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    • May

    14

    Sumer is I-cumin In …

    Filed Under happiness, pregnancy | 6 Comments

    Towels hanging to dry at La Montana School in Guatemala, 2005

    Quick updates - Was without computer for a week, then my grandmother (Nanny) has been in the hospital since Saturday (hopefully she’ll come home tomorrow). An ultrasound last week gave us the good news of a baby GIRL. 

    While Baby Osuna is kickboxing her way to rock-hard abs, hubby and I have narrowed the list of possible names to less than five. And I am at 20 weeks and counting, which means: halfway there! Was also thrilled to discover that the 30 pound weight gain in the first three months has slowed down to only four pounds in the last four weeks. I was very much afraid of gaining 100 pounds during the pregnancy - and not just out of vanity: I’m not due till the end of September, and we don’t have air conditioning in this house, which has many large windows and south/west exposure. Right now it isn’t even 70 degrees, but the t-stat reads 79. 

    The next 15 days in the Portland area are forecasted to be warm and sunny. It began today. Tomorrow we see sunshine and 87 degrees. Then 91 degrees. Then 80s and high 70s through the end of the month.  Time for lemonade, smoothies, fruit salads, and ice cream - can you tell where my mind is these days? 

    I will resume posting again soon - maybe even this week! I have really missed it. For now, I have to get back to paying the monthly bills, listening to John Mayer, and thanking my lucky stars that I have a partner who is cooking me up a delicious dinner of rib-eye and portobellos.

     

    ***Sumer is I-cumin In

    (lyrics translated from 14th c. times)

    Summer is coming in, loudly sings the cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo…. 
    The seed grows; the meadow blossoms, and the woods alivens anew. 
    The ewe bleats after the lamb; the cow lows after the calf; 
    The bull leaps; the goat capers*; merrily sing cuckoo! 
    Well sing you, cuckoo–don’t ever stop now. 
    Sing cuckoo, now..

     

    Popularity: 38% [?]

    Apr

    10

    The Family I’ve Always Had

    Filed Under being creative, from the heart, happiness, life changes, love, people, spiritual practice | Leave a Comment

    Nanny as a Young TeenAfter my grandmother was pulled over by the police for driving “one mile an hour” down a hill after dark, she decided to stop driving. The rest of our little family agreed this was for the best. Over the last two years, Nanny’s health had sharply declined, and she was becoming less independent.

    During a family meeting of my parents, my oldest brother, his wife, me, and my husband, we all agreed that Nanny was very probably lonely, and needed help managing her health, nutritional intake, and finances. It also concerned us that her short term memory was less reliable; her paranoid statements were becoming more alarming than amusing; and she seemed depressed and easily agitated. 

    In my family, we tend to always look at two things first as the source of any problems: physical health and personal relationships. Nanny was sitting at home most of the day, eating frozen food, and not being nearly as social as she used to. Not to mention, my brother and I weren’t spending much time with her.

    My brother and his wife - who have four kids - volunteered to have Nanny move in with them. They both work and the kids are all in school, so Nanny would have some privacy and quiet during the day, as well as some energy and life in the house on the weekends. They needed a larger place, and within a week, we’d found a five bedroom house across the street from my house! They moved in two weeks later. Meanwhile, Mom and Dad put Nanny’s house up for rent. 

    A year ago this time, I probably talked to my grandmother once every two weeks on the phone, and saw her about once a month. Now, I talk to my grandmother almost every day, and see her four or five days a week, if not more. I can pop over to visit with her as easily as checking the mail. She is always happy to see me. Sometimes I make her a sandwich, or help her with something, or we just chat while she goes about her business. 

    Even though this has been an adjustment for everyone, I feel a tremendous amount of relief:  I’d had no idea how lonely my grandmother was. I used to hear about old people in nursing homes whose families would visit them once a month or only on the holidays, and think, “That’s really sad; that’s your mom/dad/grandma/granddad!” And yet gradually, I’d become more and more distant from my own grandmother, just taking for granted that I’d spend more time with her “later.” Looking back, I see how easily that happened.

    Last spring, my decision to move back to the suburbs of my adolescence - the suburbs I’d hated and sworn never to return to - seemed like a weird faux pas. I had to keep explaining it to my friends, and started questioning my progressive identity. But something compelled me; I don’t know what. That line from The Sunscreen Song kept playing in my head,

    The older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

    Maybe it was my grandfather dying last fall that helped me get real about my relationship with Nanny. I didn’t know him well, and we weren’t close, but we loved each other. When he died, it felt like a sudden zip! Everything he’d thought and felt, remembered, desired, hated - it just evaporated with him.  I can recall looking at the dark hole of his open mouth, the large head, and the massive eye sockets. And it occurred to me: I would never know the half of it. 

    Unlike her ex-husband, Nanny has never pushed me away. All I have to do is be there. I’ll drag my feet to pick her up from here and there; huff silently to myself as she slowly puts on her coat, but it’s always worth it. Last night, after we picked Nanny up from choir practice, she told me and Michael the story of her first visit to the community pool. Neither she nor her little sister could swim, so her father instructed them to sit on the bench after they changed, and he’d take them to the wading end. But Nanny wanted to take a closer look, so she’d stood at the edge of the pool, and noticed its beautiful white marble walls, and how the light hit them,  and … she just jumped in. She went straight to the bottom, and looked at the walls all the while. Eventually, she floated back to the top. And her little sister was screaming “in awe,” she said, and her father was so distraught he returned to the men’s dressing room to sneak a drink.

    He looked at himself in the mirror, but found no new line or wrinkle on his face, It’s probably somewhere inside me, he thought, then he ran the tap, washed his hands, and went out.           ~The Cave, Jose Saramago

     

     

    Popularity: 49% [?]

    Jan

    11

    More on Money as Debt (from the 18th C.)

    Filed Under books, capitalism, class, college studies, happiness, history, questions, quotes | 3 Comments

    Never say never, indeed. It’s nearly 4 in the morning, and I’m delighting over pamphlets from 1720 about an ill-managed public land bank experiment in Massachusetts. Having just watched Money as Debt sheds some light on the subject, as did the 1953 article The Land-Bank System in the American Colonies (courtesy of JSTOR).

    The best thing is that my professor (the class is Muckraking: Activists’ Role in History) provided us with a format that links passages from the Colman pamphlet to another that refutes it (by a fellow named Wigglesworth).

    Colman is in despair about the middle class landowners who have taken out paper currency loans against their estates through the public land banks; they are now in dire straits because there isn’t enough paper money in circulation to pay off the debts with interest. While I sympathize with Colman (but disagree with his faith in the private bank), one of Wigglesworth’s responses is what I want to note here (emphasis is mine):

    For it is easie to see, that if we had never trusted one another, the worst Husbands of us all could not have spent more than we earnt ; for when we must pay ready Mony for every thing we buy, we can’t buy more than we earn Mony to pay for; unless we borrow Mony at Interest to support our Extravagance; a thing which but few would have been so foolish as to have done. Indeed when Debts are already contracted, Do but set up a Bank to borrow of, and we have found from sad experience already, that men will be ready enough to mortgage their Estates for mony to pay their Debts. But (I say again) where Debts were not before contracted, few men would have been so foolish, as to borrow Mony at Interest to provide needless Fineries and Gew-Gaws for their Families. The Folly of so few could not have affected the Country.

    Oh wow; does any of this sound familiar?

    I am fascinated by these papers, and also by the fact that in our society today - 290 years later - we are encouraged as a people to buy more in order to spur the economy, to take out more loans, to spend, and spend, and spend. That is our “role” as consumer-citizens.  And yet, as individuals, we are shamed and chastised if unable to pay on our debts; then we are irresponsible, foolish, and greedy.

    And while that may be the case (though, not necessarily), what then, is the vice? Is the vice to borrow money (at interest) in the first place, for things we can get by without? Or is the vice to fall into a situation where one cannot pay on the money borrowed?

    Popularity: 35% [?]

    Dec

    28

    Rejected but Not Dejected

    Filed Under being creative, happiness, photos, plans | 2 Comments

    This photo of Havana didn't make the cut
    These days I’m writing poems inspired by photographs I took in Cuba back in 1999. The photos and poems will be compiled into an iPhoto book for my personal library. I’m excited to finally be doing something with the photos. (And a Hooray for scanners!)

    Several weeks ago, I received my first rejection letter since deciding to “become” a writer again. Apart from a feeling of mild disappointment that lasted all of ten seconds, the notice didn’t bother me. (Don’t ask me when I learned not to take that kind of thing personally - maybe it ran off with my Seasonal Affective Disorder.) Included in my rejected application was a proposal for a collection of poems about the trips I’ve taken to Cuba, Spain, and Guatemala. Just because my proposal wasn’t accepted doesn’t mean I shouldn’t write the poems ….

    I’m not using all of my Cuba photos - just 10-15 of them. The photo above, of a main street in Havana, didn’t make the cut. Because it’s cute, I stick in this one of the farm puppy with the toddler’s shoes.

    Puppy

    Popularity: 21% [?]

    Jul

    10

    Getting Hit

    Filed Under happiness, health, workouts | Leave a Comment

    Yesterday at the gym, Michael (the DH) and I got into the ring together for the first time, and he hit me in the face - repeatedly. I managed to get some jabs in, too, but several times I just broke out into laughter; it seemed unbelievable! I think it was more difficult for him, being so trained as he is to never hit a woman, ever. Well, so much for that!

    I did a little bit of slow-rolling before the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) class, but sat out during the class as they already had an even number of folks and I was the only woman. Women are invited to participate in any of the classes, but I didn’t want to make any of the men uncomfortable. Michael says that next time he’ll be my rolling partner (he really wants me to learn BJJ), and for the future I’ll talk to the instructor and ask if he can identify men at the session who would feel okay to roll with a woman. So instead I did some work on the speed bag, exercised with the medicine ball, and did some pushups. I was surprised at myself: I completed 20 push ups without incident. (To test whether this was a fluke, I just dropped and did 20 and it was fine). I’m pleased about that.

    Later today I head back to the gym for more boxing and kickboxing. I’m excited to get kicking because it’s such good exercise for the legs. My body is a little sore from the last few days of boxing workouts, but it feels good!

    p.s. Fight Girls comes on tv today and tonight, if you haven’t seen it already.

    Popularity: 10% [?]

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