It's October

Finally the season that gives us a reason to live in this desert.....nice and cool with 80F (26C) during the day, and probably 60F (15C) overnight.
I have been really really busy, mostly with work.  The kids have been home on fall break.  We live in a school district with year around school, so frequent breaks are common. 
Also my dad moved here from Nebraska, so he is with us for some time.  Lots of little changes to my normal routines.
Here are some pictures from a little outing we did a couple of weeks ago to Canyon Lake, east of town by the Superstition Mountains.

This week at a glance

This week has gone by very fast for me.  Last Saturday my husband had an art opening at the gallery in our own city, Vision Gallery.  On the same day, in the morning, I helped a friend with tending her booth at Art Unraveled.  My friend has the coolest supplies for mixed media artists.  Even the famous Michael DeMeng stopped by and got several doll heads from her.  Speaking of Michael DeMeng, I do belong to his Facebook page, Art Abandonment, and I really haven't abandoned anything in a while.  I think it's time to do that.
Yesterday, I went to the gym with my husband, and the 40 min workout felt really good.  I am sore now, but that's perfect.  It's a good reminder for me that I can now take care of my physical fitness, while the kids are at school in the morning.
And last, but not least, this coming Saturday I signed up for another workshop.  This time it's a book binding class.  I am getting well versed in many crafts.

And here are my favorite two photos of the week:
1. My daughter (her Highness) with her dad (my husband).
2. The sweetest boy I know (my son) and me.
 

Tooth fairy

A bit of a busy week, along with a visit from my dad.  On Sunday, we had a birthday party for my daughter who is now 5. And on Tuesday the tooth fairy visited my son.  A week of milestones, naturally, for a family of young kids.  This was our first-ever visit from the tooth fairy.  My son, who is 6, is already questioning her existence, because he didn't see her come by.  He asked if perhaps she may be a ghost.  And then went on to ask me what she does with all the teeth she collects.
Kids...they never fail to surprise me, delight me, catch me off guard.
 
And since the tooth fairy tradition is really not something I grew up with, it's new to me, as much as it's new to them, I used a match box for the tooth-money exchange to take place.

Redescovering myself

Since the kids started school on Monday, and they are now both in school full day, I have found myself alone for several hours before I start work myself.  This was something I was looking forward to for many years, and it's here now, and it's been great, but also a little bit uncomfortable.  I can hear myself thinking, I can hear myself breathing, I realize I exist and I can get to know myself again.
Today I even went to church.  I am not a religious type, but there is a Catholic church in my neighborhood, only a 5 min walk from the kids' school.  It has a little Chapel and it's open from dawn to dusk.  The quietness inside is what appealed to me.  Sure my house is quite now too, but there are many distractions (the darn computer being one). 
I sat in one of the pews, the dim light inside and the sound of the ceiling fan were comforting.  I sat and daydreamed for some 30 min.  Then I came home, made lunch, and ate quietly by myself.  I liked the feeling of being by myself, with nothing that needed an immediate attention.  And I felt guilty about it at the same time.

I worked on my Book of Tea for a little bit too. 


And was doodling in the white space of the monoprints I made the other day.



And it's now time to go to work.

Monsoons!

We've had several storms in the last couple of weeks, but somehow I am never at the place where the storm is.  That changed on Saturday, when I stepped out to go to the airport to pick up my husband.
There was a warm but eerie glow on the front patio when I opened the door.  I looked up and the sky was heavenly.

But there was something brewing in the back.  I turned around and my house was engulfed in dark heavy clouds.



It poured hard.  I barely could drive at 35mph on the freeway.  Lightning was everywhere.  Maggie counted every time she'd see a bolt light up the sky.  Then she fell asleep in the car.
We waited a little bit at the airport as there where multiple delays, but husband got home safely and that's all that matters.

Cheers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sometime when life gives you an opportunity that you are petty certain it won't come again, you gotta go for it.  Even if that means that you have to take the risk of getting stuck at an airport with two little kids (which I didn't luckly).
So this is what happened:
Few weeks ago I found out that a friend that I grew up with in Macedonia, that I've known since I was about 8 yrs old, is in Seattle.  He was there for work and was staying only for a few weeks.  Being on the same continent with someone you grew up with, it's not something that happens to me every day.  I knew I had to make it happen especially since I work for the airline that calls Seattle its hub (Alaska Air).

I was off this Friday (yesterday) and noticed that I needed one person to oversleep and miss their 620am flight to give me enough seats for me and my kids.  I took the chance, and I got on the flight.  The last 3 open seats.

Seeing someone from my childhood, was almost like going home.  And it was even better that I can introduce my kids to an old friend.  This was special to me to show my kids to someone I knew when I was a kid.  My friend took us to the beach (who knew Seattle was a beach destination) where we all had a great time playing in the water, running, playing hide and seek and having a picnic on the grass.

I must have exhausted them, because when I took them to get something to eat at a nearby mall, they fell asleep on the table before they got food.

I wished the day had more than 24hrs to better catch up with my friend.  I changed my flight from 7pm to 9pm which gave us time for a cold beer to wrap up the day.  It wasn't 'Skopsko pivo' (Skopsko beer), but we opened it with a bottle opener from Skopje.  Good enough!
Cheers!!!!

School time

On Monday both of my kids will start school.  This is the first time that they will both be in school all day.  It will be quite a change for me.  Every morning after I drop them off to school, I will have a few hours alone, before I have to go to work myself.  And then I won't see them until their bed time when I come home from work. 
Right now, I am not sure how I feel about all that.  Excited to have some time to myself, and yet sad,  to be away from them most of the day.  But they are growing up, and I am growing up along.  I am not a mom to babies anymore, but to school age children. 

Kids

There are many reasons why people have kids.  As I grow older, trying to raise my kids to the best of my ability, I am becoming more convinced that in turn they are my guide into adulthood as much as I am their guide into childhood.  They make me be a better person.  They are capable of giving the best words of wisdom, true, unfiltered, raw words that you can't always get from adults.  I appreciate them and I hope they stay like this for a long time.

Pausing for a moment

I am learning to be able to tell myself to take a break, and that it's ok to take a break.  In the last couple of weeks working a few extra hours along with the heat and taking care of the kids/house, has left me exhausted.  I felt sick last night, and decided that working overtime till midnight wasn't worth it.
This morning I slept in till a bit past 8am and I feel recharged.
I wanted to share a picture of a plant that I nursed and just recently replanted it in some soil.  Maggie and I found a little snip of a plant on the parking lot at the grocery store.  I had it in a cup of water for the longest time, and it finally grew some roots.  I planted it in a pot, and added a little statue of mother with a baby, that Helen, my mother-in-law, gave me a few years ago.  The kids broke the bottom stand.  I couldn't bear to throw it away, it has a sweet poem on the back.  I kept it and it was a perfect addition to my pot and the plant.

Crafting with kids

The school in my neighborhood where my kids go has a summer program that provides school kids with free breakfast and lunch for the entire summer break.  In between breakfast and lunch there are activities, crafts, games etc.  The last two summers I took the kids every once in a while,  but this time around I offered to teach some crafts.
Yesterday was my first day, and with Father's Day approaching the program already had it on their schedule to make cards.  I was helping them make envelopes.



With cell phones in their hands the handful of 10-11 years old kids who decided to craft were amazed that a person can make an envelope.  And that you can use an old road map to make them.  They had fun.

An odd week

It was an odd week.  At work we learned that a co-worker was found dead in his house.  He's been dead for a couple of days before they found him.  This bothered me a lot.  It bothered me because where I grew up, it would be rare for someone to be dead in their own home for a few days and no one knowing.  But in the US this would not be uncommon as people live alone, no family to check on them daily.  So it's that isolation that bothers me.  So many people around, yet we are alone.
Then just as I came home from attending a memorial service for my co-worker, I learned from an email that another dear friend from folkdancing has passed away as well.  A sweet, energetic 94 year old lady named Alice.  Alice amazed me what she did at her age.  Danced every day.  A few years ago, after she lost her husband, and her own health was deteriorating she moved to Nevada to be close to family.  At that time, she gave away hundreds of costumes she accumulated over the years, to her folkdancing friends.  I have about a handful of them myself.
My fondest memory of Alice is dancing with her at a lawn behind the Scottsdale library for some type of event.  I had a very limited knowledge of folkdancing at the time, and desperately tried to follow her dancing Ali Pasha, a Turkish dance.  Her friends here in Phoenix will dance this Tuesday night in her memory, and I am going to try to attend if I can get the night off from work.
Sooo...anyway, just an odd week.

LA

There was a time when moving to LA would not even be a choice I consider.  But the more we visit the city the more I like it.  Off course, I realize to visit and to live in LA are two different things.  If the opportunity to move there comes along, I still have to consider a few things: a good neighborhood, one that I can afford to live in, with a good public school for my kids, and with a relatively good commute to the airport so I can go to work.  Is that a lot to ask?

The last few times we went to LA the kids always ask to go to the beach.  They love the beach.  I never thought much about the beach, but I love the beach too.  Growing up in Eastern Europe we went to Greece almost every year.  So the beach experience is not new to me, I just never realized that I missed it in all the 17 years living in the US.

So this past weekend when I had an opportunity to go to LA with my husband, I didn't think twice. In addition to spending time at the beach with the kids, I also got to see my college friend Isabel, who has never met my kids before.  And since the job my husband had was close to the fashion district I found myself walking though this row of street market where pinatas, Hispanic foods and candy were everywhere.  Walking along, holding a kid in each hand, I fit right in.  After all, I grew up in a developing country, where the atmosphere, street vendors, street food and all that goes along with it, is a common thing.







So who knows, maybe I will end up in LA one day.

Tornado

It's on a day like today when a tornado wipes a town in Oklahoma and many die, children included, that I squeeze my kids a little tighter, I hold them a little longer and I am thankful that my family is ok.  We live another day.

I think of the pain, grief and confusion that the families affected are going through right now and how their lives are changed forever and their healing process has not even begun.  I think of the families that only a few months ago lost their children and loved ones in the school shooting in Connecticut, or the ones in the Boston Marathon bombing just last month.  How are they doing?  And if I kept up with the news a little better there are probably many more tragic happenings that are too much, too many or too overwhelming to remember.
And there is nothing that I can say that is profound, that would make a difference.  Inside I hurt a little, and I wished that somehow that was enough to take a little of the hurt away from those who suffer right now.

Vacation

I've been busy, but not with working, instead with taking vacation.  I took vacation twice in April: the first week and the last week of it.  I didn't have big plans, and had a great time still.  I did some travel, visited family and some friends, spent time with my kids, enjoyed the beach in California and Virginia and did some crafting.

 

      

 

 

 

Soleri Bells

Sometime about a decade ago, during our first year or two in Arizona, David and I had a chance to meet Paolo Soleri.  Paolo Soleri was an architect, who in his early days in America lived with Frank Loyd Wright's family.  He was a great thinker and the very person that created arcology - a happy marriage of architecture and ecology.

Soleri used to hold lecture talks/conversations on arcology every week either in his residence known as Cosanti, or in the city he built just outside of Prescott, AZ known as Arcosanti.  David and I attended one of these talks and bought one of Soleri's books: The Urban Ideal (a compilation of conversations with Soleri from the past 30 years).


Here are some of my favorite quotes and paragraphs from his book:

1. "I think our gravest problem is the technological rage, the rage to do whatever is possible.  There is a difference between desirable and feasible.  We create a catastrophic avalanche of junk because it is feasible, when we should be paying attention to what is desirable.  I call that 'a better quality of wrongness.'  We are getting very skilled - skilled at doing the wrong thing in better and better ways.'

2.  "It is necessity to make the city package small enough so that both the man-made and the natural are at your disposal.  There is a limit to the size of any organism, whether biological or para-biological.  The city is no exception to this imperative."

The pictures I added here are pictures of bells hanging on my front porch.  I bought them during one of the visits to Arcosanti.  These bells are one of the ways Soleri was able to raise funds to build his experimental city Arcosanti, which is still a work in progress.

If you are around Phoenix area, the Scottsdale Art Museum currently has models and sketches of Soleri's buildings and designs.  You can also visit in person his residence in Cosanti, or you can visit his marvelous city of Arcosanti.
Paolo Soleri died on April 9th this year.  He was 93.