Spirited Away

We watched (actually, I watched while Rob slept in front of me on the couch, pretending to watch) the movie Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki. The girls and I love Our Neighbor Totoro which Miyazaki directed as well. But this one was darker and scarier so I watched it with Rob after the girls went to bed. I loved the bizarre weirdness of the story; the young girl and her family come across a bath house for ghosts and spirits. Her parents eat the food of the spirits and are turned into pigs and their daughter must save them. It was a wild imaginative ride and then this song at the end! This song really got me. Bless itunes. How amazing that I could stand up from the movie feeling transported and moved by this song and within minutes have it playing in my own kitchen. I listened to it like 40 times while I was home alone making a 7 layer dip the next day for a pot luck at work. Heaven. (The song not the potluck)

Here's the song, the translation and a story about the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYeNNOPYElA&NR=1&feature=fvwp

The words in English:

Always with Me

Somewhere, a voice calls, in the depths of my heart
May I always be dreaming, the dreams that move my heart

So many tears of sadness, uncountable through and through
I know on the other side of them I'll find you

Everytime we fall down to the ground we look up to the blue sky above
We wake to it's blueness, as for the first time

Though the road is long and lonely and the end far away, out of sight
I can with these two arms embrace the light

As I bid farewell my heart stops, in tenderness I feel
My silent empty body begins to listen to what is real

The wonder of living, the wonder of dying
The wind, town, and flowers, we all dance one unity

Somewhere a voice calls in the depths of my heart
keep dreaming your dreams, don't ever let them part

Why speak of all your sadness or of life's painful woes
Instead let the same lips sing a gentle song for you

The whispering voice, we never want to forget,
in each passing memory always there to guide you

When a mirror has been broken, shattered pieces scattered on the ground
Glimpses of new life, reflected all around

Window of beginning, stillness, new light of the dawn
Let my silent, empty body be filled and reborn

No need to search outside, nor sail across the sea
Cause here shining inside me, it's right here inside me

I've found a brightness, it's always with me

http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/sen/song.html

Like apples!

A quote I just heard from the Talmud that sounds a bit threatening, but I loved the idea that it is our duty to notice the beautiful things around us.


"In a world to come we will be called to account for all the beautiful things that God put on this earth and we refused to enjoy."



Here's Georgia eating a Mutzu apple as big as her head at the Winter Carnival Farmer's Market in Greenfield this weekend.

Rob and Georgia time.

I had to work on Friday so Rob took a personal day and hung out with me and Georgia while Lily was in school. Here I got some documentation of their goofy interactions. Georgia has favored me forever, but recently when I picked her up at school she whined, "Oh I wish it was Papa!" Rob really enjoys kids once they get to be about 4 years old. Then they can talk and hold up to his wrestling and loud music. Of course he also loves them when they're babies, but now they like to sit and talk with him while they do projects.

The other day I was telling someone when I worked (3pm-12am) three evenings a week and she exclaimed,
"Oh that must be so hard! You don't put your kids to bed so many nights a week!" I agreed that it was but then I happened to be with a couple of other nurses who raised their kids on evenings and who said,
"Yeah, but half the time you're at work they're asleep and all that together time really forces the dad to be independent and build his own relationship with the kids, which, in the long run, is only good."
I'm not as sure as they seemed and I would love to be home. But, I am grateful that Rob is as close to the girls as he is.

Mummies and musical instruments

The girls and I met my parents and sister at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on Sunday. They're having a show about mummies, which currently fascinate and horrify Lily. Georgia doesn't quite get the connection between mommies, which she really likes, and mummies, which seem really wrong to her. I didn't get into too many details before the trip and luckily the girls ran so quickly through the exhibits I did not have to explain the mummified head in the dark chamber or the MRI scans of the ancient head done at Mass General that are displayed eerily on the screen at kid level. The presentation explains why they cannot tell if it is the lord or lady's head because the tell-tale jaw and face bones have been removed by the ancient embalmers to help the dead open their mouths and speak in the harrowing underworld. (shudder)





We stopped in the John Singer Sargent room and Lily proudly noticed the vases in the portrait of the girls are standing in the corners of the museum room. It was crowded on a cold Sunday and there were plenty of kids, which is always a welcome sight to me. When my children are wired and goofy, it's nice to see other kids acting out, too.
These big road trips always seem like a grand idea when we plan them months in advance but, on the actual morning, as I'm starting the cold car that has almost no gas and Rob is standing there in his robe waving goodbye; I realize it is a terrible and foolish idea and that we will all be dead-tired by the time we return to the driveway again.
But my family helped manage the girls and it was a wonderful time, really, and in retrospect, even more fun because I drove through Boston like a champ, we didn't get lost, we saw tons of art, marble staircases and painted ceilings. We survived and made it home in time for bed.

Old tapes; old stories

I was cleaning out the closet and I found these old tapes of two astrology sessions from ten years ago during my Saturn return. The ladies I worked with at Bread and Circus (now Whole Foods) had encouraged me to go. The astrologer was a lovely woman who gave thorough and compassionate readings in her woodsy home.
I didn't think the readings had done much for me at the time. What I took away from the reading then was that it wasn't really my destiny to be a writer, which was devastating because that's what I really wanted to do, and that someone I loved was going to die soon.
Listening to the tapes 10 years later was riveting, it was so compelling to hear my own younger voice talking about my concerns, hopes and dreams. Also astonishing was that the astrologer never said either of the things that I thought I had heard and held onto for all those years.
She did say that my Pluto return was coming and that it would mean a death of a certain part of me or of my life that would take me deeper into the mysteries, but she did not say someone I loved was going to die.
She also said that I had alot of teacher activist energy so when I mentioned the writing she declared that it would be a great vehicle for communication. I think I must have been disappointed she hadn't said I could be a quiet writer sequestered in the woods.
There was also alot of very interesting and accurate information about me in the hour and a half of tape that I don't remember hearing the first time at all.
In retrospect it was sort of grounding and reassuring to hear things now that I have discovered on my own, but it was a bit exasperating to hear it all laid out for me in a kind and firm way and know that I chose to ignore it and create a wall of misunderstanding where there really wasn't one.
Hmmmm.
Glad I still have a car with a tape player in it.
Rob went out to start my car the other morning and came in, puzzled, "What the hell are you listening to in your car?"

Cleaning up uncovers abundance of toys!

Well, I cleaned up the girls toys and gave a bunch of them to good will. First I tried to be honest about the plan and teach the girls how to throw stuff out. I put a laundry basket out in the living room and said, "Let's get rid of all the stuff we don't play with anymore. Someone else might like it!" After an hour there were one or two crappy toys in the basket. Mostly Lily would painfully decide to throw something in there and then Georgia would snatch it to her heart and save it from the basket. This went on, back and forth, until I decided I had to be sneaky.

I didn't want to throw out stuff they really liked so I stuffed a few bags of junk in the basement and waited for the wails. After a week or two there were a few things I overheard them looking for so I took those things out of the trash bags and sneaked them back into the living room.

Growing up, my mother never threw anything out. It was a good feeling knowing that something wouldn't be tossed while you weren't looking. (Except, of course, for my precious collection of stuffed animals we put in a trash bag for "just two weeks" when I had lice in 5th grade, that was never seen again. I looked for that bag for an entire decade, opening up garbage bags in the corners of the basement over the years to see if maybe my huge stuffed tiger was in there.)

It is a delicate balance.
But, since we (I) have done some rudimentary cleaning and tossing, there has been great excitement about all the toys we discovered and alot of sweet sisterly play with the critters we found scattered and ignored all around the house.

Shower clock

I re-read this Martha Beck article the other day and decided much of my lateness issue has to do with transitions. She has some practical suggestions for moving things along. I decided to get a clock for the shower and learn how to set my watch alarm so I can stay on track.
http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Dealing-With-Transition-Anxiety-Martha-Beck/1

I am really excited.

My fixed watch and my shower clock came in the mail today! I have been suffering as I waited for both of them to arrive.

I completely lose track of time in the shower. Because I am free from nagging and whining, enjoying the dizzyingly warm cocoon of no-responsibility; it can go on forever. Then, suddenly, it is way too late! I have to rush out! It is cold! Moisturizer and deodorant become too time consuming to apply. Lily is late for school and I am frazzled, rushing and trying not to yell, "Hurry Up!!" because I know I just took a 25 minute shower.

Every time something has been "off" this last week: somebody's got a cold, I can't find my wallet, babysitting falls through. I tell Rob, "It will all be different when my shower clock gets here." It makes him laugh. I asked him to buy one for me at Home Depot and he was too embarrassed, like I was asking him to buy me cloth menstrual pads or something.
Here's the link in case you want one, too.

http://www.amazon.com/Ripple-Water-Conservation-Products-Digital/dp/B001MLZZ74/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1265073468&sr=8-9

Also can't wait to sit down with the huge piece of gray tissue paper, that are the directions for my digital watch, so I can figure how to beep annoyingly when I need to go somewhere. I also want to chime every hour to remind me to take a deep breath. Very excited to become one of those annoying timer-people who make noises every hour.

I'll let you know how it goes.