My eyes are trained to the sky these days. I eagerly await these pretty winter sunsets.

They can be quite spectacular, I find. In the winter we get some beautiful cloud cover, so the sunsets are wonderful.

Sometimes I catch them with my camera. I rush to the end of my street, where we have a big school field.

Or I shoot from my doorstep. To me, these moments are peaceful and promising. If you are patient, you get to see a whole story of color unfold before your eyes. It’s like a reward at the end of the livelong day, if you take the time to notice it.

Sometimes I pull my car over to take a photo. My kids think I’m nutty but it’s worth it.

I love this one I took at my parents’ house. Their daffodils are coming up, so spring is on its way. Just thought you might like/need to know.

“Kind hearts are the gardens, Kind thoughts are the roots, Kind words are the flowers, Kind deeds are the fruits, Take care of your garden And keep out the weeds, Fill it with sunshine, Kind words and kind deeds.” —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Do you ever get crabby or short-tempered? I do. Sometimes I have to work hard to be my best self. Kindness in everyday interactions makes pretty much every situation better. We can make kindness even more reflexive by taking some time to work on it.

Day 1: Set Your Intention

“Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.” —Albert Schweitzer

First, you have to want to embrace kindness. Maybe kindness is already part of your spiritual beliefs or religious practice. Or perhaps no one has ever put it to you that living virtuously is largely a matter of being kind to others. If you’re ready to embark on this little seven-day experiment, sit for a moment with yourself and commit to it. Over the course of this week, you will endeavor to keep kindness in the forefront of your mind. You will do your best to notice kindness, engage in it, share it with others, and give thanks for it. Read ahead on this first day, if you wish. Know what you’re getting into. Really, you do this stuff already, so relax and set your intention. Making a mindful practice of kindness will be simple and rewarding.

Day 2: Plan Your Kindness

“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.” —Dalai Lama

Just as you write out the week’s grocery list or daily tasks, you can plan kindness into your life. I believe you already do this, but you’re perhaps not aware of it. Every time you agree to pick up your girlfriend’s kids from school, take your Mom to tea, pack your child’s lunch, or iron a shirt you are being kind. Those everyday kindnesses are wonderful and important. Chances are, they shape your days. With just a little more mindfulness, however, you can plan something extra—some out-of-the-ordinary kindness—into your week that could really mean the world to someone. So get out your calendar. What things have you been meaning to do lately? Who has been in your thoughts or your dreams? What can you say or do to touch their lives this week?

Day 3: Think Kind Thoughts

“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.” —Lao Tzu

Think for a few minutes today about your family members and pay attention to all the things you appreciate about them. Overlook failings or hurts and focus on the good stuff. What do you wish for these beloveds today, this week, or this year? What good do you hope for them? Now expand your kind thoughts to include friends, coworkers, students, acquaintances, etc. Think of the people who are facing challenges, ill health, or difficult change. Imagine all the kind things you would like to say to them or do to help them. Think about the wonderful communities to which you belong. This next part is harder: Think of people you usually do not like or with whom you have difficulty getting along. Think kind thoughts about them; find something you appreciate in the situation. There’s always something. You’ll find it.

Day 4: Say Kind Words

“Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.” —Blaise Pascal

Some days pass by without our paying much attention to what we say, especially when we are busy. We show our love and concern for others (or lack of it) in our choice of words and our tone of voice. All people deserve respectful, kind words. You might be surprised to observe you’re always polite to the restaurant server, but sometimes are snappish or dismissive to those you love most in the world. Take a deep breath and allow the kindness of your heart to ride forth on your words. Here are some ideas for cultivating kindness in what you say: Greet your family after sleeping or an absence. Smile. Tell them how happy you are to be with them again. Call a friend or elderly person on the phone. Say that you were thinking of them and wanted to hear their voice. Ask them how they are. Give compliments as often as possible. Write a letter or an email. A handwritten letter these days can have a tremendous impact, so take out your stationary and write. Show your appreciation for the help you receive by saying thank you. You’ll melt when you see your child’s smile after you say those blessed words.

Day 5: Do Kind Deeds

“The best portion of a good man’s life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.” —William Wordsworth

This one is easy. You do kind deeds every day! And now that you’ve been thinking a lot about kindness you probably have many new ideas of kind things you can do for others. Pay for someone’s food or toll. Help someone with a chore. Make a favorite meal. Volunteer. Teach someone something they need to know. Save someone some time or effort by taking on a task and lightening their load. Share what you have with someone who has none. Give a gentle, healing touch or a hug. Make something especially for someone, personalizing it and pouring your kindness into the gift. The possibilities are endless, and the joy that results from kind deeds is sublime.

Day 6: Make Kind Wishes

“If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.” —Mother Teresa

You may be accustomed to meditation or prayer in which you send out your love to others. You may already say blessings at mealtimes that express your care and concern for humanity and the health of our planet. This is your kindness spreading to all beings, to all corners of the earth. Even if this feels alien or uncomfortable, try it. Think of all the good you’d like to exist in the world: peace, sufficient food and resources, sustainable living, the end of human rights abuses, the end of horrible violence and murder, love and support for the world’s children, education for all. Wish it for all our sakes. Let your kindness radiate from your heart into the universe. Let your kindness waft on the breeze to all beings everywhere.

Day 7: Reflect on Kindness

“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.” —George Washington Carver

You are here because of the kindness of others. In your life, you have received a million small acts of kindness, gifts, boons, words of encouragement, and good wishes. Adopting a reflective attitude about this can lead to a deep sense of gratitude. When you truly appreciate the gifts of your life, you will give to others in turn with intention and generosity. So, make a list. Take a few minutes and start writing down the names of people who have been kind to you. You will most likely immediately write the names of your partner, your parents, and your children. After you get through all of the obvious ones, you will expand your awareness of all the people who do or say kind things for you: your boss, your coworkers, your child’s teacher, your grocery clerk, the librarian at your elementary school when you were a child. Before long, you’ll have a list of names a mile long. Now, don’t you feel supported and cherished? How have you benefited from these kindnesses? I’m sure that’s a long list, too.

Finally, reflect on your week of increasing kindness and know that others noticed and benefited. You touched lives with your many kindnesses. How do you feel? Now notice how you yourself have benefited from your kindness experiment. Know also that you have modeled a beautiful way of being to your children and others.

“A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves.” —Amelia Earhart

Materials

• white wool batting
• a board, such as a painting board or serving tray, to serve as a base
• figurines (gnomes, animals, people of any material you have)
• driftwood, bark, sticks, pine cones, rocks, etc.
• small bit of silk

Tutorial

This winter playscape can be assembled inexpensively and remade again and again. It can be either temporary or permanent, as you wish.

Buy a bag of wool batting. This material is often used as stuffing for toys or pillows, or can be wet-felted or needle felted. It is extremely versatile for all kinds crafting and fiber arts. It often comes in one- or two-pound bags. Tear off a layer of batting to make snow and place it on your playscape base. Add other bits to cover your base. Try to add a hiding place, such as a wooden cave or build a little den make of driftwood or sticks. Layer some more snow over the top of it.

If you have a small bit of silk, you can create a silken creek, perhaps. Now add some figures such as gnomes or animals. Or add some people.

You might also add a special rock or two. If you have a mama and baby animal pair, they might like to cuddle into the den you made. Resist the temptation to fill the scene or complicate it will too many toys.

Leave this simple scene for your children to find. They will elaborate upon it, change it, and remake it as they play. Their fingers will be warmed and comforted by the feel of the soft wool. They will respond to it and the feel of the wood and rocks in this simple scene.

If you find your child playing with the winter scene, ask him or her to tell you the story of what‟s happening. Or just listen to the play.

(When the play is done, the wool can go back into your craft supplies to be made into something else.)

It is nearing the end of winter vacation. I am grateful for the good weather. The boys are playing outside. Asher is “painting” the window with a paintbrush and what I hope is water. Lucas is bouncing on a pogo stick. It’s a ka-chuncka-sqeak sound, over and over. Neighbor kids are in the play house.

Later I peek out and see Lucas cracking ice in the birdbath. A wave of noise floods the backyard when they tumble through the gate, then trickles out again as they move to the street in front of the house.

Some construction or demolition is happening nearby. I can hear the drone of heavy machinery doing work. The soundtrack in the house is the drone of the dryer, which I believe is trying to die.

Now I hear the boys playing stick wars outside, dueling it out with found tree branches, with smaller sticks-as-daggers stabbed through belt loops. They can never have too many stick weapons. I worry about their constant war games. But I have long since learned that I can sooner stop the moon from fattening than I can stop their games. To me they are frighteningly fierce. The boys ignore my pleas to play nicely. I am frequently told to chill out. At the present moment, I am grateful that their bickering and battling is taking place outside our home and not in it. There have been far too many arguments these last few days. Alas, it’s almost dark now and they will come galumphing in the front door soon.

I have all manner of things I want to be doing. My mind is full of chattering thoughts. I sit here, trying to refocus on what I have to do, telling myself to just be. I cannot to all. The. Things. I can only do one thing at a time (plus keep the clothes washer and dryer going).

Back to the editing. I tell myself that I can have a reward when I reach the end of this chapter. I can check Facebook, or write a few words here. I have already rewarded myself several times today with breakfast (after some work), with a shower (after some work). That’s how I roll, how I work alone year after year and stay motivated. Some days—especially dull days—I even break out teeth brushing as a separate reward for slogging through. “Want oral hygiene? Finish this chapter!” Hear the whip crack?

So, in the back of my mind, while I edit fantasy wars for couch-ridden adventurers with thumbs, I am kinda planning out some goals for myself, for this blog, for my work. I had a little time today to lift my head and look up, while the boys were away with grandma. I put a few events on the calendar. It seems that on 1/3 I am able to finally begin my new year.

Well, that’s where I am. Here.

2012: The year that featured plenty of Big and Scary and Sad. I learned so much this year and I am grateful for all the opportunities and lessons it brought, although I often didn’t like learning them. I’ve watched us dig deep and come out older, wiser, and sadder but with a greater capacity to love.

Plenty of amazing and beautiful things happened, too. When I look through photos from the year, I see so much color, so much light, so much adventure, so much growth.

I asked my family what were the best parts of 2012 for them.

Lucas’s Favorities:
He got to ride the biggest roller coaster on the SC Boardwalk and do the Haunted House for the first time.
This Christmas—“What part?” I asked. “The Christmas part.” I think he means everything about Christmas.
The world didn’t end. He’s glad about that.

Ian’s Favorites:
He finished his second Tough Mudder at Diablo Grande in the California Central Valley.
Our family trip to Santa Cruz in September, when we visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk with Ian’s brother Danny.
Both of our summer camping trips to Grover Hot Springs with our beloved Barbarians and DL Bliss State Park with our Waldorf school chums.

Asher’s Favorities:
His. Own. Legos. And playing Legos any chance he gets.
Being an “Older” in Kindergarten and all the great responsibility that entails.
Playing D&D with Daddy and Brother. Playing with Solstice dog.
“Writing books. Annoying my brother. Getting presents from Santa.”

My Favorities:
Watching Lucas play Thor in the spring fourth grade play and Hanuman in the Ramayana in the fall.
Painting, especially my landscape class and how challenging it was.
Writing e-books and publishing festival e-books with Eileen at Little Acorn Learning.
I am closer now to some friends than before and that feels wonderful.
Celebrating so many lovely holidays with my family. Creating joy and memories.
My birthday wine-tasting excursion with my friends.
Family Clay Camp with my kiddos in the summer.

Happy New Year! May you find new richness in the everyday, new opportunities, new friends, and new delights in 2013. May you find peace and laughter, forgiveness and love for self and others.

We’ve had buckets of rain in the past week. Our jacuzzi has stopped working again, due to flooding. The chicken run is a soupy, smelly mess. The pretty leaves have largely fallen from the deciduous trees in the neighborhood, but my liquidambar is still full of golden stars.

The palette of my surroundings is fading. Bright oranges, golds, russets, and crimsons are vanishing, giving way to more muted tones. Browns and grays, straw, and dusty greens—punctuated by lurid, store-bought red and green for Christmas—are the colors of December in Northern California’s central valley. The transformation is gradual and a few flowers seem to have missed the memo. I’ve seen marguerites shouting “yellow!” at the top of their voices, and a few purple irises are confused enough to bloom even in the heavy rain.

A couple of weeks ago, we took the boys to a local amusement park called Funderland, which has been in operation in Land Park as long as I can remember. The day was perfectly glorious, the kind of day November hopes to achieve—with sparkling, flaming trees and crystalline skies.

The rides, horseback riding, and pretty slanting afternoon sunbeams inspired many shining smiles.

And plenty of autumn frolicking.

It was a wonderful day. Land Park had lots of finery to show off while we were there.

Thank you, November. Your brilliance is fortifying.

Today is rainy and gloomy. We’re getting our first big winter storm in Northern California. So I consoled myself with some photos from about a week ago—I took these on a glorious November day in Temple Park in Fair Oaks. I thought I’d share them here, in case you need a pick-me-up too.

This shadow was really stunning. It reminded me of Yggdrasil, the World Tree from Norse mythology. Kind of a magical, accidental moment I captured. My children played at the park while I wandered around with my eyes mostly in the sky.

It’s no wonder to me why this place is called Fair Oaks. These trees are so mighty and beautiful. They never fail to inspire me.

I try not to get too sentimental about my children growing up. They grow. They are made to. They strive and learn and change and discover and grow every day, with or without my consent. And I approve. Most of the time I am too busy being astounded and amazed by their leaps of intelligence, judgement, compassion, and understanding, and feats of strength and skill to be the least bit sad about their not being babies anymore.

These are pants and shorts and pajamas that my mother and I have for Asher to wear. They were sewn for him and made with love (and in my case, with mistakes and a fair amount of learning frustration). They are all too small for Asher now, and I have sent them on their merry way to another sweet boy (and his baby sister) who may get some further use out of them. They are not the first set of handmades to be passed along, and they certainly won’t be the last. Growth and change are guaranteed.

Nevertheless, I was sentimental enough to take a photo before passing them on. These clothes are loved, soft and colorful, and unique in the world. They are special not only because they once covered my sweet son’s soft skin, but because they were created with loving hands and clever tools and eyes for detail. They are special because they were made first in our hearts before they came to be objects in the world.

May they be useful in the years to come, until they are once again outgrown.

So inviting, this golden tree, shining in the setting sun.

Impossible to resist, with its rustling leaves like stained glass of every warm hue.

It doesn’t take long for a boy to find his way up.

Stretching and climbing, gilded by light,

into the heights, where no one can reach and he is best and bravest.

I’m not going to get anything done today until I write a bit. I am all pent up and my feelings on all subjects are all over the place. They’re mixed up because I haven’t been writing, which is my process for sorting things out, for determining what matters, what to hang on to and work on, and what to let go of. I’ll try not to make this too complainy because there’s really tons of good stuff.

Lately:

I am very busy with work; I have three projects going full speed ahead. Well, the truth is two of the three projects are taking up so much time that the third is languishing and I hope to get back to it ASAP. I don’t know when that will happen and it’s worrying me. I hope it goes without saying that I’m very glad to have the work. I am. Really.

My computer died last Wednesday. My main, desktop, do-everything-on-it computer. I will spare you the emotional trauma of this and just say that I have a new one now. It’s a great new machine and my old data is fine. “Hard drive is robust like ox,” said my tech support queen. This is a VERY HAPPY thing. I am still tweaking and finding workarounds to this happy thing, however, as the happy thing is far from optimized at this moment and I don’t have time to optimize it … yet. Nevertheless, all of this will be better soon. In the meantime, I’ve struggled to keep those three projects moving forward.

The boys are doing great. Lucas is adapting gradually to the greater expectations of fifth grade. (I have a whole post on this topic brewing in my head.) Lucas is really enjoying both soccer skills practice and his twice weekly karate class. Asher is zany and clownish and enjoying the hell out of life, it seems. Both boys are healthy and happy. Managing them is like herding cats, or monkeys, um—good-natured, sometimes-disdainful-or-obstinate, constantly forgetful catmonkeys who are generally too busy singing or shouting or bickering or spilling or bouncing through the house to listen to you. Or me.

I’ve gone over to my sister-in-law Kellie’s house a couple of times to help out a little with baby Jack, her newborn son. He is beautiful in every way—utterly perfect—and is finally seeming to get a handle on this breastfeeding thing. Some babies are stubborn like that. Holding a teeny baby has got to be one of the best joys of life. I only have to hold him a moment before he has cast a dreamy spell on me and I find that everything else fades away. Still, I did that so-familiar thing of holding baby and editing one-handed. It brought back so many memories and feelings from when my babies were small. Anita Martin, the charming and talented photographer who took Matt and Kellie’s wedding photos has taken some gorgeous shots of them with new baby Jack. They are truly spectacular. Our love goes out to Matt, Kellie, and Jack during this difficult and wonderful newborn time.

Harvest Faire  and the Walk Now for Autism Speaks events both happened last weekend. (I’m planning to write more about this.) It was community service weekend, to be sure. Consequently, it felt rather like no weekend at all. Today, Friday of the following week, I am running on fumes. (Return to the first paragraph under “Lately.”)

I’m also supposed to be writing a book. I hope to get back to that ASAP before my coauthor disowns me.

I love the fall. Can’t wait to hit the pumpkin patch and start work on those Halloween costumes.

I miss painting sooooo bad. It’s been too long and I now feel fear when I think about picking up a brush. Isn’t that the way of it? I’ve lost my momentum and with it some confidence. It’s a thing I have to correct at the soonest possibly opportunity. Must buy that fancy light so I can paint in my house at night. Must get back to class. Mustn’t forget what I’ve learned so far.