage stamps (aren't they the best?) and choice apples, succulent mangos and fuzzy mittens, to show her how much we love her story.

If God isn't a single mother as much as God is anyone and everything else, I'm no believer.

Random play....

• Why are all Richard Scarry books so damned *violent* and full of peril? Seriously. I don't think I ever noticed this until we began reading our broken down childhood copies to our own toddler. There are wrecks of all kinds, Biblical type floods, lost possessions, cooking disasters, etc.
  
• how horrible am I for thinking of returning a terrifically elegant and shocking birthday gift from my Mister?
• Any of you know how to build stilts? Want to come build some? Holler at me.
  
• Do you have a business that would like to sponsor Nashville's 2nd Annual Mother's Day Peace Parade? Would your group like to be a part? Red Hat Society? Lawn Mower Brigade? Fife & drum corps? Seriously. If so: email me.
  
• Anyone plan to attend BlogHer in Chicago this July? I'm pondering it in my heart, as we say.
  

Note to self.

Write about diamonds.

The Transformative Power of Mother's Day.

The following is a link to my friend and colleague Tina's excellent first person account of creating a Mother's Day event in New York City after having given birth immediately following 9/11.

Mothers Acting Up: The Transformative Power of Mother's Day.

Call Congress today: health care for ALL children.

It's really simple. Our elected officials are our employees. They need to hear from us to know how we want them to vote. In Tennessee, our Bill of Rights says that we the people shall instruct our elected officials on how to act on our behalf.

Give your congressional representative a holler today and tell them that health care for all children is important and they need to fund the SCHIP program.

Head over here for details.

TamPonification.

Click here and Seventh Generation will donate environmentally friendly monthly flow products to a shelter in the state you choose.

A deep and gentle sigh of thanks.

Days like today, I feel so fortunate: Enough is the same as a feast.

I woke early, early, prior to the alarm going off in the quiet darkness. My Beloved Mister and child slept soundly, softly snoring that fuzzy wee morning hour peaceful sound I've grown to love and think of as home. I prepared coffee, shuffled about with the creatures who live with us, letting them out and in and puttin out food. Turned on the computer to begin my day of work (work I love passionately and am so grateful for each and every day!) and to center in, and lean into now.

After gentling my boy down with a nursing not long after I originally woke, I returned to work, to happy industriousness. By and by, MBM crept from the bed to tend to laundry and the washing of dishes (we'd let them go last night, after finally being healthy and available for all three of us to visit our favorite Mexican place in celebration of my fortieth birthday). Little feet hit the floor not long after, scooted across the kitchen to Daddy, then to the office for some snuggle time at Mama's desk. And this life, it just felt so right. And the morning preceded apace with work and love and granola and dry diapers and hugs and kisses and building with blocks and music and Tubbies and nursing and plans for meeting Friends to lobby at our representative's office later today.

My husband, my friend, my partner: before trundling out the door and into the world for work, he held us tight and kissed and hugged us and I knew so strongly what home felt like for this little family. I was and am, so glad to be here. The noise in my head settled down, my spirit leaned into now. There are days when this isn't so clear through my muddled thinking and exhaustion and if-wishes-were-horses thinking....

The card my man gave me for my birthday sits here on my desk still.

In the week that preceded my birthday I thought of all the things I haven't yet accomplished: achieving financial sustainability, publishing a book, completing my family, purchasing a home, attaining and maintaining a healthy weight, hiking the Appalachian Trail, unpacking all these blasted boxes of papers and bits of previous lives that line the office walls three deep.... It's been enough some moments for me to give in to minor come-aparts, fits of anxiety and weeping. (Motherhood has removed the luxury of big come-aparts in large part. Thank goodness for that, for the necessitated focus on something other than navel gazing bullshit and unfounded worry.)

So the card, a lovely and simple one that astonished me in its generosity of sentiment, given what I often experience as my man's harshness and holding back. He is Midwestern, afterall. AND of Scandanavian descent. He is a great admirer of the seemingly disparate Bushido code and iconoclastic autonomists. All of which is attractive, baffling, maddening, amusing and in some ways my polar opposite. The best part of this is that when he tells me something, I know he's thought about it in an amazing amount of detail and he holds it as fully True. All of which makes his sign off on the card both a comfort and an excitement. I feel known and loved and supported just as I am in all my fallible wonder when I read: "I know you're not where you thought you'd be... but I'm glad you're here with me."

Me too, Babe. Thank you for helping me find the multi-tiered levels of home I've been looking for since always. Thank you very very much.

Vocabulary.

Our child is a parrot.

At seventeen months old, his height, coordination and speaking often have folks convinced that he's several months older. I suppose it stands to reason, given his environment and genetics, he's a chatterbox with an extensive vocabulary.

As of yesterday's viewing of the pulpit speeches from Selma on C-Span and the lobbying training with the Peaceable Assembly & Instruction Project (Tennessee's arm of the national Occupation Project), said vocabulary has grown by the following words:

Barack Obama

and

Agenda.


I adore this amazing little elf in our lives, even as he bossily asserts, "Sit," "Clean," "Sing NOW!," and "Go home."

Lunar Eclipse.

We watched from the front porch and yard, though in all likelihood, missed most of it as the moon, it seems, actually rose here in full eclipse. Ziggy, with peanut butter smeared across his mouth and chin, said, "bite." Indeed, the moon looked as though someone had taken a nibble as if from a hoop of cheese.

In Peace....

Arise!!

Marching to the tune of Mother Leadership in 2007, this Mothers Day-- May 13-- MAUs from coast to coast will be getting their parade on from New York City and the Bronx, to Austin, Nashville, Boulder and Carbondale, Alexandria, Vashon Island and the Twin Cities, too... More cake walks, teas, rallys and parades being added in cities and communities across the country weekly!!

Find a Mothers Day Parade near you, and / or watch the following, and get inspired to to host your very own! The MAUmas at the Mothership will be with you every step of the way and I stand ready to encourage, support, hand hold where necessary and celebrate YOUR community's victory in taking great strides in this magnificent revolution in the names of all our children:

FBC .

It seems that surely I should have posted this previous, as it's been my favorite birthday cake (FBC) for a couple decades plus some. It has become, over the last years, My Beloved Mister's FBC as well. In any case, here it is again (or not), because you should go make this in the morning straight away for enjoying with a big steamy cuppa strong coffee. Mmm.

The one I made for me / us yesterday was actually the most beautiful ever, which is a wonder, as my new to me temperamental electric oven has generally given me fits if pique.

Without further ado, my own mother's recipe: excellent for church lady functions, birthdays, wedding preceptions, brunchy things and cold morning pick me ups.


Diggy's Cranberry Coffee Cake

2 C flour
1 t soda
1 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1 stick butter, soft
1 C sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 t vanilla extract
1/2 pint sour cream
1 8 oz can whole cranberries
1/2 C nuts (chopped pecans, almonds, or walnuts....)
confectioners sugar

Grease a tube, loaf or bundt pan. Cooking spray works well.

Sift together flour, soda, baking powder and salt. Cream in butter. Add sugar to creamed mixture. Add in eggs, mix. Add vanilla and stir in sour cream. Mix all but cranberries, nuts and confectioners sugar.

Alternate cake batter, cranberries and nuts in baking pan. It'll be pretty and swirly.

Bake at 350 for 55 minutes.

Keeping me young.

Forty! Today begins what I expect to be the best decade yet.