backyard terrain park

The boys (and even Darren) hauled snow all day to complete the ramps and rails and so the fun began after the sun went down. What a way to celebrate the shortest days of the year.

This is for my nieces, cousins, sisters, friends who blog and inspire me to keep on keeping on creating. Have a good one!

time since... seven months

My package would arrive a few weeks before Christmas. Brightly wrapped and heavy-solid... to be opened before the holiday. A Jim Shore figurine from my mother. Bittersweet as I put them out this year wondering if I should go pick up a new one to add to the collection as if it is all the same. I decide no... I read a prayer that a woman uttered at the loss of her child:

God, we thank You for the gift...
You know what a treasure she has been for us.
It is painful to part with her physical presence.
Bless the hurt in our hearts as we trudge through each day.
Grace us with awareness...

I soak up the words of Terry Tempest Williams; she has been through this shattering,

Who will give up this world?
The catalog of forms is endless.
No one sees everything.
I am looking for a way to vocalize, perform, act out, address the commonly felt crises of my time. These are spiritual exercises.
I went back for the disembodied arms with the hands clasped in prayer, but they were gone.
Fragmentation and breaking up is indeed the essence of the twentieth century.
We are now living in the twenty-first century.
We have no compass to reorient ourselves.
Memory is redundant.
didn't we plant the seeds?
weren't we necessary to the earth?
There is an old saying that when you change your life, you also change your ideas.

I listen to a thousand tiny pieces, and lift the treasured mementos {the seeds} and tenderly arrange them on the table and anxiously await the return of the light. {the new ideas} I am filled with love. Merry Christmas Mom.

who throws a shoe, honestly

Props to President Bush for quick reactions and shoe ducking skills.
{I don't even want to think of the reasons the man felt he needed to toss his shoes, but in a land of everyday bursting bombs, maybe chucking the chucks showed quite a bit of restraint while still expressing his "sole" felt point}

December Morn

Wake Up. Yoga... (hmmm, I think I cheated, unless just laying on the mat counts). Heat waffles I made last week in the toaster. Stare out at the blinding snow lining the backyard while eating. Now, go calculate the rest of the semester grades.