We are nearing the exhibit for this project with only two days left before installation and another day before my presentation to finish my essay that reflects on the work and its connection to class. Yesterday I cleared out my school studio and in doing so have begun the process of leaving Goldsmiths. With the stress of these deadlines and our move my body yesterday tried to tell me to 'stop the insanity,' that is the insanity of trying to do all these things perfectly or to a level that does not take into account the fact that we have a two year old to care for. The way my body likes to do this is to give me a panic attack. And often times, like yesterday during class when it started I try not to listen and try to just avoid and get out of the attack (which I did by going outside for a breather). When I do, I rarely stop and say, hmmm so why did that happen and let's depict it and work with it. I just chalk it up to “stress” as if stress is an unavoidable byproduct of a/my situation and I don't have any choice or responsibility for it. And I know better. In fact, this year as part of an art project I did for my art therapy class I made myself a personalized “Panic Attack First Aid Kit” and discovered this idea of my anxiety not being something to avoid and run from but a way, a very loud and obnoxious way, but still the way my body has figured out how to tell me something. So, since I didn't listen too well yesterday, today I woke up with a migraine...and after taking my medication for it and sleeping a few hours I decided okay, I'm listening, I can't read the amount of research I want to and write a perfect essay and put up the show and continue moving our house all in three days and I'm a nutter to try. So, instead I'm listening to something I wrote as a reminder to my perfectionism from my kit: “You are allowed to do only the best you can with what you have right now.”

With that I've been writing here and there today while taking care of myself, Carrie and Gryffin. When we put her down for a nap, we took turns cooking. Carrie made her potato soup with the homemade chicken stock she made the other night and I made us a puff pastry pizza. It didn't turn out as well as I hoped but we ate the outside pieces anyway. As a topping I made my flash carmelized red onions—when I don't have the time to cook them on low heat forever, I start them on high and stir a lot, then when they start to brown I lower the heat and simmer for about five minutes. 

Carrie went to her last Yoga class here and I made Gryffin her favourite “soup with berries” which isn't made with berries but is an organic miso that comes in sort of a paste with barley grains that she calls berries. You add it to hot water or in this case I used our homemade chicken broth. For myself, I looked at the two middle pieces of the pizza and couldn't bare to waste the good sauce, onions and cheese so I decided to make a dish my old roomate Eric and I used to love. 

We call it “Pasta Povertza” (poh-vare-tza) which is pasta with whatver you've got in the house. I had extra sauce but not quite enough so I added some olive oil and cut up the top of the pizza into little chunks of the cheese with the onions stuck to it. It was spicy from the pepperoncinis from Italy I used (hot pepper flakes in their pods) and the sweet bites of onion made a nice contrast. Mr. Cooper would be proud.

Having fallen asleep with our darling daughter, I am now completely out of it and can't think of much to say. We are in the thick of things and trying to stay sane is hard let alone eating well. I made a a wheat-free pasta today using the chicken and veggies from yesterday. Stacey had a chicken tikka subway sandwich at school. I added a new recipe to our site yesterday...spanish rice..so check it out. And with that, since I can barely finish a sentence, I will sign off until tomorrow. 

It's 10:13pm and we both had full days...me with school stuff and a workshop I decided to take at the Hayward Gallery, and Carrie with tying up our moving lose ends and taking care of our overtired and not sleeping well or enough child. We are in the thick of the moving stress and it seems near impossible to get all the things done with this daily blog, putting up our work in the show, writing my reflective essay AND packing and all that moving entails. Carrie made a roast chicken with potatoes, carrots and onions and began a stock for us to make soup with this week. I felt really great about doing the workshop (The School for Perfect Strangers) for myself, feeling as if it was totally worth it even though it took up 8 precious hours over these past two days because it was something for me and I got to integrate my interests in art, performance and alternative education. So I felt wonderful about taking this time out for myself amidst the crazy, but then came home to find Carrie worried that I was an hour late (dead cell phone battery so I couldn't call). It was the kind of worried that makes you mad when you find out the person is fine. So instead of sharing how much fun it was to do the workshop and then have drinks and a lovely, lively chat with the artist Simon Fujiwara afterwards I felt defensive and annoyed that she was upset and annoyed with me. The annoyed circle of annoyedness? And the day started out so nicely with Carrie placing her hand over my heart and sending me big love (I was already alseep when she typed up last nights blog—so she waited until this morning).

I know we will be in a better space tomorrow and I can share some of the wild and fun things I got to do, but as I type this I'm realizing how easy it is to allow resentment to form between you and your partner that is really not about each other. Maybe resentment is too strong a word, or maybe not. I love being a parent and I adore my child and the family we have created with her in our lives. I don't love being tired all the time or having so little energy I feel like I'm physically, mentally and emotionally always on the brink of exhaustion. I think it becomes easier for us to take out feelings of resentment on each other because we don't want to have any towards Gryffin. So what do you do with that? Right now I'm just praying that this is the hardest part, these first few years. However, parents of older kids tell me, “it doesn't get easier, it's just different.” When I hear this from them I want to scream “NOT HELPFUL” but instead to soothe myself into a false sense of hope, I dismiss their idea and chalk it up to them not clearly remembering how hard the first years are. (If you happen to ask me about this in the future I'll do my best to reassure you because sometimes false hope is better than no hope.) For now, I've done today's blog and can head off to bed. Tomorrow Carrie will read this and maybe we'll talk about it. 
[PD: I'm sorry I was late and it worried you. I know how that feels and it's awful. I'll try to be better about charging my phone. Thanks for taking care of G and for making us good food. I love you.] 

Day 16 by Carrie

Today I spent a lovely afternoon with our friend Katia talking about motherhood and the spiritual journey of life. It was the most feeding social interaction I have had in a long time. We sat in the grass on the Goldsmiths campus with her baby while Gryffin looked for ladybugs and played with a tennis ball. As I spoke to her some things I had been ruminating over became clear. Mothering is such an all consuming thing and for the first year or so I was clear that being a mother was my spiritual practice. To stay present at all times, to be loving and gentle and patient when you have no sleep and your child has been crying for over an hour is an amazing practice. To gently say no over and over and over offering love and boundaries at the same time is no easy feat. And to consciously parent, paying attention to your choices, choosing your own path and not being on auto pilot takes intention and energy and a lot of perseverance. In my longing for a spiritual community here and my beating myself up for not being more connected to my spiritual practice I somehow forgot that LIFE is a spiritual practice. And it occurred to me that the care and mindfulness I once took with my marriage has now been funnelled into my child and I miss consciously making my marriage part of my spiritual life as well. It has felt like I don't have energy for both. Is that true? And if it is true that there isn't energy for both are we expecting too much? Maybe it is natural that at this time in our journey of parenthood your child takes it all and then that eases up later? You just suck it up 'til then and hope the flame is still there hiding in the coals that have been buried?

As always, no answers just tons of questions. The whole purpose of this project is to bring consciousness to all these issues so that Stacey and I can be more mindful in our interactions with each other. And maybe that is the trick to keeping the coals hot...to every so often go over and gently blow on them until they burn a brilliant red-orange. Maybe tonight I will go blow a little love into Stacey's heart and watch it glow.

One of the things that has come to the forefront during this challenge has been the issue of perception. Our reality is based solely on perception. You know the phrase “change your mind change your life”? If you perceive things differently everything changes. I have been noticing how this is affecting my interactions with Stacey. For instance the other day she asked me to scoot over on the couch and give her some more room. She said it in a neutral tone and there was definitely room to move over. I responded in an incredibly defensive manner as though she were saying – why are you hogging the couch? She noted how defensive I was, something I have been noticing myself...I have been taking a lot of what she says as a criticism. Instead of responding to the moment at hand, I come to the situation with all the past baggage and with my own internal judgments first and foremost. I am so hard on myself, I assume she is judging me just as harshly and instead of finding out if my assumptions are correct, I am running with them. So I am living in my own little world of my own creation based on what is happening in my head and not checking in to see if that matches the reality of my situation. And it is causing friction between us. Isn't that the essence of conflict?

And again this is exacerbated by the lack of communication. We desperately need to check in to see how the other is thinking and feeling so there is a different subtext to our interactions. 

But how do we shift the perception? How do we acknowledge our own internal lens and remind ourselves that this is not the only way to see the world? I have some nifty shamanic tools for that which involve finding your perceptual lens and moving it about, which are quite powerful. Stacey and I have set the intention to do one of these processes about our marriage. Once we do it I'll let you know how it turns out.

As for food, Mondays are always a bit nutty and we are trying to keep the main goal in mind – nourishing the body.  Stacey had lunch at the best place on or near campus...cafe Natura which is an earthy-crunchy haven owned and run by our friend Dinam, pictured above behind the counter. (She got a baked potato with butter, cheese and beans—a London favourite.) For dinner however, we are letting ourselves off the cooking hook by ordering some very good Thai food since Stacey is going to be at school until late. 

We have a plan for the next two days to cook, when the schedule is a little less hectic. As things get crazier as the move date approaches, it will be a true test to see if we can keep up the self-care even when the stress is high. This, I feel, is the true lesson we are trying to learn – taking care of the self no matter what the external conditions. Oh, it's a tough one.

Today we had our friends Dinam, Katia and Anaua over for “tea”. I do like this idea of stopping in the middle of the afternoon and making yourself a cuppa and snack. It's the English version of a siesta and both of these practices should be something we Americans adopted, but sadly never have. My friend Gretchen in California has tea for her English husband and ½ English child...but she'd have tea even without those excuses I imagine. And what I didn't realise until living here is “tea” often doesn't even include tea. Here they say, “what'll we have for tea?” as in what is our 3-4 pm snack going to comprise? 

For our tea this afternoon we put out some crackers and cheese including the incredibly rich “black bomb” cheddar we got last week at the farmers market. It did not disappoint. In addition, I made a batch of crepe batter and made one each for Dinam, Katia and myself (Carrie was juice cleansing). I tried a new combination of dark chocolate, ripe cherries, pistachios and clotted cream with a slight drizzle of honey on top. They also did not disappoint. Tomorrow I'll make Carrie and I a few savory ones to use up some of our veggies.

So what does food have to do with marriage? When you bring awareness and consciousness to one aspect of your life, you can't help but have that spill over into other aspects. We are hoping that by nourishing our bodies, we will have more to give to our relationships. And it is working – we are becoming more aware. We have been wondering what is so different about our dynamic as a couple. We used to talk everything out as it came up so that even if things weren't great and we were stressed, we were communicating and because things were processed in the moment there was no time for resentment or misunderstanding to build. Now we notice that in really stressful times we try to converse about what is happening but we never get to finish the conversation because we are trying to navigate what is happening and put out the fire. It's hard to talk over a two-year old in full melt down. And then there are times when we are so exhausted we don't even start the talk, we just look at each other with this pained or sometimes angry and resentful expression. So how do we carve out time to come back to the conversation? How do we even remember what the conversations were? We may not have the answers but at least we are starting to ask the questions.

So today our nourishment came in the form of massages – we even had the masseur come to our house and as a true gift, Gryffin slept through the whole thing. The massage therapist is also a hypnotherapist and gave us each a guided meditation massage. As Stacey said, “It was like getting a two-for one” (a spiritual journey and a massage at the same time). Since we both are quite familiar with “going there” we each had our spirits fed as well as our bodies and what was perhaps even more remarkable was we made time afterward to talk about our journeys. Progress!

Ps. Today Stacey had her favourite lunch at our local cafe (the Brockley Mess) – something called a Buck Rarebit (a poached egg version of a Welsh Rarebit otherwise known as a fancy open-faced grilled cheese with worcestershire sauce). Besides a decent latte they also serve nice french fries with garlic mayo...yum.

I'd like to write here about what and why we are doing this:

As part of my final coursework for a class I'm taking for my MA degree called “Critical Pedagogy in Contested Spaces”, I have the task of working with a collaborator (Carrie) on the idea of a “contested space”. In the course, we looked at conflict spaces such as Belfast in Northern Ireland and the Middle East. We then looked at how art and artists work have influenced and represented these contested spaces. Finally, we were asked to reflect critically on our own pedagogical practice and connect our research to the contested spaces in our own lives, in our own teaching and with the students we work with.

For my collaborative project with Carrie, we are looking at how with parenthood our marriage has become a contested space. This blog is one part of our work and uses the idea of feeding ourselves good food as a way of nurturing our bodies and our relationship.

Some of the questions we'll be asking ourselves as we work are:

• How is the space of a marriage created by the two individuals in it? What does the current space of our marriage look like?
• How does introducing the new roles of being parents create tension and division within this space?
• How can these tensions and divisions be acknowledged and worked on through art, spiritual and social practice and pedagogy?
• How has becoming a parent been traumatic?
• How have we experienced loss in our marriage due to parenthood?
• What effect does parenthood have on our individual and collective identities?
  

This project is about exploring the contested space of parenthood and marriage. It is about critically evaluating where we are, who we are and what our marriage has become since we became parents two years ago. Through our work we will rediscover our intentions and reclaim our identities both individually and as a couple. As we continue this work, we hope to reconfigure the space of our marriage toward a more integrated family life.

P.S. For those following our blog who have some thoughts on these questions, please share a comment with us.

Well, it's been a hard day. Gryffin was up from 3-7am with nasty nightmares and Stacey had a stomach bug yesterday and a migraine today. So it is with utter exhaustion that we announce we are heading back to the states in 17 days. Several synchronicities appeared to allow us to go home 2 months early. Stacey will be able to work on her final project for her program which is actually best done in Beacon and I will have support from friends and family. It will feed us in so many ways. We are not in a place in our lives to enjoy the big city. Instead of finding it exciting and energizing, we find it overwhelming and draining and having a 2-year old is actually quite prohibitive. She doesn't care about the culture and the sights, she just wants to run around outside which is impossible in the abysmal weather. So we are ecstatic to be headed to a small town nestled between a mountain and a river where we can procure good food, and where we are near family and friends. It will be a good chance for a lengthy goodbye as well, before we head west.

So the plan is to move back to Beacon, NY until November. If we haven't landed jobs in CA yet, we will proceed to Phoenix for a couple of months to stay with my parents and then on to the San Francisco Bay Area.  So the next 2 and a half weeks will be quite crazy, what with cooking, blogging, showing, presenting (we are doing a workshop at the Hayward Gallery next week), packing, organizing and such. It will be more important than ever to take good care of ourselves and eat well and that IS a challenge. Because isn't it just when you are the most crazed that you need the most self care and you are least likely to give it to yourself because you are too tired, too busy, too stressed, etc.

In that vein I did manage to make a meal today, chicken cordon bleu, one of Stacey's favorite dishes. I had butternut squash and broccoli to go with it, but Stacey didn't feel well enough to eat. I enjoyed it at least. 

Cheers

P.S. Stacey did manage to make a nice BLT for herself for lunch using the nice sourdough bread we get from our local grocer. Good job on the self care Stace (that's what we say to Gryffin when she picks up her toys or eats all her olives or brushes more than one tooth).

We have been making some new plans to care for ourselves in a very big way this summer...and we'll share them with you all tomorrow.  For now, it's time to turn off the "pooter" and call it a night.