A mishmash

I feel like I have a ton to blog. And I've been trying recently to put more thought into my words in this space. To take the time to express myself in a more beautiful way. But with the disarray around the house as we play musical rooms, and planning Zeke's small and simple but still a birthday party this weekend...well I can hardly organize my thoughts in my own mind, let alone on the keyboard. I have said it a thousand times and yet still I am constantly surprised by how much a disordered home makes for a disordered mind, at least for me. But things are looking up. We are soo sooo close to being done moving everything around.

So until that fine fine moment, when I can breathe in the knowledge that everything HAS a place and is IN that place....

A mishmash.

1. The garden is doing great, better honestly then I expected. I should have taken some pictures, but I didnt so just use your imagination. The strawberries are fruiting, the tomatoes and peas are flowering, the peppers look the same as always I have to admit...but they aren't dead! (except for one that was I suspect eaten by a cat but we ended up in the end with 11 peppers so I think I can spare to lose one. We've had more lettuce then we know what to do with, and enough spinach to not buy any for weeks now (and that is saying something because I eat a LOT of spinach). The beans have come up out of the ground and the squash have been planted (hopefully not too late, it was into June by the time I got around to it).
This has been a really fun experience. I love to dig around in the dirt and I love how excited Zeke has been watching everything grow. He plants "seeds" ALL day long in his dirt pile in the yard.
I'm also getting a whole new respect for people that actually had to grow all their food. With bugs and surprise freezes and pesky cats not to mention toddlers my garden is in a constant state of danger. I cant imagine knowing that our very lives depended on it. After all, if my garden fails it only means I need to go to the grocery store. For some, it meant starvation the next winter.
2. Zeke is really cracking me up these days. He's been using all sorts of new body language, I can see him really studying and copying the way I hold myself. Not to mention a TON of new words, he is really getting talking lately. He can sing twinkle twinkle, and the itsy bitsy spider, although his favorite song right now is the Battle Hymn of the Republic...that and Bad Romance (he's only heard the Glee version, not the lady gaga...Zeke and I LOVE Glee). He's also started to get more and more imaginative in his play, which is so exciting to watch. I'm loving having a toddler. Even when he tells me I'm "no nice!".
3. Malachi is also cracking me up. He is getting sooo angry at his inability to do everything Zekey does. This kid absolutely HATES being left out!! We've put his crib in the boys' new room 2 days ago and he's slept in there from 9 till 4 am one night and until 6am the other. You cant imagine how exciting that is for me, lol. At this point I'm going in there more often for Zeke.
4. Our neighbor gave us this awesome slide her kids have outgrown. Zeke wanted to push Mal down, but I convinced him baby Burt might enjoy it better.
5. Since I have to move all of our books I've decided to get rid of some of them. We have a ton of books, this is a little under 1/3rd of our collection:
But I have to admit not all of our books are really treasured...many we will likely never read again. So I signed up for paperbackbookswapper.com and I've already mailed 4 out, giving me 4 credits to get books that we actually WANT. I'll probably wait a few months and then just donate the rest of the books that no one wanted, but its nice to get a few good books out of the pile of bad ones (though I almost feel bad giving away some of my pregnancy books of the "what to expect when expecting" caliber, it seems wrong to continue the misinformation)

6. I read The Tent a few years ago but this poem has come up twice now in conversations this week. It was my favorite from the collection, although honestly I'm young enough that its talking about more of my grandmothers' generation. Well worth the read.

Bring back Mom,
bread-baking Mom, in her crisp gingham apron
just like the aprons we sewed for her
in our Home Economics classes
and gave to her for a surprise
on Mother's Day--

Mom, who didn't have a job
because why would she need one,
who made our school lunches--
the tuna sandwich, the apple,
the oatmeal cookies wrapped in wax paper--
with the rubber band she'd saved in a jar;
doing the ironing
or something equally boring,

who smiled the weak smile of a trapped drudge
as we slid past her,
headed for the phone,
filled with surliness and contempt
and the resolve never to be like her.

Bring back Mom.
who wanted to be a concert pianist
but never had the chance
and made us take piano lessons,
which we resented--

Mom, whose aspic rings
and Jello salads we ate with greed,
though later derided--
pot-roasting Mom, expert with onions
though anxious in the face of garlic,
who received a brand-new frying pan
from us each Christmas--
just what she wanted--

Mom, her dark lipsticked mouth
smiling in the black-and-white
soap ads, the Aspirin ads, the toilet paper ads,
Mom, with her secret life
of headaches and stained washing
and irritated membranes--
Mom, who knew the dirt,
and hid the dirt, and did the dirty work,
and never saw herself
or us as clean enough--

and who believed that there was other dirt
you shouldn't tell to children,
and didn't tell it,
which was dangerous only later.

We miss you, Mom,
though you were reviled to great profit
in magazines and books
for ruining your children
--that would be us--
by not loving them enough,
by loving them too much,
by wanting too much love from them,
by some failure of love--

(Mom, whose husband left her
for his secretary and paid alimony,
Mom, who drank in solitude
in the afternoons, watching TV,
who dyed her hair an implausible
shade of red, who flirted
with her friends' husbands at parties,
trying with all her might
not to sink below the line
between chin up and despair--

and who was carted away
and locked up, because one day
she began screaming and wouldn't stop,
and did something very bad
with the kitchen scissors--

But that wasn't you, not you, not
the Mom we had in mind, it was
the nutty lady down the street--
it was just some lady
who became a casulty
of unseen accidents,
and then a lurid story...)

Come back, come back, oh Mom,
from craziness or death
or our own damaged memory--
appear as you were:

Queen of the waffle iron,
generous dispenser of toothpaste,
sorceress of Mercurochrome,
player of smoky bridge
at which you won second-prize dishtowels,

brooder over the darning egg
that hatched nothing but socks,
boiler of horrible porridge--
climb back onto the cake-mix package,
look brisk and competent, the way you used to--

If only we could call you--
Here Mom, Here Mom--
and you would come clip-clopping
on your daytime Cuban heels,
smelling of sink and lilac,
(your bum encased in the foundation garmet
you'd peel off at night
with a sigh like a marsh exhaling),
saying, What is it now,
and we could catch you
in a net, and cage you
in your bungalow, where you belong,
and make you stay--

Then everything would be all right
the way it was when we could play
till after dark on spring evenings,
then sleep without fear
because you threw yourself in front of the fear
and stopped it with your body--

And there you'll be, in your cotton housecoat,
holding a wooden peg
between your teeth, as the washing flaps
on the clothesline you once briefly considered
hanging yourself with--

but forget that! There you'll be,
singing a song of your own youth
as though no time has passed,
and we can be careless again,
and embarrassed by you,
and ignore you as we used to,

and the holes in the world will be mended.

The Tent, Margaret Atwood