17 posts tagged “brother”
Don't let the door hit ya...
Numbness, then summer's light. My brother is growing up. A family's warm embrace. Finding a spiritual community, building authentic relationships, knowing abiding love. Present.
- More about the Mayfly project.
- Previous year's Mayflys: 2007, 2006.
Before going to school today, my brother called upon my wisdom with these queries:
- Aren't ants weird?
- Are fruit flies bad?
- If Yoda is staring at me while I make a sandwich, should I say 'no'?
Which is all to say, while I let the blog slip for awhile, life has gone on.
Summer concluded with a 11-day trip visiting my husband's family and then a week of back-to-school scurrying. Now we're trying to get back into swing of the school pattern: up in the morning, catching the bus, doing homework, meeting new people and learning new things. The big challenge this year is my brother's advanced math class; due to his work last year and high test scores, he is leaping up from the class with special assistance straight into advanced. He's intimidated, but I really think he's up to it.
Other than managing his time and helping with homework, I'm also busy with work, art, and a few side projects. I'm back to doing a few web design projects (mostly for love, not money), so I'm dusting off my HTML, PHP, and CSS skills and mainly using WordPress to make me look smarter than I am. :)
Both my art blog and this one have been on the back burner since vacation, but I'm hoping to get back in the swing of things. I'm sure brother being back in school will aid in that--both by giving me more quiet time to myself and, when he comes home, peppering me with more amusing questions.
Husband is in geek ecstasy using a seal-o-meal to prep all the food for our camping trip. Keeps bringing me little packages & bouncing.
@gapingvoid Were you an outdoorsy kid when you went? Previous interest or experience camping, hiking, kayaking? Just curious WRT my brother
Have returned from my adventure in the swamp. Was beautiful and grounding, inspiring and awesome. Oh, yeah, and filled with bloodsuckers.
My husband and I ended up in Florida because it's where my mother and brother were, and they needed our help. Mostly, we miss being up North (closer to his family, more connection to the cities and life there), but it's pretty damn hard to complain when it's the first days of April, you're cooking out on the grill in bare feet, a skirt, and a sleeveless shirt.Shrimp are in the marinade; going make skewers on the grill tonight. For a moment, living in Florida = bliss
I expect my brother is only child in country who got a mentos geyser in his Easter basket.
This Easter basket brought to you by Mythbusters, for sure. Followed by much bouncing up and down, shouting, "It was higher than the house? Did you see that? Higher than the house!!"
Okay, so that was me. But the kid was impressed, too.
I turn thirty on Thursday. Last year, my birthday was a pretty depressing affair, in fact I don't have many strong memories of it, just the overwhelming sadness. My mother had died less than three months earlier and I just didn't know how to process anything in the absence of my mother. I don't know how much I've learned in the subsequent year except I know I'm still here. I know I've been happy and can still be happy. I know I make her proud by continuing to make my way, by raising my brother into an good man.four more days to my birthday, squeeeeee!!!
I've experienced a few things in the first thirty years of my life I wouldn't wish upon anyone else, but those experiences continue to form me into a woman I'm proud to be. In the next years, I hope to come to grips with myself as an "adult." I hope to be successful in my career and to support my husband in his. I hope to continue growing an inspirational, creative life. I hope to inspire and encourage my brother. I hope to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Okay, so this tweet and reposting it here is just utter gloating. Ever cook a meal and feel its execution and presentation were just dreamy? That was Monday's dinner.soaking maple planks for tonight's mahi mahi Dinner: planked mahi mani with roasted red pepper sauce, mushroom risotto and grilled asparagus
Random thought about my morning routines. In yesterday's case, I was reading new content at nonprofit.alltop.com and was inspired to write last morning's post (please read if you missed it :). Today, bowl of oatmeal in front of me, I decided to wrangle my tweets into this post. If you wish to be similarly fueled, consider Alton Brown's overnight oatmeal recipe. We've been making it in a triple batch with craisins and dried blueberries, then just reheating up a bowl each subsequent morning. Soooo delicious.my blog is fueled by steel-cut oatmeal and coffee at this point, me thinks
SCENE: Interior, kitchen. A woman is cutting an onion at the counter.
boy: enters stage right
boy: What's for dinner?
woman: cheerily Tacos!
boy: With meat or beans? pauses It's okay, you can tell me; I won't whine. pauses Do we have beans because that's what you and Z like?
woman: Well, yes...
boy: So, it's not just, like, to torture me?
Now part of a series, I suppose. More questions from my brother:
- Cats don't have like a boyfriend and girlfriend do they?
- Does that mean they just do it whenever they want to?
I swear to god, I should make a blog just with the questions my brother asks me on any given day. Kind of the opposite of Things I Learned Today, a friend-of-a-friend's blog.
Today's memorable gems:
- Why do people think it's a bad idea that we bought Alaska?
- What does it mean when the cat looks at me like that?
- Would it be bad if people in Egypt stoned you?
- What does it mean to scan something?
- What do apples with peanut butter taste like?
More than three months ago, I shelved this blog in a fit of despair.* I needed to find some way to put my head down and make my life work, and I hope I am now arriving at that point.
To that end, I'm rebooting this Vox for the New Year and am giving it the following direction:
- My Vox is going to remain a personal blog, about the tribulations and festivities in the life of a near-30-year-old woman living in the Sunshine State, married, raising her brother, feeding the cats and overpriced terrier. When I burn a loaf of bread, celebrate a report card, or have a funny anecdote to share, it will go here. If I like a movie, read a book, or have to out my obsession with Project Runway, it will go here.
- I'm setting up another blog to chronicle my creative aspirations and my fledgling attempts to sell the goodies and oddities I create. If you want to see pictures of collages, messy journals, and stitchery, it will go there.
While, in general, I have a big o' fear of overlapping my personal and (ha!) professional personnas, I also plan to do a kind of monthly recap on my Vox of how things are going over in artsy land. Mainly for the purposes of hoping to shamelessly lure you to my Etsy storefront, obviously.
I'm also going to take the leap and start pointing people who actually know me (other than you, Donut Pusher) to this blog. If you went to school with me or know me from some other venue, gosh, I hope I didn't rant about you in this blog's earlier incarnation. I kid, I kid...
To those in my Voxy neighborhood: Hey, thanks for keepin' me in your loop. If you had a baby, opened a business, got married, ditched the jerk, or otherwise made huge moves in your life since September, I hope they have worked out for you, and I'm sorry I didn't write. Special shout-out to the very creative Lorri, whose Vox I wandered into whilst investigating other arty-crafty blogs for inspiration for my new venture. There are so many very talented people out there doing amazing work, it is both inspiring and scary to me!
More soon, including 2007's "mayfly." (Don't know what that means? Looky here. Want to read 2006's? Looky here.)
* "a fit of despair": This phrase makes it seem needlessly dramatic, but things were very low on that day in September, and I don't mean to diminish my emotions or feelings about life as I felt them then. We were unable to make mortgage payments on our house, my mother's life insurance policy had been denied, and, in a less than ten-hour window, both of our cars died. Life was not peachy keen, and I still own that feeling of damnation and don't mean to make light of it with these four words.
Most people who have kids had time to either grow up with them or grow into their roles as parents. Since that wasn't the case for me, sometimes I look around and get a little anxious and awed. Thinking on this, I just said to my husband, "You know, when I was younger I used to make the old argument about a parenting license for all sorts of reasons that weren't about me, thinking instead not just of parents who are abusive or neglectful, but also those who don't teach their kids to be respectful of others, don't want to spend time helping them with schoolwork, and so on. Now, I am still for that license--but for me. It sure would give me some backup, some confidence about what I'm doing."
Everything's going to be okay, I'm licensed for situation just like this!
(True story: Just as I typed those words, the little brother comes in the door with a majorly scraped up knee for me to bandage. I need a license, I tell ya.)
This is the rub: All happiness will be bittersweet.
I've experienced happiness this year and know more will follow, but it's undergone some emotional equivalent to a chemical reaction; it's not happiness as I knew it before...because my mother isn't here to share it with me/us.
I've been up since five this morning, anxious and sad. Today, my brother graduates elementary school. Registering him for first grade in the summer of 2002, she had no reason to think she wouldn't be here today. Nearly five years of homework and studying, learning and struggling. Pencils, rulers, glue. Buying this year's school supplies, I know Mum had a shadow of doubt over the year ahead; she knew it was statistically unlikely she would be here today. And, as each quarter passed us by, every report card marked a turning point:
- When I wrote of his first report card with straight As, she was living with cancer, and I had moved in to help her and my brother as best I could.
- His teacher sent home his second quarter report card--again, straight As--early, so he could share it with Mum. I opened it excitedly at home and gave M a big hug. Then we called my mother's Hospice room, and a close family friend conveyed the news to Mum, so she could be part of the moment. I brought the report card when I visited Mum that evening and left it with her. She died later that night.
- M's third round of straight As...I couldn't tell if it was a greater victory for him or for me, a sort of basic validation that I hadn't screwed him up too bad (yet). I didn't have a decade of experience being his parent; I was never anyone's go-to person for homework help.
She's not here, but I am, trying to make the best choices to help this little boy be everything he can. At any given moment it can be a joy or a frustration, overwhelming and exciting, blissful and exhausting. Right now, minutes away from waking him up to experience his last day of elementary school, it's all of these things at once. I am so proud, so proud...of him, of us.
