welcome, happy morning

Today was a very good day.  Crisp, sunshiny, Easter Sunday filled with family, food, new shoes, egg hunts, laughter, and sandwiched by caring for our herd. Happy baby boy asleep by 5pm.  Mommy soon to follow.  Bone tired from a full spring-y weekend as Easter was preceded by an on-my-feet lessons and barn day from 8:30-5.  A bit much for preggy lady, but happy to push through it whilst still I can.  Bill right by my side.  Our lives are blessedly full and ever filling. These things happened today - photos to speak for this mush brained mama.  Welcome, happy morning.

Some things I have thought about lately and contemplated posting on Facebook or sharing in an e-mail, but then not.  I think I am out of practice when it comes to conversations or chatting just to catch up.

-- "That's not my baby!"  I had one of those moments the other day when my son's behavior suddenly seemed like a bad reflection on my parenting or his personality and I was embarrassed just a little bit.  When we arrived for our meet and greet with the potential new babysitter and her son, little man wandered right into the toy pile, grabbed a car, and proceeded to try to race it across her little boy's face.  Not long thereafter, he walked up to her little boy, grabbed him hard with both hands and tried to muckle on to his face.  Or maybe that was an attempted kiss since he was laughing.  Anyway, a chorus of "Oh - be gentle!  Be sweet!  Nice touches, please!" from the various adults in the room solved the problem and then I remembered that he is 13 months old and really, truly doesn't know any better and is just a pretty rough and tumble little toddler man.  He happened to be the same size as the 18 month old he was tormenting so they looked the same age, but 5 months at that life stage is pretty much a lifetime.  As my mom pointed out, the 18 month old needs to learn to defend himself anyway.  Got to love the grandmother point of view.

--  Fun fact. One actor is the voice of Fozzy Bear, Miss Piggy, AND Yoda.  More muppet show fun facts, the pigs in space characters have fantastic names and if I ever drop Bubbles as my bowling moniker, we may end up with a pigs in space themed team.  Captain Strangepork and Captain Link Hogthrob.  Fabulous.  I love the muppet show and love that E and I watch it on the computer over breakfast.

-- Days that are relatively warm (30's) with no wind, brilliant sun, and mounds of freshly fallen snow are what make winter wonderful.  They have been painfully few and far between in the winter of '13 so far, but Sunday was a day that made up for a whole month of its predecessors.  E got to ride around in his sled and on our shoulders and on a sleigh ride and be a healthy, glowing outdoor baby.  The horses shed their coats and kicked up powder with delight.  It still makes me happy to remember.  Love the little things.

-- Baby 2 is suddenly 3 months along.  How did that happen?  Baby 2 also likes Lo Mein.  I'm thinking Baby 2 must be another boy.

just write

Truth is (as my Facebook teen friends would say) there really is no excuse.  There is no excuse not to spend 10 minutes of each day writing, recording, sharing, jotting down thoughts before they escape, never to return.  There is also no excuse not to spend 10 minutes of each day stretching or doing some sort of passive exercise like kegels at your desk or allotting, religiously, several hours of one day every month (say the 3rd Friday or some other arbitrary day) doing your bookkeeping for the business instead of spending several days (after several weeks of dreading said several days) doing the entire year's worth of recreating figures in the winter deep freeze that is January and February in Maine.  There is no excuse, but I don't do any of those things.  I am pretty certain I'm not alone.  I read an interesting piece recently regarding the concept of "I can't do xyz because I don't have time."  Said interesting piece recommended re-thinking that overused statement and replacing it with, I can't do xyz because I do not choose to spend time doing it.  This after taking careful stock of a day and a week and the number of minutes and hours therein spent doing things that you are not actively choosing to do, per se, but that add up in little inconsequential increments to massive chunks of time which could be devoted to more positive endeavors.  For example, the Facebook check.  I can't even count the number of times a day I read my Facebook newsfeed.  How many minutes and hours and days do I end up wasting reading about the gymnastics meets of the daughter of a girl I wasn't even really friends with in high school?  This is not a Facebook lament, however.  Really, it is only a preamble about not writing when I should write and could so easily do it, particularly during this deep freeze that is January in Maine, but I don't.  Not even after purchasing a spankin' new journal for a little old-fashioned pen to paper.  Not even after reading The Paris Wife and being swept up in the romance of Paris, Hemingway, literature, love, and my life as a Princeton undergraduate all over again.  Or even after discovering scarymommy.com a very funny blog about the universally human comedy of parenting which has been turned into a NYTimes best selling book and syndicated.  But wait, I AM writing tonight and it is likely in large part because of those things.  Just haven't exactly channeled the direction or the audience or that BIG idea that will make it big.  But I am getting the rust out of the pipes.  While my husband spent his evening get the ice out of ours.

What did I intend to write today?  That it is exceptionally exhausting to spend the morning before a trial packing up a fussy 12 month old toddler with anything and everything he might need to survive his first 7 hour day at the "kid farm" daycare full of love and competence and loud bigger kiddos.  The worst is that he is never fussy in the morning, but chose today of all days to let me have it and nearly had ME in tears with his teary moment in the carseat as I raced about the house trying to add last minute make up to my "I'm a lawyer today not just a mommy and a farm girl" look and be sure we had our swim gear packed as well for 5pm swim lessons.  Luckily, I fully prepared the trial the night before as I had not more than 5 minutes for review upon arrival given the entire emotional and mental suck toward my little E man...oh and logistical, too.  The trial was a hoot despite the passage of a full year since my last one.  A bit of de ja vu with my wonderful client at my side suing yet another of his utterly unbelievable tenants.  The second of two who not only did not pay rent but instead sued back saying that my client (whom they each stiffed) should pay them for imaginary damages!  We won the first case a year ago to the tune of $115,000.00 but don't get too excited for us since we are receiving payments in $25 increments bi-weekly for life.  Brilliant.  Here's hoping that today's is a win as well, however modest in comparison (from $14k to $29k possibility) but that the judgment is worth more than the paper it is written on.  Pro se defendant resembled our buffoon of a governor in demeanor and performance, so I'll be eating crow if it isn't a win in some respect.  Post trial celebration of a roast beef and cheese sub and a small blizzard from DQ (on the COLDEST day of the year, no less) reminded me of my current state.  The one I frequently forget somehow in the hubbub of the day to day although the one that I consistently blame for my perpetual drag-assedness so far in 2013.  The result of which has been multiple hours in which I CHOOSE to lie on the couch and vegetate for the entire evening after little man goes to sleep.  At the end of the day, E and I both survived our first mommy-is-a-real-life-trial-attorney day and we are both glad (I'm projecting) that it was a simple and single day event.  We even managed to muster the energy for swimming at 5pm although he was asleep before we pulled into the driveway and didn't even open an eyelid throughout a diaper change pre-crib.  I wish I could do that.  And now here it is at the whopping hour of NINE pm and I am going to shut down this machine and lie down in my bed, relax, vegetate, and grow a baby.  I'm glad I chose to write.  I may even read a little of a Christmas gift book.  But most likely I'll just read some status updates and call it a night.

Lots of love out there in interwebs world.
Lawyer-mommy-farm-girl

ps
Farm-husband did 100% of all horse feeding, caring for, looking at, engaging with in the sub-zero temperatures today.  Same for the cheep cheeps.  God love him, he's amazing.

'Twas the night before Power Ball

On the day before I became a millionaire, I woke up with my baby boy and my husband at 5:30 in the morning.  That was baby boy's choice.  We braved the cold in the dark and fed our herd before work.  I kvetched with a dear friend on g-chat about being broke and rationalized that it would make me a (insert rationalizing positive thing to be here...) more compassionate person, more creative thinker, an artistic genius, closer to my roots, appreciative of each dollar, better wife and mother after enduring mutual struggles early on, etc.  Then again, movies always make painting a room with your partner look like an adorable romp filled with cute cut-off shorts and accidental paint strokes before collapsing in a pile of painty giggles on a floor mattress in the middle of the room with magically appearing chinese take-out when the reality is that it starts with getting sweaty moving furniture, inhaling a lot of dust, getting buried in socks that have no match and piles of unfiled papers, scraping, priming, taping, and being too tired to actually paint and then you are stuck out of your room for a month because it takes that long to finish the project and eventually put the furniture back where it started instead of in an inspired new Real Simple advised arrangement.   But anyway, on the day before I became a millionaire, I also forgot my wallet in my bowling bag.  I didn't have any money anyway. but I did need groceries.  Luckily, my dad still carries cash and he spotted me $100.  With my roll of 20's in hand, I traveled to the way back machine typing subpoenas on a real life typewriter in a hall-closet at the office.  Typewriters are also less romantic in real life than they are made out to be although I think I might like to bang away on one if it was more than the name and address of people who owe us money.  If the recipients of these subpoenas pay up, that will be $144,000.00 heading our way.  They probably won't, but it won't matter because I'll be a millionaire anyway.  I left the office at 4 to pick up little man at his sitter and then we parked our big 'ol truck at the grocery store.  The $100 cash limit was a fun exercise.  We won the game clocking in at $80.48 which was about $100 less than a typical grocery run.  Clearly, we can cut some fat.  But we won't need to soon!  On the way home from the grocery store, I almost ran out of gas, literally.  I could feel the truck starting to struggle and I asked Soraya Sarhadi Nelson to just talk me through it since it would simply suck to be stuck on the side of the road in the dark with a baby on a below freezing night less than 5 miles from home. It would be a lame out of gas story and not really an adventure.  We coasted in to C&S on fumes.  After the grocery purchase, I had $23 and change burning a hole in my coat pocket.  Started putting gas in the truck, walked around to grab the boy, and then leapt back to the other side stop that fuel from flowing at $20.01.  Even the clerk was impressed with my agility. Little did he know, I was inspired.  My $3 cash after that $20.01 bought me a $1 scratch ticket (loser) and the $2 game changer I promptly lost between the truck and the kitchen (I have since found it).  At home, I made sure to savor 5 blackberries (muires) as I unloaded the groceries.  Blackberries were on sale this week.  Not so for blueberries.  I wanted to remember what tasting individual berries and counting them out to make them last felt like.  I played with baby boy, cooked chili, told the hay man that I needed more time for our next payment (please be patient b/c I have no idea from whence it will come...if not for that power ball ticket) and then settled in to watch a few TV shows with my husband when he finished tucking in our animals and our son.  I attempted to ignore the gnawing feeling that I'm late on Christmas that the marketing world has successfully given me.  It is still only November.  I actively ignored my growing to do list and the marketing campaign of my own I concocted earlier in the day regarding horse sales and leasing.  Instead, I wrote.  It's pretty important to commemorate the days that you may otherwise not remember but that you think you will never forget.  Clearly, the last day before my reign of benevolence is worthy of recording.  Remember when...  I'm so winning the lottery tonight.

Here we go again.  A blog post.  I don't know why I don't just do this on a private document for myself or in a notebook or, perhaps, not at all, but I have the urge to tempt fate and semi-anonymously share things with anybody or nobody at all.  And this is now about the earliest conception of this blog which was, in part, to be about weight loss.  What more common theme could unite folks around the globe?  Weight loss, so hot right now.  In any case, today marks my first day back at the gym in a lifetime.  Literally - my first day at the gym in Elliott's 9 month lifetime.  And I didn't set foot there before he came into the world for some time either.  It being October 24th, 2012, however, I realized today that I have a mere 7 months until my 10 year college reunion by which time I intend to be back down to my wedding weight which is 30 pounds away from where I am today.  Phew.  Lots of numbers.  And, because life is easier in bite sized morsels, there will be mini-goals along the way (thank you, every diet guru ever for making small steps toward big success a hard and fast rule) including 10 lbs by the wee-man's first birthday on January 10th, another 15 for a total of 25 by the eldest niece's West Coast college graduation in early May, and then, the final 5 for that orange and black blitz of type A, marathon running, beer swizzling, world traveling, corporation owning, country leading Reunion of mine.  Plus, the horses will like me better by then.

Step one.  Go to gym at lunch.  Check.  Major fail in the selection of aqua zumba which was led by the Tracy Turnblad of zumba instructors.  I have a thing against overweight doctors and nurses, but I think it may be much worse when it is an overweight FITNESS INSTRUCTOR. Really?!  Not so inspirational.  Nor were the middle aged white ladies with bad hair shimmy grooving to some reggaeton in a highly chlorinated pool in Central Maine.  Oh man.  Next time, I'll just go running.

CIAO! (until possibly another 2 years go by if history repeats itself with me and this blog thing)Big and groovy - cool and all but not for leading the weight loss class! 

Silent Snow

I haven't blogged in a year. On that note, I'm not sure I have ever used "blog" as a verb in any tense. However, as I sit on this Saturday morning in my crushed velvet rocking chair with my coffee on hand, various members of my animal family curled or sprawled sleeping in carefully chosen spots around my bedroom, and my feet up on the chilly windowsill with a perfect view of my white winter farm and colorfully blanketed horses enjoying breakfast hay as a light snow falls, the spirit moved me. I have taken to writing in a real journal again for 2011 as opposed to a virtual one. There is something seductive about a colorful book bound only by an elastic strap with fine lined pages and a new ball-point pen. There is also something seductive about imagining that somebody out there in the web wide world might just read the virtual stuff, might just, you know, offer a book deal! Doesn't that happen every other day? Or a blog deal, or something like that. And so, today, the computer wins. The man formerly known as TT (time and talent) is now my DH (dear husband) and he crawled out of bed even earlier than we do every weekday for horse care to follow the siren song of standing on a frozen lake in the company of beer-drinking men friends. He so rarely takes time for himself and for male bonding and such that I am happy he is out there with the shiners, suckers, and smelts today. That doesn't mean that I don't also miss him. I am awfully accustomed to sharing weekend mornings and evenings and starting our days, every day, with an hour of NPR, feeding and liberating our herd for the day, and cleaning up after them leaving the barn tidy and prepared for evening. An easily measurable daily task. A ritual of renewal - our own type of sun salutation I suppose. It is a wonderful routine. Doing it solo is nice, too, though the extra time needs to be accounted for and sometimes is not. Today I listened solo to the tales of Mubarak and Egyptian uprising in the streets and the nearly immediate governmental crackdown on communication to try to stem the tide by disabling the internet and cell phone communication. Maybe that is what inspired this electronic private/public share today that maybe somebody or maybe nobody will ever read. The knowledge that I CAN communicate in this fashion. I think we are so spoiled to our instant knowledge and connection that it boggles my mind that it could be shut down overnight by an authoritarian government. My god, I love my farm and my husband and family, my friends, my legal career, and my Maine. This silent snowy morning of utter peacefulness and plenty, of horses, pets, good coffee and fresh breakfast, of reading, writing, and reflection are tremendous gifts that are not lost on me. And this little post is my tribute to that. Thank you thank you to the powers that be. Until next time, Farm Girl.
P.S. And yes, perhaps next time there will be a touch more humor and less sap which is what I normally go for in this medium. I can tell tales of winter travails at the otherwise peaceful farm like 1 a.m. escaping horses trying to come into our house on the coldest, -20, night of the year! But that's for another time. I have to teach a snowy lesson soon.