My Baby's Growing Up and I'm Not Coping So Well...

Ireland at the Yankee's game, she lost her first tooth there too.

This past month or so, my daughter and her friend (who loves to clean and de-junk, odd I know) decided to clean out Ireland's play room.  All the stuff that they thought she was 'too old' for, was quickly removed.  Bags and bags of stuff kept coming up from downstairs with the words 'donate' written across them.  I had no idea there was that much stuff down there!

The bags were piled high in the garage, so high in fact that we officially lost the north wall!  We decided to keep the bags there for a few days so we could go through them and double check that she wasn't getting rid of things she shouldn't be, and to give her a chance to re-claim anything she has second thoughts about.

A few weeks go by, before we decide to go through the bags.  We open the first bag, filled to the brim with stuffed animals!  Kyle starts pulling out the animals, he notices one in particular and holds it out.  It was one of her first Build a Bear animals - yeah, you know the kind; the hundred dollar, pull at your wallet strings stuffed animal.  He holds it up high for our daughter to see, and asks 'Are you sure?'

Maggie My Muse

Let me tell you about Maggie - Maggie my muse.   

Romancing Maggie in the Garden

 She's a fickle sort of gal, and feels that giving her a name would hinder her artistic flow - thus making it hard to pin down the appropriate one, Maggie.  

Maggie has a wind blown style about her, the one that flows and billows in the wind creating wispy texture about.  She survives on romance and dreamy air - if you want her to swoon, sip wine in the garden at dusk.  The twilight of dusk is her magical time, fairy friends find time.


Maggie is lost in time and matters of cordial comfort.  She'll bestow her creations when they are ready - waking you as the story unfolds and propelling your forward all night long.  She'll exhaust your physical platform, pushing you past your known.   She flows through time like the eagles soar above, with astounding ease and grace.  


She lusts for loads of naps, rejuvenating her spirit in order to tap her trundle of inspiration.  


She vehemently hates stress, to-do-lists, alarm clocks, should haves, and could haves -  foreign to her soul.  Zen is a must, if you want her stay.   

Maggie a seat for you

Maggie my muse keeps me craving her company.

Attracting Matt - What Does a Shallow Dish and a Hole in My Organic Garden Have to Do with Anything?

Being an avid organic Gardner, (which just drives my husband crazy. I won't allow him to use any chemicals at all in my garden - he does however sneak chemicals on the lawn when he thinks I won't notice.  Silly guy hasn't he learned that by now I notice everything?) I've been trying to find a solution to an over abundance of grasshoppers dining on my plants.

After a bit of research, I found two great options:
Chickens and Toads

My first choice would be to get me some chickens! We'd have fresh eggs, they're natural aerators (through their ground scratching), they LOVE to eat bugs, and they'd provide natural fertilizer to the yard.

I've been wanting chickens since we've moved out to the country.  However my husband, being a city guy, will have nothing to with farm animals on our land.  During my research, I thought that I'd finally found a solution to convince him that chickens were a great idea.  I learned that they not only eat grasshoppers, but spiders too!

Nope, no matter how much convincing and begging, he wasn't going to give in.

My second option is a toad!  A gnarly, healthy, knobby, rugged, local toad.  I knew that toads live just up in the foothills from us (about a mile away), because I see them when ever I run at dusk.  Now a toad isn't a farm animal.  Who is my husband to say anything about a local toad moving in.

Now to research toad attraction to my garden - who by the way don't eat your veggies like the chickens will.

I found that toads like to burrow in cool, damp, shady spots. Now here's the thing, our yard isn't old enough to provide lots of damp shady spots for them to burrow in and live.

Imagination, here's your cue! So I call upon my imagination and figure how to create a toad pent-house haven (let me tell you, if I were a toad, I'd totally live here!)

I got a large shallow terracotta tray, built a shallow hole under it, and placed it near my ornamental grasses growing next to my garden.  I then created a 'rain fall' from our irrigation pipes that'd fill the shallow dish and keep the ground wet around it.  Perfect!

Once I finished the toads pent-house, I thought, and felt (very important step here), what it would be like to walk out to my garden and find  all my vegetables in pristine condition.  The leaves and veggies would be untouched by those jumping flying grasshoppers.  I felt what it would be like to walk around and not flinch when an unexpected large flying grasshopper jumps out at me - they still startled me even after almost 40 years.  Ahh what a great addition this toad would make to my organic garden.

Then I let it be.

I would imagine a toad living under that tray, and think about how exciting it would be to one day find him in my garden happily gorging himself on grasshoppers.  


Then I'd let it be - not worry, not stress, not obsess. 

I even let the nasty growth that builds on the bottom of the tray stay (my dogs love getting a drink out of it - so gross).

To my husband, I've become a bit crazy.  Preparing, setting up and feeling what it would be like to have a garden toad, before we EVEN have a garden toad. I kept just telling him, and my daughter, that a toad will come, I know it. I've sent it out to the universe, and I'm letting the universe figure out 'the how' a toad will make it's way to this upscale toad house.

A couple of weeks later,  I was over at a friends house, when a teenage boy thought he would try to scare a few of us gals by shoving this extremely large (about the size of a dinner plate) toad in our face and yelling 'blahh' at the same time.

I quickly jumped up, not in grossness, but in excitement.  I grabbed the toad out of the kids possession, and almost kissed it.  I did refrain from kissing it, only because it would confirm the belief of many that I may be off my rocker a bit.  (BTW I rock on my rocker!)

The owner of the house, Matt, piped up, "Yeah I've got several of these toads around the yard, however this one hangs out on my driveway every night."  That was my cue.

To my husband's dismay, we drove home with a toad!

A toad named Matt.

Here's a close-up of Matt

Here I am showing Matt his
 toad pent-house

By the time we got home, it was late at night.  My daughter and I step into the darkness of the garden, and quickly show Matt his new home.  We let him loose and watched him hop away in the darkness. We stood there for a moment and let the feeling of being wild toad owners wash over us. (How cool is that!)

While working in my garden during the day, I try not to lift and look for Matt in the toad pent-house, especially since they are crepuscular animals (out during dusk and dawn). I'm just letting, not obsessing, over Matt. He is a wild local type of toad after all.

I just let him be, let him be him, and do his thing.

The other night, my neighbor tells my husband that he saw this really large toad in his rocks.   He couldn't believe how big it was.  I knew he saw  Matt.



I sure hope he returns, cause I know of a great toad pent-house in the garden next door!

Jane? Who? Me? Runner?

So today's form of athletic 'inspiration' came from Active.com's facebook page: "You must begin to think of yourself as ... the person you want to be." - David Viscott.

I read this as on a December day that feels more like March.  Yet, unlike March, there's no wind to bring down the temp.  The sun is hidden behind a cooling veil of clouds, which helps keep the temperature a perfect running 49 degrees.  Mother Nature has lined up everything for the perfect running day. 

I walked outside to get the mail, mentally tallying everything that will make today the best day back to running (after some healing time for a tendon flair).  While I walk out to the mailbox, my zealous mind has already created the perfect run: I've already ran 6 miles along a tree lined single track trail.  My dogs following.  I could feel their fur rub against my calf, their tongues lopping to the side, their eyes focused ahead anticipating the next turn of the trail.  It was perfect!  As I walk back from the mailbox, I had convinced myself that this mental trail run surely did happen.  I was so close, close to the elusive "Runner's High". 

Oh, that Runner's High is magnificent! I turn into Super Woman.  I become everything my mind says I am.  I'm invincible, I can leap over buildings (or logs) in a single bound, I run faster then Paula Radcliffe, (a 2:15 marathoner).  No mountain can make me huff as I run up it.   The runner's high is like the musician Muse; elusive, coming and going, just out of reach, sometimes allowing me to catch it - just for a moment - never staying long enough. 

I leap up the front steps, still grasping for the coat tails of Jane (that's what I'll call her - Jane, my Runner's High).  When suddenly I feel the churning reminder of an ankle not yet ready for running.  I stop at the top of the stairs (which is only 3 steps), and watch Jane - as she keeps running, taunting me, haunting me until the day I can catch her.

So here I sit, waiting for Pilate's to start, mourning the loss of my perfect December run and my elusive Jane.  Wondering if this still makes me a runner?    

My ankle had been feeling great, or so I thought...