RTW

Chris put this song on one of the mix tapes that we had in our car in Japan and it brings me back every time I hear it.Before kids, I planned to backpack endlessly around the globe and made no alternate career plans. What I love about travel is the elation that comes from stripping away daily habits to more easily reveal a true sense of self. In widening my scope beyond my environment, I feel I deepen my scope within. I love to travel alone and feel like a perfect sphere of a person - not being dented and misshapen by daily pacifying, compromising, expectations, anxiety-inducing relationships. Like a floating bubble with no ties, no people-pleasing. Just adventure, and the kind of wild-eyed observation that sizzles in the eyes of an artist like on two hot pans.

Traveling with two toddlers in Japan was an overwhelming responsibility and mostly we just tried to live our simple lives in a small town. It was there that I really began to appreciate the nuance of beauty in the mundane and the spiritual value of living simply. That was the treasure we brought home. I can't remember Japanese anymore. Sumimasen.

I love our life here and my smokin hot husband. More now than I did in Japan. I still try to talk him into going back - the yen IS much stronger than the dollar now, but he is sure he doesn't want to. I am "teaching" the girls geography by flipping through The Travel Book, asking them where they want to go on an RTW, and putting a sticker on the wall map.

What is an RTW? Why, a round the world trip. All at once. Why would you do that? To really get into the spiritual culture of travel. To not pay for living expenses at home while you are traveling. To save on airfare. Because it would be awesome.

Here are some families doing RTWs together:
One Year Off
Coomer Family
Family on Bikes
Bowman Family
Six in the World
Tims Family
Carlson Family
Bagan Family
Escampette
Fleming Family
soul traveler's 3

See also:
circle the planet
gonomad
BootsnAll
Lucy Travels

Where's Gracie

Today was cold. We went to the gym. No problem with the kids and it felt great to workout. After that we met with our unschooling group, who are always good company. While talking with another mom, I looked up and couldn't find Gracie, who I had become used to seeing stumble around a five foot radius of my legs, and said out loud, "I can't find Gracie" ...AND I WAS NURSING HER. Ah ha ha. Oh my god. That's worse than telling the person you're on the phone with that you can't find your phone.

The Dead

I found the debate boring tonight so I watched The Girls Next Door instead. Holly made a chocolate vagina.

In class tonight I announced we would be making shadow boxes for the Day of the Dead. Naturally, I've never made one before. Check out Crafty Chica and this project.

I am trying to figure out if it's OK to bring your homeschooled school age children to the gym during school hours. They all like the daycare there and it shows them that fitness is a regular part of life. It certainly would help my mood. They can even do their own exercise. I'm just afraid of what people will think, I guess.

Charlotte made a cool book today called "The Dead" in which a skeleton rises from the dead and makes friends with a little girl and then becomes human. I had nothing to do with it. She is so cool.

Look at their hearts in little cages in their chests. They are happy.

Housework Monday

Today was way better than yesterday. Yesterday I cried. (I think it was menstrual.) Saturday we tried to have a little party for my birthday. 3/4 of people could not come. I felt very grateful to the two very important to me couples that did come. I felt I should send them a thank you note just for taking time out of their schedules to come. AND they gave me gift cards AND they both brought bean dip. I think it's much better when you tell people to bring a dish instead of a gift, to ask them to bring whatever they want because what is funnier than every single person bringing the same thing? That is a cohesive group of friends. Another friend came a little later but I offended her, she soon left, and then I felt bad through the next morning about it. I was just keeping it real. I really thought it was dumb to rename yourself after a building material. Maybe without margaritas I would not have said it out loud. But I came to a conclusion. I CANNOT live in an isolated ecovillage. This may be the Geography of Nowhere, but I am here, my family is here, my friends are here, enough people are here that I can meet diverse interest groups. I like that. I know by now that happiness has everything to do with perception and little to do with location. We are going to have to do something with the suburbs anyway. It wouldn't be efficient to completely tear them down. Better to be a beacon of education in a crowd than a purist in the middle of nowhere.

So yesterday, I finally got dressed, resenting the New Year's Eve sort of inevitable-let-down pressure of an adult birthday, and drove in the rain to the best hot chai latte, one town over. No wallet. I scrapped together the coins from Chris' car, enjoyed the latte, and reflected on how I would live out my cob dreams, realizing now that I was unwilling to live in places where people renamed themselves Cob and were defensive about it. I began to imagine a municipal sculpture park, inspired by Nikki de Saint Phalle's Tarot Garden, which was inspired by Gaudi's Parc Guell.

Colorful and inviting, that children could climb and crawl into and play with, each sculpture representing a tennet of sustainability or suggestion toward. So I'm drawing up ideas. I know just the park for it.

I came home after the latte, sat around and watched TV with my family, who did not want to go on my annual walk in the woods, and got depresseder. I finally decided to go to the bookstore by myself, feeling guilty that I was choosing to leave my family as my birthday treat. Gracie gave me such a power pout on the way out that I turned the corner and pulled the car over. Then I pulled into a parking lot and cried. I ended up going to a movie with my best cousin (also an attendee from the night before) but guilty and anxious about Chris' feelings about my leaving him to go to a movie. (again with the menstrual) We saw Burn After Reading. It was pretty funny.

I already skipped yoga today. I just didn't feel like it. But we did 3 loads of laundry -all the way to folded and in the drawers, and finished the dishes and got the kids to tidy the house and work in their workbooks and made Thai food for lunch and peeled and sliced a dozen apples t0gether (which is harder) and made 2 apple crumbles. Then I called my MIL about the kids coming over later and had a very awkward exchange when Chris answered the phone, thinking it was his brother sounding creepily like Chris, because why would he be at his mom's and not school. I guess he didn't have anything to work on. But he is leaving early tomorrow morning because he has to work on some stuff. I feel uncomfortable about this. I don't want to micromanage his time or be on his case, but I am jealous that he has free time. I don't have any free time. If I am not with the kids, I am at work, or in transit to one or the other. But he has secret mystery hang out time? I felt like I caught him cheating. I mean, not just like. Just a little like.

slow Friday

The house is messy again and I am stressed out that people are coming over tomorrow. Eleanor peed on the floor on purpose while I was on the phone, ignoring her request to turn on the lights for her. I was so mad. She laughed and then cried. We woke up Gracie and then all three of us ignited Charlotte's wailing that she feels like she's in a nightmare. I hosed off Eleanor and hoisted her into bed after she refused to do it herself, read Charlotte a story, laid down with Charlotte and told her to have peace in her mind that no one can get at, tucked Gracie in again, and told Eleanor I loved her and tucked her in, too. Then I sat down at the black hole which is the computer, ate the rest of the kit kats, and googled kids too old to pee on the floor. I called my mom and she said it's just for attention- ignore it. She's right.

Earlier today, we went to the library and got 27 books. Chris took Gracie for a pair of little converse(?.) We had pizza for lunch (20.) We met the new home school group at the park, then got gas(50), went to the farm for the CSA pickup, and stopped at the grocery to get a list of items that Charlotte wrote out after choosing recipes from a delightful kids' cookbook from the Moosewood Kitchen (35.) At the end of our expensive day, we made bean and cheese enchiladas together, which I served by slipping them from the pan onto the coffee table. Classy. No wonder the kids pee on the floor.

In the last week, all the girls have had to pile in from one side of the car and we are short a seat belt because Eleanor closed the door with the seat belt hanging out in just the right way to catch the lock. Neither Chris nor I can get it open for anything.

future roller derby

I took the girls roller skating today($20- with pizza and an ice cream bar.) It was wonderful and we met more great homeschoolers. Gracie seemed interested so I put some skates on her and she was a natural. She was so independent; she didn't even want me to hold on to her.

close call

We went for a bike ride on the trail by our house. Beautiful day. Collected more leaves. Explored. On the way home, Eleanor almost got hit by a small truck turning into a driveway. He missed her by about 2 feet. Half a block later, a couple screamed at me from their car, presumably for having my kids on this sidewalk. I looked up bike safety rules and we weren't doing anything wrong. I never take them out riding because I am afraid and it felt great to ride the trail together today, but now I feel dazed.

...

Feeling better, 8 hours later. I love this blog. Look at this designer's website I found there.


This also really does it for me. I want to have a chandelier like that in my cob hut.

(Michael Eastman via Hidden in France)

I love this and found it here.

I am looking at a lot of graffiti art lately and thinking about starting a series of 4 Amazonian girls/women in spray paint, naturally about the girls and I, and inspired by Kirsty Macoll's 'Us Amazonians' and 'Allegria,' from Tropical Brainstorm. I've never worked in spray paint before but I don't want to deal with a palette or brushes or cleaning. I need immediacy of materials or I just won't get around to it.

Homemaker - woman who makes her family's home - with her bare hands out of mud and clay, all curves and color and superior design.