Yes. No. Maybe. (Repeat)

My dear friend, Nirmal, says that sometimes, like it or not, Phoenix claims you.  Then, no matter how hard you try to escape, you are somehow bound to Phoenix and it never quite works out to leave.  I wonder if this is our situation.

I've been wanting to leave Phoenix essentially since we got here, almost eight years ago.  Why?  Because it is insanely hot and ridiculously dry and I think I'm allergic to it.  It doesn't have any personality.  It feels empty and soul-less to me. We are confined to indoors here and are starved for nature.  It does not feel like a place that humans should live. Yet, here we are.

So what keeps us here? The two things Phoenix has going for it are 1)People that are fantastic and 2)Familiar things - I know where to buy groceries and send my kids to school.  As much as I long for a shift in life, I like roots.  I attach to familiarity.  I say I like change - but truthfully, I only like it in small, controllable doses.  Otherwise it is just chaos.

And then there is this other thing: For years now, if someone asked me what I would do if I could pursue any   "job," I would say midwifery and writing.  Those were my two things.  So, writing - I'm working on that one.  Midwifery - for years, I have taken steps towards it and then quickly stepped away.  But right now, I have pretty much the ideal opportunity for exploring midwifery.  The previously mentioned dear friend, Nirmal, just got her midwifery license and offered me the paid position of being her midwife assistant.  That means I'd get to learn midwifery in a paid position (which is unheard of, really)  and I'd get to work with one of my favorite people on the planet.  And she has bent over backwards to offer me ways to make it doable.  Seriously, if I could have outlined the very best and most wonderful way I could imagine to start learning and experiencing midwifery, this situation would be it - plus some other great stuff I wouldn't have even thought to ask for.  And that's in Phoenix.

Even with the amazing perfection of that job opportunity, I have said no repeatedly (only to then come back and say, "Well, maybeeee.  I reeeeeally want to.  But I can't. Oh, maybe I can.  No...yes...no...maybe...")  Nirmal has been tolerant and understanding of all this back and forth (which I've actually be doing for months.)  I am driving myself crazy - I don't know how those around me are handling it so well.

There are a whole bunch of things that keep me going back and forth on the midwifery issue - most are emotional and specific to my own crazy head.  It is funny when you ask for something and then freak out when you get it, isn't it?   It really is a hard decision though.  In addition to my own emotions and fear about it, it impacts my family hugely.  And doing it would further root us to Phoenix.

Last month we made another trip to Seattle and Good God, I think Seattle is trying to seduce us into living there.  Every single day we've spent there has been gorgeous.  We have never once seen it rain.  It is all sun and breeze and green, lush beauty overflowing all over the place.  I know that weather is not typical of that area but it is all I have experienced.  And since we got home, I have searched the rental listing every day, trying to find a house in Seattle.  No luck.  Rent houses are garbage.  And expensive.

I've looked in other areas too: Austin, Eugene, Portland, NorCal.  I've even, in desperation, asked the people of Facebook to tell me where they think I should live!  (There were lots of great suggestions, which just made me want to live all over the place and/or learn teleportation.)

Ultimately, I believe decisions should be felt with the heart.  But my heart wants so many things - and they don't all fit in the same place. So, for now, we continue to sit in the hot hot heat of Phoenix, un-moving - yet also not quite embracing the opportunity that is here.

Temp today

Marvelous Mundane Moments

Every time I take Suky to her school, when I am unbuckling her from her car seat, she announces, "I flyed the dragon! It was really really bumpy!  It was really really fun!"  Who knew a Toyota Corolla could be such a wild, dragon ride?

Often at night, we go through several rounds of saying goodnight.  Mangala and Satvinder have beds in Satvinder's room; Suky and I share a bed in the other room. Once we are all in our places, the good night wishes evolve into calling to each other from our different rooms, Walton's style.  Suky would go on all night if we let her.  She mostly shouts to Satvinder, "Goodnight, Sister!" and then, no matter what day it is, follows it up with, "Have a good weekend!"

Satvinder likes to observe things at school and then write down her observations. This was the page she started for today's study...

(If hard to read, it says "Studies on Boys lab")

One of My Favorite Things

Story by Satvinder

Remove from your mind your previous ideas of what a javelina is and read this story that Satvinder wrote:

The day the havalina came into my yard was the weirdest day ever.  It had red hair, blue eyes, and basically looked like a hippopotamus.  It smelled like mustard because they usually live in mustard caves.  It sounds like a cocateau.   Then the S.O.M.C.C. (a.k.a Society of Magical Creatures Control) came.  They are vicious creatures.  You could call them evil.  Havalina is a girl. Havalino is a boy.  


I stayed where I was, in my room, looking out the window, watching the S.O.M.C.C. conquer the havalina (girl.)  The havalina ran back and forth with the S.O.M.C.C. team running after it.  They finally caught her and I immediately emailed all my friends.  All of them were exactly the same - exactly like this one.

Conversations with an Eight Year Old

Satvinder: Why does Suky get sooooo excited about nothing?
Me: Because it's not nothing.
Satvinder: What's not nothing?
Me: Nothing is nothing.
Satvinder: Argh!!

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Satvinder: Can somebody cut my food for me?
Mangala: I nominate Satvinder.
Me: I suggest Satvinder's hands.
Satvinder: I mean somebody that is not me or part of my body.
Me: When you are 35 and you go on your first date, are you going to bring me with you to cut your food?
Satvinder: No.  I'll have an ice cream soda.
Me: You'll just drink your meals?
Satvinder: NO!  Don't you even know what an ice cream soda is?!
Me: Is it what you just drank?  An I-Scream-Soda?  To make you all screamy?
Satvinder: Argh!!!

She doesn't always appreciate our attempts at humor so much.

Conversations with a Two Year Old

Sukhjot makes me laugh so much.  The following conversations are just from this morning:

Suky: Where's Pita?
Me: He's doing Banis in the other room.
Suky: Bunnies?!  Pink bunny?
Me: Banis.  He's saying prayers, words.
Suky: Blue bunny? The bunny runned away?
Me: Do you hear his voice?  Do you hear the words and sounds he is making? He is saying Banis, prayers.
Suky, running off: See bunny!  Say hi!

(She was a little disappointed when she found Mangala and he was just sitting there, reading from a little book. And there were NO BUNNIES ANYWHERE.)

-----------

While I was washing dishes this morning, I heard Suky say, "It's good!" and turned to find that in the brief moments I had not been looking at her, she had reached into the garbage and pulled out the remains of Satvinder's pizza from yesterday's lunch. Seriously, I had just been looking at the child and she was not doing anything objectionable like digging old food out of the garbage.  She has very stealthy garbage skills (both for putting things in the garbage that we don't want to throw out - and now, as I learned today, taking things out of the garbage.)

I said, "Oh, no!  Honey, you can't eat food out of the garbage.  It is not fresh anymore, not good.  If you eat it, it might give you a tummy ache."

She immediately started dancing around excitedly.  Then I realized she had misunderstood the word "ache" as she said, "Yes!  Yes!  I want to eat cake!"

(Disappointment #2: no cake in the house, darn it.  But she loves us anyway.)

Whew.

Today I finished the third draft of my book.  I wanted to get it done before June so that feels good.  However, I feel a little traumatized from writing this revision -haha.  It was hard!  It was long, painful, and exhausting -  and took me places in my head that I wasn't expecting to go.  But I did it.

Anne Lamott, who writes some of my favorite advice about writing, says that pretty much everybody writes a first draft that sucks. Read this little piece from her book, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing & Life: Shitty First Drafts.  I think she is hilarious and the permission to write crap has been very liberating for me.  In fact, it might be the main reason I have been able to make myself write through the challenge of knowing it sucks.  (That, and the persistent, nagging story that won't leave me alone until I write it.  Gosh!  So insistent!)

Anyways, I wrote a terrible first draft and a, hopefully, slightly less terrible second draft.  And now here's this third draft, which I think is probably less sucky than the first two.  And perhaps, one day, I will have created something that doesn't suck.

For now though, third draft is done.   Onward to #4.