Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Wealth

So much has happened since I last posted here.  I'm a pretty private person so I don't like to air my junk, but some things I've been up to in the last 4 years:

I bought an old dual-cassette player and I've been listening to some old tapes that have allowed me to re-live and re-do some troublesome years of my life.  I have been playing music alone and with friends, I've been raising my babies.  I got a job, sold a house, bought another, played Dream Police on a Telecaster, painted a giant mandala on my dining room floor, took a sex-ed teacher-training course, bought marijuana stock, lost some ego, gained some weight, forgave myself, forgave the universe, gained knowledge, lost friends, gained friends, lost Bowie and subsequently found Bowie, started a business, struggled, laughed, and found a certain peace and liberating humility I've never had before.   Life is rich. 




Saturday, August 23, 2014

I posted some songs on my Soundcloud account www.soundcloud.com/catwix
It's all the same old stuff, a few live songs.  Fun to listen to some of it.  I miss playing music.  A lot.  It's just really nice to collaborate with other musicians and become a band that is something bigger than the sum of all parts.  I miss it.   I'll have it again someday.

My kids are growing up so fast. Abigail is 6.5 and in 1st grade, Chu is 4, and Edie is 2.   They are all healthy and happy and beautiful. I am blessed beyond anything I could have ever imagined.  We moved to the suburbs last year and are still trying to unpack and figure out our new environment.  Hubby & I haven't slept a full night's sleep in 7 years so we're kind of living in a weird zombie dream-like state.  Taking lots of pictures so we can document it all in case my memory fails me.












Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Universe Timing

I was texting with a dear friend last night, for whom I had ordered flowers to be sent more than a week earlier, but due to circumstances beyond my control, she didn't receive them until yesterday.  I was upset about the whole thing, because there was plenty of miscommunication with the flower shop owner and the credit card company, and I was irritated.  We finally cleared it up, and the flowers were finally delivered yesterday.

Turns out the timing was perfect. She was having a rough day and the flowers (which had been intended for a different rough day) cheered her up.  It was good.

It made me realize how the universe has its own agenda and all the fighting in the world to make things go on my schedule is not going to do me much good.  Basically I need to chill.

Time has its own mind
Mindfully
mind the time.
All will be
as it should.
It will happen
when it's time.

Sunday, November 04, 2012

Family

We had our 3rd child, Edie Elizabeth, at home in July.  I have been a bit busy since then, so it's taken me a while to finally post here.  She is beautiful, and the other kids love her. As far as I can tell, our family is complete.  

 Birth Day Photo by our Doula Bess Schaefer


Edie at 3 months old!! 

Tuesday, October 09, 2012

Hello Grandad

 *This is an old myspace (does anyone remember myspace?) blog post from February 28, 2008 that I wanted to re-post on this blog because I was just thinking about my dear old Grandad, who passed in February 2007*

 I visited my Grandma today. My Grandad passed away a year ago the 18th.  He was the love of my life until Ivan came along, and more recently, Abigail.
I left my Grandma's house feeling overwhelmed.

My brothers & I grew up there. After Grandad had retired from the DSCC, he did a bunch of impressive home projects. He built a gorgeous 2-tiered back patio, almost the full length of the house.  He converted the basement to a sweet hang-out spot with billiards, ping-pong, darts, a bar, a tv room, and a bedroom with a 3/4 bath & kitchenette. My brothers & I had our friends over there all the time. Everyone would dip their hands into the cookie jar, and from time to time, Grandma would bitch about "feeding the whole damn neighborhood," although I think she secretly enjoyed it.  As we grew up and went to college, the basement became more of a holiday place, where we would all go to play pool after eating turkey.  I don't really remember the last time we actually played pool down there, but there was a last time.

Today my Grandma and I were talking about all the stuff in the basement and garage. Tools, building materials, all kinds of stuff.  SHe wants us all to come over & take what we want. I am sure this is a common ritual in families, it's just weird now that it is actually happening to us.

Grandma & I decided to go to the basement together to have a look.  It really struck me to find, that in my Grandad's twilight years, he had taken apart everything that he built.  Seriously, everything was disassembled and rearranged- for no reason- except maybe to give him something to do.  The game room was nothing but a storage room, the pool table was hoisted up on wheels and had become just a table, with all kinds of tools and hardware stored on it.  The bathroom light switch had been removed, as well as the medicine cabinet- for no reason.  The antique grandmother clock had been completely disassembled- the casing was hanging up, empty, but then I found its pendulum hanging on another wall, and the weights hanging on a nail a few feet away.  He removed an entire wall that had stood between the game room and his work space, and he gathered like items and put them on shelves.  I opened a drawer & found a box full of old batteries.  Grandma said that at one point, she caught him taking up some of the floorboards of the back patio. She said "Oh, no you don't..." and made him stop.

Why did he feel compelled to disassemble what was once such a place full of happy memories?  Grandma said that in the end he would spend all day down there & just come up for lunch and dinner.  Then he would spend the evening watching tv with her and then they'd go to bed.  We knew what he was doing in the basement, but I guess we never really thought anything of it. We just figured he was working on some other big handyman project & he would eventually clean it back up.

I thought that until today.  Ivan said that it might have been a side effect of some of the medications- that the tendency to disassemble things is a strange side effect of crystal meth.  Maybe his medicines were interacting with each other and this was a side effect.

He was definitely losing his mind. He was beginning to have hallucinations, like he would wake up in the middle of the night and look out the front window and see people dancing in the yard across the street. I witnessed him picking at his clothes and removing little tiny imaginary bugs and throwing them on the floor.  Once he asked me if Ivan was sitting across from him, and Ivan wasn't even there that day.  I could tell he was a little embarrassed when he realized it was his imagination.  He wasn't always like this.

Grandad liked Ivan.  I think he saw himself in him and approved of him.   He walked me down the aisle at our wedding.  As I said, he was the love of my life.  He was a funny man.  Jolly, happy, witty, smart, politically interested, a veteran of the 2nd World & Korean wars.  He was a humble great man, proud of his family.

Grandad died after falling backwards when he reached the top of the basement stairs after a normal day of disassembling. He went quickly -within 12 hours- so we are thankful that he didn't suffer.  Funny-I found out 2 weeks later that I was pregnant.

The last time I saw him was at my mom's a week earlier.  She made a special dinner for my Grandparents and me and just wanted to get them out of the house for something different to do. He was in good spirits, lucid, and seemed to be feeling well. I am so thankful to have that memory.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My Grandma has had a rough year. She still cries a little almost every day, and she talks to him.  She's lonely and that makes me sad.  But she is strong and sharp as a tack, and still goes to the gym 3 days a week to walk around the track & do the machines without the weights.  She has a laugh with the few friends she has there and then goes home to an empty house.  She can still drive, thankfully, but she's afraid they'll take her license away when she turns 89 this April & goes in to get it renewed.  She has her 1 mile radius that she drives- Kohl's, the library, the Post office, Kroger, Carfagna's, the "spa" (gym), and her doctors.  I hope they don't take her license.

Funny- the thing that keeps her going is a doorbell that Grandad installed a few years ago.  It seems to have a short in it or something and goes off several times a day.  She is convinced that it is Grandad, saying hello.  It didn't start doing it until we got back from Washington DC after taking Grandad's ashes to Arlington National Cemetery for a beautiful 21-gun salute ceremony in June.  My cousin thought the doorbell might be picking up a signal from someone's garage door opener in the vicinity, but I think for Grandma's sake, nobody wants to know if that's true.  She even took it down & took it to Home Depot to have someone look at it & they said there was nothing wrong with it.   It's funny, though, it seems to go off at the darnedest times.  It always goes off when someone visits, as if he's saying hi.  Today, it didn't go off right away & Grandma took note of it. "Your Grandad hasn't called yet to say hello to you.  I wonder why?"  After a while, Abigail woke up from her car-induced slumber, and after I took her out of her car seat & gave her to Grandma to hold her, the dorbell rang.  Grandad didn't want to wake the baby, so he waited to say hello.

Hello Grandad.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

39 weeks

I am sitting on my birth ball, watching my 2-year-old son play with his chicken nuggets while I eat my chocolate chip pancakes. I've given up on timing contractions for the time being- I couldn't concentrate on starts & finishes, and all in all, they aren't really proving to be regular anyway.  Planning a home birth, my biggest concern is that I will be in labor and my kids, particularly Chu, will wake up in the middle of the night & want to sleep in my armpit.  With him, no other armpit will do. Abs is pretty good about finding her way to the toddler bed in our room & not waking anyone.  But Chu needs skin-to-skin contact when he comes into mommy & daddy's room.  It's sweet, really, but if I'm not in there because I'm birthing a baby, he's gonna flip a lid.

Anyhoo, I'm very close to having this baby, and I've been having periods of interesting contractions and then nothing.  So I am trying to be careful not to cry wolf with any of it.  But I also want to  be careful not to have a 2.5 hour labor like I had with Chu, I'd like to give my attendants enough time to get to me.  It's a beautifully frustrating balance of being in tune with my baby, my body, the time of day & the schedules of my husband & my children, and the universe.  Tall order!

Here are a couple shots from a photoshoot I did with the lovely & talented Kim Sailor with Sweet Meadow Photography last week.






Sunday, May 20, 2012

31 weeks

It's going to get hot from here...  Abs is out of school and I am scrambling to come up with ideas to keep the kids occupied during the day.  I have a feeling there will be lots of playdates in the shade.  I have a lot of really groovy mom friends around town so I have plenty of options. It's just a matter of getting us out the door.

I just attended the Eco Chic Craftacular this afternoon and went to visit my friends Karen Buoncristiano & Nick Singer from Crafty by Nature and picked me up some soap.  Then I went to see my friend Tera play her Ginger Lees gig and got pulled up on stage to sing with her.  Since I had the kids with me, they got on stage with me.  It was fun since I don't really get much of a chance to play many shows these days!

Anyhoo, just checking in. Hope you have a great summer.
Love,
Catwix  XOXO