Indigo Luna

Inch by Inch

Well, inch and a half by inch and half, actually.  After receiving the new Quilting Arts Magazine yesterday, I was inspired to make some "inchies" which are little bits of art that are 1-1.5 inches square.  They are quick and fun to make.  I can see lots of possibilities.  Of course, now I have an excuse for saving every teeny tiny little scrap of paper, fabric, and yarn.  Like I needed an excuse!

I have been working on organizing my studio.  It started out as packing but evolved into serious sorting and culling.  I have SO MUCH STUFF!  Lordy!  I have enough art supplies for about 20 people.  I have art supplies that I bought years ago and have literally never even opened.  I have boxes, baskets, drawers, jars, various containers and shelves filled with ribbons, yarn, thread, paper of all kinds, glass bottles, beads, buttons, fabric galore, fimo, wire, board books for altering, images sorted by type, stickers, an entire drawer of various kinds of cards and tags, obscure rusty metal odds and ends, marbles, bingo numbers, a million different kinds of adhesives, more pens than any one person should ever be allowed to own, piles of rocks, sticks and feathers, photographs, transparencies, towering piles of magazines, paints, rubber stamps, pastels, colored pencils, a bowl filled with ATCs, scarves and hats by the dozens, a massive Rubbermaid container filled with yarn, a jillion old CDs and Altoid boxes, eyelets and brads in every color of the rainbow, bones, microscope slides, fusible web, glitter, jewlery supplies and tools, a gluttonous collection of art and quilting books...I could go on for days.  It's loony.

It's hard not to get inspired while I am sorting and organizing.  I'm constantly finding things I forgot I had that I once harbored big plans for.  I find supplies that I have no clue how to use and realize I am going to have to track down the article that inspired me to buy them in the first place so I can remember why it sounded cool enough to order stuff off the internet.  And where do I store all the half-finished projects??

I love my studio space.  It is going to suck big time when we move and I don't have all that lovely, well-lit space to create.  I love to just get lost out there with the iPod cranked up to top volume and the scraps flying.  Maybe we could just bring my little red barn with us.  What?  It's a possibility!  Don't stomp on my delusions.  Some days, they're all I've got.

Blue Tuesday

Here Comes the Sun - Yellow Monday

Think Pink

Let Me Count the Reasons...

...why we are not the poster family for normality.  For lo, they are so very many.

Last night Maddy started looking really bummed kind of out of the blue.  The girls had just finished watching Wallace and Grommit - the Curse of the Were Rabbit which is not exactly a deep and depressing film and we were getting ready to have snack before bed.  Maddy was moping about the kitchen looking ready to burst into tears at any moment.  I asked her a few times what was wrong but received a terse "Nothing" in reply.  The girl is a lousy liar.

So, I sent Gabe and Rowan off to her room to watch the special features and sat Maddy down on the couch for a little talk.  She kept insisting that it was nothing and that I would laugh at her but she was obviously really distraught so I insisted that I would not laugh.  With Maddy you never know what you are going to get into when you start one of these conversations.  I guessed that maybe she was worried about her dad being gone so much or possibly feeling sad about the local shop bulldog named Pocket we've been visiting for years that recently died.  But what she finally comes out with is this: "What do you think happens when you die?"

I'm a little taken aback by that but Maddy has always been one for deep existential topics.  We've been having spiritual and surreal conversations since she could speak.  I told her that no one was really sure what happened after you died but that I believed it was something good.  She disagreed.

She told me through tears that she was worried that maybe when you died God just made you think that you were still alive and created this imaginary life for you to live so you wouldn't be sad that you were dead.  Erm....huh?  And then she got to the crux of the issue by telling me that she was worried that she might already be dead and buried in the ground and everyone was really sad but she didn't know it because she was living in this false reality.  "What if nothing is REAL??" she moaned, "It's just so SAD!  What if you're not even my real mom and none of this is real and I'm already dead??  I don't want to be dead!"

Color me gobsmacked speechless.  I have no response for that except that I am never ever allowing her to watch the movie Jacob's Ladder.  Essentially, my child is worried that she is living in the Matrix.

We talked for a while about the nature of reality and how it is all about our perceptions.  I told her that if it feels real to her than that is as real as it is going to get.  Worrying about bizarre alternate realities is ultimately just a way of avoiding your life.  We also discussed the possibility of reincarnation and past lives and that she could be remembering a past life where she did die and did have a different family.  We talked about how death is not necessarily a bad thing and that because we are all made of energy, death is just another level of exisitence where we get to be pure light, energy and love (she said, "but wouldn't you get bored?").  Maybe it's just me, but I don't think these are the typical before bed conversations that most moms are having with their ten year old daughters.

Finally, I did some energy work with her.  She is always skeptical about energy work before we start but often the difference in her mood is radical when we are done.  She was still very upset and weepy when I began doing F.O. Holding (channeling energy through my hands while holding her forehead and the base of her skull) but very rapidly calmed down.  After a minute or so I asked her on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being really scared, how scared she was feeling now.  She said it was about a 3 so I had her do some heart center tapping and within a minute she was smiling and calm and joking around with me.

These are really not the kinds of issues I imagined coming up when I thought of becoming a parent but it definitely makes life more interesting.  I am always reminded of things that I need to remember when we have our little talks.  I am both teacher and student.  In helping her get centered, I become more grounded.  It reminds me of why I love doing energy work and teaching so much.  It is an enormous gift to be a conduit for grace.

Red Saturday

We took the girls on a walk around town yesterday and I finally remembered to bring along the camera so I could snap some pictures.

One of my art dolls called "Hot Flash"

Orange You Glad It's Friday?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

Brown, Black and White - Must be Thursday

Nothin' But Girls

I'm not saying it's been an easy week as a single parent.  There have been moments where I seriously feared for my sanity.  Have I mentioned that I am an introvert?  That translates to: if I don't get some time to myself to recharge, I just might go clean off the deep end and start rolling on the floor, foaming at the mouth and speaking in some demon dialect.  It could happen.

Rowan had me up until 1:00 in the morning last night randomly crying and whimpering and claiming that she felt queasy until I finally just let her sleep in my bed.  I will probably seriously regret that decision later as Rowan has a memory like a steel trap and figures if you let her do something once, then it is obviously her birthright from here on out.  I'm sure my little middle of the night speech about how this was a very special one time event made a big impression.  The night before that, I had Maddy in my bed after she kept me up until 1:00 A.M. complaining that she couldn't breathe and her room was filled with terrifying monsters.  Sigh.  Am I a pushover or what?

We have had fun, too.  The other day I set up blogs for both of them on Vox.  Maddy decided to call hers Reverse Banana which is something her friend Jake came up with when they were thinking up unlikely combinations of words.  Her writing is really cute and the Vox blogs are fun because they can easily add books, videos, pictures, etc.  Rowan called hers Ro Ro Ro Your Blog - a title which cracks her up every time she reads it.  She has posted some pretty funny pictures and You Tube videos but she doesn't really have the patience for writing that Maddy does.

We went and saw Ratatouille which was very cute but color me appalled at how much it costs to go to the movies!  Almost $20 for the three of us to see a matinee!!  And we brought our own snacks!  Sheesh.  I'd like to take them to see Hairspray but I don't think I can justify the expense.  We've also been watching the TV series Bones on DVD which I am really enjoying.  Maddy loves it, too because she loves any kind of mystery.  For a while I was switching back and forth between Bones and Angel and it was getting a little surreal - he's a hot, brooding vampire with a soul; no, he's a hot, witty FBI agent with a guilt complex...Strange.

Yesterday I curled their hair.  They both really want their hair to flip up on the ends and with the end razor cut it does look super cute but it's a little labor intensive.  Maddy is so paranoid about the curling iron that she jumps out of her skin every time I touch her with my hand or tug on her hair.  I don't think it's something we'll be doing a lot so I took some pictures for posterity.

Aren't they cutie pies?

I am so very ready for my husband to come home now.  I am just not cut out for this single parenthood gig.  We are all getting really fed up with each other and I am running out of things for them to do.  On today's schedule is making killer banana cake with mini chocolate chips for daddy and probably watching far more TV than is really healthy.  I can always pray for the remote possibility that they will entertain themselves.  Sometimes they even entertain me.

It Ain't Easy Being Green

Full circle back to green Wednesday again.  And yes, I am aware that today is actually Thursday but the camera batteries died before I could download yesterday and I had to wait for them to recharge.  Lots of green out right now at the height of summer here in the Pacific Northwest.