This was sent to me by my Other Mother (mom-in-law)
I'm still laughing, and hope you enjoy this Food as well.
Q. Why did God make mothers?
1. She's the only one who knows where the scotch tape is.
2. Mostly to clean the house.
3. To help us out of there when we were getting born.
Q. How did God make mothers?
1. He used dirt, just like for the rest of us.
2. Magic plus super powers and a lot of stirring.
3. God made my Mom just the same like he made me. He just used bigger parts.
Q. What ingredients are mothers made of?
1. God makes mothers out of clouds and angel hair and everything nice in the world and one dab of mean.
2. They had to get their start from men's bones. Then they mostly us string, I think.
Q. Why did God give you your mother and not some other mom?
1. We're related.
2. God knew she likes me a lot more than other people's moms like me.
Q.What kind of little girl was your mom?
1. My mom has always been my mom and none of that other stuff.
2. I don't know because I wasn't there, but my guess would be pretty bossy.
3. They say she used to be nice.
Q. What did mom need to know about dad before she married him?
1. His last name.
2. She had to know his background. Like is he a crook? Does he get drunk on beer?
3. Does he make at least $800. a year? Did he say NO to drugs and YES to chores?
Q. Why did your mom marry your dad?
1. My dad makes the best spaghetti in the world. And my mom eats a lot.
2. She got too old to do anything else with him.
3. My grandma says that Mom didn't have her thinking cap on.
Q. Who's the boss at your house?
1. Mom doesn't want to be the boss, but she has to because dad's such a goof ball.
2. Mom. You can tell by room inspection. She sees the stuff under the bed.
3. I guess Mom is, but only because she has a lot more to do than dad.
Q. What's the difference between moms & dads?
1. Moms work at work and work at home and dads just go to work at work.
2. Moms know how to talk to teachers without scaring them.
3. Dads are taller and stronger, but moms have all the real power 'cause that's who you got to ask if you want to sleep over at your friend's.
4. Moms have magic, they make you feel better without medicine.
Q. What does your mom do in her spare time?
1. Mothers don't do spare time.
2. To hear her tell it, she pays bills all day long.
Q. What would it take to make your mom perfect?
1. On the inside she's already perfect. Outside, I think some kind of plastic surgery.
2. Diet. You know, her hair. I'd diet, maybe blue.
Q. If you could change one thing about your mom, what would it be?
1. She has this weird thing about me keeping my room clean. I'd get rid of that.
2. I'd make my mom smarter, Then she would know it was my sister who did it and not me.
3. I would like for her to get rid of thos invisible eyes on the back of her head.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Roadrunner's tiny mohawk and Tribute 2
I love the female people in my life more than the Gemini brain that spins on these shoulders of mine can put into words.
It is a beautiful thing.
I also love food, my children, and all things related to "pleasure" - which- for today - will stay in the arena of sister-friends, food, and my daughter.
For this beloved Food Lovolution Fortress being laid brick by brick (word by word), I ask this question -
How do I possibly move with ease and grace through everyday motherhood, work, and every meal I put in my mouth? Anyone? Anyone?
MY Answer - the females in my life move me through.
Today is a tribute to Food of the last 20 years in being seen through belly laughs and belly cries, and my college roommate Janice.
She commented on my last blog....and I just laughed reading it.
Here's the turn on story:
I began collaborating today with a delicious woman on what started as a " health workshop", and became a potential grief ritual for a house of people living amidst many big stories of old suffering and loss. Today I listened to the words of my teacher Sobonfu Some, on the importance of honoring our loss and everyday deaths, as women, together.
Today I finally broke down and called a "nurses' hotline" for a 2 year long roving pain that travels from the top of my head to the base of my spine, and culminated in a momentary flash of "am I dying?"
Today I was told by the "hotline" nurse that, 'no', I probably don't have a tumor or degenerative Lyme disease, but probably do want to get a x-ray, because it "sounds like" my "lifestyle choices" (old-fashioned-neck-cracking-chiropractic-visits-from-the-'90s + 15 years of African and ecstatic-spasomatic-dance) might have "compromised the integrity of my vertebral cartiledge."
Do you hear the humor amidst seriousness?
Today, my day ended with the re-membering of my friendship with Janice - a perfectly imperfect first-time-knitted scarf:
you love it, you wear it, it's lopsided, and too ventilated,
and it's oh so complete.
My friendship with Janice is a complete woven masterpiece of exquisite foibles and victories.
We became women together.
We had our hearts broken for the first-time by men, as women, together.
We competed silently with each other, together.
We won and lost big "games" in Life side by side, together.
And
we have become spouses and mothers apart, and then together.
Blogging about it almost seems trite,
and, at the same time
I am humbly aware of the privilege to do so,
and the importance of it.
I have no biological sister,
and my childhood was full of moving from place to place.
Janices' is a friendship that spans 20+ years chosen sisterhood.
She met me with huge permed hair, a perma-unitard of deep irredescent blue - which I wore religiously - because I did aerobics in this outfit.... religiously....
and she watched me fight hard, many times, to "get it right"....whatever "it" was at the time.
And, in between and underneath all our loss and gain and loss and gain of 20+ years,
runs a current of unbelievable Holy Sacred Sister Foolishness.
Today, I was double-whammied with this gift,
via her friendship
and of course
mothering my daughter.
Today I was reminded of
a few years ago when Janice was a new mom, working outside the home like crazy,
working to find her husband's "perfection" amidst new parenthood,
and trying to get pregnant again,
and her sister died. It sucked. It sucked bigtime. No words can describe how much it sucked.
I drove to her and we did a grief ritual.
The healing from the grieving was good good.
Yet, what I remember most was afterward.
I had selected uplifting music to "clear the space".
I had seleced a 70's R&B remix, complete with a groovy beat and happy happy lyrics. The moment I put it on had only been 15 minutes from closing the grief circle.
Out of the depths of our past Janice busted out her finest Foxy Brown- James Brown lovechild voice
and shouted
"I remember this song from your dance class. You were 8 month pregnant and wearing some psychedelic leotard.
You looked just like the Partridge Family bus!"
This is my Holy Fool Food which I cannot live without:
The sustenance of knowing that none of Life is ever too serious
to forget that laughter is the closest bedfellow of suffering.
Amidst her suffering she made me laugh.... so hard.
Janice has been a cornerstone of my re-membering this, as she fiercely commits to making the richness of the Soul accessible to everyone - through her work and how she lives her life.
That's just what she does.
After a day of serious woman business and serious mom business today, it was great to be reminded of this.
And then, it was topped off tonight, when my wisest butt-kicking Buddha-teacher told me she had brushed her teeth and was ready for her bedtime story.
As I slipped into my daughter's room quietly, she sat waiting in her Cindy Lou Who red footy pajamas, and Bread and Jam for Francis in her lap.
I had completed another full day of modern-mom juggling,
found out from the nurses' hotline that I wasn't going to die,
and my prize waited for me with big eyes, red fleece and a bedtime book.
So, what's this super-sensitive mom to do?
Cry.
And in return my daughter looked at me, rolled her eyes, giggled, and said
"Mama, not again. I'm going to make you laugh"
( I smiled through tears, and reminded her they were happy tears)
And she said
"You need to watch Bugs Bunny mama. It's so funny.
Road Runner has a tiny mohawk,
Yosemite Sam has cute tiny green underwear...."
(she smiles to me, and I smile back, bigger)
and she adds
"and I have a tiny butt." (she laughs loud)
"I don't know what to tell ya, but it's all pretty funny."
Today I bless the Holy Fool Food.
Another brick is laid.
It is a beautiful thing.
I also love food, my children, and all things related to "pleasure" - which- for today - will stay in the arena of sister-friends, food, and my daughter.
For this beloved Food Lovolution Fortress being laid brick by brick (word by word), I ask this question -
How do I possibly move with ease and grace through everyday motherhood, work, and every meal I put in my mouth? Anyone? Anyone?
MY Answer - the females in my life move me through.
Today is a tribute to Food of the last 20 years in being seen through belly laughs and belly cries, and my college roommate Janice.
She commented on my last blog....and I just laughed reading it.
Here's the turn on story:
I began collaborating today with a delicious woman on what started as a " health workshop", and became a potential grief ritual for a house of people living amidst many big stories of old suffering and loss. Today I listened to the words of my teacher Sobonfu Some, on the importance of honoring our loss and everyday deaths, as women, together.
Today I finally broke down and called a "nurses' hotline" for a 2 year long roving pain that travels from the top of my head to the base of my spine, and culminated in a momentary flash of "am I dying?"
Today I was told by the "hotline" nurse that, 'no', I probably don't have a tumor or degenerative Lyme disease, but probably do want to get a x-ray, because it "sounds like" my "lifestyle choices" (old-fashioned-neck-cracking-chiropractic-visits-from-the-'90s + 15 years of African and ecstatic-spasomatic-dance) might have "compromised the integrity of my vertebral cartiledge."
Do you hear the humor amidst seriousness?
Today, my day ended with the re-membering of my friendship with Janice - a perfectly imperfect first-time-knitted scarf:
you love it, you wear it, it's lopsided, and too ventilated,
and it's oh so complete.
My friendship with Janice is a complete woven masterpiece of exquisite foibles and victories.
We became women together.
We had our hearts broken for the first-time by men, as women, together.
We competed silently with each other, together.
We won and lost big "games" in Life side by side, together.
And
we have become spouses and mothers apart, and then together.
Blogging about it almost seems trite,
and, at the same time
I am humbly aware of the privilege to do so,
and the importance of it.
I have no biological sister,
and my childhood was full of moving from place to place.
Janices' is a friendship that spans 20+ years chosen sisterhood.
She met me with huge permed hair, a perma-unitard of deep irredescent blue - which I wore religiously - because I did aerobics in this outfit.... religiously....
and she watched me fight hard, many times, to "get it right"....whatever "it" was at the time.
And, in between and underneath all our loss and gain and loss and gain of 20+ years,
runs a current of unbelievable Holy Sacred Sister Foolishness.
Today, I was double-whammied with this gift,
via her friendship
and of course
mothering my daughter.
Today I was reminded of
a few years ago when Janice was a new mom, working outside the home like crazy,
working to find her husband's "perfection" amidst new parenthood,
and trying to get pregnant again,
and her sister died. It sucked. It sucked bigtime. No words can describe how much it sucked.
I drove to her and we did a grief ritual.
The healing from the grieving was good good.
Yet, what I remember most was afterward.
I had selected uplifting music to "clear the space".
I had seleced a 70's R&B remix, complete with a groovy beat and happy happy lyrics. The moment I put it on had only been 15 minutes from closing the grief circle.
Out of the depths of our past Janice busted out her finest Foxy Brown- James Brown lovechild voice
and shouted
"I remember this song from your dance class. You were 8 month pregnant and wearing some psychedelic leotard.
You looked just like the Partridge Family bus!"
This is my Holy Fool Food which I cannot live without:
The sustenance of knowing that none of Life is ever too serious
to forget that laughter is the closest bedfellow of suffering.
Amidst her suffering she made me laugh.... so hard.
Janice has been a cornerstone of my re-membering this, as she fiercely commits to making the richness of the Soul accessible to everyone - through her work and how she lives her life.
That's just what she does.
After a day of serious woman business and serious mom business today, it was great to be reminded of this.
And then, it was topped off tonight, when my wisest butt-kicking Buddha-teacher told me she had brushed her teeth and was ready for her bedtime story.
As I slipped into my daughter's room quietly, she sat waiting in her Cindy Lou Who red footy pajamas, and Bread and Jam for Francis in her lap.
I had completed another full day of modern-mom juggling,
found out from the nurses' hotline that I wasn't going to die,
and my prize waited for me with big eyes, red fleece and a bedtime book.
So, what's this super-sensitive mom to do?
Cry.
And in return my daughter looked at me, rolled her eyes, giggled, and said
"Mama, not again. I'm going to make you laugh"
( I smiled through tears, and reminded her they were happy tears)
And she said
"You need to watch Bugs Bunny mama. It's so funny.
Road Runner has a tiny mohawk,
Yosemite Sam has cute tiny green underwear...."
(she smiles to me, and I smile back, bigger)
and she adds
"and I have a tiny butt." (she laughs loud)
"I don't know what to tell ya, but it's all pretty funny."
Today I bless the Holy Fool Food.
Another brick is laid.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Magical Manna Mystery - Tribute 1
Brick by brick, we lay the foundation and walls of a Food Lovolution Fortress, with every reach inside ourselves, and every reach out to one another.
The root of the word "food" is "foda"; to tend, keep, pasture, to protect, to guard, to feed.
For awhile, I will dedicate each new blog as a tribute to 1 "midwife" or "doula" in my life, who helps feed this newborn blog-vision: the dynamic relationship that lives among all things that nourish us: what we put in our mouth to eat, how we "relate" to the food we put in our mouth, how we relate the food in our mouth to everything else that nourishes us, and if we let the whole Magical Manna Mystery turn us on, and light us up.
So, to each of you, one at a time, here goes.
She's the daughter that would have lasted 1 day in my childhood home, before learning to "shut up"
I, however, am the modern self-helped mother, who will twist myself into a pretzel to avoid telling my sassy, saucy, brassy, bratty daughter to "shut up", even when it would be the absolute MOST authentic self-loving thing I could do.
These occasions arise when the ensnarement of her long morning bedhead dreads, beckoning to be groomed, mix with my general mom-fatigue.
She meets the "torturous" grooming with coyote howls - 7:30am - directed toward the ceiling/our neighbor's floor: housing a woman writing her dissertation, who goes to sleep at about, oh, 3am.
How child protective services have not come to our door, I do not know.
Out of sheer revenge for the sleep deprivation experiment we have implemented in our upstairs neighbor's life, I wouldn't fault her for making the phone call.
Most times my son stands dumbfounded at the force of the "girl voice", so virulent so early in the morning.
My husband hides.
I, being the modern self-helped mother, in my head run through the chapter headings of every "raising children with self-esteem" book I'd read, tear them out (in my head) peruse them quickly (in my head), try out the bullet points (with my mouth), and viscerally yearn to yank my daughters hairs from their follicles.
The result?
My daughter knows I'm faking the 'chilled out mom' act, gets even angrier, and her screams escalate, vibrating eardrums and traumatizing the whole family's nervous system.
Darnit.
How is this a tribute you ask? And to who?
No, it's not a tribute to my daughters' lungs, nor my neighbor's extreme benevolence.
It is not a tribute to the beautiful Torok male inertia.
It is a tribute to my dear friend Jenny Proctor: mother of 3 happy, creative, very cool adults who not only still like being around her, but consider being with their mom a really fun AND enriching experience.
I want that when my kids are grown.
Thank God I met Jenny P when my daughter was young.
She has most certainly saved my family hefty mental-health bills.
So, the nourishment came when I felt frazzled, fraudulent, frail and completely fed up as a mom.
With tears and snot I call Jenny P: "I'm such a nutcase. I can't even comb my daughters' hair. I'm fantasizing cutting it off in her sleep, right after I eat a pint of ice cream"
Jenny P: (laughing) "Oh sweetie, I remember when my daughters were little.....".(she proceeds to tell a story that makes my house look like the Waltons.) "....and you know what? You get through it, and all you need to focus on is TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF. I remember another time......" (another story that makes me realize I'm not a real danger to my children) "....and you just have to focus on TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF"
Within minutes, the tears of self-absorbed, super-mom isolation are streams of pure delight, laughing hysterically at our shared "hysteria": just women striving with heart and soul to live in fullness.
Finally, a pause: a catching of the breath....
and Jenny P says, "Are you perfect? Noooo. Do you want to be perfect? Nooo."
And I get this nourishment thing on deeper level.
There can be no Pleasure or Satisfaction from our nourishment without Hunger.
And, to live without Hunger is too fail to thrive.
And, to fail to thrive is to deceive ourselves of the need to hold our own hand.
If I couldn't go out on one limb after another, trying to "do it myself" and then realize I couldn't, and then reach out to a friend with tears and vulnerability to say "I can't do it myself"....
if I couldn't do this over and over....
...AND
I couldn't do this over and over without my loved ones...
Then I wouldn't have the strength to feed myself, to feed my children, to wraps my she-bear arms around them.
The nourishment is the Striving and it is the Hunger.
The Pleasure is the Passion for gaining Satisfaction.
That day, I did not need to chew my anger down with food, and sooth my heartbreak of "imperfection" with creamy sweetness in a pint.
I laughed and loved another exquisite wise woman I have been blessed to know,
and I was fed.
The next day was a different story.
But the next day is for another day.
One more brick had been laid.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
What is Beloved Food?
What is Beloved Food?
Beloved Food is one woman's humble research into the dynamic relationship that lives among all things that nourish us: what we put in our mouth to eat, how we "relate" to the food we put in our mouth, how we relate the food in our mouth to everything else that nourishes us, and if we let the whole Magical Manna Mystery turn us on, and light us up.
Beloved Food is the words, songs, images, services, and efforts of our desire finding their messy entangled way into the exquisite order of how we relate to one another: how we receive and how we give.
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