I love weekends. Period.

This was last weekend. Flour on every surface. Delicious sourdough loaves that sustained us through the week.



And this was from a few weekends ago when Jamie visited. I wish we had a photo of her playing in the rain with Bridget. When I showed Laurel this picture she said, "When is Uncle Jamie coming over?"



And happy first day of fall! Driving home from school today, I noticed the leaves changing. But I finally uploaded some pictures I took at One Woman Farm over the summer, and this makes me smile. And remember the blisters on my hands. I have some other great shots, and I hope to put together something a little more in-depth about my experiences.

Bean Soup

Try it, mommy. Have a taste. Needs more pepper.

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Walking home from daycare

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Man Down!

Groan. Third week of school and I had to take a sick day. Yesterday at school, my throat started to hurt. By the time 6th period hit, I couldn't swallow without cringing, and my voice was no match for the boisterous energy of my afternoon classes. I set them up at the marker boards all around the room and they happily simplified expressions. I don't know why having them do the problems on the board elicits no complaints, when I am having them literally do the exact same problems that are on the worksheet, but hey, it works. I willed myself to sit through the after-school faculty meeting, and bleary-eyed, stumbled through Trader Joe's and the market to pick up our CSA. Then finally, I scooped Laurel up from daycare and got home. Thank goodness my mother had already planned to come over. She stepped in immediately to entertain Laurel and I drank cup after cup of hot water with lemon and honey. (Have I mentioned how much my mom rocks?)

Really, it's just a cold. I feel better today already. Actually, I felt better immediately upon making the decision to be gentle on myself, to give myself rest time, instead of trying to power through another day.

My school district has adopted an initiative this year called the "Whole Child", which my cynical side has dubbed "Teachers, you may not use the excuse that kids have crappy lives and arrive in your classroom sick/tired/hungry/scared...they should still be mastering grade level standards at all times".

But my cynical side is fading a bit with motherhood. When I spend time with Laurel, I choose to respect her time frame and needs (and believe me, a toddler's time frame is on a completely different scale that a busy mama's). This is bleeding over into my teaching a bit, and I have found myself with a greater sense of patience with them. I'm expanding the district's policy to include the "Whole Teacher". I meditate for a short time during my prep periods, and my desk is filled with all kinds of tea and snacks. I try to go slower. And, when I'm feeling crappy, I stay home in my jammies and curl up with tea and the Common Core Standards.

"Why are you so smiley all the time? Do you really like math that much?" one of them asked the other day.

"I like you that much," I told her.

Ha! Me. Smiley.

Now that's a thought...

We got a new record player...

...and it is awesome. Last Friday, M and I sat up (too) late and listened to records and drank some wine and talked. These days, it is a rare occasion that we can have a conversation that lasts longer than a few minutes. While we were sitting there I had a flashback of sitting on our tiny porch in Phoenix, bare feet propped up on the railing that always felt warm to the touch, even in the middle of the night. We didn't have a record player then (or did we? I seem to have a memory of putting Neko Case's Fox Confessor Brings the Flood on a turntable. Hmmm.), but we definitely had thousands of CDs, and we went to shows all the time and sometimes got home very late because we had driven to Tucson, which always seemed like a very good idea on the way there, but driving home on that flat, dark stretch of the 10 was another story. In those days, we were always going somewhere, with music blaring in the car, windows down and breeze in our hair. There was always a party, friends crowded into whatever tiny space we were living in at the moment, the din of conversation nearly drowning out the music in the background.

Now we put on a record and just listen to it. We enjoy the excuse to sit down for 20 minutes before it's time to get up again and flip it over.

Don't miss Bill Callahan's Apocalypse or tUnE-yArDs's whokill, some of our favorite releases of the year.

And don't worry, we're not total luddites....Laurel knows what a playlist is, too.

Back in the Swing of Things

I had a good first week of school. Things went relatively smoothly, I did the right amount of planning, and the principal happened to roll through my Algebra I class when the kids were actively debating the merits of two different equations they came up with to describe a puzzle.

That's right. Kids debating about equations. On the first day of school. Principal saw them.

The laundry didn't get backed up and nobody got sick. I went to bed early.

Nonetheless, even as smoothly as everything went last week, spending all day balancing the psychological needs of teenagers with my appointed task of teaching them math is exhausting.

I come home to my chatterbox toddler (kids racing! mail man! fire hydrant! moon out, mommy? squirrel eat nut berries? Sarah Kai park. what is that called? Want to paint, mommy. Sit in blue chair and paint brush, mommy. Want the other one. No. No. No. No.) She's very vocal, they report to me at daycare. They look serious when they say that. I decide to take it as a compliment. However, I do know that her rather large vocabulary includes the local term "jag-off", among other things, so I pack her up quickly and get out of there.

You would think that any toddler who had spent all day playing with friends at daycare and running around at the playground and racing her mommy through the park on the way home, would be highly willing and eager to go to sleep at night.

My friend's son is about the same age as Laurel and he recently learned how to get out of his crib. She texted me for advice for the post-crib bedtime era.

Good luck, I said. Bedtime has turned into a rather lengthy affair around here.

It's like Calvin and Hobbes. Or am I thinking Dennis the Menace? Laurel leaves a destructive path in her wake. Today, I was preparing dinner and turned my back on her for one second only to turn around again and see that she had dumped out an entire box of baby cereal into a bowl and was enthusiastically stirring a powdery mess.

"Yum, Mommy! Making eggs!"

It was in her hair. And all over the previously clean drying rack of dishes. It was not, however, on her clothes, since she wasn't wearing any. She stripped down at the store, earlier in the afternoon.

Bedtime is the same thing. I try to do all the right things. We have a routine. We turn out all the lights and get mellow and sing quiet songs and read books. We say a firm goodnight and tuck her in with an ever-expanding menagerie of stuffed animals. But some nights, she just won't go to sleep. She makes funny demands. "Lay down, mommy. Next to." There are requests to go to the potty. Another glass of water. Hungry. Or my personal favorite, "Ok, all done sleeping," as she dramatically flings her pacifier to the ground.

We had an interesting weekend...an impromptu party after the Big Pour, and we hosted a guy who biked from Charlottesville, VA to Pittsburgh. The house was loud with records playing and conversation. People gathered on the porch. Friends splashed with Laurel in puddles out front. It was the most fun I've had in ages.

Hello, again...

Well, that was a short month.

I remember days passing that were eternally long, but then nights came, and another day was born and then it was September. Just like that.

I wrote more letters and worked my way through five or six books from the library that did not have Elmo in the title, and went running and bought a bunch of art supplies at this super cool secondhand craft store and Laurel and I made giant messes with paint. We painted a lot of kayaks.

Laurel is somewhere between a holy terror and sheer delight. She lives life with the kind of exuberance that frequently results in some kind of mess. She fears nothing. She is friendly and inquisitive. She talks in brief phrases and sentences now. "Bees eating nectar?" and "Berries hiding the birds eat them." She calls napkins "lapkins" and it's so darn cute I can't bring myself to correct her (well, I corrected her six dozen times, but she doesn't seem to like my way of saying that word, so I've given up for now). I came home from running yesterday and Laurel and M were having a dance party of sorts in the bedroom. When I walked up to the house, she was standing on her little stool, pulled up to the window so she can watch for taxis and buses. She shouted "Mommy, out!" - which I knew to mean, "Please come inside, or else I will crawl out on the roof top and jump to you." I had a moment of panic until I saw M's head appear in the window. I went inside and while I stretched, Laurel stood alongside me and did toddler approximations of my movements. Which is to say, she contorted herself effortlessly with her not-yet-tense toddler muscles. When the three of us are together, Laurel shouts "Family hug!" and comes running over and we all hold onto each other and smile.

I just started working again. We have teacher inservice this week, and then the freshmen will come on Tuesday and regular school will start on Wednesday. I came home yesterday and was so utterly exhausted, not from the amount of work I did at school, but I think, from the lack of play. Play is therapeutic and energizing. Play makes people smile. I remember a couple of weeks ago, Laurel and I were hanging out in this field in the park. Just kind of shooting the breeze, the way one does with an almost-two-year old. Watching squirrels and looking for tiny flowers and spinning around in circles. That's what we were doing when this man walked by with his dog. I saw him smiling at us out of the corner of my eye as I twirled around, arms stretched wide, matching Laurel's movements. And then we fell ("ashes, ashes, down!" ) and stared at the clouds for a bit.

Tonight, we got stuck in a traffic jam on the way home, which might have been terrible, but Laurel calls it a traffic jamberry (do you know the Bruce Degen book?) and then we got some Spak Brothers takeout instead of cooking, and after dinner and a bath, we sat down and read Chicken Soup with Rice and Goodnight Moon, except Laurel wanted to read out loud, and she sort of did. And I was only a little bit amazed. Mostly I caught myself thinking, time and time again, I have never had such joy in all my life.

So, that was summer. We haven't really figured out a way to juggle everything on our plates and are desperately behind on just about everything. Except taking time as a family to love each other and play, whenever we have the chance, so I guess maybe we are not behind at all.

I'm a little worried now. I don't want to be tired for the rest of my life, and I don't want to feel like I am stealing time if I wander through the park, taking 2 hours to walk 1/2 a mile and stopping at every interesting stone in the path and hole in a tree trunk. I want to take time to explore pattern blocks with my ninth graders, and entertain their questions about real world math, and read some biographies of famous scientists and mathematicians. I want to ponder over problems.

Going into this school year, I prepared myself. I hate school (I know, teaching is probably not the best profession for me), so I stocked up on herbal tea and meditation recordings, and I just came across the following video, which makes me feel very calm, even though the awesomeness of August is gone. Alarm clocks are my new reality. Clutching a cup of coffee throughout most of the day, willing myself to stay upright and look interested while my principal talks about "the Whole Child".

So, watch this little video and slow down your life for a moment with me....

Growing is Forever from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Simplicity....

Almost as soon as M and I bought our house we had buyer's remorse. It isn't that we hate the house itself - it's a lovely place, classic and full of character. I love the built-in cabinets and weathered wood floors. The shiny glass door knobs and skeleton keys. I love how if you shut all the windows and pull the curtains it feels like there's air conditioning when you walk in from a hot summer day. I love that I have the kind of neighbors who pot extra herbs every summer and put them on our porch when we aren't looking. I love the terrific amount of space in the driveway to hang wet clothes and having a garage door with an automatic opener. And who doesn't appreciate the cozy heat our ancient boiler kicks out on cold January afternoons?

We have great access to public transportation. Frick Park right down the street. Walkable restaurants and groceries. Diversity that is not common in most Pittsburgh neighborhoods.

(We won't talk about the plumbing. The burglaries. The traffic. No place is paradise, after all.)

So, the buyer's remorse was not really about the house, or its location.

M has his own reasons, and maybe he'll comment on them here. For me it was about the space. There was too much of it, and we started to fill it up, consciously and unconsciously, with stuff and obligations and things to take care of and things that were supposed to make something easier, but were in fact harder. Like the vacuum.

So, we started to pare down. Summer break hit and with a sudden influx of time, I started to think about how we could simplify our cleaning and cooking, to prepare for the next school year. I decluttered using Flylady techniques and got brave enough to break out the tools and try my handiwork on a few nagging home improvement issues. Slowly, but surely, the house started to look better. Gradually, there was dinner on the table most days at 6 o'clock and the dishes were done and the sink wiped shiny by bedtime. I started to relax a little more at home. It felt less like the dorm-room we happened to crash in each night while we recovered from our busy lives, and more like a place to Be. A Home. I sold things on Craigslist and repurposed furniture and made some thoughtful additions, like houseplants, which help to clean indoor air.

With the decluttering of the house, I began a sort of decluttering of my soul. I started to examine the things that took up my time each day and considered what was beneficial to me and my family. A clearer picture of my hopes and vision emerged.

I got excited about what I was discovering on the internet. I clicked here and here and here and here. I read inspirational stories and poured over how-to's. I heard a whole lot of people saying things that I rang true to me. Consumerism will wear you down! Live more slowly! Be thoughtful about your contributions to the planet - whether it's your work or your garbage - and keep in mind that your neighbors are both down the street and in some hard-to-get-to slum in East Africa.

A funny thing happened.

I looked up one day and realized I was spending way too much time reading minimalist blogs, looking at systems to simplify and trying to streamline my life so that I could enjoy it. Trying to figure stuff out so I could get more done. More. Better. Faster.

This blog started off as a travelogue, because M and I were wanderers.

Our wanderlust was fueled by a life that had gotten away from us a bit in Phoenix. Money, cars, commuting, neckties, Teach for America. We desired simplicity. (You really can't get much simpler than backpacking. It's you and 30 pounds of stuff. And Nature, of course.)

That road, of course, led us on a 32 state camping trip and up and down the backbone of the Appalachian mountains. It brought us back to Pittsburgh and introduced new careers and along the way we acquired a daughter and a mortgage and volunteer work on various boards of directors. It started out as a pursuit of simplicity and it's led us back to the same place.

Now I could classify ourselves more as wonderers, as we watch Laurel explore and learn and grow, but it's all taking place right here in our house and our local park and the grocery store. And it's awesome.

I like telling these kind of stories, and I know you like reading them. But I've had the nagging feeling that I've allowed this blog to become too limiting. I've been censoring myself too much about what life is really like around here. It's not a true reflection of who we are or who we hope to become. I'm an honest writer, but I tell a very incomplete story.

I'm going to take a little blogging break. As my uncle described me during our recent family reunion, I can be a prolific writer, so I don't want you to think something awful happened when no new blog posts go up. I'm just at the park with Laurel, or maybe cleaning the basement. Life goes on, whether I document it or not.

This blog has been a marvelous outlet for my writer's spirit, and I think it captures a lot about me and our lives over the past five years. I especially like this post and this one about hiking in Vermont and maybe this one here, which sort of captures the lesson I keep learning over and over again...that I always feel like I'm searching for an answer about who I'm supposed to be, and it turns out I knew it all along.

So, I don't know what my plans are for this blog, only that I'm taking a bit of a break from it. Maybe we'll carry on in September, maybe something new and better will come out of it.

In any case, if you have any opinions on whether or not you'd like to see this blog continue, or questions about us, or other ideas you'd like to see me write about, feel free to leave them in the comments.

And until then, have a very nice summer.

Airing My Dirty Laundry

In polite society, we don't talk about cleaning that much. It is something you are just supposed to know how to do, and work it seamlessly into your day, without sweating, on a regular basis so that when guests arrive, there are clean glasses and the sofa is clear enough to offer them a seat.

I bought my first vacuum cleaner on Mother's Day (oh, the irony). It is a Bissell and it sucks up dirt pretty well, as far as I can tell. It's a little heavy, but it has a washable filter and canister and you don't need bags, and the hoses are really easy to get on and off.

At first, I was delighted. We have wall-to-wall carpet upstairs now and a very messy toddler and a cat who sheds. Not to mention all the dirt that gets tracked in from people who spend a lot of time biking around town and splashing in puddles in the park. I never had a new vacuum cleaner before, and I'm now convinced that the hand-me-down ones we always used did nothing except spew dust all over the house.

But recently I started to wonder if a broom isn't faster. I mean, the actual sweeping seems to take longer, but when you are done, you are done. No moving parts to break. Obviously I can't deal with the carpet with a broom, but why do I lug the Bissell all over the house? A broom is lighter. It doesn't take up as much space to store. It doesn't make any noise and you don't need electricity (actually a bigger problem than you might think when you live in a house with original wiring).

Cleaning is different depending on the type of house you live in. Those of you who live in old houses know that ancient dirt creeps up from behind baseboards and out of closet corners where plaster is crumbling. Sometimes we find bits of 75 year old newspapers that were shoved in cracks to prevent a draft. Buffalo nickels emerge from under the radiators.

Some people are very particular about cleaning techniques. They learn from their mothers the "right" way to mop a floor, or clean a toilet. I don't have any hereditary cleaning rituals. I just experiment with what what works best, preferably using baking soda and vinegar and perhaps a little Simple Green when necessary. Some people have special tools...a duster they can't live without, or a certain brand of toilet tank cleaner.

I recently ran across this video, and I'm sort of intrigued by the book, although she seems to be coming from a place of privilege that I can't relate to. I like the images of the "help" scrubbing the tile and changing the garbage can liner. When I was hanging my clothes on the line to dry yesterday, I tried to rethink the act...make it into something pleasurable. And then suddenly it was, the bending and stretching to reach the line, and gazing up into the sky as I did. Lifting up the heavy red bath towels to the highest part of the line. Tiny t-shirts and shorts all waving in a row in the breeze. It went from being something I do because I ought not use the dryer on a sunny warm day, into something that I actually enjoyed.



So what do you think? Should I keep vacuuming my wood floors and stairs, or just stick with a broom?

A really big box...

I remember when my parents got a new refrigerator. I must have been in middle school, on the brink of adolescence, but still in that stage where we played outside during summer vacation, for many, many hours at a time...my sister and brother and the neighbor, Billy. The box was huge, big enough for us to take turns lying down in it and rolling down the hill. We sat in it for shade when the sun got high. When it was finally too mangled to be box-like, we ripped it apart and slid down the hill on the pieces, across the dry grass.

When I dropped Laurel off at daycare this morning, there was a big box in the middle of the floor. Two pairs of tiny legs stuck out the end, and much giggling could be heard from within. This is one of the reassuring things about our daycare. Kids play in sand, and boxes and water, and come home dirty and I once caught the caregivers imagining themselves as bears, right alongside the 2 and 3 year-olds. Kids play, with stuff, using their imaginations.

As a reading specialist, I know that creative play is incredibly important for paving the neural pathways these little ones will need to become literate in the next 3 or 4 years.

As a mom, I simply enjoy talking to Laurel about whatever she has imagined that giant box to be. A house, a kayak, a mouth.