For months years I have encouraged my mother to work out. In the last few years we’ve watched her mother gradually lose some of her mobility and seeing G-ma become more and more aged, I’ve begun to worry about my own mother’s health fading as she enters “seniority”. So I would nag her, “Ya know, Mom, you really should join a gym, go work out, lift weights…”. Twas totally effective. Nawt!

In August, my mom’s work situation changed and I told her “Hey, let’s start working out.” The bulk of the kudos goes to her cos when the ball was in her court, she totally charged ahead. We made plans and <gulp> actually headed to the gym.

Now I don’t know about you, but I was actually nervous about going to the gym (even though I’d been paying my membership fees for well over a year, all I’d ever done was go to pre-natal yoga). It has been many years since I’ve been in a gym working out and I felt intimidated by the machines and defeated by the “What will I do?”edness. Enter my awesome bro and my determined mother. Rick gave us a workout plan and Mom became the motivator. Since August we’ve worked out 2-3 times per week and progressed from the “Express” circuit workout to the Hammer machines and free weights. W00t!

The gym is a weird place. Our gym in particular is very family oriented and the people seem very suburban. Wade stands out (o yes, did I mention he goes to the gym too?) because he is one of the few men with a  beard. We’d both independently noticed this aspect of the gym-people tribe. It’s funny because there seems to be a strict aesthetic at this particular gym. While there, I listen to my wee ipod, which is filled with slamming underground hip-hop and energetic house music and the contrast between the visual (bland middle class peops) and aural (Immortal Technique, Invincible, The Presets) is often hilarious. I didn’t really appreciate my music player before, but now, WOW! There are some songs that get me so motivated and energized. It is so fun! I didn’t know before.

Another aspect of this experience is that we are trying to embrace it as something we’ll do for the rest of our lives rather than the “I’m gonna lose 20 pounds then everything will be perfect”-mentality. Toward that end I’m not really thinking about weight loss, but more of a pursuit of strength, developing musculature and ability. Tis paying off. My goal is that I’ll still be working out in a year – I may lose some weight – but mostly I want to be stronger, more fit and committed to developing my body for the rest of my life.

This past week we went hiking in the desert and I scrambled up some dry falls (& with a 18# baby strapped to my back!) that I would not have been able to do without help before. They were challenging but I made it up. Twas exhilirating to know that our work is paying off in concrete results that allow us more ability and strength. I definitely feel more balance and strength and resilience and that motivates me. Overall, I am so very glad that I took the leap and that I have the good fortune to have all the resources I need to make it a go. Yay!

1 day ago: the giant tupperware tubs go back to live in the garage and fulfill their use as storage ONLY.

2 days ago: Wade and Xtina return to the store only to find better options. They buy them and put them in the car to bring them home.

10 days ago: the WeXachos spend an afternoon visiting every antique store within 20 miles of their house. They find some contenders!

20 days ago: Wade and Xtina come up with a plan.

1 month ago: on the same day Wade and Xtina come to the conclusion that they must do something about the lack of clothes storage for the adults in the house.

5 months to 1 month ago: the adults keeps their clothes in large tubs that get disorganised 12 seconds after they are organised. Wade gives up and just wears whatever clothes are on top. Xtina struggles along until she is only wearing clothes that have been hanging in her closet. It totally sucks.

9 months – 4 months ago: the furniture is on back-order. (Long wait.) It’s in transit. Oops, it’s been damaged & they have to reorder. It’s on back-order. (Long wait.) It’s in transit. They deliver. The two dressers are two different colors. “I ordered blond. I want blond.” “Will you take chocolate? We’ll give you the sale price.” “No.” They reorder. Oops, it’s on back-order. (Long wait.) It’s in transit. They deliver. The dressers look nice up top, but where the case is attached to the base it looks like a manatee put them together. Do they have any more anywhere in the continental US? No, they do not. We give up and cancel the order. They give us a gift certificate & Wade forbids Xtina from ever purchasing from them again.

10 months ago: Xtina finds a couple of dressers that will work. She visits them in store where they have them in the finish she doesn’t want. They are fine. She goes home to order them on the internet. They are on back-order.

10 months and two weeks ago: we reconfigure the arrangement of the house and deploy a chest of drawers formerly shared by Wade and Xtina to be the home of all the wee one’s various clothing. In the hours before she was born we wash, fold, and organise a deluge of teeny body suites, pants, sleepers, sweaters, hat, socks, &c. The adults have no furniture storage, so they put their clothes into large tubs and stash them in the closet. The wee one is born.

13 months: the adults go shopping again. They visit several stores that have likely contenders in a decent price range, but everywhere they go they are told that since the furniture comes from ‘overseas’ there is a 12-16 week wait for the furniture they like. The baby is due in a month. “We can’t wait that long.” The universe laughs.

15 months ago: Xtina begins to frantically search online for the furniture. She identifies a pair of chests of drawers that will work in the small room the adults call home. She does not place an order.

49 months – 15 months ago: the adults continue shopping for furniture, sharing one Malm chest between them in the meantime. Everything they like costs in excess of $1500 each. We need two. Surely something can be found that costs in that range for both, right? No.

49 months and two weeks ago: the kidlet arrives and boy are the adults happy that they bit the bullet cos keeping things in order saves minds.

49 months and three weeks ago: in a last ditch effort, the adults visit Junkea and purchase a set of Malm dressers ‘for now’. They reconfigure the bedroom and amazingly the new dressers work out well.

56 months ago: the adults, due to the imminent arrival of the kidlet, undertake operation ‘rearrange the bedroom’, which culminates in the decision that the large chest of drawers that they have been sharing will no longer work. Thus they shop and shop and shop trying to find the most appropriate furniture for their diminutive house. After visiting every furniture store within a 30-mile distance, they determine that your average joe-blow furniture is built along a limited standard i.e. if you don’t like dressers that are wider than 29 inches you can go f8ck yourself. They weep.

He sings snippets of the songs that we sing. He reads books devotedly much like Mommy and Daddy. I find him at the computer manipulating the mouse more and more frequently. When Wade pulls out his violin to practice, Lucas runs for his own wee violin case to join in. When I knit, he demands his own set of needles and some yarn (although his woolen creations are amorphous and his attention wanes quickly). Today when I futzed around taking care of our tiny garden bed, he joined in stretching out his attention span to its very limits while we went through the process of creating homes for some seedlings. If we are in the kitchen cooking, he drags a stool in and perches atop while he watches and attempts to grab the various implements as he too wants to mix, chop, saute, and bake. So it was inevitable that when he found my absentee ballot neglected for a few moments that he would take pen to paper to vote himself.

Yup, he marked my ballot up and now I have to rise very early tomorrow morning to get a replacement ballot so that I too can make my contribution to this historic moment. I hope that we do make change happen. Tomorrow can be a brighter day.

One of the things that takes up a great amount of my personal processing power is my concern about everyday toxins. For this reason, we eat a predominantly organic diet, which we are very fortunate to be able to afford (for now), we try to avoid plastics in bottles, food storage, toys, and miscellania, we do not use pesticides, when we paint we use low VOC paint, we try to avoid cleaners with too many synthetic ingredients, we use soaps for body and clothes that eschew petroleum products and avoid chemical fragrances, we use only beeswax candles (while not perfect are better than some of the other wax substances), and blah blah blah. On the surface this might seem to some an awful lot of effort for uncertain gain. However, I do gain a certain peace of mind from knowing that my choices are conscientious choices. I am aware and I try to use this information for the welfare of my family. Again I have a tremendous amount of privilege in that I have the time and the wherewithal to do this.

I think much of this is a product of growing up in Northern California and being made aware at a very young age of our responsibility as consumers of this vast military-industrial complex. From adopting recycling in elementary school and watching our community deal with Malathion spraying, I learned that our choices when we swipe our credit cards engenders change at the top. I have come to see more and more that change only happens from the bottom up. Therefore I try to use my discretionary shekels to “vote” for a less toxic environment. I think each one of us has to come to awareness in our own ways. I only hope that more people recognize their power and start using it and stop cutting their own throats in the long run in order to “save” money in the short term.

One recent experience that cemented my devotion to natural cleaners happened when I was newly pregnant therefore we hadn’t really announced it to anyone yet. I went to visit a friend on the morning that her house cleaner came to clean. We were sitting around chatting when the housekeeper started mixing up her bubbles to clean up and this cloud of vapor escaped from the kitchen and surrounded us. My eyes started watering, my throat closed up, I started choking and I needed to GET OUT right this minute. I realised that in my own way, my body had sent me a message that those chemical were VERY VERY VERY bad. To this day I remember my hasty departure and I think that no matter your condition (i.e. pregnant or not) those chemicals are not very good for the human system.

Of course, I am human, so if you come over to my house you can probably show me a million ways in which I am a hypocrite like the pressed board bookshelves from Junkea, which emit formaldehyde or our olde house, which probably has lead paint or our older cars, which are not SULEVs, but we all are fulla contradictions, no? Aware of these problems in our personal universe, we try to mitigate what damage is done by choosing our plants on their ability to scrub the indoor air, working on removing as much lead paint as possible, and limiting our driving. We are human and therefore not perfect. Selah. In other words, please don’t think that I don’t think my sh1t don’t stink.

Today I pulled out my remaining tomato plant and the eggplant bush in preparation for this year’s winter garden. Last year’s garden was a great success and we hope to replicate that success this year. Today I applied a whole bunch of finished compost, which has a redolent muskiness. It’s funny because when I first put it in the raised bed you can still see bits of eggshell, small clumps of old tea bags, and bits of hair as we compost all our old haircuts. In about a week when I start putting in my seedlings much of this will have mixed in with the old dirt, but the eggshells will not completely break down until we come back in the spring with our next batch of compost.

This year we will plant chard, carrots, broccoli, kale, beets, lots of lettuce, parsnips, mustard greens, collards, some winter beans and peas and a few different types of flowers. We loved having the garden last winter and the wonderful ease of walking out the front door to pick something fresh for dinner never got old. Most of the work is in getting the plants in the ground and helping them get established. Once that’s done ’tis just a matter of weeding and waiting. Probably after the New Year we’ll be able to start harvesting some tender greens in perfect time for the wee one’s first birthday.

This year has gone by and part of the reason for that is having a new babe in the house. I was never a baby person til I had kids and this new baby has simply pushed me over the edge. I now go gaga for babies (especially when I’m ovulating). Bringing the second baby home was a new experience because the fear and anxiety that I experienced after the kidlet was born never manifested this time around, so I actually got to enjoy the experience of bringing baby home.  Twas a very special time, plus I got to take a little bit more time off from work since my boss was out of the country for while. Having two has been tough but great for me and I’ve been enjoying it. The past nine and a half months have been marked by new growth for every person in this household.

Right now we have a number of things going on, some of which I’ll update you on in the weeks to come. For now I’ll leave you with this recipe that has quickly become a favourite. Enjoy!

Vegan Pesto

• 2/3 cup toasted nuts (we use 1/3 C pumpkin seeds and 1/3 walnuts)
• 2/3 cup olive oil (you can use less or more depending on your preference. we like our pesto a little dry, so we usually estimate to get the right consistency)
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1/3 cup nutritional yeast (this is in place of the parmesan. don’t worry you won’t miss it.)
• lots of basil ( i use at least two handfuls, probably equivalent to at least two bunches)
• 2 tsp of your favourite spices (we use a garlic and herb blend, but any savory blend that you like should taste fine)
• fresh ground pepper to taste

Toast nuts and seeds on cookie sheet at 400 F til brown (approx. 8 minutes). Add all  ingredients to blender and blend until preferred consistency is reached. voila!

In the Spring of  ’96 I was freshly out of long term relationship that had been dying a slow long death, but had been over in reality for many years.  In that relationship I had altered myself to make someone else ‘happy’, slowly coming to the realization that you cannot make anyone else happy for we are each responsible for our own happiness.  It is not something you can give to someone else.  In the aftermath of that I decided that I would never change myself for someone else.  I would be myself and love myself and say my peace and if I ended up alone, so what? I’d rather love myself than have someone ‘love’ me under false pretenses.  So began a new manifestation of myself and I decided to grasp life and live on my terms.

I dated a few guys who bored me almost immediately in their shallow pursuit of pleasure.  I met a few guys who piqued my interest, but nothing that made me feel like ‘dang, I wanna read the paper every morning with this one!’. I met one fellow who I thought was very good-looking and to whom I could talk about everything, but he moved to LA.  The Sun God festival was coming up and I invited him down to join me.  The morning of Sun God he called to tell me he’d been in a car accident and wouldn’t be coming down.  Something rang false and I immediately knew he ‘wasn’t that into me’ to borrow a phrase, but in my new found journey from caterpillar to butterfly I decided to not stay in and mourn my lost plans. Instead I grabbed a girl from work who I knew casually and said ‘let’s go to Sun God’ and we went.

We got to the pub and ordered some beer and slices of pizza and headed out to the patio only to discover there was no open seating at all.  There was nothing worse than being banished to the inside of the pub, so we stood there for a moment to see if someone might magically vacate a seat for us. Yeah, right, on the afternoon of the festival everyone was there to stay.  Off in the corner I noticed a table where everyone was standing and so I asked my friend, ‘Should we ask them if we can borrow their chairs for a minute?’ and she said, ‘I’ll follow you.’ So I walzted up and said, ‘hey do you mind if we sit in your chairs til you need ‘em?’  They quickly acquiesced. Now I was not hitting on them as I never even really looked at them.  It just seemed convenient.

My acquaintance and I had never really hung out one on one, so we started talking and eating, talking and drinking, immersed in our own little social sphere. Meanwhile, the sun started setting and the guys whose table we had borrowed started snagging chairs and joining us at the table. At one point we are all seated and introductions were procured. They went around the table introducing themselves. When Wade introduced himself and I looked into his eyes as he said his name, time stopped. There was something that snagged my soul. He seemed familiar and yet I wanted and needed to know him.  I was not drunk as I’d only had two drinks over many hours, so you skeptics can eliminate that suspicion. I was smitten. Over the evening, we flirted and finagled our way closer to one another, later dancing under the stars to whatever band was playing that year.

That summer was the quintessential summer romance, but as the summer progressed we could tell there was something deeper blooming.  We have worked hard on this relationship, both challenging ourselves to grow more generous, more accepting, more reasonable, more loving. Times have been tough and wonderful, but more than anything I want to experience it with him.  The years fly by and every moment encompasses the universe. It is grand.  I look forward to twelve more years and twelve more and twelve more and on and on until I draw my last breath. Fittingly, today we bought a new bed. The journey has been a wonderful adventure as we write next to one another while the wee one coos and squeals behind us.  I love you, my friend!

For some this would be torture. For me it is a joy. One of the things that has reformed my thinking about what is necessary for gracious living is the Apartment Therapy website. I have been reading the website for years and over time my notion of what constitutes a home has changed. I think we all have an idea in our minds about what we think our home should look like, a certain number of bedrooms and bathrooms, a square footage that will allow us to pursue dreams and hobbies, a Platonic ideal against which all things are measured. In addition we have ideas of ‘safety’ and neighbors and if we have kids we think of school districts. Probably many of our preferences are shaped by our childhoods and formative experiences. In fact with over half of the world existing on less than $1 a day, many of these concerns are just learned notions of what exactly a ‘home‘ is. Apartment Therapy questions our notions — our American, developed world notions — of what one needs to create a home. I have let go of some of my biases and embraced our current situation.

Another factor in my release of the notion ‘bigger is better’ is the long running column, Shelter by Toni Schlesinger, in the Village Voice. In one of her earlier columns she documents a family who share 500 square-foot apartment. At the time Wade & I were living in a 425 square-foot duplex near the beach. I remember looking around the space, which I had only gotten to work comfortably after many iterations of furniture moving and stuff organizing, and thinking, ‘ZOMG, could Wade & I raise a child here?’ I never found out the answer to that particular question, but here in CasaWeX, I am pursuing the factual actual question ‘can 2 adults and 2 kids share less than 1,000 square-feet and enjoy it’. One of the reasons that Wade & I have always embraced this house is that everything is very close together. One can be cooking in the kitchen and the other geeking on the computer and a conversation can be held at reasonable volume. We like being close to one another. But when two kids (and all their stuff) are added to the mix can it be made to work? The answer to that question remains to be seen, but suffice it to say so far, so good.

As far as enjoying this time, we are in a flurry of activity getting CasaWeX into tip-top shape to accommodate another resident. Our house is small and we love it that way plus we live so close to Mom and Dad. We are energized by our proximity to one another, so moving is not really an option. Instead we have to make our casita more efficient. Within the next two weeks we are having some work done to the house to make the children’s room more of the hub of the house. Guess who is coordinating all the contractors? That’s right. Moi. I am not one of those super-outgoing personalities, but I have managed to bring forth my getting-things-done spirit and have arranged the work. My hope is to have the room ready to go at least a month before the due date. Here we go.

Since San Diego tap water comes from a variety of sources, a number of additives are used to counteract the contaminants founds in the water even after treatment. One of these — I think chloramines — leave a stale, chemical taste in the water (something I did not miss when I visited SF a few weeks ago). Kiosks with filters that are hooked up to municipal water pipes seem to eliminate most of this flavor, rendering the water mostly palatable. The little filter we keep in the refrigerator works for most beverages like tea, soup, or, well, actually nothing. I start gritting my teeth if I have to drink it plain. The fact of the matter is that I’d like to have some type of appliance at home that I can use to filter tap water to make it as enjoyable as I perceive our old brand of bottled water to be.

My requirements are simple. Something that will fit on the counter, something that does not require batteries or electricity, something that will take our slightly dodgy local water and turn it into something cleaner with a lighter flavor. Oh. My. Dorsh. I though I would google a few filters, read some comparison sheets, and blimbo-bango make a decision and buy a new little filter. The filter industry is widely variable and the people who buy them and sell them rely on all sorts of hyperbole to push their product. In addition, I found a subculture of message boards focused on a ‘back to the land’ movement, based on a widespread belief that society as we know it is on the verge of an imminent breakdown. I’m not going to provide any links because I am trying to forget some of the stuff I read. It’s out there and relatively easy to find.

We are still functioning under our stopgap measure: going to the local water kiosk and filling our plastic bottles with reverse osmosified water. We’ve tried this many times or the last several years. Every time thus far this system breaks down after a few months due to memory laspses, exhaustion, and lack of dedication. I am still unclear as to which filter I will eventually buy as my old standbys have failed me in this effort. The appliance I’m looking for is a niche product, something between a whole house filter and a little pitcher filter. In the meantime, I am reading up on filters, learning the lingo, and trying to stay far away from the cultural rabbit hole.

*a quote that does not inspire confidence from the 2006 Annual Water Quality Report

Earlier this spring I designed a type of raised bed that would enable Lucas to help me in the garden. Wade pulled out his tools and crafted an exquisite interpretation of my plans. Then the worst part of my morning sickness hit and the project lay fallow for many weeks. Curious neighbors stopped by and inquired as to our plans for this big, giant redwood box resting on the flagstones. Once I started feeling better, I collected all the ingredients needed for the mix to build the soil for the planter. A few weekends ago, we put the ingredients in and dumped the contents of the composter into the mix. Months of kitchen scraps, ash from the fireplace, sawdust from various projects, grass clippings, paper towels, and haircuts had transformed into a nice, loamy dirt-like substance. There were a few clumps of brittle egg shells that hadn’t broken down all the way and a few paper mache-like rocks, but in the last few weeks most of these artifacts have disintegrated, becoming indistinguishable from the other dirt components. Now onto the seed planting and sprouting. (Note: I am sure we are planting late/early for a winter garden, but I am just trying to get something going here and will hopefully learn a lot from trial and error.)

For the last few weeks, I have been researching plants and planning the garden. This week I finalised the plan in selecting the plants we’ll (try to) grow and experienced an inexplicable joy at seeing all my months of plans get to this stage, but a few small things were needed before we started sowing seeds. The bottom of our 24 inch raised bed is covered with some landscaping fabric to keep unwanted growth from creeping into the vegetable garden. There is a store ’round these parts called ‘City Farmers‘ where you can obtain a dazzling array of necessities for all types of yardening. Dis ain’t your daddy’s Home Depot. Yesterday Mom and I took a field trip to afore mentioned City Farmers Nursery to obtain copper tape and red wiggler worms. The copper tape is for the outside of the raised bed. It is an effective means of keeping slugs and snails out of the vegetable patch. The worms are for the inside of the bed to keep the dirt alive and aerated. Since I didn’t want the one pound bag of worms, we had to go back to the vermiculture bed and dig for the worms ourselves. O, dewd! A year ago I had no idea about all this kind of stuff. I grabbed a little rake and got to it. In about 20 minutes or so we harvested about 75-90 worms, but we also found a bunch of big, fat, happy grubs, which a nursery employee had asked us to put aside if we liked to feed to the chickens later. Later, the owner of the nursery let us feed the grubs to chickens and turkeys and oh my dosh, now I know where the slang ‘grubbed‘ comes from cos those fowl grubbed hard on those grubs.

Well, the bed is ready and we are going to be sowing some seeds later this week in the hopes of growing some organic, local, seasonal veggies like collard greens, chard, amaranth, carrots, eggplant, and brussel sprouts. We’ll see where this fork of the path takes us.