Asher is sick today with a cold. I apologize to everyone he came into contact with over the last two days; I hope we haven’t gotten anyone sick. He had a rough night last in our bed, which means none of us slept well. I confess I find it hard to be a compassionate mother in the middle of the night when a thrashing child is alternately pawing at me and randomly punching my face.

But look at him. He looks tired and sad. Today we’re taking it easy. I went out this morning into my backyard and gathered up all the spare pieces of wood I could find. These are all the sticks my kids find and bring home, bits of home carpentry projects, bits that fall off our trees in winds, etc. These are the pieces of wood my kids bash each other with at every chance they get—swords, knives, spears, scimitars, poleaxes—you get the picture. Then I lit a fire for Asher and me.

Unfortunately, this novel entertainment will end soon, as we will rapidly run out of wood to burn.

So we are playing LEGO by the fire, while it lasts. Asher is telling me about Earthland, and his pet dragon, and pontificating about what color of fire is the most dangerous—blue, in case you didn’t know. I expect we’ll spend a good part of the rest of the day on the couch.

He tells me I should build ships that do better things than science vessels. Apparently my science vessels are boring.

In mid-November I went back to my painting class after a two month hiatus. I had to earn some dough before I could return to class. In the time that I was away from it, my stress levels soared, I got depressed, and things looked bleak. I’m not saying all of this was related to not painting—there was plenty of other stuff going on. But I remember thinking during all of that, I just want to paint. I yearned for it. I decided for the sake of my mental health that continuing my classes was good for me.

And it is. I’m now three more classes in and I’m still loving it. This is a series of three paintings of a copper kettle. The first was the black and white one above. We were instructed to use only Payne’s gray and white. The point of the study was to focus only on value and not on color. I have a lot to learn about this, but value is the relationship of dark and light. With the two paint colors I mixed a middle gray, then a light gray and a dark gray.

Modern Color Wheel from My Class

Goethe’s Color Wheel (for Fun and Because It’s Pretty)

After Thanksgiving we were given a new exercise: Paint the same subject in basically the same position on the same background using complementary colors, which are opposite on the color wheel. When mixed in equal proportions, they should create a neutral gray. I’ve learned that in painting “gray” is not so specific a shade as it is in my mind. There are lots of grays and, well, isn’t that wonderful?

This second study above was painted with a blue-green and a red-orange. All the colors you see were mixed from those two and then tinted with white to ultimately fill my palette with 15 different colors. My kettle wasn’t in the exact same position as in the first study, but the effect is the same. (I just noticed there is a diagonal shadow in the bottom right corner of these photos. That’s not in the painting; it’s in my window and the photographs.)

This one is last night’s study: same kettle, different exercise. The point of this study was to use three colors from the color wheel, a triad. (A color scheme in which three colors of equidistant distribution on the color wheel are used, e.g., red, blue, and yellow.) We could pick any three, so long as they had the right relationship to each other. I chose green, orange, and violet. I mixed and mixed these three colors and then tinted with white to get roughly 17 colors on my palette. Just doing this was awesome. I also had three goals in mind when I was painting this third kettle study: 1) paint a little faster, 2) paint thicker (use more paint), and 3) take more risks.

Now, this copper kettle isn’t exactly the thing I want to have a painting of in my home, much less three paintings. But this was a fascinating exercise and I’m so glad I did this. I have a much greater appreciation for color and mixing than ever before. Also, I no longer feel that every painting has to prove anything. The doing of it was the thing.

Ian

I am grateful for …

your humor

your smile

your ceaseless, devoted love

your boundless curiosity and need to know

your intelligence and courage

the way you hold me at night and I melt into you

how I can always find safety in your arms

your tireless caretaking and delicious cooking

the way you will play Legos for hours, create movies and games, build with, cook with, read to

and otherwise spend time with our children

they soak up every moment with you

the way you do the things I don’t want to do because you want to spare me

the way shield me from news or stories that will hurt me

our sweet children,

with all their random noises and sticky fingers and smelly feet

how they are intense and playful

learn every moment,

and trust that their world is safe and beautiful

because it is

they are the gifts we gave to and share with each other

and they crack open my heart to make it bigger every day

our health

and healthy relationships

our community of creative darlings

and loving family

how we are nestled in among all these loving people

who share with us their stories and wisdom and passions

our beautiful, wacky home

with its hundreds of colors and clutter of goofy, artistic treasures

its happy memeories

its fullness and warmth

its laughter and chaos and rhythms

how it always has enough

the way we are always filling it up with our friends

the garden, which is our labor of love

that pleases me with each blossom and every leaf

and reminds me to celebrate small things

These things, and so many more, are my blessings and I’m grateful for all that we are and all that we have built together—for so many of my blessings circle back to you, my love.

Our Sunday began at 4:45 a.m., earlier than we ever rise. We dressed, brushed our teeth, threw our things into the car, and then carefully transferred sleeping boys into the vehicle. We drove almost two hours up highway 80, heading toward Squaw Valley, California, to the Nor Cal Tough Mudder. Seriously, check out the Tough Mudder website here. You won’t be sorry you did.

Ian had been training hard for this event since May, when he decided to join our friends NoNo and Mars in this obstacle course extraordinaire, this crazy endurance “race” to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project, which helps recently returned wounded veterans. Yes, that means our dearest Daddy and darling friends paid for the privilege to test their meddle against 24 seriously gnarly obstacles designed to challenge both body and mind.

Our arrival at Squaw valley was a joyful, exciting time. Hundreds of participants and spectators milled about reasonably, filling out death waivers and promising not to sue. All Mudders recieved registration packets and race numbers, which were written on their foreheads and bodies for easy identification. One wonders whether they expect participants heads to separate from bodies—well, better safe than sorry.

This is team Burndoggle. As you can see, spirits were high before the start. Butterflies? Oh yeah! This is some crazy stuff, folks. We in the support crew, our dear friend Dakini and me and our two children, were there to take photos and give high fives and wishes of good luck. Honestly, I’m overjoyed that I got to be present for this. What a day! What a day!

An amazing, loving, superb couple, our lovely NoNo and Mars! Lets just say they’ve been training for the Tough Mudder for something like 11 years. Yes, they take their fitness seriously.

Daddy was pumped up and jittery, and took some time before the 8:40 start to love up the boys and play with them. Oh yeah! Asher kept looking at Ian like he was more than a little insane. Frankly, I don’t blame him.

The Tough Mudder start line was at the base of a huge mountain. It seemed to say, “Get use to it, Mudders, because mountains are going to be your life for the next several hours!” Some Mudders wore funny costumes. I saw ‘fro wigs and matching tights and tutus and teams of friends all in pink scrubs. The National Anthem played before the 8:40 wave was allowed to start. There was crazy cheering and Asher cried because I was making too much noise. A lot of this day was well outside his comfort zone.

We Burndoggle team supporters knew we wouldn’t be able to witness MOST of the Tough Mudder obstacles. (Here is the course map.) But we were there to pass the day, have a great time, and hope for the opportunity to see our friends kicking ass, so we bought tickets for the cable car to take us up to 8,200 feet above sea level. (Asher didn’t much like this part either, but he bravely did as he was told and stuck very close to me. Especially when it started rocking after passing a pylon. Even my stomach did flip-flops while on this thing.)

Right after we exited this cable car “sky bus” thingy, we emerged at the top of a gorgeous mountain with a vista that stretched all the way to Lake Tahoe in the distance. But that’s not what caught our eye right away. First, we were captivated by the nearby obstacle called Everest—a quarter-pipe against which Mudders threw themselves in the hopes of  scaling it. A group of burly athletes lined the top to help other Mudders over the obstacle. Yes, Mudders, you see work in cooperation. This isn’t a race, per se. It’s more about teamwork and cooperation and facing your fears. These guys at the top were more than happy to haul others up and over the edge. But just jumping high enough to grab one of these body-building helpers’ hands was a huge feat. Most people I watched couldn’t do it. Some did. Mars did it, somehow, when I wasn’t looking. This may be my only regret of the day.

(None of these marvelous people are my people. That’s OK, though. They’re cool!)

What was truly thrilling was the fact that Mars, NoNo, and Ian were there when we arrived, waiting for their chance!  There was something of a traffic jam for the Mudders to get over this thing. I hadn’t really dared to hope that we might catch up with them at any point on the course. This was a dream come true. NoNo waited and watched others make their attempts, strategizing all the while, I think.

Ian weighed the risks carefully.

NoNo and Ian both climbed the 12-foot half-pipe to get over. Tough Mudder isn’t about doing every obstacle perfectly. It’s about making it through. This Everest was only obstacle 3, I think (after the Kiss of Mud and the Death March). We got kisses and then they were off again, running up an even higher mountain to who knows where? … something about crawling through snow, I later found out.

Dakini and the boys and I followed an alpine meadow trail a ways over to two nearby obstacles: the monkey bars and the rope climb. These were monkey bars on steroids, I tell you. About six lanes of Mudders monkeying uphill to a peak and then downhill to the end of the obstacle. Most fell into the muddy water below. Some made it all the way across. Many made it only part way. I really didn’t ever realize how many different monkey bar styles there were before this day!

This might be my favorite photos of the monkey bars because of the tights, of course, but it doesn’t convey the numbers of people crossing at once. Crazy. We waited here quite a while, hoping our friends would arrive after having passed through obstacles that we skipped by coming here. We’ll never really know if they went through this section of the course before we arrived here on foot with a 4-year-old, or after we finally gave up hoping to see them.

Right near here was the rope climb, which I later learned was something of a triumph for Ian. At this point the boys were holding up beautifully, especially since I kept feeding them.

The High Camp views were amazing. Truly spectacular. It’s the kind of place that makes you feel small and yet restores your faith in the world because of it.

Dakini took this great photo of us on top of the world among the mules ears. It was such a gorgeous day!

Squaw Valley hosted the Olympics in 1960. They have an Olympic Museum, which would be interesting to visit sometime, but we weren’t here for that.

Eventually, we rode the cable car back down the mountain and got the gear bags for our warriors. We ended up waiting under some shade at the cargo net obstacle for quite some time. This is a shot that Lucas took, which clearly shows Mudders coming down a (third?) mountain single file to get to the cargo net. We could see them way at the top as tiny specks, and we must have scanned the outlines of hundreds of descending people, looking for our three darlings, all the while shuffling our feet and hoping.

The waiting was hard. Anxious for me. But mostly boring for the boys. I jollied them along as best I could with PBJ sandwiches and pears. Lucas made a little birdie out of a pine cone and bits of wood chips. Asher made a big pile of rocks and then carefully formed the letter A with little sticks. “Mama, look what I made! Is that a A?”

After what felt like a long, nail-biting time, Ian emerged on the top of this obstacle. We had spotted our friends snaking down the mountain, and we were cheering like mad when he reached the top and looked right at us. Moments later, NoNo and Mars were there, too. They were close to the end of this ordeal and spirits were very high!

Daddy ran to us. We cheered and applauded. We got hugs and kisses. I snapped many photos of these gorgeous, dusty Mudders. (A gazillion more are on my Flickr stream.)

Don’t they look wonderful? But alas, even though they had scaled the Berlin Walls, carried logs, swam under walls, jumped off high planks, and braved the Chernobyl Jacuzzi already, they weren’t done yet. Two or three other obstacles still remained ….

Like this balance-beam obstacle called Twinkle Toes. Again, there were many lanes that Mudders could cross. Trouble was, the boards kept wobbling and many people fell into icy-cold water. I’m told the day was punctuated by frequent encounters with icy-cold water.

They approached the last obstacle, Electroshock Therapy—a field of electrically charged wires ready to zap Mudders with 10,000 volts as they pass—at a walk. This is one that messes with your mind, I think.

And then they were done. Their reward? A free beer and some food, a T-shirt, and this nifty orange headband.

Ian was elated, but not quite in his right mind at the finish. Dizzy? Addled? Relieved? Definitely happy!

Team Burndoggle’s time was something like 5 hours and 20 to 40 minutes. I don’t know exactly. I was too excited and busy congratulating them and taking photos to check the time. Whatever. They did it! And then much celebration ensued. The grins were worth a million bucks. There was pizza and more beer.

And our Tough Mudders posed for pics in the most delightful ways.

And my little, impressionable boys got to see Daddy do something amazing and clearly worthwhile, something he worked hella hard for—which is why I dragged them two hours into the Sierras at the crack of dawn and then up and down mountaintops after all.

Congratulations, NoNo and Mars! You rock!

Congratulations, Ian, my love. You are heroic and mighty! I’m so proud of you.

The boys and I made another batch of jam last week, which was Week 11 of summer vacation. You see, we mamas must be creative to survive summertime. We must also do our best to create and squeeze sweet moments out of these long, warm days at home.

I wish I could say we plucked all of these strawberries from our garden, but we don’t grow enough berries to make that possible. I also wish I could say they were organic berries, but alas, they weren’t. They were the next best thing: on sale!

What is absolutely wonderful, however, is that my kiddos and I worked together on this project. Lucas and Asher were great about chopping all the strawberries. (Getting to use real knives is a thrill for them.) Their cooperation and good natures made this such a fun activity. I just love how capable and helpful they are these days! They got to decide on the sweetener for our low-sugar jam—they picked honey!

The chickens benefited, too.

We call this Mama and Sons’ Strawberry Honey Love Jam. Good name, no?

I should be doing a bunch of other things right now. Instead I’m going to talk in this space about fitness, my own fitness, in particular.

I am having more success this year than possibly ever before. Which is why hurting my back last weekend has really thrown me off. See, I’m not not exercising this week because I don’t want to. Well, OK. I’ll turn that around: I’m not exercising this week not because I’m too lazy, or my kid is sick, or there’s no time, but because I can’t. Because I should heal from whatever the hell I did to myself. Because I don’t want to make this mild injury worse.

And, well, this not exercising is kind of driving me nuts. I can actually, honestly say it: I’m missing my exercise this week. I’m feeling really hampered by this mild back pain, this slight impediment to my normal, everyday movements. And I don’t like it. I don’t want to rest.

Those who know me will realize how big that is.

Ian deserves all the credit, except for the fact that those calories I’ve been burning regularly since January 17, 2011 were my calories and I burned them. But Ian helped an awful lot—by coaxing, encouraging, cajoling, rousting, pushing, and loving me into our shared exercise and my fitter, stronger body.

It’s worked. I’ve accomplished 121 workouts since we started seven months ago. I won’t go into all the gritty details. The truth is I hated many of them, especially those that began and ended before 7 a.m. But what I like is the accumulation of them. The collection of workouts. The notches on my bad-ass belt. The sparkly jewels on my custom rainbow-and-unicorn reinforcement star chart that Ian made for me.

My relationship to exercise in general has always been wobbly—often emergency-room wobbly. Exercise has always meant to me asthma, asthma, and more asthma, running around toxic school fields of allergic green death. There have been some small exceptions in my adult life, since asthma maintenance drugs have improved immeasurably over those I took as a child. The crux there is they were always brief exceptions, short forays into the realm of normal people. In high school I enjoyed dancing in musical theater productions quite a lot. In college I walked all over the hills of Santa Barbara, Berkeley, and Saint Andrews in Scotland. During one of my office jobs, Ian and I managed to drag ourselves to the gym with good regularity.

Something always came up, though. Asthma. A massive deadline, or a whole season of them. A nursing baby in arms. Then another. It just got more and more complicated.

K, never mind all that. The point is: I’ve been running. A little. Since about March. A little here, a little there. Almost 2 miles, then almost 2.5. Then 2.7 miles a bunch of times, then that distance without any walking breaks at all.

Last Saturday, I ran 3.8 miles in a row without stopping. And when I was done, I felt fantastic.

So, I’m a runner? Me? Asthma girl? Running is the freakin’ Holy Grail to me because it’s always been so unattainable.

And now I’m benched. Slightly injured. For now. For not much longer, I hope. Because now that I’m on a roll—succeeding at this difficult thing—I really don’t want to lose it all and go back to Square-One Failure. The Harpies are shouting in my ear, “See, you can’t actually be a runner. You’re no athlete. Who do you think you’re kidding?” And I fear I will have to start over. I have fears.

I also have two stars to go before my rainbow is complete.

Earth Day is Friday, April 22—tomorrow! Even if this holiday isn’t something you grew up celebrating, you can bet that your kids are aware of it and eager to participate. Over the last few years, we’ve been doing a bit more to honor the ideals of this day and our kids just eat it up. Here are a few ideas from our family to yours.

1. Plant a tree: This is every bit as appropriate on Earth Day as Arbor Day. This year we’re planting a tree for two reasons: My great-aunt Nana passed away last fall, and we will plant a tree in her honor and in honor of Earth Day. We have chosen a beautiful pink dogwood for our back yard.

2. Make a terrarium or a dish garden: I wrote a tutorial about how to make a moss terrarium for Little Acorn Learning’s April Afterschool Enrichment Guide, which is full of amazing activities, recipes, poems, and much more. You can find it here: http://www.littleacornlearning.com/.  Here is an in-progress shot of the dish garden we made yesterday. We used moss we collected on a recent trip to the foothills and wheat grass seeds. Lucas included a spiral of small stones we found in our yard. We are adding beeswax bunnies and Easter eggs to it.

3. Go on a hike, take along a trash bag, and pick up any garbage you may spot along the way. (Kitchen or latex gloves come in handy for this activity.) Recycle those things that you can. Note: don’t let children pick up certain kinds of trash, especially anything that looks like it might be medical waste. Many communities have park or creek cleanup days that need volunteers.

4. Do a science experiment. For young children, seed projects are great because they are fast. Here’s what we did last year. Some of our pumpkin seedlings even survived the transfer out into our summer garden and we harvested pumpkins in the fall from our Earth Day experiment! I don’t know about you, but I love cycles like that.

5. Start a worm farm: All you need is a boxy container (a styrofoam cooler does the trick nicely—I know styrofoam is lame, but it works well for this project), and a container full of red worms from the bait store, or else dig up the worms yourself. Put some normal garden soil into your container, shred some newspaper into small strips, wet it all down, and add your worms. Poke a few holes into the container for air circulation. Then put in your vegetable kitchen scraps daily. Stir once in a while and keep it moist but not wet. Before long you’ll have loads of worms (and worm babies!) and great soil for your garden. (It helps to have a plastic or metal container underneath the whole worm bin, to catch any drippings. These drippings make excellent fertilizer.)

6. Learn about the weather or the water cycle. Check your local parks and recreation department for children’s nature classes or day camps. Try this page of links at The Water Project for science experiments for kids.

7. Read books about caring for the environment with your kids. Last April, I wrote about quite a few children’s books we recommend for Earth Day. Adults can check out the works of Richard Louv, Rachel Carson, David Sobel, Robert Micahel Pyle, and Bernd Heinrich.

8. Start a vegetable garden! Good Friday (also Earth Day this year) is a traditional day for planting seeds and seed potatoes. Lucas is outside preparing his garden plot. We have worked into it our soil full of worm castings  from last’s year’s worm farm. That should give our garden a good start!

9. Make space in your yard for wild creatures: add a birdbath, places wild creatures can use for cover, and plants that attract bees, butterflies, and birds. This spring I’ve seen birds actually bathing in and drinking from my birdbath. It was very cool!

10. Take your recyclables in and redeem them for cash; donate your family’s proceeds to a charity such as NRDC or National Wildlife Federation, or any number of other worthy charities. Better yet, if you can support wildlife and habitat restoration efforts in your own community, do that.

That’s 10. I bet you can think of dozens more. If you have a nifty idea to share, please do so! Happy Earth Day!

I’ve been so busy that I’ve not had a lot of time to write lately. But while I’ve been working, spring has sprung! I did sneak away with Asher last week to visit the Sacramento Waldorf School farm in the late afternoon.

We wanted to see the black butterflies on the yellow flowers …

the seedlings in the pyramid greenhouse …

Princess the pony, grazing by the American River …

rows and rows of glowing lettuces …

Honalea, the school cow …

calla lilies growing in the shade …

But most of all, we went to see the baby lambs, Milkshake and Licorice. Asher says, “They are a-DOH-able.”

Happy spring!

Happy first day of spring! It’s raining like crazy. What’s up with us, you ask? Lots and not much at the same time, it seems.

Mama’s busy with work—two books are chugging along, hot and heavy. One new one is just starting up. All three feature different tasks and require different portions of my brain, so that’s something to celebrate. I give thanks whenever I get to use rusty brain cells. Alas, these hours spent working mean I take fewer pictures.

We are—at present—all healthy and strong. This is also something to be celebrated! Pardon me while I whoop and holler. Woo hooo! Yippie!

In fact, we’re getting stronger every day. Our workout regimen is paying off for Ian and me (which is something I feel I can finally say out loud in this space). It’s still very hard for me, but I’m doing it—and although I have a hard time being positive about it at 6 a.m., when it’s time to start sweating. It’s much easier to be positive afterward, when the workout is done, and now I can fit back into some of my skinny clothes. I’ve lost approximately 9 pounds. Ian, well, Ian looks and FEELS terrific! And anything that makes my love this happy is worth it—whatever it takes.

Asher gets stronger after every meal, just ask him. He bares his muscles and asks me to feel how they’re growing from all the good food he eats.

Asher’s Dreamland adventures are getting more complex and elaborate. There’s a new character there—James—who hangs with Asher and Kompatchuk. They go out everyday and fight bad guys. Apparently, they are extremely competent at the superhero business. They do ninja moves and kung fu and plenty of magic. Just about any weapon in the world is available to them and they rescue people in dire straits. Asher also does a lot of work there: mostly in factories with systems and equipment and donations. And, oh, the competitions! They are held often, and Asher always wins. Furthermore, in Dreamland there is tons paperwork to deal with, like chapters and grading. Asher works constantly on his computer, programming and energizing and downloading. I haven’t yet heard him use the phrase “leveraging the synergies,” but I expect it’s not long now until I do. Honestly, he can talk 35 minutes nonstop about this stuff.

Lucas is in a really good place most of the time these days. (Creating the triangle prism above out of skewers and string is how he spent part of this morning.) He’s happy at school, learning like crazy, and enjoying life. His only real complaints center around not having enough time to have all the play dates he would like to have, and having to practice his piano. Lucas loves playing the piano, just not practicing. Next week he will perform in his fourth piano recital. He’s been playing less than a year. Lucas would dearly love to start taking martial arts classes. Unfortunately, although I think he’s ready to do it, it’s not presently in our budget.

Asher has formally been accepted into the Red Rose Kindergarten at Sacramento Waldorf School. This is very exciting and wonderful, and is exactly where I want him to be. Now I spend lots of mental cycles worrying about how we’re going to pay for it. But never mind about that. Let’s focus on how he calls me the “Princess of Love” instead, shall we?

Firefly, our special-needs, almost-starved-to-death chick, seems to have made a complete recovery. I have to say, I’m flabbergasted. I thought sure she was a goner, and that we’d be having that kind of teachable moment around here. She is not only walking, but also now runs and flies short distances.

So, yeah. I guess we’re good! One final thing: Thanks, Mom, for the new shoes for the boys, and clothes for Lucas!

Home-raised eggs have yolks that are huge, bright, and orange. Those are commercial eggs on the left and bottom.