eastery fun

I hosted an egg hunt here on Thursday, which was the perfect chance to use my new camera. I guess I've now joined Dana and Caroline in the clunky camera club (we're waiting for you, Z!).

This probably means my blog will include more look-at-my-pics-of-the-fun-stuff-we've-done posts in addition to the usual here's-what-I've-figured-out-lately-and-now-must-write-about posts. Hopefully these new posts will force me out of my introspective comfort zone and make me focus on the now. Or something like that.

At any rate, I love my new camera. It IS a lot of fun. The Easter egg hunt was a great time. I've done a hunt for the past year (or two?) for our homeschooling group, but this year I scaled it back even further & it worked out much better. There were only 3 families besides us, which was very do-able. In the past, I've put out blanket invitations only to find myself totally stressing over not having enough eggs, not having enough candy, spending lots of money on supplies, having a full house of muddy children, etc. Although I always want to invite everyone I know and love to these sorts of things, I literally bit my tongue to keep it small & consequently, eliminated the stress & was able to relax, have fun, and take PICTURES!

The girls hamming it up for the camera



"Everybody say candy!"



Our Mama-Sassy shot



Hunting



I also picked up some baby chicks from our local poultry farm so the kids could hold them. We still have them chirping away downstairs (well, actually, we have the brown one and a new, older yellow one -- the little tiny yellow one the kids passed around was, unbeknownst to us, only a day old (!) when we picked it up. It was not doing so well the next day, so I drove it back to the farm so it could heal & exchanged it for an older one.) Between the chicks & the kittens, it's gotten us so itchy to move to the farm.





That night, we went to Kroger to buy the supplies to reproduce the Sitwell's Gouda & Guacamole sandwich. Sassy used some of the supplies to make a gorgeous salad for herself, complete with lime juice for dressing and a dill garnish, with no help from us.

Jeff's dad would be so proud.

After she fell asleep, I told Jeff that she would so be his dad's favorite if he had lived to know it. Of course, he'd never have admitted it. But that wouldn't have made it any less so.

kittens!

We have KITTENS!

Three of them, to be exact. And we also have one dog, one mama cat, one big-ass goldfish & 2 baby chicks. Oh, and an almost five-year-old. Whew! That's a lot of caretaking on my plate right now. It makes me tired just talking about it.



Everybody told me that cats will go off by themselves to give birth -- just disappear -- but not Sally. She wouldn't leave me alone until I followed her upstairs & wouldn't give birth until I stayed with her.

I usually am not a believer in the "everything happens for a reason" mentality...I'm more of a believer that everything happens by chance and things work out better when you follow the conscience God gave to your soul. But this cat almost has a magical quality to her. I wonder if she came to our door because she's my healer.

Here she showed up barely showing a pregnancy, but I figured it out the same night & insisted we keep her. I've watched her get bigger & bigger at the same time that I'm facing the fact that I don't trust my body anymore & feel it's inherently flawed. Instead, I've been watching her be completely at home with her pregnant self, which has been a great model for me.

I've been suspecting lately that I am probably supposed to learn something from her. The night the kittens were born, I was so, SO tempted to jump online & research the heck out of cats giving birth & the signs & how often cats will be with their humans when they do it, etc, etc. But I didn't let myself. I decided this was between me & Sally & she'd tell me everything I needed to know if I just trusted her & listened to her.

It was wonderful. I've never felt I understood a cat's body language before, but she communicated very clearly with me. I turned off all the sounds in the room so I could hear her & drifted to sleep. About an hour and a half later, I heard the tiny squeaks of a kitten, then another. In the morning, I counted 3. Yay!

I had to ditch that great glowing bastion of accumulated information and trust that nature will take its course & that Sally & I could handle whatever happened just fine. And we did. I think I need to apply this lesson to my own body.

She is a wonderful mother. She does it so naturally. I get so caught up in watching her sometimes, soaking in her calm.

the lion who resurrected

I’ve written before about the cheap little movie machine at Kroger. The selection is small, but for only $1/night, we use it when we want something outside the library.

Last night, I thought it would be fun to get something Sassy and I would both like. I rented The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe. Of course, Jeff was happy with my decision & wanted to watch too, so it made a nice little impromptu family movie night.

I’ve seen my share of these fantasy-type movies, but this is now my favorite, partly due to nostalgia & partly due to timing. I figured there would be some sort of various Biblically-influenced parts to the movie. Having read C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters in my college years, I was well aware of his beliefs. Our pastors at Crossroads also referred to his books often in their own studies. Personally, I’ve found him to be one of the most accessible & intelligent Christian writers out there.

What I didn’t expect was a retelling of the entire Easter story through different characters. It’s easy to become jaded after awhile with the death and resurrection. Even the beating, taunting, suffering beforehand can lose its intensity after you hear it so many times. But to see it through the eyes of this lion, the lion who was both inherently gentle and supernaturally strong, the lion who made even the White Witch sit in her seat with a single roar – it breathed new life into the old story.

I loved it.

I was itching to grasp my teachable moments when I could throughout the movie, but it became a Family Movie Night, and multiple pauses to draw clear metaphors for Sassy wasn’t appropriate at the time.

I’ve requested a movie from the library, The Easter Storytellers, that shows the Easter story as we know it on a kid’s level. After we watch it, I might just watch Narnia again with the remote in hand.

aaaaggghhhh! where's the money???

I'm getting so tired of having zero extra money right now. I sort of know where it's going. Our gas & electric bill was well over $300 for the past 2 months & then there's the fact that I'm seeing a nutritionist weekly to the tune of $35 + supplements a pop. It just seems like with Jeff's recent raise there would be more than this!

We watch PBS. All the time. So lately, we've been watching PBS's fundraising. All the time. I agree that we all need to contribute to PBS & I believe with all my heart that it's a great cause & the best TV out there, but I tell you -- I want to stab that woman with a blunt knife every time she interrupts Curious George for 10 minutes in the morning, leaving me with a little Chatty Cathy right next to me until I can (hopefully) persuade her that the Super Why we're hearing might not be a rerun this morning. But then of course, the relief only lasts 10 more minutes anyway before Little Miss Contributions comes back on to yada yada yada us.

It's not that Sassy doesn't have brilliant things to say. (She does!) And it's not that I don't want to hear them. (I do!) But I am not a morning person. I never have been, probably never will be. I enjoy getting up early because that means I can really get going by 10:00 or 11:00. If I were getting up at 10:00, I'd be a grump until at least noon. It's unfortunate, but, what's that phrase? It is what it is.

So, yes, I depend on PBS cartoons in the morning to let me wake up gently, coming to the table a patient mama, an attentive mama, not emotionally scarring my child by appearing to be annoyed by her mere existence beside me. It's just not true. It's chemical!

And so I'd really like to give to PBS. First and foremost, I hope that our "generous gift of $75" would magically tip the scales so that yada yada yada lady would shut up already & let Curious George play all the way through. But, really, because it is something we should support. It is a great institution. And we do watch it. A lot.

Just tonight I saw a very interesting documentary about Pete Seeger. I've now decided that I am not allowed to call myself a hippie, a liberal, a leftist without serious scrutiny and ribbing considering I didn't know many, many of the things in the documenatry. (I will not publicly embarrass myself by listing them here, but suffice to say, I knew next to nothing of his songs, his persona, etc. and I found myself saying many times during the show, "So THATS's where that came from.") My next stop on my internet tour tonight is to request his CD from the library. That should say it all.

In the closing of the documentary, he sang a Spanish song & translated it during the performance. I will close with the line from the song that struck me as the wisest quote I've heard in years. Perhaps that's because Jesus himself said as much over 2000 years ago. Regardless of my ability to support public television, it's important to remember how lovely that struggle can be.

With the poor of this world, I want to cast my lot.

"

and the list goes on...

We are trying to get our house ready to list by the end of this month. There is so. much. work. I've been trying to do at least one thing each day toward the house & have been fairly successful, especially during the week. But today, I have a few sewing projects so I have to switch gears from the painting, organizing, decluttering mode & try to enter the more sedate, calm, meditative mode of sewing. One of my projects is a gift for a friend, so it actually has to be good. :-)

Lately, we've been spending so much money to fix up the house & do work on the land that it keeps eating our grocery budget right up. So it's been nearly a month since we've had more than $30/week to spend on food. Jeff and I have been supplementing with our own spending money when we get tired of the pantry choices, but the freezer, cabinets & basement storage are all running low. I'm trying to look at it as another chance to work out those tightwad muscles -- sometimes it's too easy to slack off -- but frankly I'm getting tired of workarounds. And yelling at Sassy for eating "too many oranges" in one day, even though the poor thing is still sick & could surely use the Vitamin C. I feel like such an ogre, hoarding the fruit, doling it out one by one after she's proven her case to me. Anyway...

The key in a tight market is to not waste anything, so I've developed a new system on cooking day. Cooking day usually happens every Monday through a confluence of factors that involve me paying bills over the weekend and realizing how poor we are, doing a tiny bit of grocery shopping on what little money we have, spending one full weekend trying to find food for us in the house & looking at the empty refrigerator first thing on Monday morning, thinking I'll surely KILL myself if I don't have ready food for the next 5 days. Or at least be really hungry. And so I cook. And cook. And cook as much as I can think of that day. And it lasts us until Wednesday maybe.

Well, as I was heading to the trash can with my sweet potato ends, I decided it was so wasteful -- why not prepare them for Sofie? So I've kept a small pot of water on the stove all day to which I've added:

sweet potato ends
2 bites uneaten eggs
walnuts found on the floor
popcorn spilled on the floor
cornbread batter from my beater hook (I rinsed it off in the pot instead of in the sink)

Tonight I plan to put all my old leftovers from the fridge into the pot before I boil it all up for her. And hopefully, we can spend our money on people food instead of dog food during this time.

"How I Became Pro-Life" - an excerpt

It is tough to be pro-life & liberal at the same time. I've lived that life for over 20 years, believing staunchly in many things that are "leftist" in our culture, like protecting the Earth (that God has given to us, making me question why this ever became a partisan issue in the first place), caring for the unfortunate (again, just as Jesus himself did, bringing into question its partisan status), and the left's general reticence to throw us into war.

During my college days, I hid my true pro-life feelings behind a veneer of apathy. "I would never have an abortion," I'd say, "but I guess I can't really control what other people do." That much was true indeed. But I didn't feel comfortable revealing my disgust at abortion and the way it valued mom's feelings about the pregnancy over those of the developing fetus. Essentially, a culture that says abortion is legal and doesn't even carry with it a scarlet letter is saying that one human life (that of the mother) is more important than another human life (that of the fetus). Let's bring up all the ethical baggage that goes along with the dilemma: but what if there was rape? What if the mother's life were in danger? What if the baby had severe disabilities?

Is it really our right to decide the answers in blanket yes or no judgements? Is it all black and white? Does it have to be? I'm not fooled by the excessive media attention given these fringe scenarios, when I realize fully well that they comprise a very small percentage of abortion cases.

I found a post sort of accidentally this morning that detailed another woman's journey from pro-choice to pro-life, and I appreciated hearing her thoughts.

It made me realize that my pro-choice viewpoints were putting me in the position of deciding who was and was not human, and whose lives were worth living. I (along with doctors, the government, or other abortion advocates) decided where to draw this very important line. When I would come across Catholic blogs or books where they said something like "life begins at conception," I would scoff at the silliness of that notion as was my habit...yet I found myself increasingly uncomfortable with my defense:

"A few cells is obviously not a baby or even a human life!" I would say to myself. "Fetuses eventually become full-fledged humans, but not until, umm, like six months gestation or something. Or maybe five months? When is it that they can kick their legs and stuff?...Eight weeks? No, they're not human then, those must be involuntary spasms..."

I was putting the burden of proof on the fetuses to demonstrate to me that they were human.

If you have 20 minutes to spare, please read the whole post because it's very good.

Lately, I've realized what a wonderful moral compass we can find in healthy, secure children who've been given the chance to think freely and not have our society's moral agenda superimposed onto them. My daughter is a great example of this, as was I, and as I believe most children I know are. These well-adjusted kids have an inherent sense of what is right or wrong, not based on a particular ideology, but based on an innate conscience that, when followed and not ignored, will cultivate a loving, generous and kind soul. This, I believe, is why we recognize that children are "innocent."

The abortion issue is one that struck home with me very early. I remember as a child when I first learned of the procedure. My first thought was thankfulness that my own mother didn't choose to have an abortion, followed by a feeling of having had a "narrow escape." Then, I felt a deep sadness for all the babies that didn't get a chance to live. I hadn't been taught yet that the correct term was fetuses and that only pro-life freaks called them babies.

My own daughter loves babies as well, inside or out. She was fascinated by the baby that lived in my womb for 3 months last year. She knew that the baby was to be protected. She would have been horrified if I'd terminated the pregnancy on my own, and rightly so.

We don't like to hear of the particulars of dismemberment, drowning in acid, floating heads, etc. We call it "religious propaganda," and wouldn't dream of showing it to our children. That's because we know our children would be horrified. In their innocence and ability to feel truth rather than our current culture's dogma, they would be sickened and disgusted. That doesn't mean the answer is to hide it from them, any more than the answer to factory farming is to put it out of sight so we don't have to see the suffering of our meat.

The answer for me is that logic and rational thinking only take you so far. No matter how much life experience you have, true wisdom often comes from the littlest voices. If you aren't afraid to look directly at your own moral compass, I think you'll agree.

lights will guide you home

Ahh....

Reason #94 that I love my husband: because he watches Masterpiece Theatre with me...even the 6-hour, 3-part Pride & Prejudice....and he enjoyed it.

I'm sitting back enjoying the feeling of Part 3, the finale, which we just finished. At which time, Jeff turned to me & said, "I plan to take my respite in the lower portion of the home tonight, as I don't think I can stand yet another minute of the tossing and turning of the little one's legs."

I think Colin Firth might be one my new favorite actors (I'm about to check out his other movies from the library to find out), and Masterpiece Theatre, while I've enjoyed it before, has now leapt to the top of my charts as the only show I look forward to each week. I must offer a thank you to the writers who went on strike, since before they did, Desperate Housewives was in that position. It also so happened to be in the exact same timeslot, and I was certainly never proud to anticipate it so strongly each week. (Yes, after you watch MT, it's far too easy to slip into "Jane Austen-speak," so forgive me, my dear friends.)

Now, however, I can look forward to a show that actually teaches me something, is exciting & well-written, and assuages my guilt about my lack of time for reading all at the same time. Oh, and the best part? Sassy can watch it too!

I never miss cable anymore. And I love PBS. A lot. I hesitate to say just how much we watch PBS usually, because we'd either look like (1) pretentious art snobs or (2) old fogies. But, we do watch it a lot. And we love it.

And, by the way, reason #7 that I love my husband: we watched Masterpiece Theatre together a few weeks ago....instead of the Stupidbowl.

the little camera that could

When I bought our old Olympus Camedia, I was one of the "early adopters" on the digital camera bar graph. I purchased that little 2.1 megapixel guy on a Best Buy credit card for a whopping $699.99 in 2001 and was ecstatic to have it. A few years later, I decided that it was too outdated and marched right out to Best Buy, credit card in hand, to purchase a Nikon Coolpix, since I've always been a Nikon devotee. Problem was, I got the Nikon home, and convinced as I'd been that I'd love it, I hated it. It had the worst delay of any digital camera I'd seen. Your ability to capture good pics relied on one thing only: lucky timing. If, perhaps, your subject might have made an endearing facial expression 3-4 seconds after you pushed the button, lucky you! What a great shot! If instead, your subject, I don't know, decided to crawl away or look at the ceiling or blink or drool, well then, another scrap shot it was.

I sold it for $40 at a yard sale last summer.

I went back to the Camedia, which was, in all respects, a very good camera. Its big flaw was that it did not have an adjustable and interchangeable lens, i.e...it was not a DSLR.

Well, it must have caught wind that I was planning to replace it with the Nikon D60 because it finally, after all these years, just pooped out on me the other day. It flatly refused to turn on, no matter how many different combinations of different AA batteries I used.

So what are we using now? This little gem from Fisher Price, which Sassy received for Christmas. That's right, folks. This is our only digital camera in the house.

I won't purchase another snapshot type camera right now since I'm saving for my Nikon DSLR. So, we are suffering through with the KidTough. Funny thing is, it turns out that it does take some rather cool-looking shots. They're very vintage-style, reminiscent of pics from those little black box cameras that used to be all over every thrift shop you visited in the 90s, but are now collector items selling for big bucks on eBay. For the novelty of it, it's kind of fun right now, though the minute I have my $600 saved, I'm heading straight out to get my Nikon.

Check 'em out:

My Kitchen Sink
I just love having all these little glass bottles of different things above my sink. It makes me feel joyful, fulfilled. Silly, yes, but I do love it. I have organic vanilla extract, dried mango and pineapple slices, red rooibus tea, indian spice tea, and oven-dried tomatoes in olive oil in the first pic. The second pic shows my new why-didn't-I-think-of-this-already drying system for my rags and scrubbers so they don't get nasty sitting in the sink anymore.





Oven-Dried Tomatoes
Here we have the latest batch of oven-dried tomatoes, for which I cut in half some organic grape tomatoes that were on clearance at Jungle Jim's. They were 84 cents a package so we bought 2 packages and dried most of them. I actually turned these into a "salsa starter" (just add canned tomatoes) last night along with the rest of the dried mango (bought also on clearance at Jungle Jim's for a ridiculously low price, oh how I'm loving that Jungle Jim's right now).



Pancake Rollups
I made buckwheat pancakes for the first time last week. I soaked equal parts buckwheat and whole wheat with some raw cider vinegar, sour cream & water a la Weston A. Price guidelines, then rolled them up with the sweet cream cheese from Nourishing Traditions. I added some vanilla extract and almond extract to the cream cheese and YUM! Sassy and I both loved them.



Sassy's Plate Arrangement
Jeff's father would be so proud of our little girl. She is destined to work in the culinary field, I'm convinced. Here she arranged a plate for her "bake shop" where she sold "tea and pancake rollup pastries."



My First Cold Frame
Here it is -- the first cold frame I've ever made. (I say "my first", because I hope to make many more.) We used a free-to-us bookshelf for the base and a trash-picked french door for the top. I've already planted a few lettuce seeds in it, you know, just to see.



STILL I'm Watching You
And rounding out our gallery tour today is this stupid, oh-it's-so-cute-I-think-it's-going-to-kill-me little cat that Jeff and I have been hiding in various places for each other, like the inside of our kitchen cabinets, our underwear drawers, under the computer mouse, taped to his rearview mirror, etc.

warmth and wind and water

The other day, I wrote about persistent, loud grief and I received such kind words from my friends. Thank you.

I knew I should pray about it. Heck, what with all the direct answers I've been getting, you'd think I'd want to pray all the time -- you know, sort of maintain this constant prayerful spirit, looking up instead of back & ahead, instead of looking into the shadows all the time. But, I must admit, after I received an answer I didn't like, I sort of avoided it for awhile. Then, of course, there's always the fact that when my life speeds up, my prayer life all but fades away, as do all activities that require a calm spirit.

Yesterday was the perfect melting pot for looking up. Sassy was with her Nana all day, and Jeff worked second shift, which left me with an empty home save the Vunderdog. I returned home at 6:00, fed myself, fed the Vunderdog, and gathered some materials for gardening. I was certain that getting my hands dirty would settle me enough to hear answers if they were there. I took out an oil torch for lighting. After I planted some lettuce and spinach in my new coldframe, I sat on our trash-picked swing with Peter Bjorn and John on the mp3 player. There, on the swing, I took some minutes to feel the unseasonable warmth, the restrained power of the pre-storm wind, and the vitality of the day's rain and finally, I could ask the questions and listen for answers.

As usual, the answers make little sense right now. I trust that they will. I was left feeling that the pain IS and that's all. The pain is neither inherently good nor bad. It just is. And, as Jeff suggested earlier yesterday, I am allowed to pull it out, examine it objectively, and eliminate its negativity since it simply is.

The other answer is that even though my reticence to share my pain is actually a symptom of fear rather than strength, that balming the grief isn't going to happen by opening the floodgates. Instead, my pain will be soothed by daily activities. By simple routines and grounding organic activities. Things like cooking from scratch, growing food, being side by side with my animal, washing our things, arranging our home to be even more of us, and replacing Google with God (thanks, Lara). Things like noticing the "triangles in the water" running down our street (thanks, Sassy). Things like portraying what is in our hearts through the artistic techniques of masters (thanks, Caroline).

I enjoyed watching the wind sway the branches above my head for almost an hour as I considered these concepts and how to put them into practice. The storm was on the horizon all night, moving the warmth through our area. But the wind didn't rush things along. It had a steady intensity about it, but it didn't blow through in gusts, leaving wreckage behind, as I've seen so many storm winds do. As a result, I felt more wholly comfortable and settled myself, in the warmth and the wind and the water.

How much wreckage could be eliminated in my home and in my heart if I approached life with a steady intensity rather than my long-standing pattern of either strong gusts or light breezes?

if you're gonna talk the talk...

...then walk the walk, or ride the bike as it may be. People, this is why I love Portland.



I'm so glad someone had the ironic sense to snap this photo. My friend Jeff and his new wife Jill recently moved to a new home. But they did it all by bike. I've been awaiting the pics & I am not disappointed! It's heartwarming to see this kind of dedication, stamina & community. There is hope for humanity (in Portland, at least).

If you want to check out more of what a MxB looks like (move by bike), check out some of the other public collections of the event. Says one photographer:

24 brave hardy souls braved rain, sleet and (yes, briefly) snow to move Jeff and Jill a few miles. Half of us were crazy enough to go pack and pull a second load!

Shot on a Nikon D200

That's my friend there with the map. I love it! He's always good for being organized and definitely knows his way around a map. :-)

Looking at the scope of the project

Yep, couches & mattresses too

Lotsa MxB

Bike moves = much pizza

pain and health

My grandma has always been a strong woman. She's not had a piece of cake life; actually, she's had more than her share of grief to deal with, as anyone would if they lost one of their children. But she keeps going, she perseveres, she puts on a face of faith & strength, even in the midst of her grief. My mother was similar, in many ways. She and I shared this impulsive part of our personality, infused with nervous energy. But my mom didn't break down in public. Even when she was sick with cancer, she continued to go to work at her new management job at Cincinnati Bell & put on her game face for several months until the disease forced her to quit.

The past few years have held my own shares of pain & grief. I won't detail them here. Some of them are well-known to my friends; some of them come from many years past. The point is, I learned how to put on my game face a long time ago from my two masters. I learned that being a blubbering idiot about your grief gets you nowhere -- that people lose respect for you, that you don't appear strong, and that strength is the defining characteristic of a worthy woman.

Unfortunately, in the past year and half, life keeps piling on the grief. Each month, each moon, more grief, more loss. And I'm left now wondering where I have put it all? It keeps simmering far too close to the surface for my comfort level. It keeps bubbling over at inopportune times, try as I might for it to stay in the pot. Where have I put it? Where should I put it?

I often address my problems visually, a trick I learned long ago when I had to deliver public speeches in college. If I imagined myself at the podium, delivering my speech to a spellbound audience, natural and relaxed, with perfect comedic timing, my speech went pretty well. If I imagined myself crashing and burning, I would leave the podium embarrassed.

Last night, I was talking to an old friend on the phone when lo and behold, here came those pains, pushing their way out the top. I actually hung up the phone with her, told her I'd call her right back. I was frustrated. I didn't care for them at the moment. I visually saw myself, asked myself, to push them back where they belong, which in my mind's eye, was somewhere in my belly area. Then I became concerned. How long have I been pushing them into my belly? What implications might that have now, or in the long-term. I decided I needed somewhere else for them, and mentally went through my body parts. Brain? No. Heart? No way! I'd have a heart attack eventually? So I started thinking of less important body parts, in the grand scheme. Legs? Uh-uh. I want to walk. Hands? No, I need to be able to work.

I was then even more concerned. If I didn't even feel right about giving my grief to my hands, why on earth was I pushing them to my bellly? Had I been pushing these feelings to very detrimental places all my life? Even if this has had no discernible consequences up until now, when will it? Of course, I fear it may have already.

So I thought about giving my feelings to the chair I was sitting in. Let them drip out the bottom. But I immediately rejected the idea, because I love the chair I was sitting in & I didn't want it to become a big chair of negativity. OK, now you may be laughing, but what struck me is this: I love the chair enough not to give it my negative feelings but not my body?

In the end, I went to bed wondering where to put them? Where to push them to? The best I could come up with is to give them to God. But how does one do that exactly?

a few fun things

Here's a couple activities we've done together lately.

The other day, we made a maze out of blocks. Idea from Highlights High Five Magazine.



Then we played with it for a little while.



As my own project for her, I made a baby carrier for her dolls.





And finally, we've picked up the best children's art book I've ever seen per C's recommendation. This will be our art curriculum through Kindergarten. I am excited to do the projects along with her!

no writing?

I think I'm starting to glimpse the true meaning behind "Quit writing," and if I'm right, it's also not something I'm ready to accept. And here comes Sassy up the stairs....perfect timing.

This is the usual pattern. I settle into something that cannot by the nature of the activity include her, just like this post. And next thing you know, she approaches me. And it bothers me. Sometimes just a little bit. Often, it's more than a little bit. I snap at her. I say crazy things to her, like, "Mommy needs quiet time!" or "I HAVE to get my work done. You need to find something to do!"

In reality, telling a 4 year old, in so many words, to "Go away and leave me alone" never works. In fact, it usually has the immediate opposite effect. I might as well just whip out my velcro & give us each a piece instead.

This post isn't very well thought-out & might meader, so my apologies upfront.

It isn't just writing that brings on this scene. It's writing, paying bills, checking email, doing financial spreadsheets, doing group maintenance, researching ideas or information online, replying to posts within larger forums, reading posts within larger forums, requesting media from the library, purchasing things online, sometimes even downloading music. It's interesting to me that I call all of this "work," when actually, it's not. Most of it is truly just play.

When we were browsing the thrift store together yesterday (and, BTW, she was SO GOOD), we were playing this back/forth imaginary game where she was a little girl who was buying a dog from me. She told me about her family. "My daddy doesn't go to work out of the house," she said. "My daddy works in his study. He works on the compootier."

"Oh?" I asked.

"Yes. He works a lot. But he doesn't go outside the house. Well, actually, he doesn't work on the compootier. He doesn't work at all!"

"Oh," I said, "That's interesting. Well, if he doesn't work, what does he do with his time?"

"He plays with me!" she said. "All the time."

No, I don't think it's possible (or appropriate) for Jeff or for me to play with her all the time. But I do think this is a telling representation of how she is experiencing life.

And, as much as it pains me to say it, I don't feel like I am experiencing her. I am managing her. That's mostly how I feel. Even when we play or do things together, my mind is usually on "grown-up" things.

Last night, we laid in bed when we were both getting tired and we played a question game. I told her I could ask her any question I wanted to & then she could ask me. My first question was, "What was your favorite part of today?"

"All of it!" she said, although we truly had not done much that was exciting yesterday.

As we were exchanging questions, I looked into her eyes & she into mine. It was so hard! I was amazed that looking straight into her eyes was as hard as it was. I used to look into her eyes all the time when she was a baby. Why was it hard?

I'm not sure why exactly. Part of it was the earnestness in her eyes. I've never seen someone look at me so earnestly, except maybe an ex or two that was far more into me than I was into them. Not so with Sassy! I look at her with just as much longing and love but it's always when she's sleeping. The mere intensity of her undiverted stare made me uncomfortable with a mix of guilt, radical love and too much emotion. But I think part of it was also that I'd let myself get un-used to it. Most of the time, rather than really listening, the kind of listening where the person can "see your eyes," I maintain our conversations with an "mm-hmm", "oh, yeah?" "hmm, that's cool." Often I have no idea what she's actually talking about.

Naturally, children separate from their parents. Sassy's too little to need to separate so far.

Where does this bring me?

It's not about the writing itself. It's not about the computer or the TV in and of itself. It's about my attitude of management rather than engagement. I could set limits on our TV time & computer time & I think that would be a great start. But it won't finish the job.

To engage with Sassy means that I need to not assume that since she is old enough to be more self-sufficient, that I can take off & do my own thing for a couple hours while she watches cartoons, plays computer games or plays with her toys in a different part of the house. It's OK for her to do those things -- I am not her permanent entertainer. But, it's not OK for me to expect that time. That time is a welcome surprise. An unexpected treat.

My online habits will have to change, of course. I am likely going to take TTC down completely. Well, actually, I will likely make it password-protected & keep it as a virtual filing cabinet of various financial "articles" that perhaps I could market one day. After a few months, I hope I can find time to transfer those to hard disk somewhere & take it down entirely.

I doubt I'll check email more than once/day unless I am expecting something.

I will try to maintain a consistent bedtime at night so that I can do computer work then while Sassy sleeps AND she can hopefully get the sleep a child her age needs, which has been a problem lately.

I will try to involve Sassy in my activities & limit cartoon time to an hour each morning & perhaps an hour of "downtime" in the afternoon, if needed.

I am not the type of person who can play imaginary games all day. Even an hour really wears on my nerves. But I can involve her in what I do & not try to live these separate lives in the same household so that I can loaf on my own.

a couple more cleanse recipes

For dinner, roasted spaghetti squash with homemade tomato sauce. I used 1 can tomato paste, enough water to make a good consistency, generous oregano, sauteed onion & sauteed garlic.

For a chocolate craving, blend 1 frozen banana, 2 Tbls. peanut butter, 2 Tbls. carob powder (this was iffy on the allowed scale, but it was a serious chocolate craving) & enough water to make a smoothie consistency.

when I grow up....

Driving past my old college yestserday, Sassy and I had this conversation:

S: Mommy, what's that big building?
M: That's actually the place where I went to college.
S: Oh....well, what did you want to be?
M: (trying to ignore how loaded a question this was) Well, Mommy went to school to be a writer, actually.
S: Oh. Well I going to be a chef!
M: That's great, sweetie! You should be sure to tell Daddy when you get home. You know, when Daddy was little, his Daddy was a chef. He worked in an expensive, fancy restaurant.
S: Well I not going to be that kind of chef. I going to be a chef who makes sweets. Like cookies and cakes and candies.
M: Ahhh.....so you're going to be a pastry chef. You should talk to Aunt Angie about that. She was a pastry chef for a long time.
S: Uh-huh. And I going to have my own little bake shop.
M: You know, when we move to the farm, Daddy's going to have his own bake shop too. But he's not going to bake sweets. He's going to bake bread.
S: Ooh! Then I can open my bake shop right next to Daddy's!
M: Or, maybe when you get a little older, you can work in the bake shop with Daddy. You could bake sweets and Daddy could bake breads.
S: (thinks for a minute) No, I going to have my own shop. Next to Daddy's.

Sounds like she's got it all figured out.

unexpected answers

I share this with trepidation, because I fear it wil make me sound kooky--more than I already do. :-)

For many, many years I have stated, "I don't pray. I try, but it seems like I'm talking to myself. I don't see the point in it." Lately, this has changed. Why? Because I started getting answers. Not answers where I laid still & pondered for a good long while about what I was bringing up in prayer. More like the kind of answers where you barely get the question out & a bullhorn voice smacks you upside the head with the answer.

In my agnostic years, I would have assumed it was my subconscious talking. Who knows? It very well may be. I wonder at times if we don't all have the "rightness" of the world constantly in our subconscious waiting to be tapped -- or asked. An innate conscience. An inborn godliness. Whether I have a direct line to God way up on His Throne in His Heavenly Universe through His Son, or whether I have all of what I ever needed to know resting in my soul, waiting its turn to speak, I don't know. What I do know is that the answers I get never come from me directly. They never are a scientific conclusion after I review the facts. In fact, the latest one was an answer I did not want to hear. I'm still chewing on it. I don't want to obey the answer just yet. It's too big.

The first time this happened, I wrote about it here. The first answer brought with it a sense of calm.

The next time it happened was last week. I was exhausted from a completely overwhelming week, and I was flopping an incident around in my head that had happened earlier in the day. I prayed on the incident, asking for Christ's help in figuring out why I had reacted to someone new to my life in such a defensive way. Before I could even get through to the "How can I change my reaction?" part, I received an answer that came from way over in left field. The answer brought with it a sense of wisdom.

Last night, it happened again. I made a mental note in the evening that I was going to bring my anger to Christ in prayer that night, so when we all were on our way to sleep, I started to pose the question. "Dear Lord, I want so badly to get rid of explosive anger with Sassy --" I couldn't finish the statement this time, let alone get to the question. Here came another answer from past left field, you know, way out past left field, where you can't hear the game anymore or even see the stadium. The answer said, "Quit writing." That was it.

What do you all do? What do you all do that is a key part of your person? That is as intertwined in your identity as your face, your memories, your values? What kind of answer is that?

I was shocked. I don't know what to make of it. I asked. I received an answer. A loud and impatient one, at that. As if the answer was wondering if I would ever ask the question.

But I do not like this answer.

I tried to understand it a bit last night. It does make some kind of sense, though I doubt I'll ever understand it fully until I'm looking back. As Sassy has gotten older, I've found myself drawn to creating more for myself, which usually means writing. I have at least five book ideas going right now. I maintain 3 blogs. In my blog profile, I state it clearly: "The Tightwad Trainer loves to teach and lives to share information."

More accurately, perhaps, is that The Tightwad Trainer lives to raise children. This is as much a part of my person as writing is, as writing ever has been. Never in my life have I doubted that I would one day write a book. Never in my life have I doubted that I would one day raise children. Perhaps those two things are less compatible right now than I want them to be, and anger is my clue.

The thing about answers is that they always carry more meaning than their simple words convey. "Quit writing," was spoken in a way that carried with it, "Not forever, but for now. It's not time yet. There are bigger priorities."

Will I listen? More importantly, will I obey? Right now, I'm writing about the very answer that has told me not to write.

I've decided to mull it over a bit before I make any big decisions. When the answer is right, it always has a habit of not going away. If I choose to obey, I'll keep my blogs up, but they won't be maintained as they are now. I won't write to share information, only to organize my thoughts and release them, when necessary.

We shall see.

Fasting

I started my 3-week fast yesterday. Actually, it's officially a "cleanse," but I'm tired of having to either define or defend the cleanse to people who are ignorant to its ways, so I'm calling it a fast instead. Everyone can relate to a fast; plus, it has that added benefit of having a spiritual connotation which makes people less likely to criticize it.

I have so very, very little energy right now. I looked at my half-closed eyes in the mirror and realized, try as I might, I can't pull them upright into a position that does not make me look half-dead. Or at least half-asleep. Maybe it's a benefit because I really don't seem to care about anything right now. My energy is so low that my stress level is at a 0. Unfortunately, that's extremely rare.

I'm writing a few of my experiences as I think of them, but I especially want to document what I'm eating. I'm always looking for vegetable recipes, so I'm taking advantage of this time to jot some more ideas down as I use them for my fast.

Yesterday I made sauteed veggie rolls. I wrapped a Napa Cabbage leaf (now my favorite cabbage BTW) around finely chopped carrots, regular cabbage & pineapple). I sauteed them in about 1 Tbls. light oil and some water with the lid on (so they also were steamed). For dinner, I had baba ganoush (1 roasted eggplant, 6 cloves roasted garlic, 2 Tbls. tahini, juice of one lime). I ate it with roasted zucchini sticks (thin spears of zucchini tossed with 1 Tbls. light oil, roasted at 350 degrees just until tender), raw carrot sticks and sugar snap peas. It was a birthday party, so for dessert I brought crushed pineapple mixed with 1 Tbls. chopped raw cashews and topped with banana slices.

Today I had some Napa cabbage, zucchini & onion "stir fry" (just sauteed in water, not oil) and a salad with 1 Tbls. almonds & 1/2 date for lunch. For dinner I had 2 yams sliced & roasted with 1 Tbls. oil & Bragg's kelp seasoning. For a late-night snack I had steamed/sauteed pears with cinnamon (just 'til tender) and a banana coconut ginger sauce to dip in.

The specs of the fast per day are:

2-3 protein shakes/day (special shakes from SP, unsweetened, so I add banana & berries)
30 horsepill size supp's this 1st week each day
as many salad veggies as I want
whole fruits, but only at 50% of my veggie intake (so twice as many veggies as fruits)
cooked veggies are OK but no starchy veggies (potatoes, corn, peas or legumes -- I pushed it with the yams today, I'm sure)
2 Tbls. olive or flax oil
1/4 cup MEASURED OUT nuts
seasonings that don't have any salt or sugar (or preservatives, chemicals, etc.)

That's it, in a nutshell. I'm so tired now. I'm off to bed.

go local

So I joined this Y! group for our area's localvores -- those who try to eat locally as much as they can. And the more I read their posts & the more I think about our impending move to Indy, the more I think about learning to eat more locally. Plus, it's exactly the kind of far-left (or is it far-right? they are strikingly similar these days....) activism that makes me happy and tickles my need to be in control.

Well, conveniently, my good friend, a fellow localvore member herself, decided to make 2008 her local foods challenge year. If the details of her challenge aren't up on her site yet, keep checking -- she assures me they will be!

I plan to join her in this challenge and I think you should too! Since it's not my challenge, I don't know that I'll be as hardcore as she will be, but I've been talking the talk for a long time & I think it's about time these boots got walking.

Now, I've done some preliminary thinking on "going local" and my first conclusion is that it's one of those things that almost has to happen gradually unless you want to severely cut your diet. Or, if you are a firm believer in eating seasonal foods only, you might not have a hard time. Personally, I think January and February are far and away the best time for fasting anyway. But, I get grumpy after fasting for too long so I'm big on eating seasonally when and where available, and using preservation techniques for any surplus you can get your hands on.

Knowing your seasonal availability of different foods and where to get them when they're harvested is the key. Then, you just show up and buy in bulk, planning to preserve your surplus in whatever way suits the food. If I find an oat grower, for example, here in my area, I would probably buy 100 pounds. This should last us for a year (we rely on having oats always available) and it might even be cheaper to buy it in large quanities. Thing is, we'll still have to feed ourselves while we're building our supply, so general cost-cutting will have to be a priority for 2008 if I'm going to strive to be 90% local in 2009.

For me, there will be a process to 2008 that should bring us to near-complete local eating in 2009. The process consists of these eight steps:

1. Make a list of the foods that are both grown locally and enjoyed by our family.
2. Separate into two groups those foods that are available year round (meat and dairy products) and those that are only available seasonally (vegetables, grains & fruits).
3. Of those that are only available seasonally, research to find the harvesting month for each food.
4. Find a local source for each food, probably using the database in our localvores group.
5. Set up a carpool group of others who might be interested in obtaining these foods.
6. Trim costs in both the existing grocery store budget and other household expenses to free up more money for buying in bulk when seasonal foods are available.
7. Preserve all surplus using any method that suits the food.
8. Keep a list in the kitchen that details how much of each food we purchased this year so that we can adjust our buying next year.

I won't likely shoot for 100% local eating at any foreseeable time. I like my coffee and chocolate too much for that! But I believe that 90% local should be attainable after a year of careful planning.

Challenges like this are great and I'm glad Mama brought it up! Not only do I love kicks in the pants to live in closer alignment with my principles, but it's just plain fun to do a challenge with a friend. I have one of my own challenges going on right now that I anticipate will help me cut those costs so I can free up money to buy local foods in bulk. I'm tired of feeling like all I do is shop for, maintain, fix, clean and rearrange my Things. I want to know how all those Things are coming into my life. I want to know how much stress they are causing and how much time they are stealing from me. I've created a challenge to write down all of my transactions that involve more of these Things so I can see more clearly how much time they're eating up and how I can fix it. And you know what? Call it shameless self-promotion, but I think you should join that challenge too!

Braggy McBraggerson

That's me this morning, singing the praises of my little girl. So excuse me upfront for my assertion that I have the most empathetic, sincere, lovey girl in the entire world.

First, the background. In case you haven't noticed this about Sassy, she is made to be a Mama. This seems to be her driving force in her play, her words, her genuine love of all babies. I recognize this because that was me. That was little me, for as long as I can remember. I never cared what I "grew up to be," as long as I was a Mama. I am infinitely, supremely glad that Sassy is a little me in that respect. I didn't necessarily expect her to be, certainly haven't tried to force her to be, but she is. And it makes it so easy for me to understand her. It helps us connect. I've often wondered how I would handle a frilly girl, the one obsessed with makeup, playing "princess," cheerleading, her looks. I've also wonderd how I'd handle the athletic girl, the one who never met a sport she didn't want to play, who shunned all skirts & dresses, who fought for her right to play on the boy's team. Both are alien to me. I would hope that I'd learn from them & they'd learn from me, & we'd love each other unconditionally despite our differences. But it's so much easier when your daughter is just a little you. A little you who is so much more empathetic, thick-skinned, sociable & trusting than you ever were.

Because Sassy is made to be a Mama, I notice that she is particularly drawn to the babies in her life. Let me put it bluntly: she wants to be a Big Sister. She wants a Baby. She talks about it all the time. She plays it out in her imaginary games. I don't think I've seen a single imaginary game in the past year that doesn't include Big Sister & Baby.

So imagine my surprise when this eloquent assessment of her own little life came out in our conversation the other day. We were on the way home from my grandparents' house & I had just started my cycle again. I asked her, "How would you feel if Mommy never had another baby out of her belly again?"

Me: "How would you feel about that?"
Sassy (in an upbeat tone): "That would be okay, Mommy!"
Me (confused): "Why would that be okay?"
Sassy: "Because you can be happy even if you don't have a baby sister or brother, Mommy."
Me (still confused): "What if we brought a baby home that Mommy didn't have in her belly -- a baby that didn't have a home?"
Sassy: "That would be good! I think I would like that!"
Me: "So what you're saying is, you're OK with it either way?"
Sassy: "Yes, Mommy. I would be happy if I had a baby sister or brother but I would be happy if I didn't, too."

The release that this child gave me in this one interaction is so immense, I don't even think I could put it into words. I wasn't sure if I was transporting my child or my angel at that point. I know this is hard for most easily conceiving mothers to understand, but it's hard not to feel like you're failing your existing child when you can't fulfill their dream of having a Baby in the family. You watch them coo over babies everywhere you go, and you think, what I wouldn't give to have a baby of our own for you. When you have a child like mine, who intergrates a Baby Sibling theme into practically every single thing she does, it can be excrutiating.

I asked Sassy the other day if she chose me to be her Mommy. Yes, she said. Why did you choose me? I asked her.

"Because I loved you," she said.

Sometimes I wonder if Sassy really did choose me -- if she chose me because I needed to be healed, because that's exactly what she continues to do.

the qualified

"Remeber that God doesn't just call the qualified, he qualifies the called."

~ member, GCM