Stuff That's Hard

• Being a parent in a dirty public bathroom.
• Understanding why people go to chain semi-fast food restaurants, like "Chili's"
• Not eating oreos after I've eaten dinner, second dinner, a snack, and some m&m's.
• playing "Hello, hello" at junior and senior primary for the billionth sunday in a row
• stopping yourself from watching the next episode of "24"
• watching your daughter fake vomit in her mouth from eating a piece of zucchini
• following through with your P90x workout
• finding clothes for school in the dark
• getting a 9th grader's attention and keeping it
• Jake's muscles

I guess not everything that's hard is undesirable.

Listen

When Amaya woke up early this morning (as she has been ever since we broke her from her morning bottle-- Now she sleeps even less-- not even 9 hours at night),
Jake said, "Amaya, why are you so lame sometimes?"
Amaya answered, "No, I'm not lame. Spongebob is lame."
Jake told her this tidbit about spongebob about 3 months ago, once. A little later she remembered that The Lion King was also lame.

For breakfast she said, "Get me a napkin, please." When we didn't jump up right away she said, "Anyone....? Anyone?"

After breakfast she wanted a body tart. Which is apparently the same thing as a poptart. A strawberry one.

When I was in the bathroom she was very upset about being locked into the house and heard "Uncle" Buddy talking to Pam outside. She was trying to unlock the door herself and kept calling out to them. Then she got a key out of the key bowl and said, "Uncle Buddy! I have a key! Let me show you how to use it! I need to unlock the door!"

I used to think nothing sounded funny at 6 am.

Workin' Girl

I caught Amaya with her hands down in the toilet this evening.

My first reaction: FREAK OUT.

And not in the good dancing kind of way.

The, "What-ARE-you-DOING?!-That-IS-SOOOO-YUCKY!-You-are-so-weird!!!!" kind of way.

She turned her head to me, and said, "Mommy, I love you." And smiled so sweetly.

Oh. My.

My girl already knows how to work it.

She doesn't know how to read letters or numbers, but she's fluent in people.

Poem

I'm having a hard time with the title.

I thought I would post this here, because I have some amazing students. And these amazing students actually helped me edit this poem.
Usually I'm really irritated with my students (every year) because they have a hard time being critical of writing. SO, I gave them something they couldn't wait to tear apart. My own poem.

I was surprised to find that they did a good job. Not because they don't write well. Because I actually made this into a way better poem because of them.
It still needs some tweaking, but I like how it's turning out.
They didn't like the word "crackling." But I couldn't find a suitable replacement. Poet's license I guess. Everything I came up with made it sound more and more like cereal.

Poem

When we argue in the car,
soon we fall into a silence
backlit by wheels spinning over concrete
~
~
~
air slips around our encased contention
the tunnel cuts the radio transmission
into a tune of electric chafe

Your head is facing the angle of the windshield.
You are watching the lines in the road
making their paths out of the dark.

I wonder if the direction of your face
Means you are waiting for my reply,

Being alone, together, crackles in my ears.

We’ve had this moment before
In many pieces

~ We’re standing in a wind, cliff side,
the waves cresting white over rocky pieces

~ hiking ahead of you,
clouds heavy in my rasping breath

~ our running soles scraping concrete,
a lopsided beat, at night

the static
scratches
my thinking.

Creative Cat

When I was in elementary school I put a lot of worth into the idea "creativity."

I think that was the buzz word back then. If you were creative, you were going somewhere, you were doing something, and you were somebody.

Funny how all of those things sound like somebody somewhere doing something else.

I often wracked my brain trying to find ways to be creative because I worried that I was not. I worried that the fact that I was wracking my brain meant that I was not creative, because creative was a gift that people had and it exploded out of them like a woman in labor. Sometimes you wanted to avert your eyes from creativity, but you didn't deny it either.

I think now that I am married to creativity, I know even better how creativity is like labor.

Difficult, inevitable, draining. And amazing.

Jake is on fire about 95% of every day. If he's lucky the other 5% is extinguished sleeping. His brain is on constant overdrive output. Creating is very different than explaining, assembling, or producing. It's that intangible idea that becomes tangible, abstract to concrete (and even abstract concrete). It's more than a plan and involves difficult manipulation to bring about, and I think the key here is that it IS created. Plenty of people have good ideas. Jake actually makes them happen.

We've watched more than a few movies about musician, writer, or artist geniuses. They're often on the haunting side, but they leave me with the strong feeling that Jake is in that category. He has the same need to create and work and love/hate his talent. Luckily for me he has worked very hard to put his fires under control, the ones that lean those geniuses to destruction.

Even luckier for me that I get to witness creativity in action. Jake is doing art, now, here. That kind of makes him a big deal.

Happy Birthday Jake.