writing – Page 8 – Frozen Spaghetti

Lemon Curry Corn Chowder @ The Perfect Sunny Day – Bellingham

August 9, 2020August 9, 2020by Erin2 Comments

I am in the process of making what I am calling Lemon Curry Corn Chowder on one million percent the most gorgeous August day your heart can imagine. It’s about 68 degrees, perfectly sunny, and all doors open with birdsong a-go.

We have people in and out of our front yard picking up Facebook finds and Craigslist ads… it’s sad to see the kayak go, the house up here empty, etc but it’s exciting to see our petty cash bucket fill up and think about the things that we need slash want for our Webster house to take root.

Primarily a dishwasher, but – specifically a tv for David’s Saturday morning soccer – I mean football games, the lumber for our Urban Chestnut brewery inspired dining hall and two new black ceiling fans for me.

I am excited to get all the kids under one roof and be responsible for feeding them and telling them, lovingly and with big wide space for self-exploration, what to do.

I am eager to get school schedules and such together and start figuring out what that is going to look like. I am already planning a family friendly Avenger character development learning series and am thinking that I’ll do silent reading time where the readers get waited on hand and foot that flip flops with kitchen time where the young women in the making get taught basic cooking functions, how to be a generous spirit to others and how to – in general – not burn the house down. (Primarily taught by my own sharing how I leave the burner on and it drives David mad.)

The chowder is exploratory and the house smells delicious. I went to the co-op downtown Bellingham (which is in the top 5 of “Things I Will Miss”, without a doubt) and picked up $90 worth of local, organic cheese, fruits, veggies, bread and pork to make up a couple days worth of brioche french toast, chowder and oven friend pork chops.

Okay – so this is for sure part one of the chowder series.

Oh, the person was for the kayak. WOW. David’s fishing kayak is gone.

Chowder recipe so far:

Diced up 2 cloves of garlic, half a red pepper, 1/4 of a red onion, 1/4 yellow onion, 2 carrots and put on super low with some butter and olive oil.

Let that go while I cut up a small sweet potato. Added that in with a tablespoon of chardonnay and what looked like 2 teaspoons of yellow curry.

Stirred it up for a minute just to mix it well.

Let that go while I shaved 6 ears of corn on the cob. Mixed the shaved corn in a bowl with celery salt and a pad of room temperature butter and a tablespoon or so of seriously minced almost gone yellow onion.

that’s going now… official recipe will have to read “mix the corn in and let that simmer with a cup of water and juiced half lemon for the amount of time it takes to write a blog post and cut up the rest of the potatoes…”

5.1.20 On the Road

May 1, 2020by Erin5 Comments

Started into a podcast this morning when Maddox, our youngest, asked for music for a little bit. He is so sweet, I obliged.

As I scrolled for a good easy song to play, I stumbled upon Oceans and said to David, “I think I’ll start us out with a little worship music.”

“I really don’t want to listen to worship music.” He said, with his loving laugh voice which I’m thankful exists.

“Well then that probably means you should” I say in my loving laugh voice which I’m also thankful exists. It was a sweet exchange.

I looked out the window at this beautiful sunny morning, headed into our 9 hour journey to Black Hills National Forest. My heart started to tremble:

// spirit lead me where my trust is without borders //

Listening to the repetition of the prayer while watching the landscape with the lingering smell of a PBJ in the truck cab (made for Aria) made me aware of this reality that I have been led to an adventurous man.

This commitment we are in has me on a roadtrip, through a part of the country I have never been in, using strengths my life has equipped me for (like making three kids comfortable in a backseat and making sandwiches from a front seat – wrapped in a folded napkin with a quick scribble note to the recipient on it) and in a landscape of people so wide and deep that the only realistic expectation I can have of myself to help guide and mother is to stay present. To pay attention.

When I consider the whole of all that is on my mind and heart and how much is unknown, I am led just to consider its opposite: “known”.

I considered seasons of “known” (where nothing major was in question or in flux) and realized those seasons were seasons of plans, concrete planning or where plans were in motion.

If what is “known” means to me that I know the plan then, very much so, my life right now is “on the fly”. Big stuff: I don’t know what June looks like, yes. But even daily stuff like tomorrow night, I’m sleeping “in Montana”.

I did a little word math, a way I journal to try and make sense of complex ideas, to find my center. And I saw quickly that living “on the fly” and living “planned” have the same root: my intention.

If living present, per my true honest root, my intention, I believe, would not make my plan that much different than what I would come up with in a split decision. Said another way, what I come up with in a split decision is probably similar to what I would have planned… I think this is where the lyrics got me, spirit lead me where my trust is without borders.

Maybe living spirit led allows them to be the same: making plans and winging it. Just like Covid changed the best of plans, a boon can change the worst of winging it. If you’re true to your intention, to being spirit led, your trust is without borders.

To close, I’m stunned at how much of my life with David rings true to what I am accustomed to – like long road trips and lots of people – while also having me in unknown territory where I am reminded to rely heavily on the spirit. In yoga, we call this the balance between effort and ease – and when we find this place, we have just the right amount of tension to grow and explore newness with just the right of softness to trust and relax. It’s humbling: how simple the complexities of life can be.

Lots of love. :) me

Words in Sentences

I AM THE GOOSE (original)

August 4, 2019May 2, 2020by Erin2 Comments

AUGUST 3, 2019BY ERIN

Context:

goose

Allow me to build on my sentiment,

“I legit expect my kids to follow me following the goose”…

In my earliest year as a mother (age: 23), I remember turning my infant’s life over to the greater connected protection of the universe, The Big Love.

I sat, uneasy in the rocking chair, playing back the previous night’s episode of Law and Order, special victims unit in a post 9/11, post Columbine afternoon.

The curtains hung in the dusk-dusted nursery where a summer nap was being kept at bay. I was restless, contemplating these evils in humanity.

I did not want to “mother afraid”.

I did not want to “worry all the time”.

I did not want the pressure of “best” or the perceived stain of “worst”.

I did not want the responsibility of her story or her decisions. I did not want her carrying the weight of my own, personal regret.

In between that afternoon, where I “turned her over” to good, and the first time I watched her crawl away from me in accordance with her own curiosity, my motherhood journey became a continual invitation to Ellen (and eventually her sister, Lucy) to follow me.

Rhianna enforced afternoons in the Jeep, combing back the long way towards home from the zoo. Pizza adorned fingernails washed up in the historic tub of an ABQ lavender farm, watching sharks in Denver… trying Turkish delight in Park City…

I took on my life; them incorporated.

Our stories are plentiful, meaningful and thick. The meaning of being their leader, their goose, is never lost on me. In and out of the car, into museums and onto the plane: they have followed me.

Unlike the goose (though their personal notice is at least consistent in advertising inconsistency and temperament), I offer, give and set expectations to and of my daughters. Always gauging the fine, traumatic line of projecting one’s own experience; taking care to avoid infusing too much of the state of the world into the future.

Indeed. This is the paradox of being more than a “goose goose” or a Mother Goose; pecking rhyme-based rhythm and order.

Aha! See, I am *the goose*, living both into her future and ushering her goslings on in their own.

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