random ramblings wrap-up - today: wth do we do with this or the stuff that hides behind the back fence

Yes, that's a tree crushing a truck.

Yes, this is my backyard.

Yes, there is a bucket loader (I think it's a bucket loader) in our backyard with a tree on top of it.

The bucket loader, is of course a non-running bucket loader and so cannot be used to push off the tree ... of course.

There is a very heavy tire rim (I think it's a tire rim) at the base of this tree. I do not know if hubs set that there in an effort to keep that tree from falling or if it was just a random drop off point for the rim.

(hubs drops truck parts and yes, sometimes even actual trucks, the way other men drop socks - this is the real secret behind my lockets, folks)

The hurricane took 4 trees - one landed on the pool - which we removed - the only thing left of the pool are a few metal posts (because metal is valuable, or so I am told ... although it still sits there) and hundreds of pounds of sand.

There are a couple trees Chris was nice enough to cut up with a chainsaw and of course, the tree on the truck or Mr. Fibbets as I have taken to calling it. And then there is Mrs. Fibbets, another tree that looks about ready to crush our side porch, although hubs has assured me the situation is not as dire as it appears.

Most of the wood has been carted off as firewood - we throw a few pieces in the front yard every week and it disappears. We are down to branches (which are heavier than they appear), a broken storage shed (which I did not have the heart to photograph) and of course Mr. and Mrs. Fibbets.

Now, I am not posting this to brag (I know you are all thinking about the many things you could do if only you had a broken down, rusted out, bucket loader in your backyard) or complain (because obviously a whole hell of a lot of people had it way, way worse than we did from this storm), but simply report on what is happening here.

Months ago I got a price from a tree service of $2500 (insurance doesn't pay for tree removal unless the tree hits something insured) to remove these last 2 trees and chip the wood.

Hubs, who has lots of tree removal customers, thinks he can get it done for half price (this is his thinking with ... everything) - the problem of course is that his customers are out working with people they can get $2500 from and we are low on their list of priorities. So, here we sit, 7 months after Sandy, waiting ... I am not so good at waiting. George shrugs it off.

And not knowing if we are leaving or staying, which changes what we are going to do out there - is slowing everything down, too.

I get sad when I go out back, like I am walking through a forgotten, over-grown cemetery and really, really miss my time out there; hubs goes straight to his garden and can totally block out the dead trees and chaos (must be a man focus thing).

This weekend I am going to shovel the 33' circle of sand into a pile. I'm thinking I'll make a giant Zen garden somewhere out here ...  a little memorial to the trees.

(or maybe a bocce court - trees like bocce, too, from what I hear)

No aha moments yet out here - other than the obvious connection between this mess hidden behind the back fence (no doubt if this had all happened in the front yard we would have cleaned it up long ago) and all the other things we hide from the eyes of others and most importantly try to hide from ourselves that come up sooner or later to be dealt with.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone - the weather is supposed to be great here, I hope it is wonderful where you are, too! xo

random ramblings week - today: when things look too good or am I really sitting around waiting for my flowers to wilt ....

Three times in the last week someone has asked where we bought our hanging baskets.

One, an old man quite unsteady on skinny legs, talked to hubs and was given incorrect information. Ugh. I felt awful - I mean I realize he wasn't asking about something important, but still I wish he would stop back.

Now, I usually plant these baskets myself with a little of this and a little of that with moss liners, but this year I decided to buy the baskets already in bloom. They have just gone crazy out there. We must have just the perfect amount of sun and the perfect amount of water - something must be just perfect for these baskets, but ...

here is the thing with all of this 'perfectness' - I find myself totally unsettled with it.

Every morning I open the front door expecting to see flowers all over the porch floor and naked plants greeting me with brazen leers (who's your daddy now) - little springtime versions of that Charlie Brown Christmas Tree.

Maybe this is because these baskets have been through crazy temperature fluctuations and they could be thinking "It must be August by now, time to croak off" - one day it is 90 degrees and the next it is 40 - the cold temps the other night made me sympathize with every Eggo waffle I'd ever abandoned in the back of my freezer. 

Maybe it is because the color seems lighter than when I first put them up. I'm not sure.

But it is another little aha moment for me - yes, I'm having a lot of them lately - because I am wondering why something that is going good is so hard for me to appreciate - why I am determined to look down the road toward some kind of problem around the bend - why I am spending my time waiting for the other shoe petal to drop.

I am thinking I might do this with other things in my life. I am thinking it is time to stop doing this.

random ramblings week - today: buffer zones - or good fences make good neighbors or if you turn around in my driveway I'll cut ya'

the view of our new fence from our front porch

Every house we've looked at since the idea of moving took root has been built on a busy street

(partly because we have ruled out suburban developments, but mostly I'm sure because we have ruled out busy streets - ugh)

and since we have spent so many years waiting for traffic to stop so we can pull in and out of our driveway, and this feels like something we would like to give up doing, and we have had 3 accidents in front of our house we've been hoping for something different.

I noticed that although every house was built on a busy street- they didn't have that busy street feel our house sometimes does.

I noticed they all had buffers.

They had trees that ran the front of the property line and gave the front yard a more private feeling and really blocked out the noise.

I needed a buffer (in more ways than one and I'll get to that) but I didn't want to plant trees since I'm pretty sure I won't be in this house to watch them grow up (sniffle) and I don't want to just see them through preschool after all - I am a better tree-mother, earth-mama than that.

And I didn't want to spend a gazillion dollars on picket fencing or landscaping.

Anyhoo, to cut to the chase here - we put up an inexpensive split rail fence a couple weeks ago.

The last post wasn't even in the ground on installation day when George and I were looking at each other like - why the hell didn't we do this years ago.

It had nothing to do with the way the fence looked, although it looks pretty good and everything to do with the way the fence felt.

Well, not the way the fence felt since it is rough and weathered and likely to give anyone running their fingers along it splinters - it really affected the way we felt.

For the first time in years (please don't be as slow as me to figure shit like this out) we had a front yard for us.

Our front yard had always felt like it belonged to other people. It was the yard where we cut the grass every week and watched dandelions bloom every spring while disgruntled neighbors looked on in dismay. It was the yard where we planted flowers along the house so they would look nice from the street - the yard where the drivers lined up out front at the nearby traffic light would sometimes throw their cigarette butts and often use our driveway for their u-turns.

(and we are not the kind of people to put up "no u-turn" signs - although it always gave me a funny feeling - and it happened almost daily - I'm not sure if it is because it feels like someone has come to visit and then abruptly decided to leave or it feels like an invasion of our space. I'm not sure what it is that bothered me about it, but it does did)

The front yard felt like something we had to take care of more than something that took care of us - now, I can see that we were looking at the whole thing backwards.

It is exactly the place that takes care of us and it was the fence that created the boundary that let us see this part of our space as ours.

We decided to plant a couple rose bushes - without hesitating we both knew they would be planted on the inside of the fence. The roses are for us.

(which is a good thing since there's no guarantee how long they will last with my not-quite-green thumb)

This buffer zone thing - this "things expanding within boundaries" and not even just within them but because of them is a lesson for my life in so many ways right now.

NOTE - whenever something really works for us or really doesn't work (a loud clear resonation either way) - if we take a moment and really look at it we can often see how this same thing can translate into other areas of our life - aha moments are aha moments for a reason and they are very personal things.

There is a structure creates freedom post I wrote a while back and it all holds true for buffer zones, too, which are the boundaries we create to lay claim to our space. The boundaries that need to come before the place where we get real and vulnerable.

This zone is like the relationship you build with someone before you let it all hang out with them, the space you've built together so you know you will be safe. Real growth only comes from being open and unprotected, but this doesn't mean we need to be stupid.

Yesterday's post about biting off more than we can chew, which was such an aha moment for me, and probably a snore-fest for some (this is really personal stuff after all) shows up in my life in other ways, too.

(which will take us back to next week's series, which I kicked off last week, about do-overs)

It made me think about all the ways I need to slow down and focus and finish my unfinished stuff (or toss it) before piling more on my plate. I don't like to call these things lessons because that feels a little bit like I could pass or fail (although if someone wants to stick a gold star on my forehead I am totally up for that) and that we need to struggle to get it right.

We don't.

These are simply experiences and taking the time to look at what it all means and the way the different parts of our life work together will create clearer, more full experiences for us next time - at the very least we get to feel like the Ewings every time we pull into our driveway (which other cars have stopped turning around in now that we have claimed it ... plus made it harder for them to maneuver into) - we may have to rename this place Northfork.

xo all

random rambling week ....today - why biting off more than we can chew is more than bad manners

My brother and I at NJ's rally

Some random ramblings this week feels like what we need.

(also a scary bad pic of my brother and I at the NJ rally against Monsanto's monopoly of our food supply)

1. Health Stuff

I am going to stay lighter with this stuff since previous posts - depression, thyroid, schizophrenia, cysts, fertility, hiatal hernia topics - have been a little uh depressing, but I did want to pass on a tip that I heard last week from an expert about digestion.

This is important so grab a pen and listen up.

Our only teeth are in our mouths

- that's it. Genius stuff. Write it down or better yet commit it to memory because if you're anything like me, you'll probably lose the piece of paper.

It sounds simple and a bit, well, disgusting if you start thinking about teeth in your stomach or your feet or something, but it really boils down to - we need to slow down and chew our food.

The 'expert' I heard - now I am not going to tell you what kind of expert this was because I do not want to ruin this piece of important information for you - you might get all judgey about it and say something like "now wait a minute Cat, your mailman isn't an expert" or "that guy at the rally with the hazmat suit and the ponytail isn't an expert" - look, I don't go around asking people about their credentials - that would be rude. You'll just have to trust me - this came from an expert.

Our stomachs are not supposed to digest huge pieces of food and when we ask our stomachs to do that - it will need to produce extra stomach acid and we don't want that - so we need to chew our food well. 40 times this guy said - yes, you heard me, 40 times.

So, here's the test- chew a mouthful of food and before you would normally swallow just spit it out

(on a plate not into your hand or anyone else's hand unless you have kids and you want this lesson to really stick with your kids and actually this is a great lesson for kids and we do want it to stick with them, so I say spit your food right into their hands- they will never forget this)

then take another bite and chew it 40 times and spit it out. Check the difference - this is how your food should look when it hits your esophagus.

Esophageal health and gut health are very important. This chewing thing may not be the entire picture - the stuff we are chewing and the eco-system we have created in our body are important factors of course, but this chewing thing is about more than just preventing choking.

Also, don't add food to your mouth once you have food in there. And only put enough food into your mouth that you can swallow it all at once.

You are probably thinking that you already do this. Hubs and I were thinking the same thing until we sat down to eat and realized we were adding food when we already had food in our mouths all the time and swallowing it a little at a time - because we had too much in there. And we were only chewing about 10 times (and I admit getting to 40 chews is a little challenging- we're shooting for 20).

So- today's random rambling - we only have teeth in our mouths. Let that sink in (the words not your teeth, of course if you do use your teeth, just remember to chew ... alot).

xo all