40x40

years ago one of my favorite friends told eric (I love having friends that talk about me to my husband, by the way. it is like a whole extra layer of friendship: the friend they are to me and then the friend they are to eric. double the fun!) that I was a very "goal-oriented person." I love this turn of phrase and I toss it around whenever someone accuses me of a less-than-flattering character trait where "goal-oriented" can be substituted. I'm not bossy, I am "goal-oriented." it's not that I am competitive, I'm just very "goal-oriented." see how nicely that works? it is a resume-ready phrase and I love it.

so being that I am very goal-oriented, I've decided I need a big ol' list to be working from. and to keep my life interesting and to make birthdays with a zero at the end a little less scary, I've settled in on 40x40: forty things I want to do by the time I turn forty (june 5, 2020 for those of you keeping score at home). and because I am not only goal-oreineted but a sucker for an audience, (what is the nice turn of phrase for THAT?) I've decided to share most of that list here.

when I am forty, eric will be 42. jamin will be 12. cora will be 10. I will have been married for 14 years. other than that, I am taking suggestions. mostly I think it'll look a lot like these photos, only with taller children.

so here is my list. I can't share everything on in because a girl has to keep some things just for herself. but here is most of it, all in no particular order.

1-get paid to write
2-get published by something people actually read
3-travel outside the US with my kids
4-learn the fiddle with jamin
5-have my own garden bed
6-backpack with eric
7-weekend with just my mom
8-weekend with just my dad
9-visit all fifty states (I only have the hard ones and the boring ones left)
10-create a piece of art I am willing to display in my home
11-write thank you notes to five people I have never met who have impacted my life
12-solo camping trip
13-learn to can
14-go a whole month without buying anything
15-ride a roller coaster with eric
16-sew something I am willing to wear in public
17-30 day bikram challenge
18-run up becky mountain
19-take a trip with just cora
20-take a trip with just jamin
21-get married again (to the same lucky guy, of course)
22-consolidate all of our photos and music
23-make photo albums for my kids
24-work with teenagers
25-blog every day for a month
26-get a really dramatic haircut
27-take a humanitarian service trip
28-work at a camp
29-take a silent retreat
30- bust out the trumpet
31-one month internet fast
32-build something useful
33-spend a week at john c. campbell folk school
34-10 day juice fast

you'll just have to guess on the last six.

there is a lot I want to say about each of these things, but I think I'll save it until I've checked them off the list or they are at least in progress. especially if I'm going to blog for a whole month. I'll need lots of fodder for that.

what have I missed? what else do I need to accomplish before my next decade birthday? what's on YOUR list?

week in review

things to be glad about

we are at the beach!::staying at the same beach house we stayed in seven years ago, remembering thinking that that might be our last kidless vacation::watching jamin swim::allyson's cooking::new friend katy::september, just in general::tired kids at the end of the day::making money doing things that don't feel like work::having a six year old with a great since of humor::did I mention our weekend at the beach?::new friends in old places::walks and talks with rabbit::the last dark and stormys of the season::eric's willingness to drive everywhere we go::easing into my life without feeling like I am settling::homemade ravioli::


things I've read

I haven't been reading much this week because I've been rotting my brain with television instead. I have to do this every so often to remind myself how much I don't like it. so, thank you "orange is the new black" and "ANTM" for being the force of what's terrible in my world while at the same time captivating my attention for whole seasons at a time. sheesh.

love this post on living an exceptional life, especially after my reflections on contentment this week.

our friends at eight owls farm gave me a nice shout out this week! they are doing some pretty cool stuff in a pretty cool space with some really cool people. I dig!

our favorite jam

I heard a great little segment on npr about this song and it has been running through my head ever since. the take away here? sometimes singing "ba de ya" over and over is just the right thing to do.

moments worth remembering

words for the week

"Embrace your loved one and if they cannot embrace you back, find someone who will. Everyone deserves to love and be loved in return. Don't settle for less. Find a job you enjoy, but don't become a slave to it. You will not have 'I wish I'd worked more' on your headstone. Dance, laugh and eat with your friends. True, honest, strong friendships are an utter blessing and a choice we get to make, rather than have to share a loyalty with because there happens to be link through blood. Choose wisely then treasure them with all the love you can muster. Surround yourself with beautiful things. Life has a lot of grey and sadness - look for that rainbow and frame it. There is beauty in everything, sometimes you just have to look a little harder to see it."

~charlotte kitley

we're driving cadillacs in our dreams

(I wrote this sometime back in april, before summer visitors and summer adventures, before school started and we plunged into the next thing. I remember feeling like it would take a kind of bravery to post this that I didn't feel like I had at the time. and now, a mere six months later, my life looks different, feels different, and it doesn't seem so scary. it seems brave in a way I am fully capable of living.)


Or maybe if your neighbor does you a huge favor
And he sells you that rabbit that's been sitting in his yard
You fix it up, you trick it out, you give it rims, you give it bump
You give it all your time because that's all you can think about
And that's as far as I got

And that's as far as I got, and where I wanted to go
Knowing the whole time that's all you could think about
Even though if you cut it off and start that bitch up
You need a jump like you'll need in your rump to grow
And you change all the time so that rabbit that you thought about
That whole summer, the next summer you didn't want
That rabbit no more
You wanted something bigger and better

So the summer past and the rabbit is old?
Right, right, so now you want a Cadillac
~a day in the life of andre benjamin (incomplete)

I've never actually had any desire to drive a cadillac. I don't really get their appeal or understand their symbol in pop culture. we're more honda fit kind of people (times two even!). but I am totally feeling the sentiment here.

it is never quiet in my house. right now jamin is lying on the kitchen floor listening to a book on cd. cora is sitting beside me in my bedroom, singing to herself about easter and her neighborhood and watermelon. we have no idea what she is talking about most of the time, but it doesn't seem to matter to her much either way. the window is open in front of me, and there are twenty-seven baby chicks (who aren't really babies anymore) scratching up the yard in the rain. there are beehives in my bedroom, a worm bin in the pantry, two different kinds of chicken food by the front door, and seed trays lining the deck railing. at some point in my not-so-distant past, I dreamed about every piece of this life, from the kids to the seedlings. and now here it is. 

there is lots of talk about the dream deferred, but what about the realized dream, the one we work for and plan about and fulfill, only to come face to face with the reality that it isn't our dream anymore? while are dreams are becoming our reality we are busy dreaming about something else. dreams don't seem to last too long around here. and now there are so many of us that dreams have to wait in line. but loving each other enough to wait, or to make someone else's dream part of real life, is part of the dream too, I think. or it should be, on days when I am feeling extra patient and loving.

I dreamed about having kids and now I dream about living alone. I dreamed about living in the middle of nowhere and now I dream about people dropping by for a beer because they were just driving by. I dreamed about working at camp, about homeschooling, about having a job, about staying home full-time, about being married to a farmer, about writing it all down, and I've had he chance to do it all. and then I've also wished all of those things away.

a friend told me recently she wishes she could make decisions the way I do: no floundering, just plunging. I change my mind a lot. I'm pretty indecisive. but I also plow through things like I don't know any better, sometimes leaving a lot of stunned folks in my wake. I haven't found much in my life that I couldn't change my mind about later. it is an expensive perspective sometimes (ask me about my move to canada and back) and it can be humbling to have to backtrack (again, see return trip from canada), but I suppose it makes for good stories in the long run. but here is the real question: is it a problem with contentment? or are we (or at least some of us) just hard-wired strivers, always ready for whatever is next?

my dream of different is not always a dream of something better. I am not always looking for the upgrade from vw rabbit to cadillac.  but I crave change, novelty, experience for experience's sake. it can be exhausting for those who love me best. my restlessness is a constant discussion in my marriage. it is not that I am dissatisfied (which has taken me a while to figure out) or unhappy so much as I just want the chance to try it all and I constantly feel like I am running out of time.

but then eric brings in a bouquet of asparagus and daffodils from the yard, presented to me more proudly than any exotic roses could ever be presented, and there is exactly enough time for it all.

ghosts in the night

eric woke me up in the middle of the night two night ago. on purpose.

maybe you don't realize what a weighty statement that is. sleep is precious and I need a lot of it. not in a "oh, I really enjoy a good night's slumber" kind of way. more like "if you expect me to be a functional human being, I need a good solid seven hours. and if you want me to be nice to you, better make it eight and a half." and waking me up in the middle of the night is no easy task. I am a babbler prone to long conversations I don't remember at all the next day. or I am overly emotional in a way that is not at all comfortable to my audience. it's really not pretty, either way.

sleep is not something we take lightly here at mudflower. we worked for years (years!) to perfect our bedtime routine for the kids. jamin didn't sleep through the night until he was about four, and I am not exaggerating. combine that fact with a mama who desperately needs her shut eye and you'll know why I don't remember much of my life from 2008-2012. seriously.

eric's relationship with sleep is a mystery to me. he needs much less of it than I do, for starters. he is up late into the night puttering around doing goodness knows what. and it is not unusual for him to lie awake for hours just running things over in his brain. when I can't sleep like that it is a sign that something is very wrong in my life. for eric, that's just the way it goes.

so two nights ago, eric was puttering and saw something that just couldn't wait until morning. I can imagine him weighing the consequences while standing on the deck: waking me up could mean a grouchy grump of a wife or a tearful incoherent one, hard to guess which. but what he had to show me was worth it he must have decided. because at 11:44 he gently shook my shoulder. "the blue ghosts are back. come see."

national geographic gets credit for this one.

there is nothing predictable in my story with eric. we've done everything out of order and unconventionally and none of it has turned out even close to the way I thought it would. there have been big adventures and huge heartbreaks and long stretches of "what the heck are we doing with our lives." I found an old shoebox of letters this summer full of mementos of our first year together, letters he would write to me from school where he sat next to behaviorally disruptive kids just waiting for them to, well, disrupt. and I can gush about how far we've come, how much we've done, but what amazes me even more is how much is exactly the same. how waking me up in the middle of the night is worth it because he wants to share his life with me. how sharing something with me makes his own experience even more enjoyable. how we can revel together in the simplest of joys. how we just keep finding miracles to celebrate, right under our noses.

they weren't actually blue ghosts. it's the wrong time of year for them to make an appearance, and I am not sure what those little glows really were, but that hardly matters. especially when you are standing under the stars with the one you love best watching a firefly display like you've never seen. these are the realest of love stories, the ones that matter most and last the longest, the ones worth getting out of bed for.

as long as when we get back in the bed, you let me put my cold feet on you, of course.

week in review

things to be glad about

::photos from summer adventures::supper with new friends::kids that love school::cool mornings::chai tea in a new coffee shop::new adventures right here in the middle of my life I thought was so boring::FaceTime with eliza (and mom and carey)(but mostly eliza)::mini road trips to discover new bakeries::sunday school::friends that love my kids::coziness under a blanket I made myself::real competition with my kids in board games::texting over the ocean::fresh eggs every day::kale in my farm box::

things I've read

a thousand years over a hot stove: this is a cool book all about the history of women through cooking and food. it isn't a book I read straight through, but instead got absorbed in the photographs and small sections at a time. and the recipes! oh man, totally enjoyable.

me before you: good enough. reminded me of what alice forgot without ever being quite as good. readable, likable. I'll read more by the same author, but nothing life-changing.

abroad: good read. good story, told in an interesting way.

6 things the happiest families have in common: I read lots of parenting stuff, most of it repetitive fluff, but I loved the emphasis on family history here. storytelling is so important and I keep re-reading this and thinking about it more and more.



our favorite jam

most requested song in the car this week

moments worth remembering

training to run up becky mountain

bathing chickens. I still can't believe this is my life sometimes.

words for the week

“I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight.”

~ C. JoyBell C.

throwback thursday: are your hands getting filled?

this one is from october 2012.

I am pretty sure I cry more than most people.  this used to really bother me.  at a recent family gathering my mom and I were talking about having teenagers in the house and all the tears that were involved.  my sister mused that she didn't remember tears being a notable part of her adolescence.  my mom and I just looked at each other and laughed, not that carey was a crier, but that I more than made up for both of us.  "my grandmother is a very emotional woman," I am quoted as saying regularly in our family lore.  I suppose I am just following in her footsteps.

I do most of my crying in the car these days.  in my twenties this was a huge marker of dysfunction to me.  I can remember having to pull over on 240 in west asheville because I was crying so hard and chastizing myself because THIS IS NOT WHAT NORMAL PEOPLE DO, which of course just made me cry harder.  I did a lot of screaming at the top of my lungs in those days, and the car was the safest place to do it.  I could scream almost the enitre distance from burnsville to the unca exit, that long stretch of 19/23 that brings up much more pleasant memories when I think about it now.  back then my tears were a mark of all that was weak and unhealthy and crazy about me.  now crying in the car is just part of my commute.  and I don't really scream anymore.  much more gentle emotional outpouring now.

we don't have a way to play cd's in our house, mostly because we are cheap.  so when a friend burned me some new discs I knew the car would be my place to listen to them.  and it fit right into my therapeutic crying time.  I still can't make it all the way through a mumford and sons song without tearing up, especially if jamin is with me and singing along.  "isn't this a great song, mama?" he shouts from the backseat, his whole body wiggling in time to the banjo solos.  so this week when eric and I had been having particularly heavy discussions about what's next (a constant conversation in our gemini marriage), I needed him to hear the song that has brought me to tears the most in my time in the car this week.  so, kids cozily in bed, we headed out to the truck to take a listen.  and there we sat, and I cried in the car.  par for course.  it is what I do.

here's what moved me.  feel free to ask me how my brick-layin's coming when I need a proverbial kick in the pants.  I'll know what you mean.

serve effectively, give profoundly

yesterday was my first day back to yoga in about three weeks. I always get super nervous when I haven't been in a while because what if I don't like it anymore and what if it is too hard and looking at myself in the mirror for so long is no fun and all the other things my brain likes to whine about. and for the first three poses I am sure I have made a huge mistake and I am never coming back and good lord it is hot. and then we make it into standing bow and tree and then I remember I am a total badass and I love it again. then we get to floor series and vivian says something profound and I remember the real reason I come to yoga.

yesterday was no different. my mat was next to a guy who kept doing headstands during his warm up and the guy behind me was putting his leg behind his head, you know, just to get ready for class I guess, and I was pretty sure that yoga wasn't for me anymore. but then vivian (she's so good this way) said this during savasana: "this is the reason we come to the hot room. to prepare ourselves to serve effectively and give profoundly, using all the best parts of ourselves." and of course she is right and nobody cares if I can ever do a handstand or not and I was humbled and honored all at the same time.

I just got back from a week on shelter island. going to camp is always so confusing for my heart, and this week was no different. I love camp, and I love (some things about) shelter island, and I was sad to have missed out on a summer there this year. but summer at home was amazingly good and full and meaningful, so there was part of me very glad to be catching camp only at the tail end of summer when the buzz had died down and I had lots of time to myself. after a summer full of company where I worked hard to show off all the best parts of my life here, it was almost jarring to go to shelter island, land of crazy excess where it is easy to pretend we could all live this way, but then again water tastes terrible enough to keep reality close at hand. I worked with a group of sailing kids, great kids who have families that work hard to give them lots of opportunities and support, families that have lives in the city and lives in the hamptons, lives that I don't really know a whole lot about. the other camp in session last week was a group of young adults with special needs, mostly downs syndrome, who were so exuberant and happy to be at camp in such a different way than the determined focus of my young sailors. a woman I met in the dining hall (this was her ninth summer at quinipet, she told me) said, "you seem so nice to me. I'm gonna make you a bracelet as nice as you are." she found me at supper that night and proudly presented me with my very own beaded bracelet on stretchy string with my name ("WZEDY") on it. I wore it all week, reminding myself of why I was there, what camp really had to offer me. the juxtaposition of these sailing kids and the other camp, my life at home and the life here on shelter island was overwhelming more often than not. I had trouble finding my place one way or the other.

it was good to be away, good to have time where I was only responsible for myself, good to have time to decide what the heck I am doing with my life. I feel like I am always trying to figure that out. I had lunch with a friend today and she listened to me grouse about the same things she has been listening to me grouse about for years, and she finally said," stop trying to figure it out. just stop. it is too big of a task to figure out the one perfect thing you want to do with your life. just do things, lots of things. and stop being so hard on yourself about it all." she's right, of course, not that that makes it any easier.

when I got home from my trip, kids were already in bed for the night. the next morning a little face appeared next to mine before I was even all the way awake. "mama, where did you get that beautiful bracelet?" was cora's greeting to me. "can I wear it?" of course she can. what better way to remind myself that the reason I am here is just to give profoundly?

wisdom teeth

[the first time I met maeve didn't really go so well. I was blunt, she was defensive, and things just went downhill from there. but camp worked its magic, as camp is prone to do, and by the end of the summer I could count maeve as one of my best things. when she asked if she could stay with us this summer, we cheered together as a family. here's her view on her time in nc. you can read more from maeve on her blog. then you will love her even more, because she is totally fabulous, whether she is wearing hair extensions or not.]

People always talk about how amazing travel is. How much it changes you and how you think about the world. And it does. But it's not all epihanys. It's not all magic. It's not all falling in love and sun kissed tan and hair braids that last well into October.

It can really break your heart. Sometimes it can really break you. Sometimes it's slow. And it's hard. And people are mean on the subway and you're sick of eating seven 11 hotdogs and you wonder why you came at all. When you would give anything to hear a session in the comfort of your own little city.

For a long time I have considered it as a means to gain experiences. To gain friends and knowledge and a kind of cultural awareness that only comes thousands of miles from home. And from all this I could build this perfect version of myself. This person who would sociable and interesting and worldly. A person I could really be proud of. This is the fantasy anyways.

Well This year I lived out my summer in North Carolina. Lived it on the mountains. Lived it out in the bikram studio, in the lakes, in the presence of people I have long considered family. In the lifestyle I have since come to understand and admire.

But it wasn't all connection and acceptance and easy breezy living. it was somewhere that suddenly my smoking had become unsociable. Where my makeup and hair extensions were not only unnecessary but ridiculous. Where happiness was measured in love and passion and life experience rather than money and success. In a place where i was or at least felt, often out of place.

So the word I gave myself for this summer was vulnerability. to remind myself to let people in and To let the pain go. To lower the defence in order to heighten the experience. Sounds obvious right? But how many of us are actually doing this. And it was something that was really hard for me. Something that's even hard for me to write about. So much of my personality is tied into my defence. My wit, my confidence.. Even my self esteem.

This was not my summer of growth and change. It was a painful striping down of the defences I'd so carefully built. It was going for a drink with no makeup on and curly hair and realising that maybe people could still find me attractive. And more importantly, maybe I could still feel attractive. It was not having my iPhone attached to my forehead, not having that escape. Not having that security. It was not having a face that i could just paint on every morning, the face that protected me from the world.

But it was also the first time I realised it was okay to cry in church, actually it was more than okay. It was beautiful. And it was okay to tell the person you love "hey, I'm really happy with you". The first time I realised it was okay to reach out to people who never seemed to reach back. To shout out, to stand out, to sing out without remorse or sarcasm or irony. To use accents when you talked to the chickens because you know what, it makes you happy to be silly. And who cares who's watching, who's judging. I was in church one week when the pastor said people will always ridicule those who step out in faith because secretly they're embarrassed about their lack of courage and passion. They're ashamed of the emptiness their closed hearts brings them. I guess he probably meant religion but the same can be true for life.

There were no risks, no real ones anyways. And yeah I got my heart broke but for the first time in my life I could say I really did everything I could. And yeah i embarrassed myself, but it made for good stories with my framily later over some dodgy beers.

On the last day of my trip, actually as I was sitting in the airport the first corner of my first ever wisdom tooth came threw. At the time of writing this post a week later I have three. The last piece of the puzzle. The last reassurance that this was the summer I not only wanted but needed. That there is triumph in our hardships, that there is beauty in our suffering. And that with every challenge comes a little wisdom. If you're willing to accept it.