something that I am good at,
that I enjoy,
that will give other's joy.
- smelling the butterflies
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
brave chieftains
I'll capture them fat I'll capture them scrawny.
I'll capture a scraggle-foot mulligatawny,
A high stepping animal fast as the wind
From the blistering sands of the desert of zind.
This beast is the beast that the brave chieftains ride
when they want to go fast to find some place to hide.
I found this really funny if you have read a war book where the general runs away on a horse and leaves his entire army to get captured when he is about to lose. like in the American Revolution,
Major General Heratio Gates' 170 mile retreat at the Battle of Camden, after 1000 of his men got captured.
-raised by sprouts
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
School
Recently I took a wonderful class on coursera! If you want you can turn in participation and get credit for taking the class. I think it costs something like $100 to get a signed certificate that you took the class.
But I didn't have time to figure out how to turn in all the homework, and I didn't take it because I wanted someone else to know I had taken it.
I took it because I wanted to learn.
I would have to say, of all the classes I have ever taken, it was the most educational.
So what is school?
Is it a set of rules and tests to see if you followed them well enough to get enough credit to be looked at to get hired for a job?
To me, my learning, my reasoning for going to school was to learn. And that is what I got from it.
If they had been teaching something I could have learned another way, from a book or a video game, or from talking to friends, then that is where I would have gone for the information, not to school.
I do not send my kids to school. But I am very much for free public school! I have often lauded the opportunity there is in this country to go to school for free! But do we have free schools in the U.S.A.? Are our schools places where people can go to learn? Where people go to get knowledge they can't get better and easier someplace else?
Do our public schools give us knowledge or tell us what knowledge to get? Do they open our minds and help us discover new ways of learning we wouldn't have thought of on our own, so we can open the floodgates of the unknown and drink in the depths of understanding? Or do they restrict how we are allowed to learn and tell us not only what we "must" learn, but where and how we must find that knowledge. Are these really, by definition, schools? Places to measure and keep track of learning? Yes. Places to create competition over limited types of learning? To be sure. But "schools"? Places we can go to discover what we never would have known otherwise? I think not.
Now, there are many schools in other parts of the world, that do serve this purpose. Even here in the U.S.A., there are likely places where what a child discovers in school, cannot be had other places, given their situation in life.
If the only person I knew who could tell me what the words on a page meant, was a teacher at school, I would gladly walk 10 miles there and 10 miles back each day. Some kids do.
"there are no classrooms. There are no desks. It doesn't matter. There is a teacher,"
Thankfully we have a place that is free to everybody no matter their age, that provides boundless information in increasingly innovative ways. The Public Library.
That Book Woman
But I didn't have time to figure out how to turn in all the homework, and I didn't take it because I wanted someone else to know I had taken it.
I took it because I wanted to learn.
I would have to say, of all the classes I have ever taken, it was the most educational.
So what is school?
Is it a set of rules and tests to see if you followed them well enough to get enough credit to be looked at to get hired for a job?
To me, my learning, my reasoning for going to school was to learn. And that is what I got from it.
If they had been teaching something I could have learned another way, from a book or a video game, or from talking to friends, then that is where I would have gone for the information, not to school.
I do not send my kids to school. But I am very much for free public school! I have often lauded the opportunity there is in this country to go to school for free! But do we have free schools in the U.S.A.? Are our schools places where people can go to learn? Where people go to get knowledge they can't get better and easier someplace else?
Do our public schools give us knowledge or tell us what knowledge to get? Do they open our minds and help us discover new ways of learning we wouldn't have thought of on our own, so we can open the floodgates of the unknown and drink in the depths of understanding? Or do they restrict how we are allowed to learn and tell us not only what we "must" learn, but where and how we must find that knowledge. Are these really, by definition, schools? Places to measure and keep track of learning? Yes. Places to create competition over limited types of learning? To be sure. But "schools"? Places we can go to discover what we never would have known otherwise? I think not.
Now, there are many schools in other parts of the world, that do serve this purpose. Even here in the U.S.A., there are likely places where what a child discovers in school, cannot be had other places, given their situation in life.
If the only person I knew who could tell me what the words on a page meant, was a teacher at school, I would gladly walk 10 miles there and 10 miles back each day. Some kids do.
"there are no classrooms. There are no desks. It doesn't matter. There is a teacher,"
Thankfully we have a place that is free to everybody no matter their age, that provides boundless information in increasingly innovative ways. The Public Library.
That Book Woman
Saturday, January 4, 2014
My kids' happiness
Sometimes my kids do something that mortifies me. Usually it has to do with respect or unselfishness towards other people, especially their elders and people younger than them. I want to somehow communicate to them how important it is to love and respect. But is this concept of "you aren't 'good' unless you are nice" what I really want to teach them? Do I want them to know that I think "less" of them when they are rude? Do I want them to know how much more righteous I am, than them, because "when I was there age ...."? Or do I want them to feel the intrinsic joy of seeing a softly held back smile sneak out of the shy face of an old lady as they make her day?
I love competitiveness, but is "goodness" a competition? Do I get my reward from being good the same way I get it from outsmarting a brainteaser? Do I get my reward from anything from the beautiful inner joy of feeling wonderful, or only as I compare to others - or some imaginary scale I made up? Even if I'm only comparing myself to myself, is my happiness only from how I measure up?
Then my teenager, when I'm least expecting it, when I'm not tired and judgmental and thinking "he should!" thoughts, stops in the middle of an online epic battle and asks my mom what he can do to help.
Is the beauty of a moment like this worth it's rarity? Is it worth waiting for? If I had raised my kids differently, I could have coerced him into helping all the time. Is this one true pure act of helping because he truly feels it inside and wants to, worth a hundred kind acts he might have otherwise performed out of the pride of "being good"?
To me it is.
Is it really about how "good" he is, or about how happy he is? Being good IS being truly happy. Not a superior feeling of being better than some idea of how things "should" be, but a happy glow inside. The word authentic comes to mind.
The Last Airbender season 2 ch. 9 "Bitter Work"
When we think our happiness is dependent on how we measure up on the "righteous scale", we not only rob ourselves of the subtle and underlying taste of true happiness, but we judge others as we judge ourselves. Pointing our fingers and mocking at their lack of righteousness, we hold out a barbed hand to rescue them. But if they truly followed our idea of perfection, would we enjoy it? Would we enjoy the lack of someone to ridicule? The lack of someone to "help!"
"And it came to pass that I beheld a atree, whose bfruit was desirable to make one chappy.
And as I partook of the fruit thereof it filled my soul with exceedingly great ajoy;
And I beheld a great and bspacious building
filled with people, both old and young, both male and female; and their manner of dress was exceedingly fine; and they were in the aattitude of bmocking and pointing their fingers towards those who had come at and were partaking of the fruit.
(I Nephi ch. 8)
One Sunday as I opened the heavy soundproof door of the Chapel, my toddler spun across the room as only a three year old can, and made sound contact with the edge of the door. I hadn't pulled it open very swiftly, and I hadn't realized how fast she must have been spinning, so at first I didn't know how badly she had been hurt. Her ear splintering screams, however, immediately testified as to how mistaken I was!
I rushed her to the kitchen where I desperately tried to get her to let me put ice on it, closing the doors as I knew only too well that she was all anybody could really hear as the meeting started.
Seeing my friend in her car just outside the door, I took my child in my arms and went to see if she had anything that would help calm my daughter enough to endure what I deemed as the necessity of ice.
Just outside the door I bent down again to try to hold the ice against the rapidly growing lump on her forehead, hoping it wouldn't split open. And that is when a concerned lady stuck her head out of the door and said in all the splendor of her concern for the insult of the child, "Did you ever consider that she might be crying because it's cold outside!" and then disappeared with a humph (I had previously always wondered what this would look like in real life, lol, but she really did it!) before I would have time to dare respond to her exceeding wisdom.
Sugar, as any drug, is wonderful when used appropriately, and calmed with a chocolate coin, my daughter got her head iced and her concussion eventually wore off. We were very worried at first, but then I had time to worry more about my feelings towards this lady. I so wanted to forgive her, but I didn't know how.
Wasn't I a freedom fighter? Would giving her some slack lessen my stand against judging people. We never really know what is happening when we look in on a situation, from the outside.
So many times I have discussed with like minded friends online the importance of standing up for children. That is all she had really been doing. But my bitterness towards her wasn't just for being grossly misjudged. (Did she really think I was perhaps punishing my wildly protesting child by making her stand out in the cold?) But what if I had been? What if I had been that evil and bad? I have seen less than kind parents in public places like the grocery store, and I have known very well that it was the parent more so than the child, that needed my love. If I drew attention to the judged inadequacy of their love for their child (which we all can unquestionably tell by a persons parenting skills), I knew very well that child would be beaten and blamed for the embarrassment later on. So I had no illusion that this lady was really trying to help. Perhaps she had that illusion, though.
Then it hit me! I could only feel greater sorrow for her circumstance than for mine. Her response was ignited by a true belief way deep down in her soul, that her self worth was inseparably dependent on how "good" of a mother she was. A deep scar that I knew only too well myself. A battle I fought desperately in the dark hours when the state of the house was such that I thought I deserved for CPS to take my children away. A thought that nagged at my sanity when I had just recycled all the library books because circumstances I felt helpless to control ended up resulting in a bleeding head because they had become airborne in the hands of an unsettled toddler. I knew this feeling to the depths of my toes, to the back of my throat where tears reside. If there was one dark cloud behind which the monsters of my life reside, it was my inadequacy as a parent making me know I was not worth being loved.
Thankfully I have a husband who believes in forgiveness, imperfection, and trying again and again - not in the beauty of succeeding, but he beauty of trying. Perhaps this lady had no such person in her life. Perhaps her judgment of me was merely an outlet for the pent up tenseness that had built inside of her her whole life. I could only feel horror at how decisively I had judged someone drowning from prejudice, so incredibly like myself.
I laud Christ for waking the religious world up to their reliance on pride in their actions of righteousness. He gave the world a taste of true joy from authentic kindness - without caring what the judgment of ones self or others was of the action. Now I look at my warped idea of following him, and need a wake up call to authentic joy from good. Good is what makes us truly happy inside. And I need to somehow lay aside my piety of self righteousness that makes me like or hate myself depending on how I judge myself on my scale of righteousness.
It is like the cotton candy parable. I love cotton candy! If I went to the fair and didn't get any cotton candy because I couldn't afford it, and then upon returning home, learned that the cotton candy had been free, would I be sad because I was "bad" for not having gotten to eat cotton candy, or would I be sad because I wanted to eat cotton candy and missed out. Sin is not happiness. It is it's own punishment. We don't need our own, or anybody elses opinions to make us embarrassed or sad for causing our own sorrow by sin.
And true happiness doesn't come from recognizing where we measure on a scale of righteousness, only from feeling happy deep inside from following our inborn love of doing good.
I love competitiveness, but is "goodness" a competition? Do I get my reward from being good the same way I get it from outsmarting a brainteaser? Do I get my reward from anything from the beautiful inner joy of feeling wonderful, or only as I compare to others - or some imaginary scale I made up? Even if I'm only comparing myself to myself, is my happiness only from how I measure up?
Then my teenager, when I'm least expecting it, when I'm not tired and judgmental and thinking "he should!" thoughts, stops in the middle of an online epic battle and asks my mom what he can do to help.
Is the beauty of a moment like this worth it's rarity? Is it worth waiting for? If I had raised my kids differently, I could have coerced him into helping all the time. Is this one true pure act of helping because he truly feels it inside and wants to, worth a hundred kind acts he might have otherwise performed out of the pride of "being good"?
To me it is.
Is it really about how "good" he is, or about how happy he is? Being good IS being truly happy. Not a superior feeling of being better than some idea of how things "should" be, but a happy glow inside. The word authentic comes to mind.
| Zuko | Why can't I do it? Instead of lightning it keeps blowing up in my face... like everything always does. |
|---|---|
| Iroh | I was afraid this might happen. You will not be able to master lightning until you have dealt with the turmoil inside you. |
| Zuko | What turmoil? |
| Iroh | Zuko, you must let go of your feelings of shame if you want your anger to go away. |
| Zuko | But I don't feel any shame at all. I'm as proud as ever. |
| Iroh | Prince Zuko, pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source. True humility is the only antidote to shame. |
When we think our happiness is dependent on how we measure up on the "righteous scale", we not only rob ourselves of the subtle and underlying taste of true happiness, but we judge others as we judge ourselves. Pointing our fingers and mocking at their lack of righteousness, we hold out a barbed hand to rescue them. But if they truly followed our idea of perfection, would we enjoy it? Would we enjoy the lack of someone to ridicule? The lack of someone to "help!"
"And it came to pass that I beheld a atree, whose bfruit was desirable to make one chappy.
And as I partook of the fruit thereof it filled my soul with exceedingly great ajoy;
And I beheld a great and bspacious building
filled with people, both old and young, both male and female; and their manner of dress was exceedingly fine; and they were in the aattitude of bmocking and pointing their fingers towards those who had come at and were partaking of the fruit.
And after they had atasted of the fruit they were bashamed, because of those that were cscoffing at them; and they dfell away into forbidden paths and were lost.
And great was the multitude that did enter into that strange building. And after they did enter into that building they did point the finger of ascorn at me and those that were partaking of the fruit also; but we heeded them not."(I Nephi ch. 8)
One Sunday as I opened the heavy soundproof door of the Chapel, my toddler spun across the room as only a three year old can, and made sound contact with the edge of the door. I hadn't pulled it open very swiftly, and I hadn't realized how fast she must have been spinning, so at first I didn't know how badly she had been hurt. Her ear splintering screams, however, immediately testified as to how mistaken I was!
I rushed her to the kitchen where I desperately tried to get her to let me put ice on it, closing the doors as I knew only too well that she was all anybody could really hear as the meeting started.
Seeing my friend in her car just outside the door, I took my child in my arms and went to see if she had anything that would help calm my daughter enough to endure what I deemed as the necessity of ice.
Just outside the door I bent down again to try to hold the ice against the rapidly growing lump on her forehead, hoping it wouldn't split open. And that is when a concerned lady stuck her head out of the door and said in all the splendor of her concern for the insult of the child, "Did you ever consider that she might be crying because it's cold outside!" and then disappeared with a humph (I had previously always wondered what this would look like in real life, lol, but she really did it!) before I would have time to dare respond to her exceeding wisdom.
Sugar, as any drug, is wonderful when used appropriately, and calmed with a chocolate coin, my daughter got her head iced and her concussion eventually wore off. We were very worried at first, but then I had time to worry more about my feelings towards this lady. I so wanted to forgive her, but I didn't know how.
Wasn't I a freedom fighter? Would giving her some slack lessen my stand against judging people. We never really know what is happening when we look in on a situation, from the outside.
So many times I have discussed with like minded friends online the importance of standing up for children. That is all she had really been doing. But my bitterness towards her wasn't just for being grossly misjudged. (Did she really think I was perhaps punishing my wildly protesting child by making her stand out in the cold?) But what if I had been? What if I had been that evil and bad? I have seen less than kind parents in public places like the grocery store, and I have known very well that it was the parent more so than the child, that needed my love. If I drew attention to the judged inadequacy of their love for their child (which we all can unquestionably tell by a persons parenting skills), I knew very well that child would be beaten and blamed for the embarrassment later on. So I had no illusion that this lady was really trying to help. Perhaps she had that illusion, though.
Then it hit me! I could only feel greater sorrow for her circumstance than for mine. Her response was ignited by a true belief way deep down in her soul, that her self worth was inseparably dependent on how "good" of a mother she was. A deep scar that I knew only too well myself. A battle I fought desperately in the dark hours when the state of the house was such that I thought I deserved for CPS to take my children away. A thought that nagged at my sanity when I had just recycled all the library books because circumstances I felt helpless to control ended up resulting in a bleeding head because they had become airborne in the hands of an unsettled toddler. I knew this feeling to the depths of my toes, to the back of my throat where tears reside. If there was one dark cloud behind which the monsters of my life reside, it was my inadequacy as a parent making me know I was not worth being loved.
Thankfully I have a husband who believes in forgiveness, imperfection, and trying again and again - not in the beauty of succeeding, but he beauty of trying. Perhaps this lady had no such person in her life. Perhaps her judgment of me was merely an outlet for the pent up tenseness that had built inside of her her whole life. I could only feel horror at how decisively I had judged someone drowning from prejudice, so incredibly like myself.
I laud Christ for waking the religious world up to their reliance on pride in their actions of righteousness. He gave the world a taste of true joy from authentic kindness - without caring what the judgment of ones self or others was of the action. Now I look at my warped idea of following him, and need a wake up call to authentic joy from good. Good is what makes us truly happy inside. And I need to somehow lay aside my piety of self righteousness that makes me like or hate myself depending on how I judge myself on my scale of righteousness.
It is like the cotton candy parable. I love cotton candy! If I went to the fair and didn't get any cotton candy because I couldn't afford it, and then upon returning home, learned that the cotton candy had been free, would I be sad because I was "bad" for not having gotten to eat cotton candy, or would I be sad because I wanted to eat cotton candy and missed out. Sin is not happiness. It is it's own punishment. We don't need our own, or anybody elses opinions to make us embarrassed or sad for causing our own sorrow by sin.
And true happiness doesn't come from recognizing where we measure on a scale of righteousness, only from feeling happy deep inside from following our inborn love of doing good.
Friday, January 3, 2014
The Whole Big Family
I love alternative building books! I have always loved building things and dreaming of building things. For fun, I would spend hours and hours designing "my future house", complete with fountain/waterslide in the living room.
The first substantial alternative building book I read was "The Hand-Sculpted House", all about building with cob (a clay mud, sand, straw mixture)! Like I have found is true for most alternative building books, it was not only a book for building, but a philosophical book for life! I love the things I learn from these books!
Then there are Michael Reynolds' earthships, made out of dirt pounded into old tires. I love how his book starts out with beings of light finding incapatability with other living things in humans, and deciding to become human in order to influence us. Beautiful spirituality. I will never forget the picture I saw of divers in the ocean, completely surrounded by old tires, as Reynolds testified that these were the building materials currently readily available on earth.
Birdwings
Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror
up to where you are bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.
Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralysed.
Your deepest presence is in every small
contracting and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.
From The Essential Rumi Coleman Barks with John Moyne - See more at:
http://allspirit.co.uk/rumibirdwings.html
And the poetry of Rumi, that I only accidentally found when looking for more books on Ceramic houses by Nader Khalili. I love Nader's writing as well, and found it very enjoyable to read "Sidewalks on the Moon" with my son. It is a book about his life, including his upbringing in Iran. It was so nice to be able to see into his life and culture (his writing really pulls you in), especially right now with all the people with guns over there.
But my favorite architectural book, as far as spiritual philosophy, is not necessarily an alternative building methods book. True, it does bemoan the state of affairs that have brought us to unused mowed lawns surrounding suffocatingly monotonous ticky tacky houses. But it is not about building with mud, garbage, or even underground. It is about what is built, the way the design of a building affects our whole lives.
Here it talks of the kitchen as the soul of the house. How a large friendly kitchen is important for happiness in life. How preparing food together is just as important as eating food together, and how the atmosphere a home creates around a table can make people want to linger, and turn eating food from a chore that is quickly done, to an experience that changes your whole life.
Gordon Neufeld goes further to explain how parents being the source of food for their children, strengthens the family relationship. This is hard in the culture of this time and place to imagine that we are the source of anything for our children. Food, knowledge, entertainment, is all promoted as needing to be instantly available to everybody. But missing in it all is love. I used to think that I was indoctrinating my kids with a love of books and reading, because when I really sit down and spend time with them that we both enjoy, it is when we are reading books together. But this is no more a means of indoctrination than mealtimes together are. In the chaos of rapidly changing cultures that is accelerating in our modern reality, family naturally still finds its crevices to hold on to. And the actions we perform, without need to analyze and judge them as healthy or not, naturally fulfill the roles our children need them to.
Yesterday we all got in the car together as what the toddlers refer to as "the whole big family". It was just a short drive to the library before it closed for the night, but it was my most enjoyable experience of the day. When we are all in the car together, we don't have outside distractions. We talk and laugh and joke together, and a calmness and security settles over even the most begrudging siblings who have fought that day, and we realize how much we really like being together, how much we really love each other.
The first substantial alternative building book I read was "The Hand-Sculpted House", all about building with cob (a clay mud, sand, straw mixture)! Like I have found is true for most alternative building books, it was not only a book for building, but a philosophical book for life! I love the things I learn from these books!
Then there are Michael Reynolds' earthships, made out of dirt pounded into old tires. I love how his book starts out with beings of light finding incapatability with other living things in humans, and deciding to become human in order to influence us. Beautiful spirituality. I will never forget the picture I saw of divers in the ocean, completely surrounded by old tires, as Reynolds testified that these were the building materials currently readily available on earth.
Birdwings
Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror
up to where you are bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.
Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralysed.
Your deepest presence is in every small
contracting and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.
From The Essential Rumi Coleman Barks with John Moyne - See more at:
http://allspirit.co.uk/rumibirdwings.html
And the poetry of Rumi, that I only accidentally found when looking for more books on Ceramic houses by Nader Khalili. I love Nader's writing as well, and found it very enjoyable to read "Sidewalks on the Moon" with my son. It is a book about his life, including his upbringing in Iran. It was so nice to be able to see into his life and culture (his writing really pulls you in), especially right now with all the people with guns over there.
But my favorite architectural book, as far as spiritual philosophy, is not necessarily an alternative building methods book. True, it does bemoan the state of affairs that have brought us to unused mowed lawns surrounding suffocatingly monotonous ticky tacky houses. But it is not about building with mud, garbage, or even underground. It is about what is built, the way the design of a building affects our whole lives.
Here it talks of the kitchen as the soul of the house. How a large friendly kitchen is important for happiness in life. How preparing food together is just as important as eating food together, and how the atmosphere a home creates around a table can make people want to linger, and turn eating food from a chore that is quickly done, to an experience that changes your whole life.
Gordon Neufeld goes further to explain how parents being the source of food for their children, strengthens the family relationship. This is hard in the culture of this time and place to imagine that we are the source of anything for our children. Food, knowledge, entertainment, is all promoted as needing to be instantly available to everybody. But missing in it all is love. I used to think that I was indoctrinating my kids with a love of books and reading, because when I really sit down and spend time with them that we both enjoy, it is when we are reading books together. But this is no more a means of indoctrination than mealtimes together are. In the chaos of rapidly changing cultures that is accelerating in our modern reality, family naturally still finds its crevices to hold on to. And the actions we perform, without need to analyze and judge them as healthy or not, naturally fulfill the roles our children need them to.
Yesterday we all got in the car together as what the toddlers refer to as "the whole big family". It was just a short drive to the library before it closed for the night, but it was my most enjoyable experience of the day. When we are all in the car together, we don't have outside distractions. We talk and laugh and joke together, and a calmness and security settles over even the most begrudging siblings who have fought that day, and we realize how much we really like being together, how much we really love each other.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Toilet Paper Stores
One more Christmas story, even though societal conventions say "It's not Christmas anymore!"
Well, I haven't taken my Christmas decorations down yet. It is still dark more than it is light, and Christmas is partly the celebration of it being dark and how beautiful lights look in that dark. Besides, this story is relevant to right now, for much the same reason that keeping Christmas lights up is a good idea!
There are certain stores that sell millions of plastic bottles, cardboard boxes, and metal twisty ties. Then they package these things all up for you in plastic bags that hurt the environment just as much as disposable diapers, and send them home for you to have the fossil fuel burning garbage truck drive by each week to haul away, (hopefully to be burned at hight temperatures to create fume free electricity or at least to a landfill, but too often to be thrown raw into the ocean.)
We call these stores "toilet paper stores" because they are very good if you want to buy something "disposable" that lasts as long as toilet paper. They are also actually very good places to buy toilet paper itself for really cheap if you like getting your exercise for the day by walking over car fume smelling asphalt. And toilet paper is nice. There are some times when you just want to have toilet paper around. Nice soft cotton reusable wipes that actually get you clean the first time, and that you can get wet if you need to, are called family cloth for a reason. And there are some people that it is probably best if they don't use a bidet. So when you have company over, and you don't do THAT kind of laundry for company, providing them with soft dead clear cut trees, is sometimes not only really convenient, but a life saver.
http://hyenacart.com/WindyWillowPond/mt/3343/42503/Willow-Wipes-Family-Cloth-Baby-Wipes-in-Floral-mix
Off subject note here on family cloth for even, or especially for those that know all too well that you can't get toilet paper with food stamps. I go and buy old big 100% cotton T-shirts from Goodwill or some other second hand store. Then I cut the front off and the back off, and these are the perfect size and a good shape (though not exactly rectangular) for a flat cloth diaper. Because it is knit, and because I am good at breaking sewing machines, and because I don't have time, I don't even bother to sew the edges to keep them from unraveling. I've used them for years, and they get holes in them before they unravel. These also make good runny nose rags. No matter how the commercials say they improve paper, soft cotton will not rip the skin off your nose like paper does. They are almost as versatile as a receiving blanket. It you get big enough T-shirts, you can even use them for a receiving blanket for a newborn, at least for a couple of weeks depending of course on how big the baby is ;)
And the sleeves left over make wonderful family cloth. T-shirts without plastic words and pictures painted all over them, work the best. You can usually get them for a dollar or two, and sometimes stores even will have a whole bag of them marked down as bulk!
One time I was buying a whole bunch and the checkout lady was obviously perturbed. I got the overwhelming feeling from her that she had seen much better times financially and was feeling sorry for herself for being so down on her luck that she had to work at a thrift store. She was probably a little more than hungry as well. I call it skinny. When you don't eat a lot because you want to save money. There is a certain tense tired feeling that always accompanies you when you are like this.
Anyway, she was almost making fun of me for being frivolous and buying so many shirts that she could probably not afford. "Oh, you're husband will have lots and lots of shirts for work!" I didn't want to embarrass her so I didn't tell her that "my husband" hadn't held a steady job in years (and years) and that I had saved my pennies to be able to buy these shirts so I would no longer have to end up in tears in the middle of the night when my babies were crying while I desperately tried to get creative in finding something to keep them dry. She reminded me so much of myself. I am so like that, thinking only my lot in life is desperate. Seeing others' lives as easy, and grossly misinterpreting both.
So, the Christmas memory. It was Christmas Eve and it had been dark and dreary outside all week with lots of biting wind and no snow to play in. Just no fun. The small town we lived in had no indoor place to play. Our house was 800 square feet if you counted the overly drafty "enclosed" back porch. This, combined with lots of energetic little kids made for bad cabin fever. We had even taken blankets and books out to the car and climbed all over in it (as it was at least sheltered from the wind), for a change of scenery. And this is with owning coats and socks to use for mittens. At times like this, I always wondered what they did in the olden days or in other countries in smaller houses than ours, without modern snow/cold gear.
We had no money, so we didn't have to worry about buying Christmas presents. So I loaded all the kids up, and took them to the local toilet paper store. It was large! It was warm! It was filled with bright lights, toys, and Christmas music! It was the best idea I'd ever had.
So we spent all day warm and happily wandering up and down the isles. Staring at toys for hours as our imaginations filled us. How many trips to the store have I not had time to dawdle as much as my kids wanted me to? We dawdled. We enjoyed every minute of Christmas.
I started to feel sorry for the other shoppers. If we had had money, I too would have tried to leave the babies home while I went Christmas shopping "for" them. I too would not have time to listen to their animated talk as they decided what each doll was thinking. I too would not have gently touched each Christmas plant, and marveled at the softness of the sleeves of baby Christmas outfits.
It is so much fun to not have any money. It is so much more relaxing than having a little money. When you don't have any money, you don't even have to pay attention to the sales, because any price is more than you can afford.
After all these years, that Christmas Eve is still one of our favorite Christmas memories.
Now when we shop for Christmas, we all go, and one parent feeds the imagination, while the other one plays sneaky ninja Santa's Elf!
Well, I haven't taken my Christmas decorations down yet. It is still dark more than it is light, and Christmas is partly the celebration of it being dark and how beautiful lights look in that dark. Besides, this story is relevant to right now, for much the same reason that keeping Christmas lights up is a good idea!
There are certain stores that sell millions of plastic bottles, cardboard boxes, and metal twisty ties. Then they package these things all up for you in plastic bags that hurt the environment just as much as disposable diapers, and send them home for you to have the fossil fuel burning garbage truck drive by each week to haul away, (hopefully to be burned at hight temperatures to create fume free electricity or at least to a landfill, but too often to be thrown raw into the ocean.)
We call these stores "toilet paper stores" because they are very good if you want to buy something "disposable" that lasts as long as toilet paper. They are also actually very good places to buy toilet paper itself for really cheap if you like getting your exercise for the day by walking over car fume smelling asphalt. And toilet paper is nice. There are some times when you just want to have toilet paper around. Nice soft cotton reusable wipes that actually get you clean the first time, and that you can get wet if you need to, are called family cloth for a reason. And there are some people that it is probably best if they don't use a bidet. So when you have company over, and you don't do THAT kind of laundry for company, providing them with soft dead clear cut trees, is sometimes not only really convenient, but a life saver.
http://hyenacart.com/WindyWillowPond/mt/3343/42503/Willow-Wipes-Family-Cloth-Baby-Wipes-in-Floral-mix
Off subject note here on family cloth for even, or especially for those that know all too well that you can't get toilet paper with food stamps. I go and buy old big 100% cotton T-shirts from Goodwill or some other second hand store. Then I cut the front off and the back off, and these are the perfect size and a good shape (though not exactly rectangular) for a flat cloth diaper. Because it is knit, and because I am good at breaking sewing machines, and because I don't have time, I don't even bother to sew the edges to keep them from unraveling. I've used them for years, and they get holes in them before they unravel. These also make good runny nose rags. No matter how the commercials say they improve paper, soft cotton will not rip the skin off your nose like paper does. They are almost as versatile as a receiving blanket. It you get big enough T-shirts, you can even use them for a receiving blanket for a newborn, at least for a couple of weeks depending of course on how big the baby is ;)
And the sleeves left over make wonderful family cloth. T-shirts without plastic words and pictures painted all over them, work the best. You can usually get them for a dollar or two, and sometimes stores even will have a whole bag of them marked down as bulk!
One time I was buying a whole bunch and the checkout lady was obviously perturbed. I got the overwhelming feeling from her that she had seen much better times financially and was feeling sorry for herself for being so down on her luck that she had to work at a thrift store. She was probably a little more than hungry as well. I call it skinny. When you don't eat a lot because you want to save money. There is a certain tense tired feeling that always accompanies you when you are like this.
Anyway, she was almost making fun of me for being frivolous and buying so many shirts that she could probably not afford. "Oh, you're husband will have lots and lots of shirts for work!" I didn't want to embarrass her so I didn't tell her that "my husband" hadn't held a steady job in years (and years) and that I had saved my pennies to be able to buy these shirts so I would no longer have to end up in tears in the middle of the night when my babies were crying while I desperately tried to get creative in finding something to keep them dry. She reminded me so much of myself. I am so like that, thinking only my lot in life is desperate. Seeing others' lives as easy, and grossly misinterpreting both.
So, the Christmas memory. It was Christmas Eve and it had been dark and dreary outside all week with lots of biting wind and no snow to play in. Just no fun. The small town we lived in had no indoor place to play. Our house was 800 square feet if you counted the overly drafty "enclosed" back porch. This, combined with lots of energetic little kids made for bad cabin fever. We had even taken blankets and books out to the car and climbed all over in it (as it was at least sheltered from the wind), for a change of scenery. And this is with owning coats and socks to use for mittens. At times like this, I always wondered what they did in the olden days or in other countries in smaller houses than ours, without modern snow/cold gear.
We had no money, so we didn't have to worry about buying Christmas presents. So I loaded all the kids up, and took them to the local toilet paper store. It was large! It was warm! It was filled with bright lights, toys, and Christmas music! It was the best idea I'd ever had.
So we spent all day warm and happily wandering up and down the isles. Staring at toys for hours as our imaginations filled us. How many trips to the store have I not had time to dawdle as much as my kids wanted me to? We dawdled. We enjoyed every minute of Christmas.
I started to feel sorry for the other shoppers. If we had had money, I too would have tried to leave the babies home while I went Christmas shopping "for" them. I too would not have time to listen to their animated talk as they decided what each doll was thinking. I too would not have gently touched each Christmas plant, and marveled at the softness of the sleeves of baby Christmas outfits.
It is so much fun to not have any money. It is so much more relaxing than having a little money. When you don't have any money, you don't even have to pay attention to the sales, because any price is more than you can afford.
After all these years, that Christmas Eve is still one of our favorite Christmas memories.
Now when we shop for Christmas, we all go, and one parent feeds the imagination, while the other one plays sneaky ninja Santa's Elf!
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Exploring!
I have already managed to teach my one year old that exploring and curiosity are bad, or at least not things "approved of" by Mommy. When I walked around the corner, he started and backed away from initiating an investigation of the myriad unknowns of his world. Later, he looked up at me questioningly, recognizing I was there, before he reached out to touch something new. Not in the beautiful hesitancy of trusting a parent, where a parents advice on something potentially scary, is sought. Not using me as a partner to investigate and navigate the world that has taught him healthy respect and hesitancy, but gut wrenchingly a look for approval. "Will I be pulled hastily away from this 'danger' as well? I might as well ask, as to reach out my hand for comprehension, only to have it pulled back."
I dream of being organized enough that I have a large house and yard completely explorable by a 1 year old. But then, as my child eats dirt and teeths on rocks (large clean ones he can hold in his hand are the best - they are hard and cold and probably taste good and earthy-natural-wild too), I think of all of the "safe" exploration toys on the market for his age group. Long term safety of gnawing on plastic aside, is this limited bright colored exploration what I really want for my child? Are bright colors better than what he could get by himself in his real, unpretentious world? How do I define "better"? Is it how much knowledge he can find, or what knowledge? What would he prefer?
Then words from my favorite book (I know, I have more than one - or a new one every day, every moment), come back.
How we want to mimic our parents. We want to discover their world. It is not some T.V. hyper plastic world that he wants to discover, that he is unsatiably curious about, but my world. (Unless of course my world is a "T.V. hyper plastic" one.)
I love books that capture this sacred longing of children to become like their parents. This natural motivation that makes learning what they will need in the world they are and will be in, spontaneous. This instinctual force that makes all play the best suited learning for that individuals life.
I just wish he saw me as an exploring partner, not the curiosity police of his domain.
I dream of being organized enough that I have a large house and yard completely explorable by a 1 year old. But then, as my child eats dirt and teeths on rocks (large clean ones he can hold in his hand are the best - they are hard and cold and probably taste good and earthy-natural-wild too), I think of all of the "safe" exploration toys on the market for his age group. Long term safety of gnawing on plastic aside, is this limited bright colored exploration what I really want for my child? Are bright colors better than what he could get by himself in his real, unpretentious world? How do I define "better"? Is it how much knowledge he can find, or what knowledge? What would he prefer?
Then words from my favorite book (I know, I have more than one - or a new one every day, every moment), come back.
How we want to mimic our parents. We want to discover their world. It is not some T.V. hyper plastic world that he wants to discover, that he is unsatiably curious about, but my world. (Unless of course my world is a "T.V. hyper plastic" one.) I love books that capture this sacred longing of children to become like their parents. This natural motivation that makes learning what they will need in the world they are and will be in, spontaneous. This instinctual force that makes all play the best suited learning for that individuals life.
I just wish he saw me as an exploring partner, not the curiosity police of his domain.
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