The Big Questions

Quietly he works on it. Tying and tucking and balancing and getting it just so. Then he moves on to nesting. Blankets and boxes and random bit of jewelry, certain stuffed animals, and the plastic top to a box as a writing desk. Finally he extends the invitation. "Come in mama. Come in to my fort, I made room for both of us."

I peer down wondering how to squeeze my adult proportions into his wee world. Carefully, so as not to literally bring down the house with my bum, I shimmy in. He proudly shows me everything and then asks to lie down. We lay on the floor staring up at blankets and playsilks draped here and there. He lays his head on my chest and starts to talk. And not just a chat about rocket ships and germs and ghosts. He lays into me with the big stuff.

"Mommy, does it hurt when you die?"
"How do you know when you will die?"
"What's on the other side of the universe?"
"Why do people start wars?"
"What's a weapon of mass destruction?" (damn you NPR! Sometimes I don't change the dial fast enough.)
"Why are people bombing and killing in Afganerstam?" (his pronunciation)
"How do you win a war?"
"I wish I was like air so I could live forever and go anywhere I wanted."

*Sigh* He's only 5 and a half. I am not ready for this chat. I try to listen more than talk. I try to say the right thing, but not say too much of anything. I try to hold him and hug peace right into his body. But I know that these things are out there. And I know I can't shelter forever. And I know it's healthy to work through these things, and ask questions, and seek answers, and just ponder the imponderables. We all do it our whole lives. But children are the ones brave and honest enough to say it out loud. And I let him know that mommy doesn't have all of the answers. But more than anything, I am so privileged and so grateful that he trusts me with the questions.

One Small Change

Hip Mountain Mama set forth a very worthy challenge for the New Year - taking steps from now until Earth Day (and beyond) to live a greener life. Document it. Do it. Make a difference. We can ALL live a little greener no matter how green we color ourselves. So I thought I would start by figuring out what our family does do right to seek out what we can do better.

- RECYCLING (check - although my sweet husband isn't great about getting it to the drop site on time - oops is it Friday already? We have about a 2 block walk from our boat to the nearest curb where it gets picked up. So the recycling tends to pile up and over in the winter and sometimes overflows back into the trash pile. Naughty. Could do better. Need to plan on finding a way to get to the curb on time each week.)

- CLOTH (check - we use cloth napkins and rags and cloth/ glass/ reusable snack containers throughout the boat. It was a change we made a year or two ago and I am so happy about the lack of paper napkins & plastic bags and very few paper towels used around here. Usually we reserve disposable paper for the really gross boat goo.)

- CLEANING (well... we could do better here. I buy cleaning goods from Trader Joes, and while not toxic, it certainly isn't as good as making my own. I need to start being a mad scientist more and making more cleaning products for around the boat. I also need to convince my better half to try the same on the outside of the boat. Especially since I wrote about it for a sailing magazine!)

- POWER! - (check! double check! We run everything except our air conditioning and heating on solar power. And we try to only use those when we're in the thick of one season or another, relying heavily on natural solar gain in the fall and our 22 opening hatches in the summer to do the trick. Using minimal electricity is not just a goal for boaters, it's a MUST. You use too much, you run out. Period. That is until the sun recharges our batteries and we're good to go. It's a system we had on our old boat and we made a priority to set up on this one when we got it just before Zach was born. I love that it's second nature to him to check our power draw - knowing to turn off the heater before using the toaster.)

(2 of our 4 solar panels. Catamarans have lots of space for solar power. And look in the background to the right and you'll see a wind generator on a neighbor's boat. Almost all cruising/ liveaboard boats have either solar or wind or both.)

- LIGHTS (check again. Nearly all of our lights are LED or fairly low draw boat lights. Now if I can just get my husband to turn them off when he walks out of the room... :)

- WATER - (another big check. We only have 100 gallons of fresh water in our tanks. Outside of the murky waters of the marina, we use salt water (we have a tap for that) to wash and fresh to rinse. Salt water is also used in flushing our heads (toilets, not our brains!)  We are SOsoSO careful about fresh water use. Especially in the winter when the marina turns off our access to water and refilling the tanks becomes an arctic adventure. We literally don't waste a drop. If a glass of water isn't finished, it's given to the guinea pig, or set aside for tea or cooking or dishes. Even pasta water gets re-used. There is a constant shuffle of unused bits of fresh water from container to container until every drop is used. Never, EVER poured down the drain. Even the frost that collects in the back of the fridge, I melt down for the guinea pig.)

- STUFF (check. When you live ina few hundred square feet, every inch counts. That means we choose what shares our precious space very carefully. We feel like we have a lot, but our worldly goods could probably fit in a typical suburban home's dining room.)

(this is the cubby below our dining table and pretty much the sum total of Zach's toys except for a few items we keep out and in reach.Kids just DON'T need a lot of stuff.)

- SELF SUFFICIENCY (could do better with food stuffs... would love to grow some food, but our attempts at dockside gardening have failed miserably. I need to learn to sew, which means we could make a handful of the things we now buy.)

- TRANSPORT (check mostly. My husband drives a VW Jetta TDI diesel with insanely fabulous mileage. I have a little Honda Civic. Then the house runs on wind power - gotta love the breeze it's free!)

 So it looks like my biggie is cleaning products. And learning to sew so we can be a little more self sufficient. If anyone else is doing this challenge, chime in with your goals and blog links so I can browse around and get some inspiration. And thanks again to Hip Mountain Mama for lighting everyone's fire!

2010

A last minute invite to welcome 2010 with Miss T and her family at their beach house. What a sweet way to celebrate endings and beginnings, with friends who are like family.

(Zach plays horsie to Little T while his best friend Miss T and he devour a new book together by the fire)

We all parked ourselves in front of a roaring fire (what a treat for us boat dwellers!) and spent the evenings reading, eating way too much, and generally being silly. We never quite made it to midnight. At 10:30pm the mamas made an executive decision to manipulate the children's lack of clock reading skills and declare it midnight, complete with count down and balloon popping. And then it was off to sleep, bidding good night and Happy New Year to the full moon  over the frigid Atlantic Ocean.

(liquid moonshine over the ocean is pure magic)

The days were biting and gray, but that can't stop the will of children drawn to the sea. With his new treasure bag in hand (made by our fabulous neighbor Super Jen and inspired by Soulemama's book) it was shell hunting time. The wild winter waves and winds tossed a bounty of shells on to the beach which the kids plucked up with frozen little fingers.

And then it was back to the fireplace. Oh how we loved on that fireplace! It was a perfect get away to ring in the New Year.

(Zach and daddy hypnotized by the flame. Fireplaces are the only thing my husband claims to miss about land life.)

This is going to be a busy week for our family... so although I will try to drop in each day, I may play hookie here and there. Big plans on the horizon...
In the mean time, check out Hip Mountain Mama's One Small Change challenge. More on that tomorrow...

Savoring The New Year

I was going to sit at the keyboard and write of something everyday... like our new settee cushions... when the calendar hanging on the wall screamed at me -- it's New Year's Eve! Holy cow, where did the time go?

Maybe it's from having an only child, or perhaps from being smack in the middle of that cosmic tide dance, or maybe it's just my sentimental nature, but I always have a keen sense of passing time. I feel it, I watch it, I taste it, I float above and observe it in slow motion. I am always aware of it.

That's why I want to stay home and learn from my boy while he learns from me. That's why I choose to live this life where the heater has to be turned off to use the toaster. That's why our family slumbers together in a puppy pile of breathy oneness. That's why we spend each hour of each day without a TV in our home. It's because I want to savor every moment, inhale the now, embrace the here. I am so grateful for each minute in this big, amazing, diverse, ever changing world that the idea of a whole new year fills me with excitement.

Here's to new horizons, uncharted waters, unexplored islands, curious minds, open hearts, endless sunshine, cozy candlelight, dancing feet, starry nights, joyful squeals, little hands, big smiles, backwards handwriting, fart jokes, mismatching shoes, big dreams, little pleasures, luminescent wakes, dark chocolate, friends old and new, funky socks, following seas, secluded anchorages, wind in our sails, love in our hearts, and this great big beautiful planet we get another year to explore.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!



p.s. I may be absent for a handful of days, we're heading to the beach with Miss T.

Highs & Lows

Before we moved on to a boat, a friend gave me this piece of advice to chew on, "The highs are very, very high and the lows are very, very low." Little did I know she was also referring to the tidal range. The Chesapeake Bay is not known for its tides, a just few inches up and down. Unless you live on the water like we do and observe the change each day, you probably wouldn't even notice it.

But once in a while the magic combination happens and we're living at the extremes. A nearly full moon + 24 inches of snow rapidly melting with a sudden warming + a steady 24 hour rain + a southerly wind pushing the Atlantic waters up into the Chesapeake Bay = flooding and insanely high tides.

This is what we woke up to.

Yeah, that's a long way down. And the stinger was that a wheel from our boarding ladder fell into the briny deep the day before, so getting on and off the boat was a wobbly endeavor at best.

With the water lapping over the planks, the marina turned off our shore side dock electricity for the day for safety. Normally no big deal as we run primarily on solar power. But we were socked in with fog ALL day (and it was a short day at that) and trying to run our winter heaters, without success. In other words, a long, cold, dark day counting the minutes until low tide.

The funny thing is, these extreme high tides usually happen in summer (when we don't care if we lose power and the sunshine goes on forever.) This time of year we have the opposite... with north winds emptying the Bay and we often wake up down low looking UP at the dock.

I love being able to feel the music of the tides as the sun and moon and earth do their cosmic dance. Perfectly in step, the earth eternally steadfast in holding tight to all things terrestrial. But ocean has a mind of her own, lured in every time, twice a day, reaching, swelling, yearning for the moon.  They tease and flirt. And we mere specks of flesh and blood can do nothing to change that. We just watch in awe of what the power of pure attraction can do. It's true this life has a lot of highs and lows. But if you can feel that universal rhythm, you realize that you just need to adjust the lines, check on your loved ones, and carry on.

Weeks like this always have me humming that Bob Marley song (so sweetly covered by Jack Johnson and Ben Harper)

In high seas or in low seas
I'm gonna be your friend,
I'm gonna be your friend.
In high tide or in low tide,
I'll be by your side,
I'll be by your side.

Oh No You Didn't

Oh yes we did. Kind of. Sort of. He's 8 weeks old. He's a Boykin Spaniel. And he's a timeshare dock puppy.

You see, Zach's buddy M is only here at the marina weekends to be with her daddy C (who is our good friend and neighbor just a few boats down). C wanted to get a pup, but was worried about taking care of one during the week when he's working and M is at her mom's and at school. We have longed for a dog since our dear Schooner left this world, but we knew we wouldn't want to sail away with one in a couple of years (been there, done that, no thanks, too crazy). And we weren't too sure about getting tied down again as far as travel goes. But we so miss the company of a dog.

The Solution: dog share. Truly it's C's dog. But we get aunty-uncle privileges to play with him all day and pupnap him to our place when M isn't around, and then bring him home to C's boat when we have other things going on. It's truly an ideal arrangement and working smoothly so far.

His name is Bowline (bo-lin, it's a nautical knot). And he's proving to be a very well mannered, sweet, smart little pup. And very curious about our guinea pig Mookie (who is about the same size and completely unafraid of this new little critter).

And the best part is the end of the day, even cooped up indoors in cruddy weather, when boy and pup are both pooped just from the pleasure of each others company.

That's A Wrap

It's a phrase I used all too often when I was working full time before Zach was born, but now I often just think it in my head. (the boy already says "cut", I need to draw the line somewhere) But the other kind of wrapping gives me a secret thrill. I LOVE to wrap gifts. I don't know why. There is something meditative about it for me. When I was a little girl, I loved wrapping so much that my mom would let me wrap all of the holiday gifts - including MY OWN. She trusted me not to peek (and I didn't either) and she knew that the wrapping gave me as much joy as the gift inside.

The only bad thing about wrapping it the wasteful pile that grows next to the tree as the family tears open gift after gift. So over the past several years I've tried to be creative about how we wrap so that I still get my fix without being wasteful.

(1) Cloth Bags. I've collected mine over the years from http://www.wrapsacks.com but you crafty mamas who sew can whip up a drawstring bag in no time. You can also get them on etsy. We have them in all shapes and colors and use them for in-family gift giving so that we have them year after year for birthdays, winter holidays, etc. To me they are even more festive than paper wrap.

(2) Festive Recycling. Of course wrapping a gift in the Sunday comics is nothing new. But around the holidays, I seek out the really pretty stuff. Our local grocery store has a TON of free local newspapers and magazines. And around November and December they all have nice cover shots and nice inside spread of snowmen and trees with lights and santas and the like. These papers are already printed and get tossed into the trash or recycling bin anyhow, so we look through and pick the ones that have good pages to use and bring them home to wrap.

Also, the catalogs we get in the mail. Chinaberry had some beautiful catalogs this holiday season. Music For Little People had a Jan Brett illustration on the cover - score!

Speaking of books -- we usually don't use dust covers on our books because on a boat they just get torn and mildewy and rumpled anyhow - so these get saved for wrapping too. Also, I found a couple of literally falling apart kids Christmas books at Goodwill for 10cents and since they were missing too many pages to be read, we wrapped with them!

(3) Simple Yet Classic. Plain brown paper. Once in a while I have been known to forget my cloth grocery bags at home. And so we have a small collection of paper grocery bags. Plus the craft paper that was used to pad the boxes of some larger items that were shipped to us this year (our new heater, etc). Wrapped up with a beautiful ribbon and something to decorate (like a bell, beeswax ornament, some fresh holly) and it looks gorgeous! (you can see the cloth bags in the pile as well)

Aside from having a colorful little pile of gifts for the family, this was the sum total of our trash and it just went straight in to the recycling bin. (this box is only about as tall as a loaf of bread). Of course we only have one child and we buy small anyhow, but it still felt great!

As much as I love the holidays, I am happy to say for this year, "That's A Wrap."

Joy

Critter Christmas

Blankets usually cover things, conceal them, hide them away. But our unusual, thick blanket of snow uncovered some amazing insights to our local critters. The crisscross of tracks around the marina in all shapes and sizes have been such fun to decipher. It's like a secret decoder ring, revealing what's been wandering around at night. Secrets told in soft, white crystals.

And of course it takes the heart of a child to think what these tracks are looking for. "They're hungry," he worried. "It's so cold and dark and all of the plants are dead. We need to feed them." We started with the classic, cranberry and popcorn strings.

Then a friend offered a recipe for "bird seed glue" - a way of binding the seed together in a safe, edible way.

3/4 C flour
1/2 C water
1 pkg knox gelatin
3 T corn syrup
mix in 4 C of bird seed

We smooshed the mixture into everything from silicon molds to plastic cookie cutters. Pack it in hard, layer some twine in the middle, and then set them out to air dry for a day.

Trudging out in the thigh deep snow (on me!) and following the tracks, we picked a tree that seemed to be in the heart of the animal highway. We left our offerings...

 

... hoping the shadowy friends who tread so lightly through our whitened world will stop and take their fill.

Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice is our favorite time of the winter holiday season. Over the past 5 years we've slowly developed some family traditions to mark this time.

(reading sun/ light themed books)

(Zach & Daddy making sun bread)

(eating the warm, fresh sun bread with honey comb and other sun fruits. Zach loves the honey comb more than words can say and spends days and days asking if it's honey comb night yet)

(loads of beeswax candles both home made and collected throughout the year. i love the way the smell of beeswax fills the boat)

(suns everywhere!)

(including this beeswax one we made and hung over our winter nature table)

(a new shadow puppet gifted to the family for this darkest night celebration)

(let the shadow puppet show begin! i love seeing how Zach comes up with crazy story lines. this is our friend and neighbor "diver mike" offering to change a zinc on the fox's Nile River ship.)

(Zach and Daddy deep in shadow puppet land)

(and of course Zach had to make a shadow puppet of his own for the show -- a lovable Yeti)

(a fabulous rock that I've been waiting practically all year to give to Zach. I forgot what kind of crystal this is, anyone know? It has a magical way of catching and shining out the light. perfect for winter solstice.)

And signing off with my favorite clip celebrating the light we all seek. Wishing you all light and love! Happy Solstice!

A Winter Day

I am not sure what the snow totals were in our area in exact inches. All I know is it set some records for this neck of the woods. The boy is blissed out. I, frankly, am hoping if I click my heels three times I'll wake up on a tropical island. Here's the problem. Boat life is not a life of convenience. But it's the life we choose and we love it, so I usually don't go in to how cumbersome everyday things can be for us. Like laundry and showers and such. But in the snow, forget it.

We wake up and spend the first hour or so checking everything. What's leaking? What shifted? What froze? (in this case, the port side water filter which I fixed while Doug did dishes).

Then we start getting everything warm and habitable. Crank the heaters, start cooking something, anything. Get everyone into their slippers. Breakfast done, it's time to get clean. Clean is not something we get to do everyday, especially in winter. And here's why. We can't shower aboard the boat because we can't heat the far corners of the boat and that's where the shower/ tub is. Also, the marina shuts off the water in the winter, so we ration water even more than normal, making bathing aboard an absolute no-no until spring. We've been known to keep our shampoo and towels in the trunk of our car in the hopes of catching a shower or bath when over at a play date. So this morning, we decide we NEED to bathe if you know what I mean.

(there is a winch theresomewhere, under Zach's gloved hand. He's sitting on deck which has about 2 feet of snow)

I start packing for the shower. Towels for everyone. Clean clothes for everyone. Our shower caddy with all the required soaps and scrubs. A few little toys for the boy. Next, packing for doing laundry. The laundry rooms are right near the showers, so we can get it all done in one outing. I dump out the coin jar and ask Zach to sort out and count all of the quarters. Decisions are made. We have enough quarters for 2 loads, that means daddy's work clothes and Zach's footy pajamas make the cut, our blanket does not. Oh well, maybe next time. Now the detergent. It's normally stored in the cockpit lockers. Uh-oh. Nobody brought it in last night. I put on a fleece and my boots to check the locker and sure enough, the liquid detergent is now a slushie. No worries, we'll bring it in the shower with us and let us thaw a bit. Ok, laundry bag is packed, shower bags are packed. Now it's time to dress the boy. Fleece everything, warm socks, snow pants, winter coat, hat, gloves (oh when will someone make little gloves that actually fit little hands?!), and boots. Same wardrobe minus the snow pants for mom and dad. And we're off.

It's about the equivalent of one block walk to the laundry/ shower rooms. In the summer, no problem. But now we're laden with baggage and trudging through 24+ inches of snow. The boy wants to stop and roll and jump in every drift while Doug and I strain under the weight of all of the bags. We finally herd him to the shower room, lights on, warm water running plentifully, we're all in our birthday suits and ready for a nice long shower.

"Mommy, I have to poopoo."

I lose the coin toss and so Doug gets to stay in the shower while I get Zach dressed all over again, get me dressed, snow clothes on, and out we go. The toilets are not in the same place as the showers. It's just a few doors down, but a few doors OUTdoors. Duty done, we shower, dress, pack, and trudge over to the laundry room. I sort and load and chat with a neighbor. It's time for the quarters, Zach's favorite job. He plinks them in one by one but the machine won't go. Huh? Return coin, try again, no luck. Upon returning the coins a second time I see the problem. One of the six coins is not a quarter. It's a Franc, old school French currency from who knows where. *sigh* Same size and shape, but the machine doesn't like it. The prospect of walking all the way back to the boat for one quarter makes me want to hibernate for 4 months. But our kind neighbor spots me and laundry proceeds. Basically, by the time we finished showers, 2 loads of laundry, and a meal the sun was getting low in the sky and it was time to think dinner.

We're just one day away from the Solstice, but it truly felt like the shortest day.

Check out this fabulous holiday giveaway at ImagineChildhood.com