still life with after-dinner dishes

The after-dinner dishes looked so pretty with the late sun filtering though the window that I felt compelled to take a picture instead of clearing and washing them.

Catching Up

It's been a crazy month, hence my recent absence from the blogosphere. Lots of things going on around here: teaching pottery classes at the college, a trip to the big town for doctor's and dentist appointments, the ripping up old and putting down of new flooring in most of our house.  Packing our stuff into boxes, moving it from room to room, and finally unpacking it. To add to that I have been watching a new little one, most days.  Then of course, last week was Iditarod madness, which came with all the excitement and busyness of a houseful of family and friends, a few late nights and early mornings, a trip to UNK, and lots of admiring of the beautiful four-legged athletes.  Today the house is relatively quiet, and all the excitement has died down to a dull roar. Sadie and I are catching up with a cup of hot chocolate, and I am blogging while she reads the Sesame Street news.  That's our March Madness in a nutshell.  Hope all is well in your worlds.

How to get your doggie to go "ni-ni" by Sadie

First, you need to get him his purple fleece blanket, and lots of teddy bears.  Boxers love teddy bears.

Then he's probably going to want you to read him a story. 

"Everyone Poops" is his favorite.

Of course, you will need to snuggle him up.

"ni-ni" Cash.

p.s. I wish my kid was this easy to get to sleep.

Happy Monday.

Mindful Holidays: for the planet, for the people

The holiday season is upon us.  Walk into any place of commerce (large or small) and you are apt to see a plethora of gaudy, disposable Halloween/ Thanksgiving or even Christmas decorations cluttering up your field of vision.  Does that make me sound humbug?  I'm not...I swear.  I love the holidays, but I hate the commercialized, consumerist frenzy that seems to be what a lot of people celebrate these days.

for the lols

Gosh. This could have saved me lots of time as an English teacher.

the rest of the comic (What we should have been taught in our Senior year) is here.

It is in very poor taste, of course, but funny.. and a little bit true.

Happy Friday.

a case of the gypsy blues.

When Sadie woke up from her nap today she asked to go bye-bye.  My one-year-old gets cooped up too.  Since the boys were out in the country, I didn't have a vehicle, so my bye-bye options were somewhat limited to where our chevrolegs wanted to take us.  We went for a walk on middle beach.  Sadie was perfectly happy to run around there and pick up rocks, and roll in the sand, even though that meant I had to pick a cigarette butt out of her hair (gag) but on the walk home through Front Street I felt bad for the first time that this shabby looking town is all I have to show my kid.  Sadie points her pudgy little fingers at a pile of decomposing refrigerators that are lined up in a litter-strewn alley between two falling down houses.  I'm trying to give her some kind of an adjective, because she wants to know what everything is these days.  "Junk." That's the best I could do. Front St. in Nome is decaying.  The ever-prevalent wind is scouring the exterior off the buildings, the sidewalk is streaked with hawked loogies, spilled beer and expired cigarettes.  Even though it's 5pm on Sunday there are plenty of people staggering around more than a few sheets gone. They are laughing really loudly, and ridiculously, which Sadie then immitates in her childish way, which is sad because she is trying to comprehend funny, and that laughing really isn't funny.

I know this is part of my love-hate relationship with Nome... as in I LOVE the surrounding country, and the awesome friends we have here (truly some amazing people) but I HATE the town of Nome itself. Seriously. I cried the first time I saw it.

Dear Sadie, If I could redo our bye-bye this afternoon I would have us wake up in Edinburgh, or somewhere else like that.  Somewhere old, but clean.  We would stay at an inauspicious pension, or maybe a tiny bed and breakfast owned by a sweet snowy haired lady with a thick accent that's just a little to hard to understand. We could go for a walk on old cobblestone streets that are so worn from foot traffic that you wouldn't trip over them too much.  When our legs got tired we would pop into a cafe and I would be so delighted to find a really strong cup of espresso, and a raisin scone for you.  We'd take our snack to a park, where there would be a fountain and some grass for you to run around on. You would feed the crumbs from your scone to the pigeons.  If we were lucky, we might even see a police officer on a horse. You would probably really like to see a horse. I don't know what else we would do...admire the magnificent, towering castles, maybe just walk around and people watch--look into shop windows at all kinds of different curiosities, go eat dinner in a place that has comfy vintage chairs and warm yellow light filtering through prismatic lead crystal.  When our eyes had finally seen enough new things for one day, we could retire to our accommodations and fall fast asleep under a fluffy, white feather-down comforter that still smells just a little bit like the sunshine soaked up on an afternoon clothesline.

Now that would be a bye-bye I could feel proud of. So it's midnight and I am travelocity-ing tickets from Anchorage to Edinburgh, and guess what? $345! That is less than a plane ticket from Nome to Anchorage.  Maybe when Loren gets home from this most recent hunting excursion I'll convince him that Sadie and I really need to go bye-bye to Scotland.

Buddha does my dishes.

 I have to admit, this has been kind of a bad week for escalating stress over tasks that seem to be piling up around the household.  A couple of people around here, and I wont mention any names, have actually been getting into some pretty awful (and dumb) arguments regarding said tasks.  Anyone who has ever had a baby can attest to the fact that, delightful as they may be, they don't make getting the chores done any easier.  I have been feeling in over my head, and getting kind of angry about it.  This evening I was reading in a little book of Buddhist meditations and it got me thinking.... I don't really think of washing my dishes, folding piles of laundry (and then re-folding them as Sadie dumps them on the floor), or cleaning up around Sadie's high chair for the umpteenth time that day as a time to practice self-centering, but really, what better time to be mindful?  

So even though it was 9pm, and I had already done lots of chores today, and I was tired, and I was the one who cooked everyone dinner, I decided to tackle my uber-messy kitchen in a zen fashion tonight.  

I didn't wish the job on anyone else.

As I loaded the dishwasher I thought of how lucky we are to live in a place that even has such a luxury.

While washing the coffee pot I thought of how nice it will be to have a steaming cup of black wake-me-up in the morning, without having to wash it.

Scrubbing the cooking pots to a nice shiny silver just made me feel happy--

I like it when things are shiny.

I enjoyed the simple way the wooden utensils clacked together as they stacked in the drainer.

Instead of feeling grumpy, and resentful, I felt energized as I mopped the floor to a nice gleaming white, even knowing full well that it will be covered with muddy foot and paw prints by noon tomorrow.

Its funny how in life the best path to follow can sometimes be the one right in front of you;  you might just need to kick some weeds aside.

Call it an attitude adjustment, a perspective tweak, or whatever you will, all I can say is that from now on Buddha is going to be doing the dishes around here, because by letting go of my negativity I feel refreshed and satisfied.
I know that tomorrow I will have way more energy to devote to the things that are 
really  important.

peace,

Tara

Hate cannot drive out hate.

”I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” -Martin Luther King Jr.

I don't usually blog about topics political on here, as it seems those topics tend to be ones that can cause dissention amongst friends and family, and that really isn't the point of this blog. That being said, I have been feeling a heaviness this week, a sense of something very spiritually amiss while following the national response to the recent death of Osama Bin Laden.

It is an interesting phenomenon to see people actively celebrating the death of another human being. Was Bin Laden an evil man? He was a man who chose to live by the ideals of intolerance and hatred. There are many people in the world who live by those ideals. What made Bin Laden unique was that he had a tremendous ability to make other people believe in his ideals. Maybe his "evilness" was a function of his influence more than anything else.

People who live by the sword generally die by the sword, so the fact that Bin Laden is finally dead, if he indeed is, should come as no surprise. What is a surprise to me is seeing so many people making a party out of the occasion, including many members of the religious community. I came across the above MLK Jr. quote on a friend's Facebook page and the truth in it really rings clear. Celebrating Osama Bin Laden's death as though it is the end of all evil in the world is incredibly naive. And celebrating the death of any human is a reflection of the values of hatred and intolerance which have already been the cause of so much loss and sorrow, not just for Americans, but for people all over the world.

When people say things like, "we can all sleep better at night now that Bin Laden is dead" it makes me lay awake at night trying to figure out why. Are we really safer now? If we are, you will soon see the government backing up out of everyone's coolaid with their myriad infringements on our civil liberties in the name of national security. All my money, marbles and chalk says that aint gonna happen. Do you know why? Its because we are no safer now than we ever were, or ever will be until humans stop relying on wars as a way to solve our problems.

What peace of mind does that passing of Bin Laden actually offer people? Bin Laden was just a man, but the power of his ideas went well beyond what any one human is capable of. In his passing, we can hope that his ideas die with him, but they wont. There are probably hundreds of other men and women with the same ideals, and powers of persuasion waiting in the wings to take his place. Celebrating Osama Bin Laden's death is easy, in a "yeah, we got the bad guy" kind of way. But easy does not always equal best.

Especially for those in the spiritual community, this should be a sobering time, a time to reflect on the values we promote in our own lives. The only way to really stamp out the negative impression that Bin Laden has left on this earth is to fill it with an even greater amount of love and understanding. To do that takes the persistent and unrewarded work of many lifetimes, but it is, in my humble opinion, well worth our best efforts. There was this one guy, I think his name was Jesus, and he encouraged us all to strive towards this goal.

We need to do better, to put our race, politics and religion aside and engage in a meaningful dialogue with someone who is "different" or makes us feel uncomfortable. Reach out to our neighbors, to our community, and to our brothers and sisters of the human race. We need to be mindful of the ripple effect that our actions and attitudes have in our global community, and how those actions can shape the attitudes and beliefs of others. We are all children of God. All humans are born with the seeds of both good and evil, but it is our environment, and ultimately our own choices, which dictate which ones we cultivate. Water the right seeds, think about the bigger picture. Don't just go with what is easy, or pop-patriotic. In doing so, you also set an example for the people around you. You might become a light in the darkness for someone who would otherwise become very, very lost. Lost like Osama Bin Laden. It wont matter how much money we invest in wars, and military intel, Osama Bin Ladin will never be dead until we can weed out our own hatred and ignorance.

Things that are NOT awesome.

1. 6 inches of new snow in April

2. When you are painting kiln wash onto kiln shelves and a big blob of it splashes directly into your eyeball.  

3. Walking in really wet snow with your Extratuffs. For some reason the heel constantly builds its own lumpy snowball that you have to kick out every 10 steps or so.

4. When you give your baby a couple sips of fresh-squeezed orange juice and they projectile vomit.  mom fail.

What is awesome:

Sadie's sumo-wrestler ponytail.
feel free to add to the list in the comments below.

today...

is the first day since Sadie was born that I haven't done a single load of laundry.  Not a one.  And it wasn't for lack of having laundry to do.  I think the washing machine just needed a rest; maybe I'm projecting.

does it make me totally crunchy if I think La Puy Lentils are beautiful?

because I do.
Sometimes I just stare at them because they look like little tiny worlds...and then I get to thinking that maybe they are little worlds, holding a seed to grow new life, or energy to make our bodies and spirits stronger.  Oh man, I am starting to sound like this guy.

I think I just answered my own question.

I am going to go back to the kitchen and finish making my Lentil Celebration Loaf. 

Don't judge.

thank you for the randomness Caleb.

e I love it when someone gets a hold of your camera so when you go to upload your photos this is what you find:

Poor Sadie, she's so confused.

 

obviously, so is Cash

But in the end its old Toby who always has the last laugh.