balancing technology with life

Oh so very many posts on the internet have been dedicated to this topic, I'm not about to rewrite any of them.   It's been an interesting twist of fate.  My laptop has been slowly dying.  It has gotten to the point where it's just not worth my time to upload pictures, try to go on the internet, pretty much do anything because if I spend more than 15 minutes on the laptop it will eventually do the whirligig dance of death, spinning the colorful pinwheel for hours until I finally close the screen in frustration.  At the same time, I got Jed's fancy smart phone and, though I'm not paying for service other than phone/texting, the wifi at our house works just fine so I'm spending WAY too much time checking email, texting, etc on my phone while we're home.  It totally snuck up on me, too.  It wasn't until Nate pointed out to me about a week ago- "Mommy, you're always looking at your phone," that I realized I have a serious problem.  So I'm working to scale back.  And not being too successful at it.

But, luckily, like I said, spring is here and there is SO much going on in our garden and in the world in general that I'm finding ample distractions from the lure of the screen.

I do still want to consistently post here as it's a good place for me to chronicle my thoughts and have some form of 'memory' as my own functions much like a sieve.  We'll see what happens.

in bloom

Alright, enough doom and gloom.  There are other things happening in the garden lately, namely blooms!  After a couple (oh how we could use more!) small rain showers, the natives in the garden are beginning to come out of their dormancy.  The first to bloom each year is our ceanothus- or California Lilac.  Our plant has tripled in size since we got it and each year the blooms are more and more beautiful.

Not a true lilac, but in the buckthorn family, it's still quite stunning to see when you're driving through some of the native spaces of California this time of year.  I remember my grandma would point it out to us when we were driving to get strawberries in Vista on Sunday mornings.  It's nice to have a reminder in my own backyard that perhaps it's time for a little lilac spotting road trip in the near future! 

field trip

It's that time of year again...pumpkin time.  Jess and I normally love to go out to Bate's with the kids but we had some bad timing this year- every school in north county seemed to be there and it was way too hot for our liking.  The kids seemed pretty unphased, though, and had a great time.  It seems that as long as a John Deere is involved, it's always a good day.  I love four year old boys :) 

garden love

I really thought I might get some writing in today but it seems it was not meant to be.  One more flurry of pictures.  Oh how I love amazing botanic gardens. 

in this moment

There has been a flurry of activity in our house of late as we slowly begin to gather 'necessities' for our trips east.  Of course, when certain things must get done (ie laundry, packing, animal care, etc) other things must really get done (taking advantage of dewy mornings to spot huge spider webs in the yard, making lots of art, eating so very many delicious figs, making mozzarella cheese for the first time, sewing the perfect skirt-oh that picture does not do it justice...perhaps a few more lazy daisies will make it even better?).  This will be my last post for over a week- I may bring my computer so that I can upload pictures off my camera as I will surely want to have room to capture fall in Maine- but I can't promise any actual posts.  Enjoy your first week of October...I know I will!

poetry

Poetry has been speaking to me lately.  Perhaps it's my shortened, summer-time attention span, perhaps it's just the place I'm at emotionally, regardless, I'm happy to fill my days with poetry.  My poet du jour is Mary Oliver, so perfect in the way she captures the bigs and littles of our everydays.  But I'm going to save her as I have a feeling I will be posting a lot of poetry this month.  Wendell Berry is another favorite author, so I shall share a poem of his that I found this afternoon.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the least sound

in fear of what my life and children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief.  I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light.  For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

~Wendell Berry

running and pickles

I hate running.  This has been my truth my whole life.  Even as a child, when I was semi-decent and my P.E. coach would encourage me to practice more, I hated it.  I barely enjoy a game of tag, I think I only played because I enjoyed the thrill of the chase and the anticipation of getting caught.  Yet...

This morning I woke up and went for a ran.  I ran down the street, up another, through a loop and finished at my house.  It was exactly 1.46 miles and it wasn't so bad.  But I still didn't like it.  And I don't think I'll do it again for a long while.

This was my run in my head:

5:28am: What a beautiful morning, I should get up at this time more often (while stretching on the side of the house).

5:30am: Should I start out walking or jogging, I guess I'm on a run so I should run.

5:31am: I love this!  Smell all the freshly watered grass, look at that amazing spider web!

5:32am: Oh, there's a person walking their dog- I am too embarrassed to run in 'public' yet, do the loop in reverse- up that giant hill first.

5:35am: What the hell was I thinking?

5:38am: Oh my, it hasn't even been 10 minutes yet?

So on and so forth for 15 more minutes.  

The thing is, I really believed this might be a pickles experience.  Growing up, I hated pickles.  It wasn't that I was a picky kid (though I was), I tried them at various times and each time, I didn't like them.  Almost every year of my teens I would try another pickle.  I don't know why I kept going back, there was just something to them- I really wanted to like pickles.  And then I was in my early 20s and I tried another pickle.  And it was delicious.  And I tried another one somewhere else.  Delicious.  And now I love pickles.  

But, alas, I still don't like running.  It wasn't uncomfortable, it wasn't too hard, it didn't hurt.  I loved getting up that early.  I just didn't like running. Deep down, I know it's my perfectionist tendencies that are killing it for me.  I feel most comfortable when I know I'm doing something 'correctly.'  When I swim, I have my coach's voice in my head- look up, reach, pull, along the side, elbow up, etc- and I know I'm maximizing my movements and it feels good.  I have no idea what I'm doing when I'm running.  It seems silly- we're born knowing how to run, right?  But my feet feel too heavy, my stride feels off, my knees seem to be going in strange directions.  

For now, I think I'll just stick with swimming and pickles.  Maybe I'll lace up my running shoes again next year.