ANNE CLOUD

“Shiver Me Whiskers”

If you don’t have a child under the age of 12 this may mean very little to you but…I was cast in a scripted podcast about an alien invasion playing opposite one of the Octonauts!! Not just any Octonaut – Kwazii – the daredevil orange kitty with a mysterious pirate past! The Octonauts was a picture book series and then a TV show and a couple of movies (lunchboxes, bath tub toys – well done with the franchising bit) they are huge. Like Disney Princess/Beatles huge. At least in my house. Meaning my kids actually think something I am doing is cool!! I have arrived. I. Have. Arrived.

Gratitude 2.0

Okay I know, I know – gratitude?! Seriously Anne – can you come up with some unique content for Pete’s sake?! Listen – this is different.
It’s simple (and wonderful) to have gratitude for the easy stuff – your family, your job, coffee. Having gratitude for the hard things, the parts of life that challenge you, make you want to quit, cause you pain, that’s tougher. I was recently given an exercise to help practice gratitude for hard things with an easy way in – a short cut, a hack – you get me. It goes like this:
Dear Previous Iteration of Myself (5 minute ago Anne, 5 day ago Anne, 15 year ago Anne, etc.),
Thank you. Thank you for making it through that awful relationship that almost broke you. Thank you for having the courage to quit that job that wasn’t fulfilling your life’s purpose. Thank you for your strength to trudge through your sad day. I am so grateful that you made it through the hard bits so I could be here, in this place today. Doing these things. With these people. With more tools in my tool belt for the next time something hard comes. Thank you.
Try it – see what comes.

The Power of Play

This Ted Talk given by Shonda Rhimes seven years ago is beautiful and touching and empowering and a little bit gut wrenching. If you have 18 minutes, I believe the whole video is worth your time. If you have two minutes, scrub to minute 9. And, since I know you aren’t going to do either of those things let me give you the best bits:

“My hum was broken. I was doing the same things I always did, all the same titan work, 15-hour days, working straight through the weekends, no regrets, never surrender, a titan never sleeps, a titan never quits, full hearts, clear eyes, yada, whatever. But there was no hum. Inside me was silence. So what do you do when the thing you do, the work you love, starts to taste like dust? If the song of my heart ceases to play, can I survive in the silence?”

Then her daughter asks her to play and she does.

“Play is the opposite of work. And I am happy. Something in me loosens. A door in my brain swings open, and a rush of energy comes. And it’s not instantaneous, but it happens, it does happen. I feel it. A hum creeps back. Not at full volume, barely there, it’s quiet, and I have to stay very still to hear it, but it is there.”

My partner Nick and I love a 30 challenge. We once did a 30 day vegan challenge and stayed vegan for years – until cheese got the better of us. This month we are trying a 50/50 produce challenge. Every plate of food – every meal, every snack – is 50% produce. I would say we are succeeding in making it happen about fifty percent of the time! I would love to say we are crushing it but it’s harder than we expected. Fruit in the mountains of Western North Carolina is not amazing right now – and it’s bonkers expensive – and vegetables take energy and time because this picky mama doesn’t like them raw. Thus, fifty percent – or so. It has increased our awareness and our produce consumption so I say it’s already a win.

The Countdown to Christmas is a big deal at our house. The kids call December 1 the first day of Christmas because they get to celebrate everyday. We have a little tree with envelopes on it and each day they open one to discover the holiday activity we will do that day – making ornaments, holiday themed dance party, gingerbread houses, movie night etc. I am trying to document it on instagram this year and the kids have been loving the process of helping make the reels.

Here is Day 5 – when we ate the Kings Cake

I have been listening to Bewilderment by Richard Powers and it has utterly touched my heart. It is the story of an astrobiologist searching for life in the cosmos while raising a neurodivergent son alone, after the unexpected death of his beloved wife. Based on that one sentence I never, ever would have picked this book. But it’s endearing and painful and moving all at once.

“There I was, still getting paid to prepare how to discover whether we were alone, or surrounded by crazy neighbors. Ali and I had more projects than we had hours. Then our lives changed thanks to the 1.5% failure rate of our favorite birth control. The unlikely roll stunned us both. It seemed a break in our long streak, the worst possible timing for an event we might never have chosen for ourselves. Our careers already stretched us to the limits. Neither of us had the knowledge or wherewithal to raise child. A decade later, I see the truth. Every morning I wake up, if Ali and I had been in charge, the luckiest thing in my life, the thing that kept me going when all the luck in the world went cold, would never have existed. Not even in my wildest models.”

I drove the kids to Asheville the other day and they chose the music – the way they rock out to music and let me sing along (most of the time) and be fully into the music right along with them is an amazing gift. If you’ve never heard “Raining Tacos” you are really missing out. Here is the playlist from this week – it’s…eclectic.

Listen Here

If I can’t do a thing “right” (perfect) I typically don’t do it. At all. This is not a character trait which has served me very well and I’m trying to overcome it. My intention this November was to create a “Gratitude Wall” and have our family write or draw one thing every day they are grateful for. I didn’t do it on the first and thus was ready to scrap the idea and try again next year. Instead I grabbed a few old pieces of kid art and asked Juniper to cut them into notecard size pieces. On Thanksgiving I will strew them on a table with a bunch of markers for anyone interested in participating in writing one thing they are thankful for. One day only – so much easier. Not perfect, but was it really going to be anyway?

Somehow brussel sprouts are the ‘bad guy’ of vegetables. How did this happen? They are delicious. They are a staple in our house through the fall and winter – usually roasted, because that’s easy. But not on Thanksgiving. No, on Thanksgiving they get a place of honor with Smitten Kitchen’s Dijon Braised Brussel Sprout recipe – it’s so tasty I have been thinking about it for weeks. Does not have to be for a holiday – try it anytime!