Belated Asa Birthday Letter

So it is now May 12th and i'm realizing i did not ever post an Asa birthday letter. I'm sorry my darling. I am just not organized or time aware these days (if ever i was). So here it goes:

Dear Asa,
  You are now SIX years old. SIX. I can hardly believe it. I am always afraid i will blink and you will be a man. But for now. You are a boy. An amazing SUPER boy. This has been a pretty good year for you. We took you off the gluten-free diet (and nothing bad happened!), your last dentist visit was uneventful, your pediatrician still thinks your small but i drew the line at endoscopys and horrible things like that so we are all done with that crap.  I have reached a limit and am determined to trust myself, you, and nature to do it's thing.
 
  You are in Kindergarten this year. You have the same teacher Esther had and you are thriving.  You are reading like a champ and have an affinity for numbers. You are obsessed with superheros, legos, rocks, weapons, the prospect of battle, working in the shop with grandpa and dad, and you LOVE to make things. You make monsters out of wood scraps,  paintings out of metal scraps, mosaics with rocks from the driveway, and always lego ships...

  You are still my little Buddha and enjoy talking about meditation, the elements, and we do acro-yoga together. You inspire me on my personal spiritual journey and i'm always grateful i have been given a son to show me the way as much as i am to show him.

  You are still shy and quick to temper. You and Esther fight quite a lot still, though you're getting better at working out your problems without me, albeit it takes time and it's so LOUD. But you are learning and for all the shouting and whatnot, you truly love each other.

  Thank you for being my son. Thank you for all the things you make me (cards, drawings, rock and wood monsters, clay food, etc), all the love you share through hugs, kisses, tackles, snuggles, and even whining (though that's not as nice).  Thank you for being a brilliant, fun, sweet, creative, joyous, spiritual, hilarious, wild, and free person. I love and adore you beyond words.

Love,
Mama

November of firsts

So this past November was full of firsts for me. I started Yoga Teacher Training (YTT), which as i told my teacher, Anjali at the end of the weekend, was not as scary as i thought it was going to be. I also went hunting for the first time (with a gun). Before you ask, no i didn't get anything. I did shoot at a big buck but i missed (probably by a mile).

Most of the YTT weekend was getting to know each other, discussing what yoga is, reading the first few sutras together, and doing yoga. It was pretty low key. I like many of the people and Anjali is so very laid back that it helps me be laid back too (which isn't easy for me but oh-so necessary). We even did chanting which i have to say is TERRIFYING to me, but wasn't so bad. If i ever have to lead chanting though... different story i'm sure. I left on Sunday evening feeling like i had immense clarity of vision and what can only be described as an open heart. The week that followed was a bit rough though. I think coming back to the real world from a yoga world is going to continue to be a tough transition for me until i can find my balance between the two, or maybe bring them together is a better objective.

Along with my gangster rap fixation, my new adventure into the world of hunting is another juxtaposition to my yoga world. I took my 3 day hunter safety course, got my license, and went out on opening day of shotgun season with 10 other folks (including my father, mother, and brother) and hunted from 5:30am-3:00pm (I left early because i was pretty tired and coming down with a bad cold). I started the day with sitting a tree stand for 2 hours and watching the forest wake up. It was absolutely glorious (and cold!). I learned how to field dress a deer, how to work deer drives, and how to fire from a tree stand without falling out. I can see why people are obsessed with hunting, every time i close my eyes i can see the forest and the deer running through it. I have to say though, the killing aspect is still marginal to me and may always be.  I want to learn to hunt because i love meat. I have tried being a vegetarian, a vegan, even macrobiotic to some degree but my body feels better when it has meat... not a lot of meat but meat. I'm also a firm believer that if you're going to eat meat, you should know exactly where it comes from and it should come from a sustainable source. All that said, i still have yet to kill something. I've always been on the butchering end of hunting season but this year... i'm hoping i can bring some meat to the table from start to finish. Let's hope my aim gets better.

Thank you November for the abundance of knowledge and experience.

Diary of a YTT: 2 weeks before

So it's two weeks until my first YTT workshop weekend. I'm already nervous. Ever since i made the firm decision to do this, i have been sort of rebelling against myself. I haven't been very regular about my home yoga practice, i've been eating junk food and watching junk tv.  Rebelling against firm decisions like this is something I tend to do in general. Since it's my own self that is making me (that is sometimes how it feels) do these things, i have only me to rebel against.  I think in some ways it's a kind of coming to terms with what is about to happen, or perhaps what i think might happen is more accurate. I feel i am on the brink of a major life shift (or maybe i'm just the second chapter of the shift that started a couple years ago).

Ben was talking to a friend of ours on the phone the other day and said something like "So Libby is really getting into yoga and meditation and she also seems to be getting into gangster rap".  It's not actually "gangster" rap, but i have really taken to rap this year. I think it's my brother-in-law's influence and my new found love of running working together (listening to rap while running is my new joy).  I think Ben's comment sort of sums up the weird place i find myself though i'm on this weird high wire between finding inner peace and complete anarchy and for some reason this makes complete sense to me on so many levels. To add to this weirdness, tonight i start my 3 day hunter safety course - just another non-yogic seeming endeavor that i seem to feel the need to do RIGHT NOW...

Anyway to get back to my nervousness. So this hunter safety, gangster rap, junk food scarfing persona of mine is looking back at me in the mirror and scoffing "You can't do this"... "You're going to walk into a room full of vegetarian, meditate-every-morning, ballet-backed people and you're going to be 11 years old again walking into middle school for the first time and you're the weirdo..." -- even in a room full of weirdos, i'm still the weirdo... ?

So i'm figuring out how to own this fear... i'm trying to swim my way back upstream to the joy and delight and inspiration that i found in yoga that lead me to even start looking up YTT programs. I want to feel that love affair again and not all this anxiety and self-doubt... sigh... now where did i put those crampons? i have to walk back up this slippery slope...

Esther's 8th Birthday Letter

Dear Esther,
  You turned 8 years old yesterday. What a whirlwind 8 years its been. Ever since you were a little baby everyone has always said "enjoy it, it goes by fast". I gotta say, in the beginning when you had long nights of teething and sleepless wailing, it didn't feel fast. But on the other end of that, i look at you now and i can simultaneously see the amazing 8 year old wonder girl and the little pink baby with red hair and squishy face.

   It has been a good year with you all-in-all. We have certainly had our rough patches this year as with every year. You have had some trouble sleeping lately and we've been working together to try to find tools to help you soothe yourself in the middle of the night when you're feeling lonely and tired. It doesn't help that Asa still comes down to the big bed in the middle of the night. I think it's very hard and unfair feeling to you that he gets to come down and you are supposed to stay in your bed. The only thing i can say is that he is 2 years younger than you are, and he will have to start staying in his bed by himself too soon. The other struggle with you these days is clothing. You are very specific about the kind of clothes you want to wear and that makes it very hard to shop for you. Even when i take you with me and make you try on all the clothes you insist you will wear them so i buy them, but then you don't. You have 1 pair of basketball shorts (long black nylon ones with white stripes down the legs) that you adore. I think mostly because they are comfortable. But now that it's fall and winter is starting to make an appearance, I've told you they are for the home and sleep only... so now you're trying to get used to pants and that's hard for you. I wish clothes weren't such a point of contention... though i guess i should be glad it's all about comfort and not style...

   All of our struggles aside though, it has been an absolute joy being your mama this year. You are so brilliant and creative and clever. Your love of reading is through the roof. You adore a series of books about a mouse named Geronimo Stilton. You also love the new Nancy Drew series, and pretty much anything you can get your hands on. We read together and have finished the Little House on the Prairie series (though i think we are planning on starting again soon) and are just about finished the first Harry Potter book. You tell amazing stories (you love to do puppet shows while you're taking a bath and use the piano to tell stories to add dramatic sound).  You love to run and dance and sing and you can whistle louder than I can. You are always listening (except when i'm asking you to do chores). You are quick witted, gorgeous, hilarious, vibrant, and inspiring.

  You are in second grade now (wow!). School seems mostly easy for you except for the social aspects. You seem to be having an awful lot of issues with one particular girl at school and i am very baffled with what to do to help you in this situation. I'm afraid that you're subject to peer pressure and that your contention with this one girl is exacerbated by the other girls... but maybe i'm projecting... It's a lot to ask of an 8 year old to try and include everyone and be aware of peer pressure... You also seem to disregard certain rules on a whim (like asking for permission to get a drink of water)... I think this is just because you forget to ask not because you don't want to... at least i hope not.

  We had a number of adventures this year. We went to the beach again this past summer. We even got to hang out with Taylor Culp and his family. You refer to him as your boyfriend and apparently he refers to you as his girlfriend as well. HIs mother just texted me last night to tell me that he had to write a story about his favorite summer memory in school and he wrote about eating snowballs with his girlfriend. We went camping at Red Oak for Addy's birthday and then in Quarryville (where you were born) for your birthday. You've started running with me occasionally and are part of the 100 mile club at school. You are taking dance (ballet, jazz, tap) through the rec council and you seem to love it though you are the youngest one in the class (and smallest).

  We had a brilliant summer together working on projects and summer reading and home-school activities. We made a "lab" in the yard by the shed so you and Asa would have a special place to do all of your experiments. Oh, and daddy built you a loft bed just before the start of the summer. I thought you would like some space that would be just yours that you could go to to read and get away from your brother. You liked it at first but now you seem to not like it so much. I'm trying to help you feel more comfortable there. We hung up constellation stickers and wall decals and postcards and pictures and your dad cut a whole in the wall so you could have your very own little window up there. I hope you grow to like it more... I think it's a very neat place and wish i could have had space like that when i was little.  We have such a tiny home, it's hard to make space for everything and lofts are perfect for our tiny house.

  I can't wait to have more adventures with you as we embark on you 9th year. I hope that things like clothes and sleeping become a lot easier for you... and i hope that I am doing everything right to help support and guide you through these struggles... i really don't know how to handle all of these things and it's like feeling my way in the dark when it comes to new challenges with you. I hope you can forgive me one day for all the things i didn't handle perfectly.

I hope that you know how very, very much i love you. I hope that the ways i tell you and show you that i love you come through to you in a way that makes sense. You are such an amazing person and I want to give you all the tools to do amazing things and be truly happy in this life...

I love you SO much my Esther-bug.

Love,
Mama

The Grocery Market Mission

So about 10 weeks ago i embarked on what i have lovingly deemed "The Grocery Market Mission".  After a few bouts at the grocery store this past year of spending $200 or more for only 1 week of groceries, i felt like i was bankrupting us with my liberal love of food. So i decided to go on a mission.

Some background:
I adore food. I love, crave, dream, desire, and am completely smitten with food. If you know me, you've undoubtedly seen me practically make love to a spoon or dance and wiggle in my seat while eating. I have very strong beliefs about food too. Yes, i subscribe to the "food as medicine" philosophy, but i also subscribe to "food as therapy" (chocolate as antidepressants). I believe in organics (when affordable and can be found). I believe in growing food, eating meat (and hunting in a sustainable way), whole foods, and the occasional "half" food (as long as it contains good ingredients and is affordable). I believe in pizza parties and making fancy ice cream. I believe in making donuts in the fry daddy ever fall because they're just amazing and a world without donuts would mean there are a lot of a'holes running around...

All that said, the 'mission' was to see if i could spend less money on food without having to compromise my beliefs and joys. I am fully aware that i am prone to indulgence and that we could live quite well on a cheaper diet of tuna noodle casserole (which is good, but only once a year or so).


The mission:
I was spending between $160 and $200 at the grocery store every week.  We are a family of four, myself (34 yr old female, moderate activity most days), my husband (33 yr old male, moderate to strenuous activity most days), my 7 year old daughter, and 5 year old son.

The mission was to save some money. As simple as that. I started out hoping i could spend less than $100 per week on food. We have a small CSA share for veggies and i borrowed my father in law's Sam's Club card and bought some large quantities of things like kid snacks, dried cranberries, nuts, toilet paper, dish soap...  So between the grocery store, the csa, and sam's club i was hoping to spend less than $100/week to feed us all. This did not happen. it worked out great the first week but after that it was bedlam.


The results:
So the first week was a success. Every week after that, it didn't work out. I quickly learned that despite the CSA and Sam's club, i still was spending between $80-160/ week for food.  I have two more weeks to go in my 12 week study. So the absolute results are not quite in yet.  but i did come to some conclusions:

1) It is cheaper if i spread my shopping out to include Sam's Club or better yet Trader Joe's.  Sam's club is cheap alright and even cheaper because we're on my father in law's account. However, they don't have a lot of the things we eat (non-sugary granola bars for example - and yes, i could (and have) make my own, but i have mixed feelings about that which i'll get into another time).  Trader Joe's is great for kid snacks, but it's crowded as all hell and i always buy WAY too much

2) I learned some great things like: how to make yogurt, and dry beans do taste better.

3) Making my own yogurt and cooking dry beans vs. canned, is not necessarily saving us all that much money. Well, maybe the beans are...?

4) Every little bit counts. We did save some money. And while i felt like a failure (because i didn't meet my $100/week goal), we ended up spending an average of $146/week on groceries. This doesn't feel like a huge difference to what i was spending before the mission, but if i add it up we're spending at least $1000 less per year on food. That's $1000 that we can save (or spend on vacations to west africa or buy a motorcycle with).

Summer Lovin'

Last week i turned 34. It did not feel significant perse. I do not feel particularly older, i do not feel decrepit or lost... While at Chincoteague Island the first week of this month, i did go through a very slight mental crisis of realizing that instances of being hit on by young men are becoming more and more rare. I miss being hit on... i know it's shallow and vain and that this is just another demonstration of my large ego that continues to trip me up in life. I think i'm mostly beyond that little crisis though...

I adore my birthday. I adore holidays in general. Any reason to dote on my loved ones (and myself), eat decadent food, sing, dance, shout, visit with all the people i love but hardly ever see...  Ben's present to me this year was to help me throw a giant party complete with shrimp boil.  We crashed a wedding in New Orleans a couple years ago (Thanks R&R) and the happy couple threw a shrimp boil during the weekend of joy and ever since then, i've wanted to host our own. To top it all off, my mama did a trade with some friends of ours: artwork for a performance (they're performers, Fairie Ring Theater). So they came and did a small story telling performance which was fun and funny. So many people came. So much good food was eaten. So many children and babies!!!! Years ago, Ben and I were practically the only ones with kids... In the last two years, it seems everyone we know has gotten  knocked up. It's pretty amazing seeing all these babies around and getting to enjoy babies without having to have any more of my own (this kitchen is closed!!!).

In other news, have i discussed my obsession with yoga this year? I have always enjoyed yoga and have had an on-off practice for probably 18 years or so now. But only this past year have i given it significant attention. It helps that I have more resources this year (can afford classes and workshops) but it also helps that I have new friends who are yoga instructors (Hi Nichole and Stephanie!!!) and can discuss and share the challenge of trying to bring the practice of yoga into all facets of my life. Grace, accepting limitations, strength, breathing, patience, and flexibility are not just for my mat. I have even gone as far as considering getting my 200 hour certification and possibly an aerial certification on top of that (i'm struggling with this in that is this ego or is this something i very much want to/feel driven to do). Not that i can afford it in time or money but it's an idea...

It has been a wonderful summer so far. I relish getting up an hour later every day and not having to pack lunches and backpacks and meet the bus. I LOVE spending the day with my kids, even if it can be frustrating trying to work and keep them occupied at the same time. I love the long days and the trips and vacations and feeling spoiled. I love our gardens and our bees and our chickens and this feeling of having enough (love, food, space, daylight, dollars, things to do). Soon as summer waxes and fall looms the feeling of enough will bloom into abundance and then back again to the deficit of winter... but for now, for this moment, it is all enough.

Extended family...

This is the legendary Jardeleza brood.

my grandmother, Lolita Jardeleza (or Oa to us grandchildren) and her 11 children. My mother is second from the back in the teal shirt.

Here they are again. My mother is the second one in from the left in the front row. 

And here is the greater portion of the family. There are still a few missing (maybe 10-15 people) but we are 74 strong here. This photo includes the original 11 plus most spouses, children/grandchildren, and children's children/great-grandchildren.

Family...

There's been a lot of deaths recently. My father's dear friend, Roger died a few weeks ago. The pictures below were taken during a bonfire in the hollow in his honor. A few days after this, my uncle Jim died. That same day his family's dog was put down as well as our dog Preacher... 

Anyone who knows me knows i'm uber emotional. I don't handle death gracefully and i become suddenly very scared that the people i love the most are going to be next. I feel extreme remorse for having taken them for granted in any way... of course that only lasts about a month and suddenly i'm back living life day-to-day... because truthfully, i don't think we're capable of actually cherishing every moment or living life as though any of us could go at any moment.

In Buddhism, enlightenment can only be reached if we let go of our attachments. This is probably the most daunting idea to me. I am not particularly materialistic (as any of you have witnessed in my tiny house, and heard me ranting about the constant "Crap Control"). But my attachments to people seem hardwired in me. I do not know how to let go of these people, to accept that they will too leave me some day or i them (though in someways me leaving first seems so much more easy)...  However, despite my immediate revulsion in the idea of detaching myself from these beautiful, amazing, inspiring, sometimes infuriating people; I can see that in order to avoid suffering (especially when they die) one would have to detach... 

all that said, i'm fairly certain i will never reach enlightenment in this life... however, i believe i've already obtained enrichment... these people enrich my life beyond measure...  

Playing Catch up: Winter 2013-14

This has been one crazy winter. It's been utterly frigid and snow storms one on top of another. I do like the snow and aside from occasionally going a little stir crazy being cooped up, i love the solitude and isolation of winter. I just wish that the rest of the world would hibernate too and i didn't have to get up at dawn to pack the kids off to school or go to work. If i could wile away the winter snuggled up in our big bed with my little family reading and watching movies, i think i would.

Early December found us trying to take a decent holiday card photo. I don't know why i still do this, it's always so hard to get ONE decent photo of all of us. Since only a couple of the kids' turned out well, our card had pics of only of them... Though a friend (CJ Winger!) pointed out that this was kind of cheating and if they have to suffer through having pictures of themselves in their card, so do we... maybe next year...

And then Christmas was upon us... Nothing major to report on christmas, except OH, my mother fainted at my Aunt's house Christmas night and woke up disoriented and nauseous. My brother, father, and I spent Christmas night at the ER listening to my mother make various nurses and attendant uncomfortable... 

my mother knit these for the kids, aren't they incredible?

And then came the snow and the frigid temps (which was fun at first)

 In January, Asa turned 5 years old. We were all partied out after the holidays and convinced him to have a family dinner at his place of choice. He chose Chuck E. Cheese's. I was there once as a child and didn't remember much about it. I looked it up online and discovered they have gluten free pizza and thought, what the hey. It was kind of a disaster. It was chaotic and loud and pretty much awful for all the adults. For the kids, it was just intense. The food is truly awful (i don't know why i expected otherwise) and Asa had a melt down when he discovered all the tickets he earned could only get him a tiny plastic frog at the prize counter. After a somewhat tearful exit and some pouting on the drive home, we decided in the future, we're going to go to Oma's house for Asa's birthday every year instead and that Chuck E. Cheese's is a bust. We went home and sang him happy birthday over a cookie.

And then came more snow and my new niece, Josephine Jones Tomaskovic. Drove up to Pittsburgh to be present for her birth. After a very long and arduous labor where my sister totally rocked it, little Josie decided that it was too much trouble to help her mom out and just turn her head a little... so was born cesarean section. Did you know that cesarean babies sneeze a lot? it's so freaking hilarious!

And then more snow and frigid temps came through...

And then came the ice storm which resulted in the 21 trees falling down across our driveway and week without electricity or water...

We celebrated valentine's day like other holidays, with food...

Oh and then... MORE SNOW!!!

And that more or less catches us up. The snow is starting to melt, though there are giant unyielding piles of it all about my house. Today, Asa is sick (again) with a nasty cold. We've seen our fair share of colds this winter but (knock on wood) no flu like last year. I have high hopes that the spring will start her mercurial awakening soon and banish the continuing cold temperatures. I'm ready to wake up and get out, to plant things and watch the forest turn varying shades of green around us. The chickens must feel the same way as they're laying multiple eggs a day now (i see a lot of quiche in our future). 

So anxious for the spring. I'm hoping to finally start a hive or two of bees this year. Sadly, despite my continuing love affair with the idea of raising goats, we will not be getting any kids this year though we continue to bat around the idea of a dog (a smallish one, not a monster like Thor and Preacher). My planning and day dreaming are alight, we're fueled with eggs galore and meat from this winter's butcherings... come on spring, give us light and veggies, and warm winds!