Raining raspberry cookies...

Today is a 'raining all day' day..Autumn is really in the air.. This is what it looks like in our house after a day of making real life 'spider-man' webs and baking cookies, and painting faces into princess, pirate to cookie monster.. :-)

                                                                                                                                                                  

 Making his web more sophisticated..

 Lost in the web...

Hanging from the web doing his spider-man moves..mean while the princess is dressing up..

Then the two cookie monsters made raspberry cookies..Very yum!

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Proud mama

My almost seven year old son came in the bathroom this morning to tell me his thoughts on the soul:

Mommy I was thinking: I think that our souls don’t have gravity, so  that means when our body dies it is not able to keep the soul  bound to earth anymore, so the souls flies away. Our body is like a box to contain our soul. And then he added: that also means that when our souls are still inside our bodies while we live we can’t really see each other. 

He blew me away again, like he does so regularly, with his brilliant mind.. 

Ps: After three months of psychiatric research to find out why he is showing behavior that is not accepted by society. Yesterday I heard the verdict. I was told what diagnose they found fitting his behavior by the psychiatrist. He got labeled with three disorders....None of which said brilliant mind, tender heart or sensitive soul...  Which he is clearly gifted with....

xxxProud mama

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Summer is over....

Today:
Changing my balcony painting studio into an indoors winter studio. :-( summer is definitely over :-(
Taking care of a child with cold
Picking new and loads of elderberries
Cleaning elderberries
Sorting elderberries (which takes ages)
Freezing elderberries
Making vegetable soup and baking french fries :-)
Finding beautiful words on my timeline, (thanks Pixie Campbell)


Sky of blackness and sorrow 
Sky of love, sky of tears 
Sky of glory and sadness 
Sky of mercy, sky of fear 
Sky of memory and shadow 
Your burnin' wind fills my arms tonight
Sky of longing and emptiness
Sky of fullness, sky of blessed life

~ bruce springsteen

Now tired and content and ready to go to bed...how about your day?

Goddess Kali 

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Kitten update...

 whenever i sit behind my computer, our little cat, (kitten), climbs on top of me, and doesn't sit on my lap, like any 'regular' cat does. No she climbs as high as she can, and always finds a place to settle on my heart, literally.. 

 I could not resits to pick a few favorite pictures and post them. She is so lovely :-)

There is a lot of fighting since we have a cat, about who can play with her and when.. They are driving me so NUTS with this! This was a rare moment where they, or shall i say she, found the middle ground.. creating a rare moment of peace and unity 

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Muesli bar’s in the making

Today we tried making muesli bar’s, it was our first attempt. They turned out more like cruesli, because they did not form a bar, the whole mixture  just falls apart. And I did use lots of ‘glue’.  You know,  honey and butter.  So I have no clue what happened.  But still it tastes good. It will be yoghurt with this delicious mixture in the coming mornings then. Except I don’t know about the butter and yoghurt combination, hope it will be okay..

Any tips on how to make the mixture more together are welcome by the way..

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Dreaming my big dreams

For the story i am about to post tonight i feel i need some of this music, some relaxing, calming me down music..

“The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth.” 
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Okay, here i go. But first let me post some introduction:

This place, my blog is supposed to be a safe place to vent all sorts of things, also the ‘hard’ stuff,  to the world. I do that because in the 1^stplace it helps me to get real with my struggles. Seeing them back here written down in black in white,  and the scary part, being readable to everyone that like to visit my blog. This makes that all I write should feel like the truth to me, and there for I need to be very conscientiousness of what I write and how I write. That conscientiousness helps me to stray clear and truthful to myself, well as truthful as I can anyway way. And no I am not naive, I know this is an open space and therefore can be entered by everyone, even someone who does not care about this being a safe place. But I’ll take my chances for such person can be touched with beauty of truth telling too.

This is kind of a big one for me, as it is my deep deep dream,  to be together with a (large) group of people and help each other heal our old, new, deep, shallow, sharp, bloody and nasty wounds. Help each other heal by truth telling. As someone else described these kind of spaces,  and I can’t say it better than she did, so I echo her words of beauty:

“This is a place of beauty. Each of us have to learn discernment.. How to see through the fog of untruths we keep telling ourselves. This is a place where you are all my witnesses. May this be a place be a safe steppingstone to leave the shadows behind”.

Namaste xxxD

So now i will tell the truth about a very hard topic for me, MONEY!  I will talk now about my (screwed up) relationship with money..

Money is an incredible hard topic for me, has been so for as long as I can remember. Coming from a one parent household, my mother never worked, and thus there was no money, just welfare, and that was very little. I’ve been angry with her for as long as I can remember that she did not make a ‘real’ living, but mostly for the fact that she did not model for me and my sister how to do it. So I grew up incredibly insecure of being able to make a living in any kind of job, let alone trying to monetize on my dreams and where my heart lies, which is art. I have done millions of different jobs until now,  none of which I ever loved or liked. I now know why I was running so hard without even taking time to breathe, I tried to prove to myself I could do it! That I could take care of myself, that I could work hard, that I could hold on to a job, that I could make a living on my own strength. But I also can see now that almost all the jobs I have had these past 30 years have all made me feel like grabbing me by the throat, like being chocked. And it did literally, because living my life this way has gotten me to the point of being ill, so severe, and so often, that I could not work anymore and lost my job.  Which then again lead me into welfare, which is my current status. How ironically, me being on welfare, I never wanted to become my mom, but I have...I am now a mom myself of two little kids and on welfare. What’s the  message? Whatever it is I haven’t been strong enough yet to listen to it yet.. And most of all it makes me feel ashamed to be on welfare.

I have been a (big)dreamer all my life, and have kept failing to make a living out of those. It has gotten me to the point of giving up on my dreams and focus my life on the motto ‘just do the job that pays the bills’ and exhaust myself.

Right now that I am on welfare it’s a blessing in disguise. Since June I have been granted the welfare and thus been granted time, time to think about what it is I really want and how to achieve it, or better said take baby steps to go forward. But as good as this may sound I often find myself in a paralyzing state. I just know that I don’t want to leave this earth and never have tried my absolute best to achieve to live the life I dreamt to live. Even if it’s just a tiny percentage that i will be able to achieve of what I originally dreamt up. I just don’t know how?!?!  I feel some of the dreams are coming back, but still very faintly. The scare of me never being able to amount to anything let alone materialize my dreams is so huge, so humongous, it clouds all I do and think. It's the feeling of me never being able to attain the dream i dream for myself...

So I did it, shared my money fear story..this is very scary but I hope I will be okay after posting this..

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Dear indian

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Happy with my late summer flowers

Picked some late summer flowers today...

Nurturing makes everything beautiful

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OMG this is me!!!

Qh, my goodness. This is me. The worst part is i'm this kind of parent too...

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Some days...

Today I had his crazy type of day..sometimes life just shows you all the corners of the emotional spectrum so to speak..

The day started really harmonious and relatively peaceful if you don’t count the million sibling fights that start at 6.00 am over who’s turn it is to hold the cat, and for how long... 

Besides from that tiny detail it was i who woke up happy because I had had a wonderful dream where there was warmth and closeness with someone I am missing very much every day. Then it was I who was granted some painting time on the ‘balcony studio’ because the two warriors had agreed to play nicely at a certain point.  They had decided  to ‘make some money’ by selling their most ‘un-desired’ toys downstairs in the hall way of the building where we live in.  

The day went on being really great too after that because my friend called me if I was up for a play date between her kids and mine..so we gathered our kids and went to the nearby park to let them swim on possibly the last summer day being warm enough for a nature swim..  I was having 15 minutes to myself laying on the warm sand while dreaming away about the nice dream I had had that night. I was dreaming along without disturbance because  my friend took all the kids to a water play thing somewhere else in the park.

But about 15 minutes later the day started to shift completely.. from peaceful dreamy harmony to huge hysteria and discomfort. My son came back from the water play thing crying his lungs out because he had a splinter in his foot and under his nail on his hand. He is so good at making extreme drama when he has something small but slightly painful. He did not allow me to get the splinters out. While negotiating with him about allowing me near the nail and foot  he screamed so load that the rest of the people in the park must have had the impression I was putting splinters into my sons  foot  instead of trying to get it out. This whole situation took about 45 minutes and three bystanders to help me to get them out, when he finally calmed down. Then it was time to go home. But while walking home the youngest daughter of my friend took a bad fall and hurt her knee. Meaning she had to carry her to my place which is not that far from the park, but she has a broken elbow bone herself so she isn’t really allowed to carry her kids at all. Drama completion came when my daughter too took a fall before we arrived at my place.. so five tired kids and two stressed mothers around dinner time isn’t a good combination..

So I took my kids and we went with her to help her get home safely with the broken elbow and the kid who could not walk. I took her crying daughter on my bike, while she walked the rest of the kids over on a 15 minute walk to her house . when I arrived alone with her upset daughter I had to disable the alarm in her house before I could settle her crying daughter down. But I could not get the alarm code in the right way because she had forgotten to tell me what to press on before typing in the code.. so now I was standing there with the insane sound of the alarm going off all around us and her daughter crying in my arms for her mommy! I think stressed does not describe my state of mind on that point well enough.

But all is solved now and all is well! The kids are finally all in bed and peacefully asleep, while I feel the fatigue hitting me in the face. So I think I have had enough for one day..... I’ll go to sleep early hoping for that nice dream I had last night to be continued...

Goodnight..xxx

Ps; Tomorrow I will hopefully have some great pictures to share of a project I am participating in. In the morning I will be headed for the Amsterdam ‘Red district’ to paint a part of a huge ‘street-painting’ together with lots of other artists...

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Strange conversation

I just had the strangest conversation ever with my daughter. She started to ask me questions about the way Michael Jackson died. So I started to explain he died from taking too many pills.

She: did the hunters shoot him? 

Me: no, he took too many pills. 

She: did you not tell him not to do that? 

Me: no, not me, but his mother told him not to do that.  

She: oh, good, I want to see his mother, is she still alive? 

Me:  yes, she is still alive but lives a long way from here. 

She: where is Michael Jackson now, is he still alive? 

Me: No, honey he died. 
She: is he buried under the ground? 

Me: yes he is. 

She: I want to see his mother and ask her if I can look in the place where he is buried. I want to get the things of off him and see him in there.

End of conversation….what was that about????

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......

The pathway is open to you, may it lead to your heart. 

You have a power that has nothing to do with what you do

or what you say

or who you know 

or where you are 

or what you look like 

or your skills

or your talents

or what you have.

It is the power of your presence.

It is the heat and light from your burning log.

And it touches everyone who comes in contact with you….

~Paul Williams, Remember your Essence

Via Mystic Mama

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Parenting tip :-)

Sorry, I just could not resist :-) And then i just close the door and have a peaceful cup of tea...

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Cute faces...

Her theater today was the doll-theater in the park, mine was her face :-)

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Picking Berries

                                  

                     A grazy full filled berrie-bush we found on our way to sons' football practice yesterday.

                                

Later after we got home, we made super good tasting berrie-sirup from them..

                                
                         

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Michael Jackson clothes in the making

 I don't know why this had to be done before nine this morning, but it just did...

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Sara

I think Sara our ten week old kitten, is getting used to us :-) And vice versa..

And the guy with the hat is totally obsessed lately with practising his Michael Jackson moves  :-)

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Gorgeous creatures

 Yesterday someone send me the pictures they made in the Zoo. We visited it last week while being on our vacation. This is the Zoo near my mother’s place and it’s a very special Zoo. Nothing there feels cramped and it looks like the animals are really happy there. When we were standing near the camels for example,  a group of 5 i think, they were playing with each other like young dogs.  I did not realize  camels were such fun animals, I never seen anything like it.

 Anyway my mom’s friend made pictures, and most she send are from my two kids instead of the Zoo animals. It’s always nice to look through someone else’s eyes, to see what they see. And what hit me looking at her pictures was, wow, these children are so beautiful. Makes me really wonder all over again where did these two gorgeous creatures came from? 

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Delight ♥

This morning i woke up as ridiculously early as i usually do. But the silence was overwhelming, because these guys were all not there. So i hurried myself back in bed for another lovely dream session. Taking advantage of the complete silence after days filled with laughter, screams and an ocassional cry...After a few days of bliss mine are currently at their weekly sleep-over and my friend Claudette went home with hers’ yesterday evening, home to Belgium .

♥Bliss as in days filled with dinosaur talk, shark quizzes, water snake searches and crocodile hunts...

♥And bliss for us moms, with days filled with talk of life and friendship and off course of love...and a little of work as well..but only as in ART-work....

And right there on the beach with our feet in the delicioulsy hot sand we unanimously agreed upon one ‘truth of life’

YEY!!!!!

Never let the odds keep you from doing what you know in your heart you were meant to do. 

 It is and was a Delight to be togehter again..Thank you dear Claudette♥

Photo By Claudette van de Rakt

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