500 words, less sugar and dancing with more little people

A new year hours away. It is a special day for me as it was 12 years ago I met my love and my antidote for all ills in the world. That's a fairly monumental occurrence. It surely doesn't happen every day. It is worth remembrance and worth a lingering kiss at midnight, much preferred if it accompanies a night of wild, carefree soul-stirring dance. Annually I attempt a hearty effort at locking in a babysitter and heading out the door in heels and a skirt suitable for spinning but boo on the real world it is becoming increasingly challenging to get away with paying a babysitter $15 an evening for five darlings--no matter how cherubic they are. A few dances we crashed were LDS singles dances. Once I even got permission. As an aside, why in heaven's name does the Mormon community cease to hold dances regularly for married folk. Now that it is legal and encouraged to ogle and adore your match you are expected to do it in the privacy of your own home. Well, maybe this woman likes to show her man off. Did you ever think of that? I get high as a kite twirling and getting a gently small of my back pull in for an exchange of love. Then you put on a rock and roll song, oh brother, it's over, something primal happens to this non-rated R watching Mormon lady. With each progressive guitar riff I lose the equivalent of another limb with my erratic movements while simultaneously filling up a reservoir inside. I leave the dance floor with a measure of patience, a lessened desire for finding joy in negativity and such a vigor for life. Day to day living fairly proper and conservative (who wishes she were a bra-burning hippy)-a girl needs to let loose sometimes. That, my friends is how I do it. Unabashedly.
Tonight I am listening to a horrible assortment of "classic tunes." This one is "I'm not the kind girl who gives up just like that..." while the blond minions run back and forth in scarves and Mr Potato Head pieces in their ears and mouths. Wew, one has owl slippers and a butterfly wing charading as a fan. Yes, yes, we know how to breed 'em. But perhaps there is a lesson to learn in this morocca enhanced elevator melody. Perhaps this girl outta go find her man and blast some real tunes and make her own dance! This discovery unveiled through a little writing is precisely the reason I've chosen to write this year for self improvement. The resolution is 500 words a day. Also less sugar. Don't get me started...ok, ok, you didn't but I started myself and I am gonna finish. That's what this year is all about. Finishing what I have started, folks. I have got a generous heap of talents bestowed upon me by the Almighty. Thus far, I am falling miserably short of my potential. Not in the mindset of self-loathing that was yesterday. "Today is 2012, keeping it all on shelve. " Didn't quite work as I hoped, err, a friend of mine balls up her goals into an achievable type mantra. Stole the idea. Anyway, what I mean is all these talents finding deep recesses of my being, settling in their molding and dusty crevasses I am putting them on the daily shelf where they are out in the open, ready or me to develop them a little at a time. There are a million things I could outline but we all know how easy it is to fizzle and wizzle with too lofty of aspirations. Keeping it simple. On my mind's back burner I know the other things I want to improve but those pearls shall be for the quiet of my heart.
I am approaching this year with ambition, hope and a feeling of steadiness. This week I have been working on a painting, it's coming along nicely. Hoping to grow my dance/art studio. Praying to be strong enough to eat less sugar this year. I can't do this one alone but I know doing it is not only for me but for the health of my whole family. Thankful to a soul sister who invited me to write each day along with her. Hoping the other things like a gentler temperment and kinder delivery will somehow be discovered along the way as I put emphasis on my self rather than the beloved others in my life.

Moses is 7 today!

Shiny, downy hair curls around his angled chin.

Distinct lips frown and smile to the extreme.

He's a guy curious about nature, about how things work, why they work, how things were made. He wonders how we know what color dinosaurs skin was, what the sun is made of.

His hypothesis as a toddler, "Glass, plastic and batteries."

He sticks up for his little sister when the older one tells her she has no fashion sense. He says it's not true and it doesn't matter. It's not important.

Fast like The Flash, he's got true grit.

His buddies are Monk the Monkey, Penguin and Phineas the baby brother. He feels a lot. the weight of the world, anger, stress, unfairness, meanness, irritation. He likes none of it. Crumbles when it is near. Champion of justice, love, brotherly kindness. Anti-Satan.

Free as a field of grass, wholesome as wheat. He's there when you need a hug.

He reminds me to keep wondering, loving, trying.

Happy Birthday my big seven year old, Moses.

I love you.

McCubbins beach

"Alaska has long been a magnet for dreamers and misfits, people who think the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier will patch all the holes in their lives. The bush is an unforgiving place, however, that cares nothing for hope or longing."-Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild
I know what this place is about. My memory tendrils grip the silt sand and gravel like the Kenai bluff by the McCubbins, year by year the rocks slip, the sand swallows itself and peels itself into the sand and sea below. A plot of land erasing the acres to convince its inhabitants it never existed. Yet I can never forget the scoop and swell feeling of swinging back and forth over that bluff on a home shop welded swingset made by "Uncle Ken", the one who swore and told slightly off color jokes through his missing teeth. Washed and purified, the crisp summer coolness and powder of sunshine warms my legs beneath my cut off jeans. The swing arcs as a gateway-Me on the back of Dave Rindlisbacker's motorcycle, sand softer than pearls, set nets and the rotten stench of a distant whale carcass, Dave Carlson's beach mazes that I always cheated to get out of, the windy sound of "My Favorite Things" woven through my friends voices, roasted hot dogs with friends and crushes, downstream-sessions of dip-netting, cloudy waves that pummel me down, sandcastles with Clinton with noble feathers, turtle domes, inedible sweet peas. Ebbs and flows, my heart races and slows. One hundred steps down the bluff. How many have stepped this course before? A mental painting effervescent, invigorating, reminiscent of youth and freedom. Here now, wanting my children to sketch similar patterns . Creating a canvas from which lines of development flourish. But this fierceness that Chris McCandless uncovered holds me back. Winter after winter after winter of quartz ice, crystalline sucks the idealism from my soul, scraping ice off the window breathing air that shouldn't be breathed fills me with anger. Layers of wool socks, ski-suit and scarves form an overcoat of resistance making it far too easy to stay isolated.