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Beautiful Floaty Me
Wookie and I finished reading the scene in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban where Harry is trying to think of happy memories. “My happiest moment was today at the awards ceremony when I looked up and saw you and we hugged and kissed. You looked beautiful. I thought you were so beautiful. What were you wearing again?” “A gray sweater, gray pants and a purple scarf.” “You were beautiful, mom. (Pauses and ponders) And you had that skin right there (points to hip) and it looked like you were wearing a floaty.” “What!? You aren’t supposed to say that!” “But it did! It looked like a floaty. Right…
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Morning Garden Walk with Cameras and Kids
It is the day before the first day of school, and we’ve had a summer full on sunshine, friends, light saber battles, and swimming. It also seems to be ending just in time. Earlier in the week, the boys followed me out to the garden and begged to take pictures, so I let them. The baby indiscriminately snapped shots of everything along his path. The big boy was more deliberate. They both wanted to take shots of me. I wondered if they even noticed my raggedy sweatpants, chubby belly and puffy morning eyes as I sat on the bricks and leaned my back on the place where the house foundation…
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Making Ceramic Ornaments with Cookie Cutters
For several years now, we have made Christmas ornaments from clay. Last weekend I brought my supplies into the kitchen to finish up a couple requests from friends, and my kids descended on the makeshift workspace and demanded clay and all my tools. After a morning of wresting on the living room floor and failed attempts at controlling the noise level in the house, the silence that their focus on the clay brought was amusing, even if it took me five times longer than if should have to roll out a couple Texas ornaments. Basically anyone who has access to clay and a kiln could make charming ornaments with relatively little experience. Several things that…
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Wrinkles and Relationships
It’s amazing what photo filters can do for wrinkles and relationships. As I scroll through my instagram feed, I see one continuous incongruity – I rarely edit photos of plants and scenery, but pictures with my face in them have gone through filters, sometimes more than one. Photos with my kids go through another sort of filter, the one where they are presented as loving, creative, motivated, funny and kind. I rarely capture the tantrums, the boredom or the fights. The scrutiny I apply to my appearance and my life is hardly fair. Sure, we all look a little better in the brighter light that softens the wrinkles and splotches, and…
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Rain on Asparagus
Last night the sky dropped over three inches of rain, and the beads of water left glittering blanket over the plants in the garden. All but a few tufts of asparagus have been cleared from the beds to make way for spinach sprouts and cool season crops. Crouching over the plant trying to get my camera to focus on a select few tiny globes required a stillness that I don’t find outside in the rest of the city. Sometimes guilt over having the of the luxury of stillness hits me. I feel unworthy of the quiet places I find and the time I make to dwell in them. But I think…
