First Week of Lent

There is this song, it's by this Jewish reggae rapper Grant is listening to (seriously, the guy is in full beard and yamaca breaking it down). It says;

Stripping away the layers that reveal your soul,
You've got to give yourself up
And then you become whole

Anyway, yeah, my coping mechanisms - food, sex, the internet - are all flying out the window one by one and it's left me accutely aware of all the different things that make me need a coping mechanism to begin with. It's really introspective and deep and long winded but basically boils down to me working through a lot of crap I probably should have a long time ago. I cry a few times a day and go off on these rambling diatribes to Grant about how I'm a mess, I can't do this, I am my childhood, I can't believe how controlled by my childhood I am, etc etc. Some of the things that have come clear to me are;

-I say self-deprecating things to people and then if they don't argue with me I assume they agree and get very hurt. Like I will walk into the office and say, "Grant I know I'm just being really stupid and I shouldn't even ask but do you think you could ____?" And if he just says "Of course I will", or "I don't think I can right now", I think "He DOES think I'm stupid and shouldn't even ask!!" Seriously, I get hurt and freaked out. Really though I use those disclaimers CONSTANTLY so Grant basically doesn't even hear them anymore.
-I've realized that a lot of my neurosis - like not being able to sleep because I think someone is going to sneak in and kill the children, or being certain Grant will cheat on me when he's nothing but trustworthy - are about not being able to trust anything to last. I spent the first 16 years of my life moving every 5 months and starting at 13 different schools, and with adults coming and going like musical chairs. I don't know how to honestly believe Grant and I could grow old together, or let myself hope my kids will grow up without getting cancer, and so instead I cling and freak out over hypothetical situations to such an extent that it would almost be a relief if my fears came to pass because then I'd have nothing to lose and could stop feeling so vulnerable. One positive offshoot of this is that I think I manage to do so many things each day with each kid and nto go to bed and cherish each evening with Grant and so on, consistently, because it always feels urgent to me to do those things. I don't feel like "Tomorrow is another day"...ever. I get horribly sad and achy imagining not having afternoon tea one day or not reading to the kids one night, I don't think you need an occassion to bake from scratch or make a big breakfast, and nothing needs to be pressing for me to stay up until 4 am to do it. Basically I just don't know how to get comfortable and "Settle in" to this life. Any life. Everything is vital and life and death or something.
-And I have to affirm my existence at every turn. I have (literally) over a dozen FILLED spiral notebooks of journaling, and going on 4 years of LJ, and I also am right now keeping a journal for Jake and a bible study journal...because somehow it all validates me. And I'm finding that not journaling makes me feel panicky and insubstantial. I've realized that all day, moment to moment, I'm mentally archiving and things feel almost intangible if I can't immortalize them with words.

My little sister, who somewhere along the line surpassed me as her psychology teacher and became wise, thinks this is all about self worth. She thinks I don't have any self esteem and that's what all of this boils down to - me not feeling I deserve a life that will still be there tomorrow, or even that I deserve to be able to make an unqualified statement. And that perhaps what I'm really afraid of isn't that I would lose anyone or anything, but that I could go on if I did and eventually be ok again. She may or may not be right. Meanwhile it is all getting easier, gradually. There is a part of me that didn't even want to use the computer today. It feels like some sort of drug almost to me right now, taking the edge off of real life and allowing me to float along without riding out the rough spots. It's easier to look at all the pretty things people are making in food_porn and read all the latest news headlines on yahoo and browse around ebay for teapots and wonder who's had their baby yet on my friends' page, then it is to find a way to be in the moment.

I get all manic and nutso with the computer off, there's no default place in the house for me to sit without it, nothing to distract me while I nurse or walk back and forth and glance at as I pace with a fussy Jake. I catch myself doing laps around the house while everyone else is busy with some idle persuit or other.

I ponder the meaning of Lent from many different angles.

Lent is about walking through a 40 day fast with Christ.
Lent is about suffering, and each time you suffer, offering it up to God as a remembrance of how Jesus' suffered for us.
Lent is about dying to the world to be reborn in the spirit come Easter.
Apparently Lent is about stripping away the layers that reveal your soul, giving yourself up so that you become whole.

First Week of Lent, aside from the Lent part

I made three things for the first time this past week; a roast chicken, fresh bread, and iced tea. You can tell I am neither white nor from a typical family in that I've been cooking new things from scratch for years but am only now venturing out into this sort of territory. The chicken, oy, I was so happy with it. I made an herb butter and rubbed it into the skin and stuffed it and all - I suppose I also made stuffing for the first time but it seemed like part of the chicken, even though the overflow went into a casserole dish. The bread was for communion at the local Disciples of Christ church, where there is no longer a volunteer baker. It came out very well, too, and was well received. I love the feeling of it as an offering I can give. It was Nigella Lawson's "Basic White Loaf". And tea, yeah, I just followed the directions on my english breakfast tea package but it was still fresh and sweetened "to taste", by golly.

I also made four custom order dolls, and bought some new yarn. If I made 4 dolls every week that would be $400 a month for us in crochet earnings. I find that kind of wild. If only I could teach all the kids to do it, too :p Ananda actually asks, but she's left handed and I find it impossible to make sense of whenever I sit down and try to reverse it all with her. I updated with pics of the dolls and yarn over at textile_junkie.

Grant landed the bank as a customer - they finally got back to him about the proposal he submitted in December, and he beat out the competition :D It's a $5000 site, and will be $500 a month in regular income for maintenance and updates, as well, after the initial design. He also got his first commission check for websales from the winery, which is very cool as he poured WEEKS into that last Fall. There've been a few "How am I going to pay Jon?" (the employee) weeks since the first of the year but everything is really falling into place now. It coincides beautifully with him "giving it all up to God" and I dig that. He does invoicing for all of his regular customers on the first of every month, and it came to like $2800 this time. We only get half of all money that comes in - the rest goes back into the business - but it is still awesome. We might, like, NOT have creditors calling soon ;)

Aaron was sick all day, Wednesday. Nobody else seems effected but he was burning up all day. Thursday he seemed mostly normal. Who knows. He asked me to pump some milk for him, I was really surprised. The last time I tried to slip him breastmilk in his cereal when he was sick he was on to me and made sure to ask specifically for COW milk for cereal the next few times he got it, with a knowing raised eyebrow.

Last night he was going to tell me something but then stopped and looked thoughtful, with his eyes going back and forth, for awhile. Finally he looked up at me and said, "I can't find it."

Isaac is a nervous wreck. He is terrified of everything. I mean everything. He goes from convulsing and yelling on the changing table because he can see a car out the window that scares him, to trying to claw his way back into the house when he sees the moon outside and it scares him. Anytime anyone comes in, knocks, calls or is mentioned he clutches his chest and yells that who/whatever it is scares him. Normal playing like growls or chasing that we normally all love is horrifying for him right now. It's driving me nuts. Some things I've read and my own mother's intuition tell me that he is transitioning from complete fearless ignorance to being aware that some things out there really can actually hurt him, and that this is just his tyrannical way of realizing he is not invincible...but I'm still ready for it to be done. He actually told me that he was scared to nurse once a couple of days ago, saying the milk scared him o_O

I spent an hour going through a cookbook with Ananda one page at a time, a big ol' Moosewood Collective vegetarian thing. We earmarked about 20 things to try in the coming weeks and she was cracking me up the whole time we went through it. It's a strange irony, the way these kids are; I showed them the raw, whole chicken I roasted and Aaron was horrified and teared up before I sent him away. He really saw it as a headless, bald corpse. Yet he LOVES meat and would eat nothing else if I let him. Ananda hates the taste and texture but truly LOVES hunting ants and calling a cow by the road dinner makes her laugh. She's bloodthirsty, I'm telling you. We were exploring the cavity of this chicken and talking about spines and ribcages and stuff, she wanted to see the heart in the bag of giblets (barf). All while Aaron was out in the living room playing alone because he'd cry otherwise.

And then there is Jake. Warm against me while I sleep, grinning at me in the morning, small in my arms and laughing like a loon whenever I tickle him. Jake with his tiny teeth and big smile and huge, dark eyes. All of his baby hair but a tiny bit right at the top fell out and left him nearly bald, but he's getting new hair in now and I can't get enough of the feel of it on my cheek. We found a nearly new excersaucer at the Farmer's Market sitting out randomly, unclaimed and free (no really) and he adores it. I wasn't even going to buy any contraptions this time around, but I am a sucker for the sight of him spinning the seat, playing with the toys and generally having the time of his (admittedly short) life.

Now for the real update - ( +5 pictures )