Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Karen Mello Burton 1 comment

because I can

When the mister and I got home from church today we had an hour before choir practice and decided to sit and read.

He- a non-fiction ebook about algorithmic reading.

Me- The Ten Thousand Things by Maria Dermout.

This is what we can do without little ones under foot. Although I still get the craving to take care of (feed) all the people in this house. Instinctive? Learned? I don't over-think it. Life is better for me when I offer something.

Karen Mello Burton 1 comment

by the light

We now have a fireplace. We have never had one before,  but it was a top item on the list of prerequisites when we started house hunting a year ago,  followed closely by a garage. 

As I sit by the fire tonight I look into the room and see my husband and two of my boys and I wonder to myself how I scored so well.  Problems here and there? Yes. But the things that matter feel mostly in place,  and I sit here toasty and warm and say a small prayer of thanks.

Karen Mello Burton No comment yet

good

From work to a district meeting to a thesis committee meeting to my special ed law class.

Busy day with lots of good things.

And now I'm snuggled in bed with Geo watching TV and blogging from my phone.  More good.

Karen Mello Burton 1 comment

that burns

In a dark room a funky and daring chandelier stands out like nobody's business. Suddenly the shape and color of the glass are so distracting that I have moments of confusion  as I try to stay involved in conversation with my dinner companion. My husband.

We talk about online writing and teaching strategies and self-reflection.

I see him.  I see his passion for these things.  I see his interest in his students.  I see him as that chandelier,  right there over his right shoulder.  He is light.

Karen Mello Burton 8 comments

ash and smoke

photos taken by my friend in Nutrioso, AZ

ash under foot from past mistakes, regret, lessons learned

burned and hollowed out trunks stand as reminders of what we were

what we can become again, only better,
stronger, smarter

it is good to remember as we rebuild and regrow

we kick up the ash and inhale, allowing some of us back in

it is a cycle of fire, then green, then fire again

Karen Mello Burton 12 comments

Little Water Fairy

I saw her born and live right across the street from her.

Sometimes she runs up to me and says, Can you give me a cookie? And then I have to, yes have to, give her one.

She holds my hand and likes to look through my purse. She asks a lot of questions, like, Is Jesus coming back today?

Today she stood on the bank as her mom swam her leg of a triathlon. She was a little water fairy.
Karen Mello Burton 9 comments

washed clean


 I attended the baptism of this little boy yesterday.  He is incredibly handsome and active and all that comes with being a boy.  It was tough to take this picture because he was not really interested in standing still long enough to get it done, but after some coaxing from his mother I snapped this one with my iPhone.  I used a very cool new app called wordfoto. 

Wouldn't it be interesting if we wore our current feelings or accomplishments right out in the open for all to see? 
Karen Mello Burton 21 comments

makeover




Sometimes some scrubbing up and retooling does a face good.  I realized the other day that I had been using the same template for a couple of years and felt like it was time for a change.

Last night we had to move all of the boxes back into our house that we had moved out a couple of months ago in anticipation of eventually moving.  The place where we were storing things is being sold and needed to be emptied out.  It felt so wrong to move boxes of stuff back in, right when I was getting comfortable with them being out.

Maybe my makeover here is in direct reaction to that.  I am not sure.  I am also really into the gallery look right now, so I am thinking some painting of walls is in my future.  I am leaning toward a soft white, since my furniture is all chocolate brown.  Let things pop out and say something.  Art, pottery, photos on the wall.  Make a statement.

Scream it out loud.
Karen Mello Burton 14 comments

making it work

I just visited with a dear friend that lost her 40-year old son last month.  A Korean man that had been her son since he was 3.

I was baking some bread and felt like I needed to take some over and have a little visit.  She invited me in and thanked me for the bread, and then we sat and talked for an hour.  There were tears as she related how up and down her emotions still are, but how glad she is for her high school biology students which have shown her unending love and compassion during the month.  Cards, photos, gifts. 

And then she showed me the Willow figurine she was given by a couple of fellow-teachers, showing a mother hugging her young son.

"Oh, look how much the boy looks like B!  Same skin coloring and hair color," I said.
"I painted it," she responded.  "It just wasn't right that he had blond hair."

And that is why I love her. 
Karen Mello Burton 14 comments

cello mondays

So, here's how it goes every Monday.

I work all day and then I usually have a faculty meeting until 3:25. At this point I pull up to my house, a mile away, and honk. #4 runs out with his cello and we drive up to north Provo for his lesson. All the way there I am drifting, so I keep a running conversation going with my boy, in order to check in like a good mom AND to stay awake like a live one.

We pull up to Megan's place and #4 stows away his iPod and says, "See you in a half hour", 'cause he knows I am powering back my seat to refuel for the ride home.

Here are some shots from inside my quiet time.

Karen Mello Burton 20 comments

temporary karma


 She turned 22 yesterday, so Geo and I headed to their apartment to take the lovebirds out to dinner. We were a little early, and I had been carting around my birthday cash for a couple of weeks, so I went into the Karma Boutique. A little burning going on in my pocket(book).

After the overly-friendly saleslady told me I could have 20% off of a single purchase, I found this handmade purse made with soft fabrics and beads and awesome colors. The girly girl came out in me and, after running out to the car to grab my money, G followed me into the boutique to buy it. I even asked him to help me choose between a few.

It was nice to spend the day together.

Sometimes Saturdays are about what you do, and sometimes they are about what you don't do.

Today I didn't fold laundry.
I didn't weed the flower bed. I didn't help the boys clean their rooms.
I didn't obsess about the potential home we lost this week.
I didn't do a lot of things.

But I did go to Zumba and then spend the rest of the day with my husband.

When I dig my keys out of the bottom of my new purse I will be remembering that.
Karen Mello Burton 18 comments

itty bitty reminders

This is my great niece, Lydia. Holding her for ten minutes yesterday changed my world, at least temporarily. I. Love. Babies.




Karen Mello Burton 27 comments

little pieces

"Even when it stands vacant, the past is never empty."

This is a line from Doig's "The Whistling Season".  

We live 5 miles from the first home we shared as a newly married couple. The house, which was old then, is pretty dilapidated now. But it was ours, and I can still walk through every inch of it in my mind. I drive past it every now and then as I head into Provo, and I point it out over and over again to my kids.  

Do you ever fell like you leave ghosts behind?  Like places you have spent a lot of time in have part of you?  I mean almost literally.  It's one of the things I get a little sappy about.  Because really, if you leave parts of you behind, are you less when you move on to the next place?





- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Karen Mello Burton 18 comments

out cold

We have spent days cleaning closets and sorting through years of things.  It takes it out of you, not just physically, but emotionally.  I was up by 8 today doing laundry and washing dishes.  Standing at the sink I thought about the things that tie us down, not necessarily in a too-much-junk kind of way.  Plenty of these things are important reminders of what we have done and where we have been.  China from my grandmothers, handmade mother's day cards from my sons, love letters.  So much of it matters to me.  But so much doesn't.  Throw it out, I said this week, more times than I can count.



To get a little break from the house I drove my son to his cello lesson today.  After dropping him off at his teacher's home, I drove down to a sandwich shop, grabbed some food, and sat in my car reading "Old Cape Magic" off of my iPad.  I am liking it so far.  The warm Winter sun shining in the window made me feel a bit sleepy on the drive home.  With all of this week piled up in my head, I walked in, said Hey to my husband as I passed the den, then fell right onto the bed for an hour long rest, still clutching my purse and my iPad.

Good week.  Good day.
Karen Mello Burton 16 comments

my reconstruction

Interesting things, bricks.  Used for thousands of years to add strength to a structure and to give it order and foreverness.  Symbols of something civilized and planned.

I have had a few days where the bricks in my own bldg (read:world) seem to be crumbling.  A friend on facebook told me today that it is probably just the mortar.  I would like to think that is true.  Relaying those bricks and remortaring... sounds hard, but it can be done.

When the really important things in my life are in order, like support and love from a good husband, happy and healthy children, a roof over my head, etcetera, etcetera, I feel incredibly ungrateful in my ingratitude.  If that makes sense.

It's been a hard few days.  The weight sometimes comes down and cracks up these building blocks.  This is not a new topic here on my blog.  I feel a bit overburdened with my school work, my calling. And in the next 2 months I have to make placements for my students for next year.

I don't want to overplay it, but these little kiddos are entrusted to me.  I make decisions about where they go to class next year.  A regular kindergarten?  A self-contained unit?  I spend months earning the trust of parents, and often call on that trust when a hard thing needs to be said.  It can be terrific when there has been a load of progress made and the news is good.  And it can be devastating when the news is to the contrary.  I don't like the looks of disappointment.  Last Thursday at parent/teacher conferences I cried three times.  One time it was because I was relating something sweet I had observed in a little boy in my class.  Genuine love and service to a classmate.  The other two times I cried it was because parents approached me and said, "My child needs a special class next year doesn't he/she?" I had been prayerful about talking to these parents, and instead they talked to me.  It was a tender moment for me, as I recognized my concerns had been answered.

I have the desire to do well and to do right.  In all of these areas.  I need inspiration.  And sometimes I think the Lord may be getting really sick of my petitions.

But He keeps coming back with help and more mortar.  So, though my bricks crumble, I have hope of being built back up.  But the process can be sloppy and painful.
Karen Mello Burton 25 comments

"avoid the dog"

Once I got home from work yesterday afternoon and found that my husband had been so consumed in working on his digital civilization class that he had forgotten to put the chicken in the crock pot 4 hours earlier, we decided to run out with the kids for cousin Christmas shopping and then to dinner at the Mongolian BBQ joint down the road a couple of miles.  You get a big bowl and pile it up with thin slices of meats and loads of veggies and ginger, and then the guy who works there slaps it around on a big flat hot surface until it is cooked through and ready for consumption.  Oh, it tastes good.  But I digress.


 So, it turns out I am a dragon on the Chinese Zodiac calendar.  I found this out by listening to my #4 regretting the fact that I got to be a dragon while he was stuck with being a weak little tiger.  I learned a lot of things about myself reading that red and white paper place mat.  I am eccentric and complex.  I have a passionate nature and abundant health.  And in the romance department it looks like I should have married a monkey or rat late in life.  And then the final warning to avoid the dog. 

I wonder if the monkey or rat would have remembered to put the chicken in the crock pot.
Karen Mello Burton 18 comments

between JFK and MLK Jr.

My mother was 4 months pregnant with me when JKF was shot and killed in November 1963. I am a mid-60s baby.  There was a revolt that was starting as a secret effort in the minds of people who wanted to say something different than what was said in the 50s.  A new stand.  A new definition of roles and possibilities.

And then when I was 4-years old MLK Jr. was shot and killed on April 4, 1968.  His movement was also trying to say things differently.  I have a dream.  We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.(read this incredible speech here)

I am not really sure how, but I want to believe that though I was too young to have been changed consciously by these events, I was changed in some deep way.  Maybe it indirectly influenced me because I had teachers who were already adults during these history-changing events.  My parents were New Englanders who brought their three babies down to the south for more grass and trees and openness.  Unfortunately, there was also more racism and close-mindedness that went along with the beautiful surroundings I grew up in.  I felt it personally when I dared to dance with a black friend at a middle school dance and was shunned for days by my neighbor friends.

I also was born smack in the middle of the Vietnam war, which was from 1961-1970.  I have memories of my parents watching the news, but jumping up to turn the TV off when we wandered innocently into the room.  There was never a feeling of doom in my house.  Never.  But now I look back and see that times were turbulent and muscles were being flexed all over this country and beyond.

We each have a connection to the current events of our time.  I can now say that my own children were 13 down to 3-years old when 911 happened.  We did some talking, some crying, some evasive actions to avoid it.  But it will be something they relate to their own generation.

We are not necessarily defined by these events, but to think we are immune to their influence is naive.  I am a 60s baby, and in some small way in my soul, I carry some of that with me.





Karen Mello Burton 20 comments

and down comes the gavel

It has been a tough thing to plan and manage my time.  I feel like I am smart enough to take care of these details, but they multiply exponentially in an amazing way.  I am finishing my licensing program this year, which includes 5 classroom observations and 7 serious, big-time, portfolio assignments.  Then I have 13 students that need testing and IEPs and meetings with parents.  My church responsibilities are heavy, but enjoyable, and I am still learning to do things right there.  And though they shouldn't be listed last, the family needs my attention, and guilt is prevalent in that arena. 

We do a good job with family nights on Monday, and reading scriptures during dinner.  That is going well.  I make sure the kids are at the table at 4:30 pm for study time, then music practice.  So the details are in place.  But I feel a little absent in my own life sometimes.  I know things will get better come April, when my schooling is finally over, but I don't want to get caught up in the "in only 6 months ..." game.  Again, absence.

So tonight I am trying to forgive myself and get present.  Because I remember when I was an at-home mom, with no school and no job, I still had feelings of inadequacies and guilt.  It is my way. 
Karen Mello Burton 17 comments

GNO

Sometimes a Girls' Night Out is just what the doctor ordered.  As my husband is busy getting his presentation ready for an academic conference this weekend, I am packing his suitcase (yes, I am kinda old school that way) and making plans that have to do with dinner out with girlfriends, maybe a movie, maybe some window shopping.  Sure, I will miss him, but I try and be efficient with my regenerating.  So while he is away I will power up with some girl time. 

I am a people person.  I like meeting new people.  I like hearing peoples' stories.  I like laughing with people, crying with people, working with people.  It is not only a fun way to spend time, but has become essential to my mental and emotional well-being.  I know that about myself.  When I start to get a little jittery about my life it is usually because I have slipped into some kind of isolation mode, with school work or paper work. 

Anybody with me on this?
Karen Mello Burton 25 comments

stuck to my shoes

The leaves crunch and stick to the bottoms of our shoes.  They carpet the whole front yard in October, but we refuse to clean them up because they make us feel like we have little golden flakes welcoming us home everyday.  Then the cottonwood goes crazy in November and dumps a foot of leaves in our little backyard.  Those need massive raking because they are heavy and bigger and keep the grass from growing in the Spring. 

In my life there are things I can let stand.  They might be things others wouldn't be able to live with, but in the overall view of things, they are not harmful.  Unfinished laundry, cluttered closets. They can feel familiar and even comforting.  But some big things need constant raking.  Things with deadlines.  School work, paper work, bills. 

The reassessing of daily life can be exhausting.  We plug away at things that need our attention only to go to bed and do it all again the next day.  It's all good.  Sometimes we rake, but often we let the golden flakes stick to our shoes.
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