by Susan Lobb Porter | Beloved Beasties, Life, Mr. Spouse |
This is day 2 of Clearing Space, a personal challenge for the month of February wherein I will release clutter from my environment, as much as I can in 15 minutes on any given day, 15 minutes being my limit when it comes to housework. Which could be why the place is a mess in the first place.
And because this is an art blog, I will take arty ‘after’ photos.
Today’s challenge: The dining room.
We have, in real estate parlance, a formal dining room. Formal as in a designated room of it’s own, not in what goes on there. Oh sure, Mr. Spouse and I dress for dinner. . . in the same clothes we wore all day. And sometimes, if it’s a weekend and we’re feeling particularly slovenly, the same clothes we wore the day before.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is it’s a formal dining room and we rarely eat there naked.
Naked dining being informal and that just wouldn’t do now, would it? Besides the obvious spilling problem, Mr. Spouse would discover the secret behind my skinny jeans. And I already know his truth. Pluh-eeze. Let’s just say we’re at the point in our relationship where clothing is preferred, not optional.
Lately the diningroom has become the UPS drop zone although FedEx has been known to encroach upon it too. It’s the place where important packages languish on the table. Languish, like the lazy bums they are. UNOPENED. And those that were opened are languishing empty, little packing peanuts and wads of paper proving great amusement for the cat. And for the little dogs who are NOT SUPPOSED to get on the table but they do.
I know they do because I am their mother and mothers know these things. And besides, I’ve seen them up there (insert your favorite expletive meaning shit here).
The table seats eight, but recent clutter creep has banished the two of us, Mr. Spouse and moi, to the far end. Dining in the kitchen nook is not an option, as least not yet, as the kitchen table is where mail, magazines and laptops dwell. Let’s not forget the laptop case that has become the favorite resting place of Kitty, she of the packing peanuts in the dining room fame.
Note to self: When Kitty dies bury her in the laptop case. She would be very happy there for all eternity and then you have the excuse to buy a new case. Red, the red one.
So being that the kitchen is farther down on the clutter clearing calendar and dinner is an every night affair (about the only affair in my life, trust me) I decided to tackle the dining room today.
Dining Room
Fifteen minutes. That’s all it took. I’m still wondering why I didn’t do this before. I mean, really, why did I wait so long?
Be back tomorrow. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
xoxo
by Susan Lobb Porter | Family, Life |
She’s a newly turned 4 year old. The Energizer Bunny in a princess dress.
There are no off buttons. None. Nada.
I’ve been visiting for her birthday, cementing my place in her consciousness by being the one who wears princess dresses. Just. Like. Her.
I’ve done my best to keep up.
We’ve jumped in the Bouncy House.
Played games.
Hidden from the world in the castle -that-is-a-tent.
And then, because it’s something grandmas do, I passed along my wisdom and taught her how to take photos with my iphone. Which she did. Often.
So she could take pictures of me.
I’ll be getting on a plane soon and going back home. Home to a husband, a couple of dogs, the horses and the cat. Going home to my job. To my studio. To-do lists. Marketing plans. To my life a couple thousand miles away from hers.
I’m going to miss her, oh how I’ll miss her. But I’ll be back. Got some more dancin’ to do.
by Susan Lobb Porter | Kids, Life |
This is not the post I thought I was going to write tonight. That one was about art. Imagine that! This being an art blog and all.
And then I saw something FirstBorn posted on FaceBook.
Himself, my handsome brave crazy-ass son, legs dangling from an amusement park ride, the sole purpose of which is to go straight up. And then…STRAIGHT DOWNNNNNNNNNNNN. As fast fast FAST as possible.
The kind of ride you do not go on immediately after lunch.
The kind of ride I do not go on EVER. Ever ever ever NEVER.
The kind of ride my adrenalin junkie son has loved since he was tall enough for The. Sign.
I looked at the photo and saw his legs hanging down. Yep, I’d recognize them anywhere. Then I saw a pair of legs next to his. Teeny tiny little legs that didn’t hang down so much as stuck out. And I realized holy effing crap! That’s my GRANDAUGHTER on the ride with him. My too-young-for-kindergarden-for-at-least-another-year granddaughter.
Who apparently has her Daddy’s gravity defying fearlessness. Because she likes it so much they went back the next weekend and rode it at least 10 more times.
Are you dizzy yet?
There’s a piece of me, the grandma part, that screams nooooooooooooo! It’s dangerous. Someone could get hurt. She should stick to the Merry-Go-Round. Or better yet, stay home and color. Something safe.
But there’s another piece of me, another grandma part, that is jumping up and down whistling and clapping and doing hand springs and back flips because I’m thrilled, positively absolutely thrilled that this girl-child is being allowed, encouraged, to be FEARLESS.
It’s easy to raise a fearful child. Just tell them they’re too young, too small, not ready yet. Tell them they can do something later, when they’re older. I was raised that way. I was the youngest, the baby of the family. Never able to do what the big kids did because, well, they were bigger. Older. More capable.
And so I grew up never believing I was ready for anything. Other people published novels, wrote the screenplay, started the company. Other people who were more…grown up.
I’m finally figuring out how wrong that inner programming was. Finally. And it’s about time.
Does this mean there’s a totally insanely scary amusement park ride in my future? Hell no. But I will gladly wave to my granddaughter from down below. Will take photographs and blow kisses and never, ever let her know that it scares the shit out of me.
I will never hold her back from being fearless.
And I WILL finish that novel. Count on it.
by Susan Lobb Porter | Family, Life, Parents |
“Nature often holds up a mirror so we can see more clearly the ongoing processes
of growth, renewal, and transformation in our lives.”
Author Unknown
First apples blossoms of the season
Two years ago today we buried Mama’s ashes within a circle of moss covered rocks in the oak grove where the deer bed down.
It’s where she wanted to be.
We took Daddy down from the hutch and placed his ashes beside her. Then we covered them with earth from the forest floor and marked the spot with another great rock.
Family and friends planted Vinca around the grave. Some tears. Some laughter. A whole lot of numbness.
Then we walked up to her house, just a few yards away, and sat on the patio eating and drinking and telling stories. There was beer involved. And chocolate.
Mama would’ve liked that. Daddy would’ve too, especially the beer.
Two years later the Vinca has grown and spread. I walk by the oak grove every day on my way to and from the barn. Sometimes I stop and say hi. Sometimes the chimes that we hung ring out with the wind. Or without it.
Someone else lives in the cottage now.
And it’s all good. Because life goes on.
by Susan Lobb Porter | Life, Parents, Ponies |
I have not been here for a week. Have not written a blog post, have not thought of writing one.
But wait! Wasn’t that something I said I’d do when I redesigned the blog? Said I’d post something every day. Because, after all, I am a super-human, super-creative, super-duper-super-woman extraordinaire. Without the cape.
Capes get in the way.
Oh, whack me upside the head for being such a silly girl. For not realizing that sometimes life gets in the way of good intentions. That sometimes we need to be and do other stuff. And so I was doing. Doing doing doing DOING until my head spun a complete 360 like that kid in The Exorcist.
I was cleaning and clearing Mama’s cottage for the renter. Shlepping stuff up the hill to my place. To the dining room table for further sorting. To the kid’s rooms, the kids who no longer live here so I can use their rooms as storage for saddles and other stuff until I figure out where they need to be…those rooms.
To the thrift stores. And the dump. Buh-bye.
And all the while my head was SPINNING.
Because this week marks the second anniversary of Mama’s one-way ticket to Jesusland. The week she turned to me with such a perplexed expression on her face and asked, “Why is my body doing this to me?” And all I could say to her was “Because you’re so damn old.”
There was nothing more I could do for her except love her and tend to her with my sisters. That last morning, when she could no longer speak, I slipped some shaved chocolate between her lips. Her favorite, Green & Black 85% Dark. Her smile was pure bliss.
A few hours later she died, just a two weeks shy of her 96th birthday. She died at home. In the cottage, the cottage I’m now okay with renting.
Still, it’s been a rough week. Hard work and bittersweet memories. The cottage is clean now, the renter moved in. I still have sorting, distributing and disposing of stuff but the pressure of a deadline is past. I can breathe now. Relax a little.
This evening I went down to stand with the ponies while they had their buckets, their nightly treat of senior chow and supplements. And as they ate I stood there opening my senses to the moment. Taking it all in. The sight of the mud, of hoof print size puddles, of hay trod into the muck. The pile of hair beneath Lana, hair I pulled out by the handfuls last night in lieu of a proper brushing.
But it was the sounds of the evening that rounded things out. The sound of horses slurping. Birds high up in the trees. So many of them, different birdsong, sweet and clear. From down the lane the sound of voices. A small child. Adults speaking. Laughing. And then the music, notes from some sort of flute.
The sounds dipped and wove around each other like music. Subtly so. We’re not talking boom box here. But standing there with my all my senses…with my heart open to the moment…it was lovely.
Here’s a tiny slice of it I’d like to share. A moment in time captured with the iphone. And just so you know, that muck is mud, not pony poop. Well, mostly.
by Susan Lobb Porter | Art, Life, Parents |
I’m clearing out the cottage. The place where Mama spent her final seven years, the place that once was my studio. I’m getting ready to rent it out.
At this point it’s not the big stuff, it’s the things in the drawers and closets. The things on the shelves.
The things I’ve been avoiding dealing with.
Mama’s things. And mine.
Yesterday I filled my car with books. Art books I haven’t looked at in years.
Books I once thought I could never part with but now I realize I’ve grown beyond. Way beyond.
I don’t need them anymore but others will find them useful, will be as excited as I once was to open them up and learn new techniques. So I took them to the thrift store, the one that provides medical care for the animals in the local shelter.
It was a good place for my books to go.
A few days earlier I took another carload of stuff…mugs, kitchen things, linens… this and that’s that were once the everyday of Mama’s life… I took all of that to the Hospice thrift store.
Because we owe so much to Hospice.
Today I walked into the cottage, looked around and thought Holy crap, there’s still a lot of STUFF here!
The stuff I never wanted to deal with. Like shoebox (size 8) stuffed to the rim with notes and cards from when Daddy died.
I looked through them, reading each and every one and wondered if Mama did that from time to time, before her vision failed her. I read them, notes from people I haven’t seen in years and years. Notes from people I never knew.
I set one letter aside, the rest–box and all–went into the recycle bin.
Because it’s time to move on.
I loaded up my car with more things. And then I went up to the new! improved! Studio Grande. Cranked up the music. And painted.
Because I can’t think of a better way to remind myself that life goes on.
