So the winners of the CD Giveaway contest are as follows:

Anne Stimming
Sue Walters
Shandra Smith
Schuyler U-W
and Julie

If you haven't already done so, please email me your mailing address so I can ship those out soon. And thanks to all of you who got your CD orders in in time! It makes it a lot easier on "the elves".

Warm Wishes to you alll...

~k

Okay fellow blog readers....

As a Christmas promotion, I am giving away five (5) Little Grey House CDs. This is your chance to win a copy to give to a friend or sister or wife or the lady down the road who does your nails.

I enabled the comments for this entry only.....ALL you have to do is enter a comment in the comment section below and you will be entered in for a draw. You don't even have to say anything witty, although witty comments are certainly welcome.

The winners will be notified by email and will receive a copy of Little Grey House in the mail in time for Christmas.

And speaking of Christmas... I got lots of orders last year that came a little too late to send in time for the holidays. So if ordering a CD is on your to-do list, you'd better do it pronto, so me and my team of elves can get them sent off. (Hardy har har. My team of elves. More like the team of me and my 2 kids asking if they can draw felt pen stick men on the envelopes. I'm sure a few of you have gotten a package with pen scribbles across the top.)

All for now...

~K.M.

My attempt to cook tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for supper while talking on the phone and doing a few other things. (You have to look closely to see the charred piece of sandwhich.)


How could I have possibly said the CD would be out by Christmas? This is never going to happen.
In fact, things are a bit of a mess in that regards.
But I won't bore you.... all will be well and the songs will find their way somehow. Eventually. One of these days.
The wind is blowing tonight. Every day we wake and look out the window to see if snow has come, but none so far.
Most of the trees are bare, and there's a little snow on the hills.
Today I am wondering why i even DO this. Why? Why the need to put songs into the world, or books, or poems or anything for that matter?
Why can't we all just sit around in our cozy houses, sipping tea, telling stories, reading books (er, I guess that's a bit of a glitch in my theory... someone actually has to write those books, but you see what I'm saying...)?
If you want the truth, I ask myself that question more frequently than I'd like to admit.
But the other day, I got this wonderful email from a a kind man who serves at the Utah State Prison for Women. He said that during song time, the women prisoners frequently request a song I wrote some years back, and that it touches them deeply.
So I remind myself of this now and again. And I am reminding myself of this tonight while the wind blows against the panes.

After a long pause in the record negotiations, I think we're finally getting rolling again. There is talk of the CD being out by Christmas. Maybe. There are a few final, vital things to sort out. But many of you have been asking. And the answer is: It's coming. Just so you know.
.........................................................
Today I dropped Iryn off at an hour-long sparks meeting and then tried to make it through rush hour traffic to the grocery store before having to be back again to pick her up.
Crazyness.
Ella helped me carry the block of cheese into the car, and I forgot she had it until I looked in the rearview mirror and saw her gnawing on something. I confiscated the cheese, which Ella had nibbled a hole into, and eaten almost one whole side of.

When we all got home, the phone rang. It was my dear and long-time friend Sherri, in town on business.

"How ARE you?" She said.
"Ugh. Worn. My kids are crazy tonight. I'm thinking about taking up drinking."
"Really?" she says.
"I would, but I don't really like alcohol that much." I say.
She laughs. "I love alcohol."
"You'd be an alcoholic in a minute if you were around here right now." I tell her.

I'm always aware that I might possibly sound ungrateful, so just to clarify: I adore my girls. I mean, tonight when Iryn started singing in the car, she sounded like a sweet angel, making up the words as she went along. And Ella is totally into helping me sweep the floor. Like, she actually gets excited about it. She makes messes sort of on purpose, so she can sweep them up. And the cute level around here gets so over the top sometimes. Like the other day, Ella put on her bright yellow underwear on sideways, so they were riding up her bum--which looked a little painful--with one whole butt cheek exposed. And you should have seen Iryn at the clinic the other afternoon, when she had an ear infection, and she was quiet and scared, and said: Am I going to go deaf? and I remembered that even though she acts 13 sometimes, she is only 6, and I promised her she wouldn't go deaf, and wrapped my arms around her tight until the doctor called us in.

But sometimes it's hard. Like, really hard.
It doesn't make it less beautiful. Just hard too.
And that's okay.

Last night Iryn was really angry and frustrated and letting it out on everyone. And finally, I said: Here is a piece of paper and some felts. Draw a picture of how you feel.

She drew a picture of her and me. She drew her arm pointing out at me, like she sometimes does when she is mad at me, and she drew a sunshine over her and a raincloud over me.

But - I'm not kidding - it seemed to make her feel better.
So whatever. She can draw pictures of suns and clouds and me with Xs for eyes until the cows come home. As long as it helps. Maybe I can even make it into a business and sell books full of all the pictures. I might make some money.

Today, at the grocery store, I bought some new fancy felts to entice her to draw more. I left them on the table for her.

She didn't use them, but after the girls went to bed, I picked them up and drew a picture of how I was feeling. I drew a stick girl with a frown, and my arms up in the air, one hand holding a spoon (domestic life) and the other holding a star (my creativity and things I love to do). I stared at it for awhile, then crumpled it up. I remembered an exercise I sometimes did with a workshop I used to teach. It's called "opposites" and you're supposed to draw a picture of a negative posture you feel you are in, and then you're supposed to draw the resolved posture.
So I took the pens again and drew another stick girl, but this time she was smiling and her hands were empty, but inside her heart there was a swirl of aliveness and pure being, and I drew it spinning around and shining and radiating however it wanted to in each moment.
This is how I want to live.

The other morning, at around 7 am, I heard someone clanging around in the recycling out the side of the house. I was getting the girls up and dressed, and I stopped to open the window and peer out. I saw a bedraggled looking woman with bashed-out teeth going through our bottles, stuffing some into her coat. I said hello through the screen, and she looked up at me and laughed sheepishly. “I’m just taking a few bottles.” she said. “I hope that’s okay.” “Sure.” I said. I decided she obviously needed them more that we did. “Take all the bottles you want.”
“What do you get for bottles now, anyhow?” she asked me, as if making casual conversation in a grocery line-up.
“Uh, I’m not sure.” I said, backing away from the window to help my 6 year old untangle her pants.
My 3 year old poked her head around. “Hi.” she said to the woman going through our bottles.
“Hello sweetie! What’s your name?” the woman said.
“Ella.” Ella answered in her tiny voice. “What’s yours?”
“My name is Eileen. How old are you?”

The whole thing had started to get a little weird. The whole situation was a little too “chummy” for my liking. I didn’t want her thinking she could come back for the lawn chairs or the kids’ bikes. Also, the idea of my kids befriending the local transients made me slightly uncomfortable.

I told Ella to get down from the window and to start getting dressed. But she really wanted to talk to Eileen. I insisted she get down—explaining that the woman was a stranger and we shouldn’t talk to strangers—and Ella was visibly upset by the whole thing. Iryn, my 6 year old, was confused too. “But you were talking to her!” She said adamantly.

I closed the window and started getting the girls ready. The whole interaction had felt strange and confusing—not really the part about Eileen, but more how I had reacted to my fear and had not known how to respond. I tried to explain it to the girls: “The woman was stealing from our yard. And I think she had a bit too much alcohol to drink, so I don’t feel comfortable with you talking to her.” I said.

But this felt so inadequate. Was I teaching them to turn a blind eye to suffering? Worse, was I teaching them to put people into categories—all of a sudden now every homeless person in the world drinks too much alcohol and steals bottles?

But at the same time, she was in our yard, going through our stuff—okay, our garbage—but still. Something just felt a little bit off to be saying, “Hey! How’s it going? Top of the morning to ya!” You know?

In my pre-kid life, I probably would have invited the woman in for breakfast. Or I would have maybe suggested we grab a bite to eat downtown. I used to do things like that. But with kids, it’s not so easy. I can’t just invite some unknown and intoxicated woman in for breakfast anymore. But I don’t want to teach my kids to be overly afraid either.

Later that afternoon, Iryn didn’t want to go out into the back to look for the cat, as she usually likes to do. She said she was scared of “the lady”.
She said “the lady” in a ghostly sort of way, like she was saying “spoooooky”.

“Laaaayyyyydyyyyyyyyyy”.

Now, see that’s exactly what I didn’t want to have happen.
It’s hard to know what to do sometimes. I reassured her as best I could, explaining that our yard is safe, but that if a stranger ever came around, it would be best to come inside just in case. I mean we DO live right across the street from a very happening drug deal spot (Iryn calls "them" druggers)

“She seemed nice though.” I said. “I think she was just hungry.”

Iryn looked thoughtful. “She could take our tomatoes and cucumber.” She was referring to our anaemic looking vegetable garden across the yard, where a few pale cherry tomatoes and one single cucumber were dangling pathetically from their vines.
“Yes, I guess she could.” I said.

“Then, out of the blue, a few days later, on the way home from school, she said, “Mama, I know what I would do if I was a mom and a homeless lady came into our yard. I would get some food and I would get a towel and I would put the food in the towel and wrap it around a long stick.” I knew what she was talking about. She was talking about making a “hobo stick” which we sometimes do with a bathroom towel and piece of old doweling. I thought ‘how sweet’.

She continued. “And then I would go out and say, ‘Here. Take this food, and then, please leave. And if you don’t leave, I will knock you unconscious with this big stick.”

Right. Who knows where she comes up with these ideas? But at least it’s opened the whole topic up for conversation, and I guess that’s better than nothing.

It has started to feel cold in the mornings now. Yesterday I noticed that summer had just up and left, all at once. I have that achy, slightly fluttery, heartbroken feeling. I miss it already—the bathing suits hung on the backs of doorknobs, the open doors early in the mornings to let the heat out, the hot, afternoon dullness when we’d escape to the nearest beach for a quick swim. I even miss the sand on the floors.

Also, school starts this week, which always feels so final. But truth be told, the bittersweet feeling there leans more toward the sweet. I am tired of doing so much event organizing—or should I say “not event organizing”, because although I have carried the weight of my 6-year-old’s boredom around on my shoulders for most of the summer, I rarely succeeded in doing much about it.

If she’d had it her way, we would’ve had play dates all day, every day, with little time for much else. Life would be party central around here if she was in charge. She’s always asking me if we can have this or that party:

“Mama, can we have a banana theme party where we make everything out of bananas?”

“But you don’t even like bananas” I answer.

“I would if they were mixed in with other food—like banana cake, banana milkshake, stir fried bananas.” she lists, and for a split second, it brings to mind Bubba in Forest Gump: “Shrimp Creole, shrimp gumbo, pineapple shrimp, coconut shrimp…”

“That sounds like an awful lot of bananas.” I say. But what I’m actually thinking is: That sounds like an awful lot of work. I imagine myself as one of those “good”, energetic moms—like the woman I saw at the beach this summer who, for hours on end was scooping up sand, singing Raffy tunes, hooting and hollering about something or other, and organizing games with all the 3-6 year olds that seemed to gravitate around her. She would do the banana theme party, I know she would. She would also let her kids help her make everything—she wouldn’t care about all the flour spilling across the floor and countertops, or the banana peels that mysteriously found their way to hanging across the arms of the couch.

When I bake with my kids, I always—every single time—reach a point where I want to scream like Lola in Run Lola Run, where she breaks all the windows. That mother at the beach would never want to scream like that. She would probably sing some version of “Peanut, Peanut butter, Jelly”; only she would find some witty way to substitute bananas instead.

Anyways. I didn’t for a second consider doing the banana theme party, and needless to say, it hasn’t been party central around here, and that’s how I like it—usually—but with little kids, I keep learning that good ol’ stay-at-home days don’t often pan out. I wish for them desperately—for long, slow days where we just take things as they come, maybe wander out for a coffee, then home again to read a book for, oh, I don’t know, 8 hours, under a tree. But the girls are not really into this. They have energy to burn.

So there’s this pressure to plan activities, but then on the flip-side, me pining for slow at-home days like I used to have often, before kids, resulting in me sabotaging my good planning intentions, resulting in too many frustrating, unstructured days when we all go a little nuts. Why don’t I just recognize this and get my act together?

Well, for one, I don’t want to be one of those families who can barely stand to be with themselves and each other because they’re so addicted to frantic activity. Like the guy my husband and I saw last week on our way down to Penticton—we were just in time for an hour-long highway closure, and the guy behind us went berserk—I actually thought he might punch the poor lady in the hardhat—and it was clear that the idea of just sitting still for one hour was too much for him. He proceeded to blare techno music from his truck stereo and then he went over to the side of the road—which looked onto sparkling Lake Okanagan, blue mountains and a beautiful dappled summer sky—where he chain smoked and fidgeted until the hour was up. We headed over to the ice cream/fruit stand, and agreed that there were worse things to be doing on a Tuesday afternoon than walking down a road in the sunshine to get ice cream.

So I don’t want to nurture that very thing in my kids. I want to be able to hang around the house a little while my girls make up plays like the sisters in Little Women. I want them to wander off and play like the pastel-painted children in Child’s Garden of Verses where you wonder where on earth the parents are. I’m told that one of these days, I’ll get my wish. I’m told that one of these days, they’ll actually want to take it slow too, instead of needing to go climb metal bars or hunt down all the neighbourhood cats.

But in the meantime, I’m sort of counting on school being back in to help take the edge off.

Craig keeps bringing up the fact that we should get rid of the rocking chair. We’re getting ready to put the girls into one room, and he’s gotten all organizational—spending far too much time on-line looking at closet dividers and bookshelves and things. He wants to discuss lamps, and duvet covers, as well as all the stuff we’re going to get rid of—the clunky old change table, the plastic baby toys that never got played with, the annoying toys that the girls did play with but which we can’t stand, like the pink singing pony with no volume control. And, also, the rocking chair.

But I’m so attached to the rocking chair.

“I nursed my babies in that chair.” I say, as if there’s no more need for discussion.

But he doesn’t see how this is relevant, seeing as how I don’t actually do that anymore.

“It’s ugly.” He says.

“Yes. It’s very ugly.”

He says: “Can’t you find something to replace it with?”

“There’s nothing.” I say.

It feels true. The houses where my daughters were born are gone, the windows where I nursed them, also their baby hair, the blankets they’ve outgrown.

He says, “Why don’t you take a picture of it or something?”

So I think about the picture. See, I don’t really like that idea. A picture would imply the time is passed, and now it’s just a memory, preserved for all time in a photograph. As in: ‘Oh look. Here’s a picture of the rocking chair we had when the girls were little.” As in: that’s all done now.

But if we keep the rocking chair, then it’s like it’s still in the present, as in the girls are still sort of babies, and are just barely past the needing-to-be-rocked-in-a-rocking-chair stage, and might still need it sometimes.

Except that the truth is, it just sits there.

So this is ridiculous, I know.

But I have this fear. This fear that if the girls are not small, then it’s just a short climb until they’re big and will want to move out and I will be old. Or maybe it’s better said this way: I’m afraid that if we get rid of the rocking chair, then it won’t be long now—just around the corner in fact, an eye-blink away—from the time when I will be old and die. More specifically, I am afraid that if we give the rocking chair away, then I will die.

Which is, also, ridiculous.

I mean, was I ever not going to die? This life was always going to be temporary. That’s the deal. But I think I had tricked myself again into believing that it was permanent—or at least semi-permanent, as in I would die eventually, but not for, like, a gazillion years.

Iryn asks me often: Mommy, do you promise:
1) The roof won’t fall in
2) A tidal wave won’t come
3) You won’t die today
4) No one will kidnap me
5) I won’t get cancer
6) We’ll go to Disneyland one day?

And I never know what to say. I imagine that a good parent might pat their child on the head and say: “I promise honey. Now you just quit fretting and go play with your Barbies.” I mean, if ever there was a time to trust blindly, to be free of worry, isn’t it now? But I just can’t bring myself to do it.

So I tell her the truth: “Sweetie, the sky could fall down on us at any moment. No one knows what will happen. We just have to trust that whoever put us here will take care of us.”

Maybe this is too harsh. I’m not sure. I could probably leave out the part about the sky falling down on us. But I want her to learn the truth early on. I imagine it might soften some of life’s blows. And at any rate, I would feel terrible lying to her.

But I lie to myself all the time. I pretend I’m here for the long haul, which relatively speaking, I very well might be. But still. There’s something about knowing that all of this is temporary, fleeting, which causes us to wake up, to pay close attention. I mean, if we could lose it at any moment, don’t we want to take more in? Doesn’t this jolt us into really being here?

So I’ve been thinking about the rocking chair. It takes up so much space. It really does. As does this other thing inside me—I’m not sure what to call it. I wondered if maybe by letting go of the clutter of the chair, it might clear out some of the inner clutter too.

It was a sad thought. Like someone had died. But then I remembered that no one had died at all—that they’re both right here—the girls sleeping in their beds down the hall, Ella curled up low down on her mattress in her new big-girl bed, Iryn long and lanky and slightly sweaty across the hall.

More recording.
And then, I return home to what feels like monotonous tedium.

Cutting up snacks. Folding laundry. Gathering the crayons from under the table.

I come home to conversations like this one:
"Mom, I'd like to be a reptile."
"Hm. Really? Why is that?"
"Because then I would be born in an egg."
(pause)
"And also I wouldn't have to go to school."

Or this one:
"Mom, can a worm marry itself?"
`Hm. I`m not sure. I"ll have to ask daddy about that one."

I get a little grouchy coming home after being at the studio, I have to admit. It is wonderful beyond words to be able to concentrate on one thing, one SINGLE thing, for a whole day.
I can sing my parts until I get them right, without any interruptions. I can make tea whenever I want. No one sits on the bath tub with me while I pee. I get to FINISH MY CONVERSATIONS, instead of having a thousand unfinished thoughts floating in the air like lost feathers.

Oh, what is to become of this double life of mine?

Just spent a week in the studio recording what will (hopefully) become another release. The producer is kind, and whips up gourmet meals while regalling us with strange stories of his rock and roll tours "back in the day". He knows all kinds of famous people and when I walk through his door, I make tea, and then place it on a picutre of David Hasslhoff, who is standing on a big stage wearing the most awful pants I have ever seen in my life, tight black with patchy black and white material on each leg and over the crotch.

Every day, I go down, like a spider, into a dark room. I sit there until my parts are done, and then I emerge into the too-bright light, squinting. It's almost 100 degrees here, but I wouldn't know it. They keep the air conditioning on, and I walk around in a sweater, with my hands wrapped around my warm teacup.

Making things (dare I say art?) is so vulerable.
Every day I have to go in and try my best while simultaneously letting go of the best, because often the best is just fantasy. Theory. The process is, at times, unbearable. I hear orchestras, symphonies, gospel choirs, horn sections in my head. But eventually, you have to let go and let it be what it is. Letting go of some grand idea is heartbreaking. But controlling it only makes you mental.

This is my struggle as a writer too; It has recently occurred to me that for years I have been waiting for that "just-right" feeling to descend upon me like a light beam from Heaven, and THEN... then I will know how to write the perfect song or the best-selling book or the great poem. This has never happened and I have come to believe that it never will. The very nature of art making is not one of glory, but of humility, and this means you have to be absolutely willing to say: "This could very well be total crap. But on I go."

Because of a need to express oneself. Because remaining silent has become more unbearable than saying it out loud.

And then, just when you've resolved to be okay with the mess, to do it anyway, something happens. And you realized it's the "just right" feeling you've been waiting for, but it only came after you'd been digging in the dirt a while, and it didn't come the way you expected it to either, it took on a different form, but there it is. You breathe a sigh of relief and realize, with finality that THIS IS THE ROAD. This is how it works. And so, at the end of the day, you see that not much of it is your business. In fact, the only part of it that IS your business is the showing up.

Some (hopefully) beautiful new songs coming soon....

I am torn today, between wanting to do a thousand things, and wanting to do nothing. I suppose, in the end, I will have to settle for doing just one thing, as is always the case. I read a book once where the writer confessed that as a child, she was very angry at being locked in her body and not being able to fly. I seem to have a similar condition in which I am angry that I cannot be in several places at once, doing multiple things. Right now I would be writing a book and shooting photos and taking a yoga class and scribbling poetry and playing guitar on my deck and riding my bike by the water.

But my 2 hours are almost up for the afternoon, and soon, my 2 year old will wake up and we'll go and play on the swings and maybe pull some weeds from the garden and then Michelle will come for supper and then she'll put the girls to bed while I take my bike (I don't care about the rain) over the the board walk and take some pictures of the weeping willows I've been longing to photograph for days. Evening is the perfect time, when the sun shines low and the green colors seem to vibrate.

This overwhelm of wanting to do everything all at once has always been a thorn in my side, and I have to believe that destiny saw my problem and sent me children. Children require undivided presence, which frees me from my obsession. Left to my own devices, I'd probably never comb my hair and go to the grocery store in my pyjammas, maybe I'd end up like the old homeless woman who lives here in the summers who walks along the road sides, cursing at the cars and pedestrians (What are you looking at you Mother F#*%er!) between rousing choruses of "Life is a Highway" or "Blowin' in the Wind".

As it is, my 6 year old lost her 2nd tooth the other night, and I completely forgot to leave her toothfairy money. She woke the next morning and came into my room, distraught, holding her sad looking tooth: "Why didn't the toothfairy come?" She said.

I moaned. I sympathized. I suggested that maybe the toothfairy didn't see it because it was so small, that we should try again.

I forgot again. And then again. Still my daughter, full of faith, kept believing. Although by now, her version of the toothfairy has changed from a shiny, smiling magical lady, to a fat old many who smokes too many cigarettes and misses work shifts due to hangovers.

I finally remembered on the 4th night, and left a note, apologizing:

"I'm very sorry I kept you waiting." said the toothfairy (whose handwriting looked remarkably like mommy's and whose pen had apparantly stopped working half-way through and had to be replaced with another pen of a darker color)

"So many kids lost their teeth this week, I just couldn't keep up. Some kids had to wait a whole week. Here is something a little extra." I left her double the regular price for a tooth. This morning, she crawled into my bed, smiling her little gappy smile.