Evolution

Charlie Darwin

Set the sails I feel the winds a’stirring
Toward the bright horizon set the way
Cast your reckless dreams upon our Mayflower
Haven from the world and her decay

And who could heed the words of Charlie Darwin
Fighting for a system built to fail
Spooning water from their broken vessels
As far as I can see there is no land

Oh my god, the waters all around us
Oh my god, it’s all around

And who could heed the words of Charlie Darwin
The lords of war just profit from decay
And trade their children’s promise for the jingle
The way we trade our hard earned time for pay

Oh my god, the waters cold and shapeless
Oh my god, it’s all around
Oh my god, life is cold and formless
Oh my god, it’s all around

-by The Low Anthem

like water on a rock

Ever heard Rufus Wainwright sing "Across the Universe" by The Beatles? Well, what are you waiting for? Heard Fiona Apple's cover of it that played in the movie "Pleasantville"? It's on YouTube...

I sit here looking out our dirty spare bedroom window listening to this and other Beatles covers from the soundtrack "i am sam". Never saw the movie, but I am just a little more than slightly in love with the Beatles. I looked up what "Jai guru deva om" means, and not only am I embarrased to say I thought he was saying something about Jackaroo, which was a book I read in junior high(as improbably as that may be), but it is Sanskrit. Oops.

On 4 February 2008, at 00:00 UTC, NASA transmitted[2] "Across the Universe" in the direction of the star Polaris, 431 light years from Earth. The transmission was made using a 70m antenna in the DSN's Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex, located outside of Madrid, Spain. It was done with an "X band" transmitter, radiating into the antenna at 18 kW.

This was done to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the song's recording, the 45th anniversary of the Deep Space Network (DSN), and the 50th anniversary of NASA. The idea was hatched by Beatles historian Martin Lewis, who encouraged all Beatles fans to play the track as it was beamed to the distant star. The event marked the first time a piece of music had ever been intentionally transmitted into deep space, and was approved by Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono, and Apple Records.[3] (The first musical interstellar message was "1st Theremin Concert to Aliens", section 2 of the Teen Age Message.)

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup,
They slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my open mind....

What was Lennon's world-and how did all those thoughts/feelings/moments/images not change it? He surely dug transcendentalism and meditation...did those things really drift through his mind, leaving nothing permanent behind?

I want to make more time to meditate. I have a tendency to think of things clinically, and not fluidly. I can't explain the difference very well, but it feels like the difference between strolling on a beach or running on hot coals.

Wu wei:literally meaning without action. Wei wu wei: action without action. Often paralelled with water-soft and weak but it can carve out stones and flow unendingly.

Circling...

Depression-sometimes it's a disease, sometimes it is a scavenger. It senses the dread, the weariness, the hopelessness, the despair, the anguish, it circles, and it finds the carrion. Your dreams, your hopes, your sense of self, your ability to see the future clearly, all the treasures and loveliness and wonderful sounds and scenes of your life...she finds it, this bird.

So what do I do? I put on a head scarf-you can't touch my mind. I wear a cloak-no pecking at my heart. I keep my eyes open-look out. I turn my head-too quick for you. I breath deep and find a change of scenery.

I will continue to try to elude you, scavenger. I will run through water, I will swim through sand. I will fly in mud and climb stairs of clouds. You will never really have me. Claim me. My mind is my own. I may always struggle with depression, with anxiety...and all the complexities tied to these "diseases". That's okay-if I can spend the rest of my life embracing and embellishing who and what I am. Not trying to escape it...

Potty Mouth

Abigail was a dream during potty training. One day she just decided to go to the bathroom, clean herself up, and only use big-girl underwear. That was almost 3 years ago and she has been going strong ever since.
Charlotte, on the other hand, has been a completely different story. A beautiful story, but not at all like her big sister! She is 2 1/2 and doing really well in the bathroom department, only using pull-ups at night when(I can imagine) it would be hard to remind your body to hold it for 10 hours straight! (I, on the other hand, wake up at least once a night to pee, waaaay more when I was preggers!)

A few highlights of the potty-saga for Miss Char:
This past weekend we went to the park. Charlotte was doing really well until up to the very end. Then she started hopping around and looking a bit desperate. I asked her if she needed to go potty and she kept telling me no. The next thing I know, we're beginning to walk back to the house, still in the park, though, and she does a little squat maneuver and pees all over the bark chips. She looks up at me, totally bewildered and I'm sure embarrassed, and says "Mommy, I peed on a stick." I looked down and said, "You sure did, but look at how clean you kept your legs!" We then walked back(well, waddled)home and promptly took a bath!
The other two delightful instances happened at home. The 1st one I had jumped in the shower while hubby was at Mass, leaving the girls to play for 10 minutes in their bedroom. Not usually a big deal. But apparently when the bathroom door is closed halfway, Charlotte took that as a No Vacancy sign, and peed all over her bedroom/hallway floor. I was alerted to this fact mid-rinse by Abigail yelling her head off into the door "Charlotte peed on the floor!!!!". This child has a future on the stock market floors...good lungs and always to the point.
2nd time the girls had just gone to bed when Charlotte started whining she had to go potty. So Zakk and I asked Abigail if she would take her in the bathroom. The helpful big sis obliged and we assumed all was well. Until Abigail started yelling something down the stairs I couldn't quite hear. But then it became very, VERY clear. Charlotte had not managed to put the lid up before going potty. Not only was there pee on the floor and in the potty, there was pee all over the seat, on the little potty chair she used as a stool, and all over her. All I could manage between grunting and sweating, crouched on the floor cleaning was "Charlotte, Rule #1 of going potty is to have the lid up, okay, honey?"

The saga continues...

Only You

This is just one photo to remind me of the joys I have found with my two daughters. Growing up an only child was definitely not the easiest at times, and I'm sure having siblings is not always easy, either. But I love to look at my two girls and hope that for their future they can continue to share the heartaches, the joys, the struggles and the love they are already learning about, together.

I am one lucky momma.

And it's all a part of growing up...

So, what's new?
Well, we are finally getting better"on track" with our financials...thanks to Zakk and 'Mint'. I know it may seem impossible that a family of 4 with two people working full time could not hold on to a semi-middle class budget but, well, there you go...

Our family is going to be moving to the lovely neighborhood of Sellwood in the not too distant future. I am excited to be making a change, even though it seems like we just moved into our beautiful Victorian in North Portland! This new place is closer to my work, and with Abigail starting Kindergarten in the fall, it puts us in a good distance from both the girl's schools. We will be right by a large park which makes the 5 pounds of winter weight on me happy! Walk it!

We had a local moving company come out and look over the house to give us an estimate on all of our stuff... and that leads me in to another thing I want to report: we are FINALLY streamlining our home, as in-if it's not nailed to the floor and/or providing a useful function, get it the hell out! Goodwill has been blessed with quite a few items, as well as Craigslist and Ebay-we won't be undersold!!

That's it for now. Maybe I'll post some pictures tonight if I'm not totally worn out from picking up the girls, driving home, getting dinner on the table, giving baths, reading stories, and making sure everyone who is NOT fully potty trained has used the bathroom before bed time(Sampson.....)

Shut the F@#k up!

Okay, and with that overly dramatic title you're probably wondering what the hell I'm getting ready to write about. Well, people. I deal with people all day-customers, doctors, nurses, practitioners, insurance companies, co-workers, medical staff, etc. The thing I am running into is how to keep my mouth shut while still staying true to myself. See, I am really good at being a yes-man on the phone and a lot of times in person. I am agreeable with the people I deal with all day at my job, but that, I have been finding out, is just a way to keep up an unhealthy practice that does not allow me to say what I think/feel/want, etc.
Like take today for example. I got a call from two higher ups about a patient who was upset with me and said I was a liar. Now, the last time I was blatantly called a liar by someone who was not a family member or friend, I had an asshole professor in college tell me I lied about turning in a paper-which, by the way, I did NOT lie about! I turned the damn thing in-I can't help it if he was a completely scatterbrained pig of a teacher. ugh. (ps-I ended up getting a B in his class all because of that "missing" paper-surprised he didn't turn me in to the term paper Nazis.)
Anyway, this person who said I lied about something had only one week ago, gone on a tirade(via phone) about how we live in a socialist society, that giving tax money to help people in need was wrong and that all people who couldn't make as much money as he could should basically rid the world of their personage. Now, the polite, tactful, customer service oriented Erin just sort of laughed it off and steered the person back to the task at hand, whatever it happened to be at the time. The real me wanted to tell him that he was speaking in an offensive manner and that I would rather be a socialist, bleeding heart liberal than a capitalistic asshole!
Whatever. Point is, when you get me on the phone at work I will be as genteel as a belle, but please do not expect to get my real thoughts on issues while at work.
Oh misguided patients who think my main goal in life is to smile and nod at them.
Wake up!

Whatnots

For some reason the crazy, cranky, unpredictable weather in PDX has a way of making me smile. Maybe it's that the changes are constant, an unlikely pairing, or maybe it's because it reminds me of my moods-see above. Today it has been sunny, rainy, windy, it has hailed, and I head a burst of thunder not too long ago.

I have found that odd phone calls always come in threes here at work. Much like celebrity deaths. Always in threes. If only two people have passed on, well, wait for the next copy of US Weekly to come out and you'll have your trinity. As a note to that thought, there is an 80% chance of one of the phone calls being a pre-recorded solicitation. So far I need to refinance my house, buy a house, buy a forclosed house, stop my house from being forclosed on, buy a car warranty, subscribe to DISH network, get out of debt, get out of debt fast, and eliminate all my debt with one easy call. I can find out what wonderful things are waiting in store for me in a free trip to the Islands(which ones they're refering to, I'm not sure), and more than once my future, I've been told, can be secured with one simple phone call to sign up for one simple seminar...

That's all for now, folks. Just some minor musings.

It's not Mastercard

Waffles for breakfast
Snuggle time on the couch
Playing one-on-one on the floor with the littlest one while big sister goes to ballet practice
dinner at the overlook cafe
car ride doing the usual architectural tour of PDX
chatting with the husband about the future
playing with the flashlight and light board in the tent with the girls before bed...
all these things are priceless

Communion

"And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear, we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are."

a closing prayer by Thomas Merton