The same, but different..

Dear Heather,

I always love hearing peoples stories about mom because they are so very different from mine. Same, but different. I try to keep that in mind on December 7th.

I've gone through some different rituals in honor of her death, some good, some bad. If you don't want to focus on the sadness, then don't. Do something in her honor that isn't sad and adds to the ways you are like or unlike her because even in the ways we are unlike her, we are more like her than we ever could be.

I used to be sad and depressed throughout the entire December season. Chirstmas was a reminder of the presents bought, wrapped, marked with her handwritten tags, and opened without her. The worse Christmas... EVER. I isolated myself this is the period of time where Christmas' involved you pulling my hungover self from bed to join the family from everyone and I realized many years later it was unproducive and an unhealthy way to mourn.

So, I tried to rush through December 7th, wearing a piece of her jewelry, mourning in secrecy, hoping no one would mention the date and call me out on it. This was the time it frustrated me the most that everyone mourned her on the very day I wanted to hurry up and get through. I couldn't understand why it seemed they were still on the first method of mourning - depressed and sad - because I had moved past that. But then, if the day went by and no one remembered, I found myself sobbing in bed because I convinced myself everyone had forgotten. The seesaw of this ritual was hard to handle.

So now, I'm embracing the day. It is my day to celebrate her. A day to do something she would like to do or something that makes me feel better - even if that's skipping the gym to go home and knit. That's what it ended up being this year ;).

December 7th is really no more of a reminder that she is gone than any other day of the year because I think of her often - anytime someone mentions going shopping with their mom, or talking on the phone, or hanging out, or going to dinner, all the day-to-day activities that people take for granted as I get older this is becoming a daily occurance. I've never had that type of relationship with anyone. My life doesn't revolve around her death or the particular day she died, but does very much revolve around her absence - it affects every facet of my life - friendships, social situations, relationships, holidays, financial decisions, professionsal situations, my family interactions, all of it. Yes, it is sad, tragic, horrible, unbearable at times, but I wouldn't be who I am today if things aren't as they are now. I am very lucky to have you and other fantastic people in my life who see beyond the neurotic behavior as I navigate through life and love me anyway. I just looked up neurotic to make sure it meant what I thought it meant...it does...and thinking through all the events of my life, I could've totally been diagnosed with neurosis in my younger days!

We all mourn her because we loved her. I find it to be beautiful - that all these years later, people who's lives have continued were so touched by her essence, they stop and are saddened by her absence. The stories of the ways she touched other people's lives read like a 'Chicken Soup for the Soul' book. I think everyone who has one of those 'Chicken Soup' stories is feeling the same as we are - happy to have had the opportunity to bask.

I love you.

-Em

Mama

Dear Emily,
Yesterday was the 15 year anniversary of the death of our mom. Honestly, every December 7th, I just try to hustle my way through the day, so that I can get to the 8th. Not because I don’t mourn for my mother, but because EVERYONE who knew her mourns for her on this day and I just don’t want to focus on the sadness. I want to focus on her vibrant, life loving existence, and the little time I got to bask in it. This morning, thinking about it all, I found myself stuck on the word “Mama”. I tossed the word around in my head for a few minutes, and even said it out loud a few times. It sounded…strange - almost a lost word. Like something from a dead language that you only say a few times a year, “carpe diem”. I don’t say it enough anymore for it to roll of my tongue.

Mama was her name. And it was the essence of what she was once my sisters and I came along. I don’t mean this to say that she was primarily a mother. In fact, I mean the opposite. She was primarily herself – motivated, loving, caring, strong, quick to stand up for the weak, quick to question the unquestionable. She was incredibly open to others’ opinions, but not afraid to express her own. And those parts of her, those true and rare facets of her personality were what made her Mama. Her life did, and yet didn’t, revolve around her four girls. And now that she’s gone, my life does, yet doesn’t, revolve around her death.

I don’t wake up every morning thinking about her. But I often go to sleep with something she said or did on my mind. I seek out the ways I am like her, and sometimes hide the ways I’m not - ashamed that I may not be living up to the way Mama did it. Those tenuous threads of sameness hold me in place. They tie me to a part of my family that lives too far away to be knotted in securely. They serve as reminders of what she was, and how much I’ve been touched by attributes she passed to me and the ideals she taught.

Cold weather cooking

Dear Heather,

Holy crap it's cold outside! 23 degrees on my way to work this morning!

Last night, I wanted to make something warm and gooey for dinner. We watch the news during lunch here at work and Mr Food comes on at the very end of the news show we watch. He had a Lentil bean soup that wasn't all that great. But I figured I could make it great!

Here's what I did:

2 TBS garlic
1 chopped onion

Sauteed for about two minutes in 2 TBS olive oil.

Add 8.5 cups of water, 4 chicken bullion cubes, two medium sized potatoes cubed, finely chopped celery, about a cup (or more if you want it meaty) of whatever meat you want (I used leftover ham), and 12 oz of Lentil beans. Bring to boil on medium heat. Add three or four chopped carrots. Reduce heat to low, add one or two bay leaves, cover and simmer for 40-45 mins. Salt and pepper to taste.

It was amazing! Perfect for this chilly weather.

Love you,
Em

Crafting & Thrifting

Dear Em,

I like those lamps a lot. I've also been perusing the lamp section at Goodwill lately. I don't really NEED a lamp. But I love them. A lot. Anyway, most of them are ugly. The old, charming ones exist, but thus far I haven't been willing to spend them time to fix them up, but I'm getting closer to doing it anyway - I just need a reason to buy a lamp! Lamp guts are easy to put in, and with the amazing spray paints that exist now, its just a 30 minute project from ugly to awesome and one of a kind.

Also, I'm almost ashamed to admit I like stuff like this:

There are better pictures of owls done like this, but this is the only picture that showed the before and after that I could find quickly. I'm kind of interested in maybe putting a tiny little lamp

EDIT: Omg! I thought blogspot had eaten my post but here it is! And I was so frustrated that I was going to write a mini post about this cool art piece/calendar from London...

Its really cool and comes from here: http://www.oscar-diaz.net/?p=1

the end

Projects

Dear Sister,

YAY for posting!!! See, it wasn't that hard at all. And yes, you are becoming our father - hording stuff like that! ;)


Don't feel bad though cause after looking for lamps for the house, I have discovered why mom was making her own lamps - even the super cheapy lamps from Wal-Mart are freaking expensive and you get crap for what you're paying. So here's my idea:

I have a large green wine bottle of horrible red wine that has this project written all over it!

Amazon.com has these little kit thingys for super cheap! Like so:

A lot of two for $10 and some change.

And I can get a drum lamp shade from Walmart for about 15 bucks like this:

I'm sure I can pick up some cheap burlap or use the muslin I have in my fabric stash and I already have glue (obviously, what Knepp doesn't have glue in their house?!).

Grand total for this little project:

$20 bucks.

Try to find a cool lamp for that price. Impossible!

Upcycling - Our parents' powers combined!

Dear Emily,

So, here it is - the long anticipated blog post from Heather. I hope it lives up to your high expectations ;).

I have gotten deeper and deeper into the idea of upcycling. I think its kind of a stupid, cheesy term but the idea is sound for me. Recycling is fine, but if you can skip the step of processing packages that have been processed so that you can then reprocess them into a new package it seems that is to be desired. I've been rethinking the whole "reduce, reuse, recycle" slogan and how we as a society have sort of stopped worrying about the reduce/reuse part.

So, I'm making mini greenhouses out of milk cartons for winter sowing like this:

And, I've been admiring pictures of repurposed things like sweaters into pillows, booze bottles into cups and plates (you use something called "slumping" in a kiln to make them into plates - and I just happen to have a kiln in my garage at the moment), and other various items.

What I'm sort of struggling with is finding USEFUL and not ugly, trashy uses for, well, trash. My most common trash is paper (which I'm going to start shredding and using in my compost), cans from canned food (I still don't know what to do with these - I am NOT making a bunch of pencil holders), plastic bottles/containers like those in the pic above, and glass. I'm going to start saving the glass jars that I can use for canning, like some spaghetti sauce jars. There are so many cool projects for wine & alcohol bottles, that I'm going to start saving those, too. Plus, if my dear sister gets around to making wine, she'll have a slew of bottles from me!

And that brings me around to the title of the post. I'm starting to feel like a combination of our mom and dad. Hoarding things that most people throw away was definitely a dad thing. "I'll find a use for that dead blower dryer someday". And crafting and repurposing is definitely a mom thing (i.e. sweater buttons made out of cut pieces of antler). It makes me feel proud, crazy and creative all at the same time. Weird, huh?