fetch wood, carry water.

Geeks!

When it all gets a bit much, I like to try and get back to basics.  And last week I heard the most beautiful summation of this need.  You probably already know it: Fetch wood, carry water.

It cuts through the busy-ness and the monkey mind and reminds us what is needed, here: today.  It also reminds me that sometimes even my calls for simplicity are too complex!  This is my t-shirt slogan of the week.  And it will inform my activities today, firewood being a vital part of my daily routines at this time of the year.

Before I head out and stack wood (*message to self: wear work gloves!  Why flirt with acquiring more splinters in my fingers … I’m currently nursing one on the ring finger of my right hand … OH how painful the o’s!) I will share a bunch of links with my fellow geeks.  Strangely, this serves to simplify my thinking.  It clears my desktops, literally and figuratively.

Here’s a lovely blog post about simplifying … it’s about satisfaction with a mediocre life (which doesn’t actually seem all that mediocre!)

Paradoxically now: some coveting.  Check this out … it’s a marble run that makes music.  Want!

This is a post from the Australian organisation called “baby in mind” and it is a list of books they recommend as relieving parenting anxiety.  LOVE!

Something completely different: a long essay by the amazing Elisa Albert (who wrote the mind-blowing After Birth) and this is about ambition.  It kicked my bum, a wee bit.

Now a reminder from Mothering magazine, that harsh parenting will lead to worse behaviour from kids, later.  Even the picture breaks my heart a wee bit.  And here is a splendid resouce that might break your heart a wee bit, too.  It’s a teaching video from the University of Washington’s iLab, thanks be to Jean Clinton for sharing it.

Here is an open letter to husbands from the Huffington Post – there is a break coming when you’re 67 – and THIS from Scientific American reminds us that most adults are spending more time on their digital devices than they think (want your kids to unplug?  Do it your damn self!!)  Super important, y’all.  Here is an article from the Independent in the UK linking toddler’s poor sleep patterns to touchscreen devices.  Holy ding dong.  What the heck?

This is a gorgeous online magazine made by teen girls for teen girls … Rookie.  Enjoy.

I think that’ll do for now.  Time for some wood stacking.  And gratitude for functional indoor plumbing, so that the second half of the “Fetch Wood Carry Water” mantra is theoretical only.

xxx

 

April? May!

Kia Ora friends

Sometimes family circumstances chew us up and spit us out.  As I pull rumpled bits of life back together, straighten them out like tin foil, I am grateful when they fit back together but open to the notion of rearranging the whole thing, altogether.

Anyway: what I’m saying is, April slid through my fingers like water.  Much love and big ups to the warm and loving group of early childhood teachers I workshopped with in late April.

A few links that have been on my mind and in my heart:

This is about how we are manipulated as we move around the internet.  It’s written by someone who was a Design Ethicist for Google, and is a magician.  Brilliant.  Important.  Makes me wonder why our children are being allowed internet technologies at school without being given information to allow them to critically think about the ways they’re being toyed with.

Because oh-ho-ho how they are being toyed with.  Did you see this?  About the leaked info demonstrating how cynical and uncaring Facebook are in the way they use information about their users, including (especially?!) vulnerable youth.

Meanwhile: something positive and cool … next Tuesday this event is being held at the Champion Centre, thanks be to IMHAANZ!  Can’t wait to get all up in Prof Jean Clinton’s sphere of influence!

Other goodness: this from Taranaki where their Circle of Security programme is being expanded HURRAH! and in Minnesota there are doulas helping incarcerated mamas.

Gratitude.