Yoga for Your Pregnancy

I wanted to quickly post about a prenatal yoga DVD I got for my birthday and absolutely LOVE! It is Yoga for Your Pregnancy by Yoga Journal & Lamaze. The video has multiple practices, which makes it a wonderful value for your money--there is an energizing practice, a relaxing practice, a postpartum practice and then quick practices of meditation for pregnancy, pranayama for pregnancy, and birthing room yoga. I adore the birthing room yoga segment. So good! It is only five minutes long and is perfect to use in birth classes. I've already incorporated it into my classes and it is wonderful. I bought this video specifically for ideas to use in birth classes--which is fulfilled perfectly with that great little segment--but was pleasantly surprised that I LOVE doing each of the practices as my own morning yoga routine. I'm not pregnant and find the practices really, really good even for not-pregnant people. They have a great balance of some challenge along with restorative, gentleness (they have modifications for people further along in pregnancy). The postpartum practice is really quite a workout, which was a surprise to me. Anyway, I just really enjoy this video!

There is an interview with the instructor as one of the bonus features and she talks about her planned homebirth which progressed very quickly and so she ended up having an unplanned unassisted birth, which I thought was cool. She also talks about using hypnosis to prepare for birth. Ever since I "met" Sheridan online, my ears perk up whenever I hear someone mention using hypnosis in labor!

As far as books, I only finished reading The Very Important Pregnancy Program by Gail Brewer. I didn't really like it that much. The emphasis on nutrition was intense! I recognize that nutrition is very important, but I wonder if it is the total end all be all that this book presents! Also, basically I collect books like this in order to glean new information or coping techniques to share in birth classes. I was interested that in this ENTIRE book there was basically ONE coping strategy, which was to do progressive relaxation in which a "wave" of relaxation passes through your body during each contraction. She even says that this technique might get "boring" since you have to do it for several hours of contractions, but doesn't really offer anything else! I forget that some approaches to birth preparation are much more passive than my own approach--the emphasis of this book, and in the Bradley book, is to lie still on your side basically the whole labor doing this relaxation technique the whole time. No thanks!

One World

From my Zen calendar (what did I do without this thing?!):

"There is only one world, the world pressing against you this minute."

--Storm Jameson

"The lesson that life reappears and constantly enforces is 'Look under foot.' You are always nearer to the divine and the true sources of your power than you think."

--John Burroughs

And a great one from Thoreau:

"I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows."

The quote above is about real *magic* to me. My older son was asking questions about magic the other day and I told him that I think there is plenty of real life real magic in the world and he said, "yeah, like how babies grow!" After watching the Discovery Channel film referenced below, we had been talking about the tininess of cells and how they make up our body parts and how marvelous it is that each of us grew a heart that beats in this complex and orchestrated way that we can not really fathom or duplicate, and all of the potential that exists in each flower, vegetable, or tree seed, etc., etc.

Happiness is a Choice

I needed this quote today (I read it in an article, I haven't ever read the book it is from, Happiness is a Choice, but maybe I should):

"No single energy can be more impactful on this planet than the joy and well-being emanating from one truly happy and loving person."

I try to be mindful of the kind of energy emanating from me and sometimes it gets dragged down into feeling ineffective and pessimistic (also, often not. I have a lot of enthusiasm and passion and joy of life! :) I'd like to stay primarily on the joy and well-being emanation side rather than the discouraged and critical side, which is where I felt myself being today!)

Rediscovering Birth

This past week I finally finished reading Rediscovering Birth by Sheila Kitzinger. I've had this book for some time and have flipped through it more than once because it has great pictures and some good quotes as well. It is a big hardback book (sort of coffee table style), which makes it heavy to hold up while lying on my side in bed to read. Hence, the reason it took like 2 years to make it off my to-read bookshelf.

I then treated myself to Things I Learned from Knitting , which was a birthday gift from me to my mom. It is by the Yarn Harlot and was just as funny as her others. And, yes, though this is a humor book about knitting, I still marked two sections because they had potential to develop into analogies about birth. LOL! We all have our obsessions! One was about cooking a mushroom stroganoff and the other about chance of death via legal execution....Watch and wait with baited breath for how I relate these to birth in a complicated and yet ingenious manner ;-) I won't be posted these for a while, since they aren't at the top of my to-do list, but someday, I promise...

In the Womb

I had the opportunity recently to watch the film In the Womb, by National Geographic. Overall, it was an interesting film though I thought it became repetitive and there was computer graphic footage that seemed to be repeated over and over again. It really brought home the miracle of human development. It is truly like magic how a baby develops in such complexity and perfection!

Of course, I was most interested to see the birth at the very end of the film and it was great! The mother gave birth standing, with her heads and arms leaning on the hospital bed. The voiceover made comments about how movement during labor is so important and how upright--standing, squatting, kneeling--is the best way to give birth (and thankfully this was backed up by what was actually happening on the screen instead of just the "ideal"). So, that was really cool! It is a very brief clip and not very easy to see so I wouldn't recommend the video for use as a birth video per se, it was just nice to see a normal birth portrayed smoothly (and in hospital setting). Then at the end the mother was nursing the baby and the baby was kind of mouthing the nipple and the nurse suddenly popped in and whisked the baby away from her--holding it up naked and away from her body so the poor thing was all splayed out and crying. My two year old was watching the film with me and I said, "oh no! They took the baby away from the mama!" The baby started to cry and my little guy FREAKED OUT, he clung to me crying and saying "baby. way. mama. WAAHH" and then asking to nurse. It was sad, but also cute that he cared so much and knew where the baby really should be--with its mama!

Mothering the New Mother & Others

Well, after my post last week about possibly "retiring" from this blog for a while, instead I've decided to just post quick reviews of the books I've read, instead of full ones with quotes and everything and see how that goes for a while.

This week I read:

Mothering the New Mother--this book had been on my Amazon wishlist since 2004 when I took a postpartum doula training (this book is pretty much par for the course for postpartum doulas). I finally got it for my birthday this year (I guess since it had been on my trusty wishlist for so long people figured I didn't still want it, but I did!). This book brought home for me why I think it is so important to me to be available for postpartum women (not as a pp doula anymore, but with breastfeeding help and support groups). It is an excellent resource for mothers, doulas, fathers, and any other support people who work with or help new mothers.

Also a birthday gift, I read The Tao of Motherhood. For whatever reason I was not expecting this to literally be the Tao Te Ching for mothers. I was thinking it was a book about zen mothering or something. However, it is a translation of the ancient Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tzu, but reworked slightly so that every "chapter" is about mothering and mothering well. It has 81 one to two page "chapters" just like the regular one. It was very good, even though totally different than what I expected. I'll need to re-read it and let it soak in better. It is such a quick read, I zoomed through it rather than digesting and absorbing (i.e. a non-Zen way to read!). One quick quote from the end of the chapter on selflessness:

"You can sit and meditate while

your baby cries himself to sleep.

Or you can go to him and share

his tears, and find your Self."

I finally finished reading Just Six Numbers too. This was different than my usual reads and took me a lot longer to finish. In short, it was a physics book of sorts written by a cosmologist about the mathematics that shape the universe. It was really very mind-blowing in scope in some ways--one of those things that makes you feel very, very, very small and insignificant on one hand and on the other awed by the majesty and miracle of life.

Finally, I found Juggling at the $1 Shop and read that. It is a book about balancing career and home and it was interesting. In some ways it helped me feel better about my deep need to continue with my other "career" pursuits in addition to mothering.

Recent Publications

I haven't had a chance to post yet about the recent publications I've had. The most recent was in Compleat Mother--a short little poem about nursing Z. I wrote it in January when he was really sick and we were spending a lot of time lying down and nursing through it. It is called "How to Meditate with a Baby." I also was really proud to have my article "Planning for Postpartum" published in the spring issue of the Journal of API. This would be a good article to use in birth education classes if I do say so myself :)

In March, I had an essay in New Beginnings (LLLI's magazine). This one was primarily about nursing while reading and is called "The Rhythm of Our Lives." Hopefully it will be available online at some point. I also had an article in the CAPPA Quarterly called "Creating Needle Felted Birth Art Sculptures."

Then, finally the spring issue of CfM News (which I edit--so, I guess maybe it doesn't count as a publication since I put it in there myself!) I had my "Small Stone Birth Activism" article as a well as a book review of Birth Book and a book review of Our Bodies, Ourselves: Pregnancy & Birth.

Books that aren't going to make it...

...into my blog, that is. I've decide to just clear out my pile of "to blog about" books and get a fresh start. So, these are the books that aren't going to make it into their own entry (it doesn't meant they aren't any good, it just means I have my priorities in order!):

Kitchen Table Wisdom--This one was a really good collection of essays by a doctor turned holistic-health counselor for people with cancer. I had read quotes from this book in several of my other books and it was fun to finally read it. Some really neat stories about healing, life after death experiences, etc.

Everyday Serenity: Meditations for people who do too much--this was my most recent read-a-page-a-day-after-doing-yoga book. Reading this book is part of why I'm clarifying my priorities and figuring out ways to "stop" and "do nothing." (see below for more about this.) Some of this was really good, some felt shallow or trite. Lots of good quotes though. Each meditation opened with a quote, such as this one I've liked for quite some time: "Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while a great wind is bearing me across the sky." (Ojibwa saying)

Girls Who Grew Up Great--this one was an example of my tendency to just read *anything* that happens to cross my path. I got this in a box of yard sale donations and flipped through it, got interested, and read the whole thing while I nursed Z down for bedtime. Luckily, reading the whole book only took about 15 minutes and I learned a few things from it (like about twin sisters in ancient Vietnam who mustered up a big army of 80,000 people with mostly female generals and drove the Chinese out of Vietnam. This was like in 40 A.D.).

Mother Rising--I LOVE the picture on the cover of this cool book about planning blessingway (or "Mother Blessing") ceremonies.

What Should I Do with My Life? This book was interesting. The author interviewed a bunch of people who had answered the title question in their own lives, or were in the process of trying to. He did kind of focus a lot on himself and his personal journey and so each person's story tied back to, "well, I did this and this and thought this and this," so it seemed more like a book about himself than what the cover indicated. I feel like, personally, I have too many ideas of things to do with my life and need to weed them out, not try to discover my passions and how to follow them! Reading this book made me think about all the other things I could have done and/or could be doing, especially the stories about people who have traveled all over and worked for big companies in other countries, etc. (and are only like 32) and I did start to feel a little insecure or "small" or underachieving or *something*. Then, the day I finished the book, my Zen calendar came through with this quote:

"The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Do not despire your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, ever place is the center of the world."
--John Burroughs

Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life--I read this on the heels of the book above. Anyone who knows me well will know why I was instantly drawn to this book. It was good. I recommend it!

So, speaking of priorities, everyday serenity, what should I do with my life, following an authentic life, and so forth, I may be taking a break from this blog in general for a while. I've been whining and complaining for months now about having "too much to do" and this would be an easy something to cut for a while (I have a problem with being black and white about things--either I do it and do it whole hog or I need to completely QUIT, not just "take a break" or "step back" or "come back to it later." Those things don't come easily to me--I am all or nothing. Things take up mental space in my head and thus continue to use up my time and energy, even if I'm theoretically "just waiting for later" unless I've actually quit them for good. However, I have fun with this blog, so I don't want to quit it for good, but I'm having trouble just taking a break either. Maybe blogging here is a good wintertime activity? There is SO MUCH TO DO in the spring. It isn't like I have tons of loyal readers here really, so I don't really know why it matters or not if I quit, take a break, or keep going! LOL!)

As I explained to M a few months ago, maybe I don't actually need to change what I'm doing, just how I think about what I am doing. It is my stressful thoughts that most often cause me problems! I also have dozens of craft projects I want to pursue, but then use up all my free time doing things online instead--some work stuff, some play stuff, all stuff that replaces working-with-my-hands stuff. I go through phases with creative work, in which I sometimes feel that making things is a waste of time or that is simply doesn't fit into this season of my life. I only have certain scraps of free time to work on things without the kids around and I like to use that time writing and also working on birth work/activism (oh, and reading email and blogging, which is what I'm having cognitive dissonance about lately), so making things doesn't make it. However, I have lots of new ideas for cool stuff lately and so it is creeping back into my brain and saying, "make time for me!" and I'm starting to wig out from my Mountain of To Dos (this comes from the Everyday Serenity book referenced above).

Holistic Moms Network

I wanted to post two quick things about HMN. One is that I was briefly interviewed for an article about alternative Mother's Day celebrations by the Washington Times. That was fun :) For the record, HMN National has written a letter to the editor clarifying that HMN is neither a "new age" or "pagan" organization!

Secondly, I wanted to note how much I LOVE the new HMN cookbook "Growing Healthy Families." I've purchased a large number of copies to give as gifts all the through the year. I had about five recipes published in the cookbook which was also fun and then my sweet little babies are both pictured on the back cover. I love it! This definitely brought the cookbook up high on my gift giving list--grandmas, etc. Not only will they get some great new recipes, but they can also gaze upon the cuteness of their descendants on the back ;-) My only complaint is that it is so pretty, I don't want to get it messed up with flour and stuff while cooking from it! It really is a high quality cookbook with a really nice, high quality cover and nice paper, etc.

My little cutie pies are the top three flower petals (starting with the profile of Z in the far left petal, followed by L twice as a baby) and then the third petal to the right on the bottom of L as a 3 year old (and, yes, I only have two kids, but they are so adorable they got four pictures ;-)

Happy Mother's Day!

A post on the mamaroots blog asking about "books your mother read to you" spurred me to consider my mother and books and how very many, many books she read to me in my childhood. She continued reading book series' to us for years after we were reading on our own and I was flooded with memories of favorites. So, I thought I'd share here (since it is totally in keeping with the theme of my blog):

I have a LOT of book and mama memories. My origination as a reader and lover of words and books is with my lovely mother and her love for books. As far as a read-alouder, she has a real knack for dramatic readings--no monotones here! She always created voices for all the characters and made things come alive.

The first book memory that comes to mind is of reading Bridge to Terabithia on the train on the way to California when I was like 4 years old. We both cried and cried about the girl dying (and were totally shocked by that twist in the plot).

Crying reminds me of the several times she read the Little House series to us and how she cried every time she got to the part where Jack (the dog) dies. Little House books are probably my favorite books that she read to us. Oh, and then that brought me to Little Women when Beth dies.

Reading another comment left in response to the query about books on the mamaroots blog, then reminded me of my mom reading the Milly-Molly-Mandy books to us and changing the Mandy to Mindy (my sister's name). That led me to remembering the Stairstep Farm (and related books) books and how much I liked those, which led me to think about Anne of Green Gables.

Other favorites read by my mother include the Oz books, The Black Cauldron books, The Dark is Rising books, Chronicles of Narnia, Redwall, The Wrinkle in Time and so on. Tons and tons!

Happy Mother's Day! And, thanks, Mom!

Labor Pain

This week I finished reading one of my birthday books, Labor Pain. I wasn't that thrilled with it. Not because it was bad, but because it didn't really have anything new in it for me. I wanted it primarily for additional coping ideas to share in birth classes, but there weren't any that I wasn't already familiar with. The writing style wasn't particularly engaging or inspiring, though it is possible that I'm just getting burned out on birth books and need to read something else for a while (this happens to me periodically). There was a lot of discussion of using TENS machines for pain relief, which aren't readily available in the US (the book was UK based). There were several good points made about birth politics that I will blog about in my other blogs as the time arises (the time seems to be getting smaller and smaller lately for blogging. That is okay though, real life is more important! ;-)

One of the birth stories towards the end of the book is about a woman recovering from anorexia who is so distraught by her body changes during pregnancy that her doctor agreed to do a cesarean at 28 weeks because he felt her "psychological symptoms warranted it." Whoa! However, she ended up seeing a hypnotherapist instead who taught her self-hypnosis techniques for birth and she ended up going overdue even and having a wonderful birth that she was really thrilled with. Yay!

I also read the book The Active Birth Partners Handbook that I had been waiting for. Again, nothing new for me really, but I like to read (or know about the availability of) books that are specifically for fathers, since most birth literature is directed towards women.

On Being a Cup...

I won't be blogging this weekend, so if I have any loyal readers checking in, I leave you with two quotes from...you guessed it...my Zen calendar:

"We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled.
The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over
and let the beautiful stuff out."

--Ray Bradbury

"Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize:
a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves,
the black, curious eyes of a child--our own two eyes. All is a miracle."

--Thich Nhat Hanh

Wonder Child

This weekend I made my way through several other books.

First was Wonder Child, an odd little tome I picked up at Goodwill a few months ago. I guess I wasn't in the proper mood for it or something, but ended up skimming through to the end. It was a little too New Agey and "woo woo" for my taste and also just plain didn't make sense a lot of the time (probably because what it was about was re-experiencing what it is like to be a child in order to better appreciate your own children and to better appreciate life in general. I guess if I've lost touch with my childlike nature--the premise of the book--then no wonder it didn't make sense to me a lot of the time! LOL!). There were a number of activity suggestions in it for getting in touch with your own childlike sense of wonder, etc. Some of them were interesting and neat, others were strange. It is hard to describe this book appropriately. It was odd. In the section on birth it referenced a book I'd never heard of called Active Birth Partner's Handbook by Janet Balaskas. So, of course, I went to Amazon just now and ordered it! (Luckily there was one cheap $6 copy that had my name on it!)

I also treated myself to a thoroughly lightweight, not-memorable fictional read--See Jane Date--single twenty-something gal in NYC seeking love on disastrous series of blind dates, etc.

I also finished reading the ICEA Guide for Childbirth Educators, which I've read several times before. Published in 1988, it is still helpful and relevant. Last I checked they were clearancing out copies on their website and on ebay for 75 cents! Well worth it! (Actually, it is worth much more than that! $15-20 would be more than reasonable for it.)

Catching up with recent reads

My stack of books that are waiting to be blogged about is unbelievable, so I decided I'm just going to write a quick post about the ones I don't have much to say about! I have one waiting that I read shortly after Christmas, but I jotted down like SIX pages in my notebook of things to write about it and so still it lingers in my to-blog pile.

So, sometime during the last month or so I've read the following books and don't have much to say about them (wow! what a fascinating post already!):

Full Circles, Overlapping Lives--this one is by Mary Catherine Bateson who is Margaret Mead's daughter. The subtitle of this book was "culture and generation in transition" and I expected something very different from it than what it actually was. It was really a sort of in depth case study of the multigenerational participants in a seminar the author taught at a university one year. I confess that I got bored and skimmed towards the end. I felt the title was misleading and I was not expecting a case study sort of book, but rather a sociological type book. One quote I liked early on when the author was discussing her relationship with her daughter and how being of different generations parents and children have a gap--"I have learned to work with the assumption that my daughter and I were born in different countries--not according to our passports but because our country has changed, making me an immigrant from the past."(emphasis mine) This was funny and also somehow depressing at once--I feel weird about being an immigrant from the past and yet it is true. Once you can start saying, "ten years ago XYZ..." you know you're an immigrant from the past!

The New View of Self--this was another one whose title and subtitle (How Genes and Neurotransmitters Shape Your Mind, Your Personality, and Your Mental Health) seemed misleading once I got into it. This book was supposed to be about how the brain works and also about the self, but it was basically exclusively about mental illness and how mental illnesses work and what is wrong in the brain that leads to mental illness. I was not really enraptured with it, but struggle with the whole, "I started reading it and can't stop now" mental illness of my own. ;-)

Babies, Breastfeeding, and Bonding--this is a book by Ina May Gaskin that I had never heard of before I picked it up on the used book table of an LLL workshop in 2006. I just got around to reading it and didn't end up reading it cover to cover because a lot of the breastfeeding info was repetitive to me (and/or outdated since the book was written in the 80's). I was interested to read it though and will now pass it on to a friend. It has content in it about Ina May's own children that I was not familiar with before, like that her oldest daughter had a brain tumor and died at 20. She also makes a good point in the book that I've taken to heart about nursing older babies/toddlers when they start "getting rough." She makes the point that they need to learn how to treat people with respect and you should not be a "punching bag" for your nursing toddler. I needed to hear this because I have an aggressive nurser who is NOT polite and gentle to me while he nurses. Reading her sections about that made me feel committed to "cracking down" on Z's overzealous twiddling and writhing, kicking, etc. I'm kind of a pushover for my nurslings. She had some different ideas about weaning than I personally hold and she told a story that she thought was funny, but I found creepy--the mother put soot from the stove all over her breasts and when her rough little toddler boy came to ask to nurse next she lifted her shirt, he saw the blackness and said, "what happened?!" and she said, "pigs got 'em." AAAHHHH! He never nursed again. Ina May thought this was a funny story, but I thought it was harsh and disturbing (though also kind of funny). I told M & L the story and L thought it was hilarious and says the "pigs got 'em" line now when I'm nursing Z and bugs me with it!

Me Talk Pretty One Day--this was a funny book. a little diversion from my usual and read just for fun. It was actually laugh out loud funny in some places (also really crude in others...). Talking about computers he says, "I hate them for creating the word org and I hate them for e-mail, which isn't real mail but a variation of the pointless notes people used to pass in class." I wonder what he thinks of blogs?!

Mind Over Labor--this one I have more to blog about, but I'm going to do it in a different blog, so I'm just briefly mentioning it here. I've read this book once before and re-read it looking for ideas for guided imagery or birth visualization exercises to use in birth classes. It has some good "mental work" to prepare for birth. I like it quite a bit. It is on the older side (1987), but not particularly dated.

Good! Now I have 7 books and a few articles left in my stack of "to blog." Blogging shouldn't be a "chore," LOL! That's what I get for being all Type A all the time, I can take a hobby and turn it into a "job." Maybe I read too much if I just wrote about 5 books (and another one yesterday) and I still have 7 books to write about as well as three that I'm currently reading...

Natural Birth

This week a friend of mine lent me a short book called Natural Birth that she found at the local $1 Shop (the same place my oft-referenced Zen Calendar came from). I read it this morning and am not sure what to think of it. It is basically an extended poem originally published around 1980 and reprinted in 2000 (the edition I read). The author's birth experience happened in like 1962 and then when her son was 16 the poem poured forth and was eventually published. I found the overall tone of the poem distressing to read really--she did, indeed, "succeed" in having a "natural birth" in a 60's hospital as a teenager living at a home for unwed mothers without her partner or any support present, but her birth experience was fraught with stress, tension, and agony basically. She experienced a lot of pain, mistreatment by the physician attending, and lots of pushing for medications (even almost forcing her to have a "shot"--a spinal--that they were then unable to insert after three tries). The dominant theme of the poem seems to be pain and it was stressful to even read--she is so agonized, in misery, suffering, and pain, pain, pain, pain. She seemed like a victim of it in a way that is very different than my own experiences or perceptions of the pain involved with labor. The poem is like this haze of pain. I kept wishing she would get up and move around and work with her body, but I got the impression she was lying down and enduring. I think her overall perception was of having "walked through the fire" and feeling good about it, but personally, I felt like a much more active participant in my births--not like a victim, but like a doer. I felt like birth was something I was doing, something I was working with, not something that was happening to me helplessly.

When the author begins pushing her experience shifts to feeling more powerful--lilies blooming and such. She also thinks about everyone else going about their normal lives and closes with:

"while they slept the whole universe had changed"

I remember feeling this way too after my babies were born like, "they have no idea that a miracle was happening while they slept!" When friends of mine have babies I feel similarly as well--like, how I could I have been sleeping and unaware of the MAGIC that was happening in the world at the same time!

Anyway, it was an interesting and unusual read.

The whole gnome family...

A couple of weeks ago I posted about our family wide gnome making project and included a picture of my gnome and her baby. I took a picture of the whole gnome family and wanted to share it too...


Z's is on the left (I made it too. The pants were a "creative" hot glue operation involving excessive gluing and then cutting them into a pants shape around the glue lines, LOL!), then M's, then mine, and then L's. I ADORE L's exuberant little guy (the red one). He made the whole thing himself, except for wrapping the legs with yarn, which I did for him. He painted it in his own special way and made the clothes and everything. Maybe it doesn't come across in the photo, but this little gnome completely cracks me up. The life and zest in it is unbelievable. L has tired of it already for the most part, but for a while he played with it a lot and it was always sitting with its legs at some wonky angle and that goofy, wonderful grin on its little face. It made me laugh every time I came across it--so unselfconscious and so insane looking. So much fun!

Speaking of more crafts, I got this book from playgroup a couple of weeks ago and last week the boys and I cooked up these fabulous knight helmets out of old cereal boxes. They were really fun to make. Then we also made "knight bread" and ate it with jam (it was really an Irish brown bread recipe from Parents magazine). I also made L a pizza box breastplate/armor, but it was less stunning than the helmets, LOL! In progress is a paper towel and toilet paper tube castle, but L is sick of painting it, so it may never reach its full glory. I know I have been known to scoff mightily at what I call "paper cup dog crafts," but with little guys, sometimes it is fun to just make stuff out of cardboard that can be finished in 20 minutes, instead of laboring over a "real" craft that they quickly burn out with and I am left in a, "leave me alone and let me FINISH this" mode instead of a family fun mode.

I close with a Zen calendar quote:

"In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you love? How deeply did you learn to let go?"

--Buddha

Maybe I should add, "how well did you construct playthings from cardboard?" ;-)

Aren't they sweethearts?!

Self-centeredness...

I've been reading Everyday Zen. I'm finding that it isn't as accessible or impactful as Nothing Special (by the same author) that I so enjoyed last year. Anyway, it still makes me think and one of the things it is making me think about is self-centeredness and the amount of time in which a person spends thinking about themselves and how things affect them, bother them, etc. Daydreaming about the future (and all about ME and what I'm going to do), thinking about the past (and about ME and what someone else did or didn't do and how that impacted ME), etc. It is remarkable once I've started trying to label my thoughts (the author suggests labeling thoughts exactly, so, not just, "thinking, thinking, thinking," but "thinking about my haircut" or whatever), how many have to be labeled, "thinking about myself." It was embarrassing at first, but as I thought about it more (about ME and thinking about ME, LOL!), I realized that I think it is a normal and common thought pattern. I don't think I'm an abnormally self-centered person. Also, I am me, living my little life, and so it is also reasonable that my thoughts would include thoughts about me, since it is me thinking them? (or, is it? Since, I suppose maybe there is not really any self [or me] at all....This is what ties my brain up in knots and then makes me want to stop reading books like this and ditch Zen approaches to life altogether!). Anyway, simply realizing how often I have to label a thought, "thinking about myself..." has been eyeopening. It is also really interesting to me how the process of labeling *poof* evaporates the thought (and then I am left with "now" and "what is really happening" or "life as it is," which I suppose is the goal. Except, there is no "goal," just life as it is. There goes my head again!! ;-)

Okay, so the whole point of my post was to share that I'm reading this book and doing this thinking and what should my $1 Shop Zen calendar produce for this weekend's quote?!

"Keep your heart clear and transparent
And you will never be bound.
A single disturbed thought, though,
Creates ten thousand distractions.
Let myriad things captivate you
And you'll go further and further astray.
How painful to see people
All wrapped up in themselves."

--Ryokan

So, I thought that was fitting. How many times to I create "ten thousand distractions" too. Lots! Since I've been struggling with having too many interests and too many projects/things to do recently too, this also spoke to me on that level.

Then, lest I become too completely wrapped in too much thinking, analyzing, trying to be perfect, trying to figure out ultimate reality, etc. there was this quote on my calendar:

"My advice is not to inquire
why or whither, but just enjoy your
ice cream while it's on your plate."

--Thornton Wilder

This was just what I needed. What did I do without my $1 Shop Zen calendar before? I love this thing! :-D

Making Choices

This week I finished reading the Alexandra Stoddard book, Making Choices, that has been on my to-read shelf for quite a long time. It caught my eye this week though and I decided to read it. I didn't actually enjoy it very much--the content wasn't particularly fresh or engaging and there was some sort of underlying tone of condescension to it that got on my nerves. Or maybe it was that she seemed sort of blithely dismissive of things--like, she told a story about a teenage girl trying to overdose on medications while her mother was having a committee meeting in the home and said something like, "if the girl's parents had allowed her space to express her frustrations, no doubt she would not have felt she had to go to such drastic lengths." Huh? Clearly this is her parents fault?! It wasn't like she said, "help me!" and they said "leave me alone I'm having a meeting." I thought teenagers were notoriously closed-mouthed about their feelings anyway, maybe her parents tried to let her express her frustrations and she wouldn't! There were other things like that just got on my nerves a little and seemed like "shallow" interpretations of other people's lives and experiences.

Anyway, the basic theme of the book though was, of course, making choices and how we choose most elements of our lives and how we respond to them. And, if we're complaining about things, we had better look at how we've chosen whatever it is we're complaining about. Something I identified with was her point about taking on volunteer commitments and then complaining about them/feeling put out by them. "Consider what your motives are when you accept responsibilities that make you feel frantic and frenzied. We can't blame others for inviting us to join a worthy cause. Whose choice is it to accept?"

And a quote from my Zen calendar:

"To be great, be whole; exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is you.
Be whole in everything. Put all you are into the smallest thing you do.
The whole moon gleams in every pool,
It rides so high."

--Fernando Pessoa

A Bigger Smaller Life

This month I had an article about Simple Living and Financial Freedom published in The Wise Mom (the publication of Holistic Moms Network). The theme of this issue was "Living Simply" and I really enjoyed it. Anyway, one contributor quoted Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert as saying, "I wanted a bigger smaller life." I connect with this--when I say I want a simple life, I mean I want it to be rich and FULL, but of the things that really matter to me. My $1 shop Zen calendar comes to attention again with this related quote:

"Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might
and when you laugh, laugh like hell, and when you get angry,
get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough."

--William Saroyan

While I guess that could also seem kind of depressing, for me it sums up simple living--I want to be fully, wholly alive. I think keeping death in mind can be a powerful force in living life fully (though it can also lead you to depressive and existentially trying places!).

Speaking of simple living, I also had my Information Overload article published in the newsletter of the Simple Living Network this month. That was exciting for me, because it was my first non-birth, breastfeeding, or mothering related publication (then immediately followed with my second in the Wise Mom, but the Wise Mom itself is focused on mothering/natural family living, so it is less of a departure of venue for me than the SLN is). Speaking of the Simple Living Network, I am definitely a fan of their site, their newsletter, and their work. I used to participate on their message boards some as well (which are a massive treasure trove of information), but after I had kids, time for message boards got trimmed away (particularly because we have dial-up and so message boards are really slow. I tend towards yahoogroups and other email lists, because I can actually read them!). I don't spend much time at the mothering.com message boards for the same reason (plus, general addictiveness. Need to spend time on the whole actually living thing, not reading about how other people are living!)

Courage and Craft

I have not actually read the book Courage and Craft: Writing Your Life into Story, a friend of mine sent me a quote from it that she thought fit well with me:

“To live your own true and precious life, you need to express yourself and make your inner life as important and known as your visible life. Whether you’re published or not, you need to turn the chaos and the glimpses of beauty, the questions and the search for answers, the days and months and years of your life into something meaningful on a page [canvas, performance, product, invention, or other manifestation].

When you finish a piece of writing [or art or other expression of you], you’ve reached out to the world with your own truth. You’ve told your story.”
------------------------------------------

I think I need to investigate this book!

From my Zen calendar yesterday:

"Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity,
reduce selfishness, have few desires."

--Lao-tzu

And from January 17 & January 4....

"Because I know that time is always time
and place is always and only place
and what is actual is actual only for one time
and only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are..."

--T.S. Elliott

"Listen to your life. All moments are key moments."

--Frederick Buechner