Pumpkin Snickerdoodles

This past weekend I invited Autumn into our house. Using my last can of organic pumpkin (from when I over bought at Wholefoods in fear of the great, non-existent pumpkin shortage of 2011), I made pumpkin snickerdoodles. They smell heavenly! I had a lot of help as my husband had to put all the ingredients on the counter for me so I wouldn't have to bend and lift (cursed back!) and Monkey made for an excellent taste tester.

The scent of pumpkin means fall to me and I am certainly getting into the mood a little earlier this year. Thank goodness for neighbors who like it when I share cookies. These are not good to keep in the house...at least for those of us prone to late night cookie recollections.

Just realised this picture also shows the last of our Trader Joe figs. They did not last long. We literally stood in the kitchen and ate a zillion of these over the kitchen sink (the figs - not the cookies, although they were also delish).

Gratitude

Reflecting on all the things I am grateful for tonight. 

Top of the list is my healthy family. 

The list is really long.

It includes love. 

Sweet kisses and jokes about burps and zombie cows.

It includes perfect lattes and pumpkin muffins.

It includes blue skies and fluffy clouds over a soccer field.

A sweaty, happy, triumphant boy who loves school.

A man who makes me laugh and reminds me of everything right and good.

Holding hands three across.

It includes the first autumn breeze wafting through our shutters.

There is so much to be grateful for and my heart is full.

Tender Hearts

Last month was Honey's birthday and Monkey insisted on wrapping his gifts without any help from me. I absolutely love that he taped two sticks of Daddy's favorite gum to one package. So sweet.

Sidelined

Summer is evaporating swiftly - nearly gone and I have not posted in a long while. There were several reasons. Initially it was because I wanted to be more mindful about living in the present. This blog is about my adventures in slowing down and letting go a bit. I began to be concerned that I was more interested in capturing my life in snapshots than in actually enjoying it in the moment. Make sense?

What I realised is that I almost always write late at night when the house is quiet and my mind is restless. So not really an issue. We also just really enjoyed family time this summer. No crazy rushed schedules, just exploring what interested us. Secondly, I've been busy with new projects at work that have interrupted my normal hectic, yet comfortable work patterns. My late night musings have all been work related. This is why learning new things are good for our brains...

For the last several weeks, however, I haven't posted because I just couldn't sit at a computer to do so. I injured my back in a silly second that I wish I could rewind and re-do. It happens to so many people but I never thought it would happen to me. It is a herniated disk that will take 4 weeks to 3 months to mend and another 300-500 days for my body to completely heal, provided I take care and not re-injure myself.

My experience has been deeply humbling, as I had to accept that my normal, tenacious approach to solving problems (ignore the discomfort and plow through) would just not work in a situation that required me to be still. My attempt to simply ignore the problem did not work, and in fact slowed down my healing. Physical therapy and a new respect for really taking care of myself has become a strong focus. I tend to take care of everyone else around me and put myself (I know there is a club for this...) last.

I now have a new appreciation for those who live with acute pain or who lose their mobility. Not being able to sit, pick up things without squatting (good news is my leg muscles are getting great exercise!), sleep well or remember what it was like to not feel pain constantly affects your quality of life in such a profound way. What I am ashamed of is how crummy I have been taking all this. I never slow down and yet this is not something I can rush around. My normal way of approaching things will actually hurt me in this matter. And it is frustrating not to just get better immediately.

So I complain. I whine. I apologise for whining then do it some more. It is quite detestable. My family has been so wonderful and yet I compare myself to people who REALLY have problems, who NEVER complain, despite having terrible things happen to them and yet who sweetly remind us all of angels. I am not this type of person. The sad truth is that when the tough got going, I am a failure. At this point in my life, this very week, I am a miserable, shocked child who is not feeling enough gratitude for all my blessings. So my personal task is to accept this temporary status in my life. To accept it and move through it with as much grace as I can muster...or fake.

The Met for Kids

I recall my first years in New York and the love affair I enjoyed with all the museums. Every Sunday was my special day to explore and these days often ending on the steps of the Met with a cappuccino from a nearby cafe on Madison, watching the city go by into evening.


This summer we embarked on a family summer museum program - kid style! Various museums to explore art as well as historical and/or scientific subjects. Monkey is old enough to ask questions and become truly engaged in areas that interest him in an entirely new way - it is such a pleasure to feed that curiosity and expand his experiences! Even though we have visited the Museum of Natural History and the Met a hundred times, this summer was somehow the magic age.

Van Gogh was a favorite.

Every other weekend we select a subject and location. For example, the Egyption section when we completed the last Percy Jackson novel. We poured over my old Greek art books from college beforehand and he was able to identify colums and pottery styles on his own. Woo ha!

Last weekend we decided on European paintings with a scavenger hunt for boats as subjects at the Met. We could easily overwhelm him with lots of info and I didn't want to do that. No preaching. I really wanted him to explore on his own and decide what he likes best. So we came up with a game - each picking the art or object that we like the most. At the Met, mine has always been the same - an enormous work by Theodore Rousseau that makes my heart pound. Monkey surprised me by selecting two paintings.

The first was The Virgin Adoring the Host by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
He said that he loved the colors and "the sweetness of her face".

The Second was 1807 Friedland by Earnest Meissonier. He liked the "realness of all the horses and soldiers". A Napoleon victory, I did agree with the exquisite details and it was an interesting study.




So even though I only gave us a few hours and tried to limit us to one floor, we ended up exploring a lot more after lunch, led by a little boy and his whims. Not such a big surprise? He loved Modern Art.  An area that we hadn't spent much time in before.

Here are our favorites:

This amazing work called Dusasa II by an African sculptor named El Anatsue. It is a giant net made from found aluminum, copper wire and seals from liquor bottles, with plastic caps.

We also noted and loved how interested he was in architecture. Asking a million questions about how artists and builders created columns, gates, armour etc...and the Met does a great job of providing educational support. All those hours with Legos seem to have a purpose now...

So next trip is to MOMA to explore more Calder and Pollack, avoiding the more avante garde areas that he is too young to see or for us to explain. And a return to the Met to visit the American Wing. This is such a fun age and this is our best summer ever, just exploring the world through his eyes and following his interests. So his summer is not just about camp and trips to the beach (which are still pretty terrific). Not totally about following his every desire, either.

If so we would be in Legoland right now.

San Francisco

Had an amazing work experience in San Fran recently. Didn't have a chance to do any sightseeing yet I did spend time in Union Square shopping. Of course I did snap a couple of pics on my way to pick up an evening coffee in prep for a late night. The weather was a lovely change from the heat of New York. Next trip to SF will include an evening tour of Alcatraz. Mwaaa-hahaha.

The Cost of Crazy

I hope this is not a sign of age, yet lately it seems as though the world has gone crazy. I suspect a great deal of my perception is based upon all the negative stories and images available thanks to hyper competitive media sources. For the past several weeks I've been afraid to access a screen anywhere (including online) because of all the "Zombie" stories and images.

Since elementary school when I first saw the infomercial of a frying egg ("this is your brain on drugs"), I've been pretty aware that drugs are bad.bad.bad. So why are people still making such dumb choices? Although there will always be terrible stories to tell, my repulsion is in why the media is showing such graphic imagery without providing a choice as to whether we want to see it or not. Are ratings so important - and what does it say about us as humans that so many of us are clearly clicking on these links (or they wouldn't keep providing them).

I used to love scary movies - before they became grotesque. Now I refuse to watch any scary movie. Remember the campy thrillers from the 70s and 80s? The suspense building up to a crescendo while you tensed in dread for the moment when the bad guy was going to jump out and kill teenagers about to "make hay"? Today's villain makes Jason look like a boy scout. It seems as though cinematography and technology have advanced dramatically and many images and story lines include a ton of realistic gore/horror as well as a callous disregard for human life or boundaries. I believe the Blair Witch Project was the movie that cured any interest I will ever have in scary movies (I know, I know but we saw it opening night with friends before word got out that it was a 100% fake documentary. The last five seconds of that movie had me sleepless for weeks.)

Yet I can choose to see a film - bloody images and stories plastered on newsy web sites feel much more intrusive as I am not expecting to see them pop up. Some of these sites are not offering a link with a warning - which limits my choices. Whereas I could visit a site and not choose to select, see or read about cannibalism or murder (title tag only), now my choice is being narrowed to whether or not to visit the site period.

This is also why reality TV has no interest to me. I already know how terrible people can be. I don't need to witness how heinous people can be when trapped on an island, a house or on a stage. We watched five seconds of a funniest videos show last week and it has changed considerably from when it first came out. A lot meaner. A grown-up hitting a kid in the head with a bat is not funny. Anyone getting truly hurt where they can't get up is NOT funny.

To be honest, we began watching the Bad News Bears recently with our son when I had to turn it off. PG apparently meant rated R in the 70s. Another indication of how our sensibilities have changed. It seems we have always had a penchant for the dark side yet our thoughts as to what is appropriate for general audiences has shifted. I'd like to declare that I am not a prude, nor am I a cowering flower. There are shows with violence I will watch because the content is intelligent and keeps me guessing plots. I just want to preserve the boundaries of decency and respect for human suffering.

If I do turn a screen on, it is not an indication of interest in bloody images and news featuring the worst stories imaginable (and some that are not.) There is a cost to all this crazy. Numerous studies indicate that teenage anxiety and depression have risen dramatically in the last 10 years. My hope is that the youngest generations will be turned off by the extremism of our current media culture. Although not a fan of censorship, today's unprecedented access to data requires a certain self discipline in what we fuel our minds with. History has shown a societal cycle of returning to grace after periods of more callous dissolution. It typically started with smaller voices declaring that it was enough - today it may be as simple as turning away from the things unhealthy to our spirits, including toxic people and programming. At the end of the day, the cost of crazy is a voluntary price.