Hand Work

This season I have had a chance to put my hands to work making things.  These things represent so much enjoyable connection time with friends, or with a good audiobook.  Having the space to create and connect and learn gives me so much more energy and emotional capacity for my day job.

I haven't knitted in a really long time (maybe since third grade...), but I was inspired by this fox cowl pattern to pick it up again.  My friend Kristy helped me to navigate the cryptic knitting pattern shorthand, and luckily Gigi loves to wear it on cold days.

Above are river rocks decorated with a sharpie and white craft pen.  Below is the needle felted fox I made last week.  This fall I have been attending a Monday crafting night with Emerson Waldorf mommies, and we have been making items to sell at the Holiday Faire that just happened last week.  Ildi is our Hungarian friend, and she is trained in handwork and has a crafting studio.  She has patiently instructed our band of friends for months in the arts of sanding and painting wooden toys, and needle felting.  This has been so tricky for me!  The dyed wool is literally a pile of fluff when you start the process, and then it must take on a shape and personality of some sort.  This fox has made me so proud, because this art medium has taken me a long time to get the hang of.  

And then there is this guy.  I made two little pinecone elves a few years ago to decorate for Christmas, and pinterest inspired me this year to make use of an apothecary jar I have had sitting on a shelf in the closet.  So with a little sled I found at the thrift store for 10 cents, Gigi's idea of putting one of our little miniature Christmas trees on the sled, and a dumped container of Morton's salt, we made our little winter scene for the living room sideboard.  It makes me happy every time I walk by.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Valentines Love

Each holiday is more and more fun with Giovanna.  Especially since we have started her coop preschool, life has been festive because we can always count on a holiday celebration with her preschool buddies.  

This week I made oodles of banana cupcakes with chocolate buttercream frosting for her preschool party and a few other events...

Gigi drew Valentines art for her friends and I took down her dictation for love messages, and dressed up her pictures a bit with recycled calendar pages from last year...

And Gigi had a great time at her coop preschool Valentines party.  They learned about the letter S and played games, made Valentines hats, ate treats and exchanged Valentines.  Coop preschool has been a great stepping stone for me, because everything is so small scale - holidays are not overwhelming when you only have six littles to make cupcakes and Valentines for!

On Valentines morning Tutu came over and made a big waffle breakfast for us to eat as a family.  We made eggs and sausage, and had juice and homemade berry sauce and whipped cream to kick off our special day.

After breakfast, we opened a few gifts - cards, chocolates and flowers, of course!  The highlight was Gigi's new play-doh and tools set, which has already seen lots of love.  It was the gift we had pulled from under the tree at Christmas time, and I'm glad we waited - it is a great toy and really deserves its own holiday.  

She is a very thankful girl.

On Valentines Evening Marcos and I did something that we haven't done in, oh, a few years.  We went on a DATE at a nice local restaurant called Squids.  We do a lot together as a family and frankly, I enjoy having Gigi along because she is such a love magnet, but it was amazing being able to talk about upcoming plans, how we wanted our life to work out, and process situations we are facing, without her constant interruptions.  It was so dreamy, and we are indebted to the world's funnest grandmas who kept Gigi busy and happy at home while we were gone.

I am thankful that holidays and seasons mark the passage of time, and endow each year with the ebb and flow of joy and anticipation.

Thanksgiving

This year our Thanksgiving celebrations were different than usual.  Every year since we moved to North Carolina, we have spent the holiday up in New Jersey with my dad and family, and the Saturday after Thanksgiving is usually spent romping around New York City.  But this year with the arrival of our small son, we knew it would be a year to stay close to home.

Part of our Thanksgiving tradition this year was introducing a Thanksgiving tree.  Gigi and I gathered dead sticks on a nature walk, my mom artfully arranged them in a watering can, and I sat down with scissors and scraps of paper and cut out leaves.  In the days prior to Thanksgiving and in the days since, we have been busy writing down things we are thankful for on each of the leaves.  Gigi has been fun to watch; at first the concept of gratitude was only getting to her on a concrete level, and her contributions were things she could see, like "windows" and "chairs", but over the past week she has started to think of more abstract ideas.  She has added "pets" to our Thanksgiving tree, and "my house", and today her contribution was, "I am thankful for planets: saturn, earth and mars".  

Because I have mixed feelings towards turkeys and my ability to cook them well, and knowing that we would have a new baby in the house at holiday time, I had decided months ago to keep the meal simple and just buy rotisserie chicken for Thanksgiving this year.  My mom talked me into at least roasting a chicken with vegetables, and with all of the ladies in the house contributing a few dishes, we had a complete meal of roasted chicken and vegetables, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing and cranberry sauce, green bean casserole and grapes, and a Brazilian Christmas cake, chocolate pecan pie, and an apple pie to top off the evening.  At the time it felt like an enormous amount of food, but with one more meal of leftovers the following night, we wiped out the Thanksgiving meal almost entirely!  Yes! 

Luckily, the desserts have lasted long enough to have for breakfast for the past few days.  Mmmm....

I do hope that next year we get to be up North with my dad and our New England family, but this year it was perfect to spend a quiet week at home with baby Orion and our local family.  Having a loving family and a superb community of friends, having the means to prepare a Thanksgiving feast, having a warm home and cars that function, and especially being parents to these healthy strong children gives us so much to be thankful for!  Happy Thanksgiving!

Pinterest?

In line with my personal mission to always choose my addictions very carefully, I have avoided Pinterest for years because I could see myself enjoying it too much.  When Gigi started preschool last month I finally joined so that I could access the board of free teaching resources that my friend Kristy kept raving about.  Fortunately, the whole format is still a bit over my head, so it hasn't posed a huge waste of time.  

Yet.

But I did find a few Halloween Projects to keep my hands busy during General Conference.  Little haunted houses made out of milk cartons papered in pages from Steinbeck's The Pearl.  My fingers were loving getting back into some sketching and painting and drawing...  art, it's been way too long.

Living and Dining

I think that our home is pretty much together now.  And it has only been...  four months since we've moved in?  I am pretty sure that putting our place together may be my only artistic accomplishment as of late, so here are some photos of what we ended up with.

The Metta style is quite eclectic.  I find things that I like - often at thrift stores - and then start shuffling them.  The real trick - if you are like me and have no real training in how to put a home together - is to stop shuffling when a space looks pleasing to the eye.  Above is our little entry area: I inherited the dresser from a friend who was moving a few years ago and then refinished and painted it.  It is topped with a runner I sewed from a Pottery Barn curtain panel I bought years ago at the thrift store, topped with my favorite tins (thrift store - you got it!), and some other little randoms that I like: an airplane to remind us to travel, and a little Eiffel Tower.  On the wall is a beautiful koi fish print that I found at the thrift store, framed by a deep red frame from Michaels.  

Designing the wall behind the couch was a headache, and it is every time we move.  Nailing a hole in the wall feels very committal, and it's hard to think about what you might want to look at every time you spend time in your living space.  Plus, wall art - especially large wall art - is expensive, and since we do not have the means to purchase new things every time we move, even though our tastes change over time, we have to work with what we already have.  This time we added a few new elements, got rid of a few of the old, and we are planning to switch out some of the photos once little boy is here and we have more current images of our family.  

We only have one large window in the living room (hence the funny warm lighting), and since the most tender shoots should get the best light, Gigi's table and chairs are directly in front of the window.  She colors there, makes her designs, plays with her stickers and makes her mischief. Although all of our furniture pieces are Craigslist finds, her table and chairs set has probably been our most favorite investment.  She is so happy in the space that is uniquely hers.

And then there is our kitchen.  It is one of the true beauties of living in this home.  It is the first time in four Chapel Hill rentals that we have had a large, open, and well lit kitchen and dining space, and it is a beautiful feeling.  It encourages happy and comfortable cooking, good eating, a lot of informal family time spent together, and hot cocoa parties on Sunday evenings.  We have always known that a big kitchen must be a nice thing, but living with one now will make going backwards very difficult if we ever need to downsize.  I hope that we stay here a good long time...

And our table says it all: Happy Fall everyone!  This morning I woke up and could see my breath as I was walking to the bus stop, so I think that the new season is officially upon us.  We've got about five weeks until baby boy's due date, and there are a lot of leaves to kick, pumpkin patches to visit and soups to make before he arrives!  Enjoy the changes in the world around you!

Moving... Again.

I'm sitting here enjoying milk and Joe-Joe's (which is Trader Joe's speak for "way better than an Oreo") and loving the quiet of a fairly organized downstairs.  Simple, barely decorated, with the furniture placed but not too much wall action yet.  We have been moving in this past week and a bit, which is why I've been absent from this blog.  Again.

We're now in our fourth rental place since we've moved to Chapel Hill.  Each time is a progressive step up in the world, so I feel like we're moving in the right direction, but heavens, please say that we're done with moving for a while!  The whole being pregnant thing and still having some effects from my organ removal has added a level of complication, but last time I was this pregnant I was climbing sky-high cathedrals in France so I've learned to bite the bullet, I guess you could say.  And even if I were more out of commission, anything is possible with a ton of help from Marcos and the endless hours of packing and cleaning that my mom has put into this project.

Gigi has been having fun, for the most part.  She has completely neglected her toys since the boxes of cleaning supplies and sharp tools have been available at her level.  Just kidding, but she is really enjoying the chaos, and all of her access to things that are usually kept in a certain place.  Now nothing has a certain place, so it's free game.

* Pretend there is a cute photo of Gigi here.  

(Oh heck, since we're pretending, pretend it's a cute photo of me.

That's much less likely to happen in real life). *

One thing that is somewhere in a box is our SD reader that sucks the photos out of my camera cards so that I can post them on the blog.  I know we have some cuties of Gigi participating in the "packing" process, but you'll have to take a rain check on that one.  For the most part she has been really good during this whole transition, but there was one day that she watched too much TV, and a few days when we sent her to our neighbor's house for a playdate to get her out from underfoot.  It's just hard to get a box packed when the two-year old unpacks it behind you.

And that's our weekly update.  More excitement and a surprise visit to come!

The Lap Coli

I wish this post were about our new lap dog, but it's not, it's about a new constellation of holes I have in my stomach where my recent laparoscopic cholecystectomy (removal of the gall bladder) left it's marks.  I will try not to go into an immense amount of detail, because it's painful to empathize with someone who feels like they are dying, but I'd like to record briefly the last couple of days.

To rewind a bit, I think it's important to say that I've had issues with my gall bladder for a little over a year.  Gall bladders do the important work - but not imperative work, as you shall see - of storing bile and releasing it when you eat food, which aids in the digestion process.  For fair skinned women who are of child-bearing years, it is not uncommon for us to develop stones in our gall bladder, which can be excruciatingly painful.  I have learned over the past year to manage my stones by eating better - less fatty foods, less sugar, and more controlled portions each meal.  I had never had a formal diagnosis of gall stones, but my impressive online education lead me to believe that because of the location and nature of my sporadic pain, there was no other reasonable explanation.

And that brings us up to date: last week Thursday, Friday and nearly all day Saturday I had terrible pain in my gall bladder (upper right portion of the abdomen).  This was alarming, since three days in a row of pain is highly uncommon, in my experience.  Plus, the pain was different than usual.  Last Saturday, instead of being intense and temporary, it stayed, and stayed and stayed and I just could not get comfortable in my body.  Finally I took two extra strength Tylenol, which took the edge off and allowed me to rest, but when the medicine wore off and I was back to feeling everything, the pain had moved to my entire abdomen and had intensified.  As it grew closer to midnight I became fairly certain that I was dying, and so I said my farewells to my beautiful sleeping daughter, Marcos rushed over to pick up my mom and brought her home to spend the night at our place, and Marcos drove me to the Emergency Room at UNC hospitals.

Fortunately, the ER at UNC was nothing like the show.  Midnight on Saturday night was actually very quiet, there were no dangling severed limbs in the waiting room, people wailing, or mass chaos, and after a relatively quick check-in process in a small space where I continued to heave the last dregs of foam from my body in privacy, I was put on a stretcher and wheeled in my delirium to a small curtained portion of a bigger waiting room, where I was given morphine - and finally started to feel human again.

Over the next few hours into the darkness of Sunday morning, I had extensive blood drawn for testing, and was pushed on my stretcher to the ultrasound technician, who spent over an hour with us examining my internal organs.  That was the testing I underwent, and other than that my main job was to help the nurses manage my pain, and wait until the Doctors had enough information to make The Diagnosis.

The ER is a really interesting place.  When I first arrived at midnight I was put in the curtained space next to a happy Latino family - a father (the patient) who was on the bed and clearly in some discomfort, as well as a mother and two teenaged children.  They seemed in good spirits.  Then a number of hours later, as my own pain had been managed and Marcos curled up in my stretcher asleep and I ran my fingers through his hair, my heart broke as I overhead the results come back from the father's testing, and the resident calmly and kindly break the news to the family that it looked like the father had cancer in the upper portion of his lung, and likely into his spinal cord as well.  There went all confidentiality, and the opportunity I had to be spared the sadness and heartbreak of being privy to a stranger's diagnosis.  The man heaved grown-man sobs, and my own nurse came in just at that moment to find me crying out of sadness for my neighbor.  His family held it together until he had been wheeled out for further testing, and then fell apart quietly in the room where we all waited.

After many visits from doctors, and residents, and nurses, the results were finally back and it was time for my diagnosis: Gall Stone Pancreatitis.  Yes, my gall stones had been the culprit, but the pancreas was the current problem.  Stones had fallen out of the gall bladder to obstruct the functioning of the pancreas, and my pancreas and liver functioning were wild.  Lipase levels up the wazoo.  Thousands of levels higher than they needed to be.  So what was the plan?  To wait it out.  Apparently, 85% of the time the stones move past the other organs on their own, and the organs resume normal functioning.  So Sunday and Monday were spent waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

I was moved on Sunday to the surgery floor, and lived for the next three days on a diet of ice chips.  To avoid triggering the gall bladder to release more bile, and perhaps more stones, I basically survived on an IV for three days straight.  The hunger and thirst went away after about one day, as did the satisfaction of sticking ice chips into my mouth.  I was entertained by terrible TV, the lovely nurses and nurses aids who took care of me, and the visits of friends and family, which kept me sane.

By Monday evening my blood results were back and they looked very promising - all of the offending organs had simmered down, and it was time to plot the removal of the gall bladder for the following morning.

Tuesday the 17th of April, I woke up, prettied myself, Marcos showed up around 9am, as well as my boss with flowers and a beautiful card from work friends, and at the last minute another friend from work arrived to do a final send-off into the OR.  I breathed deeply, and tried to stay calm, and was wheeled into a cold operating room with a dizzying assortment of gadgets.  A warning that my IV may sting in a second, five deep breaths into an oxygen mask, the sensation of falling through the floor and zonk.

When I woke up, I felt like I had been run over by a semi.  A few times.  Nobody deserves to feel what it feels like coming out of general anesthesia after a surgery, because it's just terrible.  I've selectively forgotten those first few hours, but I learned that the surgery had gone well, my anatomy had been straight-forward enough for them to remove my gall bladder laparoscopically, and so I was left with four holes on my tummy, which were covered by a hardened glue, and my gall bladder had been pulled out of my belly button.  I didn't have the courage to look at those holes until much later that night when I was feeling like a person again.

That afternoon I continued to feel better, and take strong narcotic pain medications, and for the first time in three days I ate food.  It was delightful.  I ate jello first and eased into real food with a garden burger and salad for dinner, and another grilled chicken sandwich and sides for a late night snack, just because I could.  Our friends drove Gigi and my mom over to the hospital after feeding them dinner, and we were all together and the surgery was done, and successfully!  That night Gigi kissed mommy's tummy very softly, and I showed off my holes and peeked at them myself, and I was really feeling good.  In the evening our friend who works as a nurse on the floor stopped by when her shift ended, and we spent an hour talking and enjoying each other's company.  I went to bed that night happy, and relieved.

The next day was a nice slow process of getting ready to leave the hospital.  I was sad to leave that afternoon, but I had waited in the ER for a room to open for me, and knew there must be people much worse off who needed my bed.  After lunch my mom came to pick me up, while Gigi stayed with our sweet neighbor Ali and got her toenails painted and played with her buddy Boston.

While I waited in my wheelchair at the hospital doors for my mom to pull the car around from the parking deck, I had such mixed feelings about leaving the hospital.  Friends have been bringing over meals every day and we have been so well taken care of, but transitioning home is really hard.  I was used to my very soft bed at the hospital, and a nurse who would bring me my pain meds at the press of a button, and a quiet floor to take walks on in my peep show hospital gown in the late hours of the night, and nothing that I had to do.  At home Gigi wants my every attention, she wants my snuggles, and she wants me to hold her and lift her, and be her mom just like I was before.  I know it will be like that again soon, but I still flinch when she comes close, and put out my hands to protect my tummy, and can't smother her with the warmth of my mama bear hugs as I'd like to.

The good news is, each day at home has gotten better.  I'm sleeping downstairs on the airbed, and it's perfect.  Each morning I wake up feeling better and more mobile, and I hurt less.  I still feel exhausted and sleep for hours in the middle of the day, but Marcos and my mom have been working around that schedule, and I love them for their sacrifice, and for helping Gigi in so many ways.

Well this didn't end up being brief at all, but I want to end with a thank you to everyone for your well-wishes, and prayers, and the cuisine that comes from your kitchen to ours, and for the flowers and cookies, and groceries and for taking Gigi this past week!  When one woman goes out of commission it really take a village to keep things running in her life, and we have felt so humbled and grateful to have so much help in keeping our heads above water.  Thank you endlessly for your kindness.

xoxo

Metta and Co.

Giovanna is 2!

Today is little Gigi's 2nd Birthday, and we feel really lucky to be her parents. She is clever, and imaginative, and she is a little love magnet!

This year we barely got it together to have a little celebration for her, but I am so glad that we did. Our options for timing and location were very slim, and we ended up hosting an Easter Sunday brunch at our place followed up with an egg hunt in the park near our home. Our wonky afternoon church schedule allowed us to do a morning gathering, so we invited just a few of Gigi's little playmates and their families, and it was really nice. When I was dreading the event, and felt like I had absolutely no extra energy to put into hosting a party, it was helpful to remind myself of the adage I made up, that where good people and good food are combined, a good time will follow.

As long as we live in the Northern Hemisphere, April is just going to keep falling during the Spring, so I wasted no time digging out the tablecloth I had sewn for last year's party, and using leftover napkins, etc. New this year were our Easter carrot cupcakes with maple cream cheese frosting and cupcake toppers proudly purchased and ready to stick on top. Ta-da!  It was all about streamlined and simple.

Since it was Easter Sunday, my mom made Gigi a beautiful Easter tree for the centerpiece on our brunch table. Each year I've had an idea at midnight the night before Gigi's party, and this year my midnight idea was a little banner for her Easter tree. "Happy 2nd Birthday Gigi!", completed about 1:30am.

As our RSVPs creeped into the 20s, I realized that I would be most sane at the end of all this if I asked our friends to bring something to share. My mom and I made three quiches between us, and with breakfast sausage links, and tons of fruit, homemade croissant rolls, orange juice and of course the cupcakes for brunch-dessert, we ate like royalty.

While I rounded up the kiddos for Ring Around the Roses and a hilarious version of Duck, Duck, Goose where all of the children stood up and ran in the circle, Marcos and Adam snuck out with the eggs and hid them in the small park just across the way from our home.  After giving the guys a few minutes of a head start, we took the kiddos out with their baskets and bags, and let them loose.  Watching children run into open grass gives me such a wholesome feeling.

After witnessing an egg hunt the day before, I made some mental notes and made sure we had enough eggs for the more aggressive hunters, as well as the more pensive gatherers.  I agonized briefly while stuffing the eggs between using sweets or non-sweets, but in the end went with some of each: a few mini chocolates, gummies, and Trader Joe's gourmet jelly beans (yum!), but also goldfish crackers, craisins, kiddo bandaids, some small toys like bouncy balls and slinkies, stickers and monster finger puppets.

Above are Gigi's little friends after the egg hunt: Emerson, Livy, Ava, Becca, Henry, Layla, Gigi and Maya.  Clearly, Gigi is much more interested in checking out her loot than looking up for a photo.  Below, Tutu helps Gigi with her cupcake after we sang Happy Birthday to our little girl.  Someone had the brilliant idea of bringing the cupcakes outside, and my carpet is still thanking me for that one.  We had ice water and cupcakes to end our gathering, and the kiddos played for a few minutes at the park before heading home.  It was a stunning Easter morning, and we loved being outdoors with friends.

Happy Birthday Giovanna!  We think you're something special!

Book Review: "Leadership and Self-Deception"

I've been meaning to write a brief review of this book for a few weeks now, and I'm finally getting a chance to tell you about it. This one is called "Leadership and Self-Deception" by the Arbinger Institute, and I really think you should read it.

Why, what am I saying about you? That you are self-deceived? Of course. But probably not in any ways that the rest of us aren't. If you are in a leadership position of any kind, but especially if you are a family member, and most importantly if you have any interpersonal relationships of any kind (have I covered you yet?), you should read this book. Marcos brought it to my attention because it was a sworn gem by a number of leaders he knows and respects, and I love them for introducing it to us. We tried to be those people who really get into a book and then buy thirty copies for all of their dearest friends, but then we looked at the cost of buying thirty copies and I decided to tell you about the book so that you can find it on your own.


In case you were wondering, "Why is she so into this book?" this is the gist: When we ignore our promptings to serve people in our lives who need our help (and this can be really little things, not just big things), we can "get in the box" toward them, and begin to create a false "story" of sorts that helps us to justify our lack of action by inflating our virtue and lowering their "deservingness". When we are in the box towards them, we view them according to the qualities that we've assigned them in order to justify our behavior, and it isn't until we get out of the box that we can truly see and value them.

The principles are basic, and timeless, and are so simple but reading it helped me to peel back some fog that was getting in the way of seeing people in my life just as they are: people who have wants, desires, goals and needs like my own. At the risk of sounding really cheesy, I have to tell you that since reading this book things have changed in how I get along with people I am close to. Ultimately, I suspect that this book is effective because although the book uses other terminology and is not spiritual or religious at all, it is another way of applying the principles that are most important to me: love, honesty, being prompted to do the right things for others, and repentance or learning to improve.

A Special Day at Frog and Toad's

Today some special things were in order at our house...

A cooking frenzy that resulted in an awesome batch of hummus, and two quiches: ham with shaved zucchini, and broccoli and cheddar cheese.


And a family trip to TCBY to celebrate The Country's Best Man!


Marcos got A JOB!!! YAAAAAYYYYY!!!!


He will be working in Raleigh at an up-and-coming company that does computer programming, and he'll be making websites. It's an awesome fit. They wanted him to start tomorrow, but had to postpone until Monday because they currently don't have a computer for him. What a super star! What a blessing!