little french things

We are now wrapping up a two-week unit study on France and all things French.

We started this unit with a documentary about Vincent Van Gogh's paintings. It showed the real-life places in France of Van Gogh's paintings. It wasn't necessarily for the art history major, but a good introduction to both French scenery and Van Gogh's art for a third grader and her non-art-class-taking mama.

This led to us creating French themes everywhere.

Mazzy had her third birthday party. We served up French bread, cream cheese, turkey salad (featuring our very own Thanksgiving turkey), French fries (haha), and a big over-the-top chocolate cake with chocolate-dipped fraises.

Sassy learned how to find and use an online translation dictionary. We did our best on le menu, but my French is way rusty. I was a Spanish girl, but for a short two-year stint in French class. We did get to talk a little about e's with accent marks - backwards and forwards - a's with hats and c's with tails. What were they for? What did they mean?

We decorated the girls' room with a Madeline theme in mind. What little girl doesn't adore Madeline? They love the coziness the new decorations brought.







Sassy wanted to look up Madeline cartoons, so we struck a mutually beneficial deal. We brought back spelling and math worksheets in the morning, and if she finishes them by the time the babies take their naps, she gets to watch Madeline while they sleep.

Sassy read Happy Orpheline in less than a day (go Sassy! yay!) and loved it. Of course, orphans are a favorite reading topic for her, so that worked out.

We watched a few videos. The first was called May Festivals in France. I was more interested than the children in that one. One of the festivals was for real-life gypsies. What an interesting subject. I'd love to explore that one further one day. Another festival did medieval re-enactment, including torture re-enactment. How macabre and, um, strange.

We also watched a cooking video loosely based on the movie Rataouille, starring several famous chefs. They liked the Rachel Ray segment best, as she taught a little boy how to make "chicken toes" - smaller than chicken fingers, she said, so they would call them chicken toes. The girls loved this. Chicken toes, hehe.

During dinner a couple nights, we watched a documentary about castles in France. Turns out, some castles are owned by ordinary people, ordinary families. They pay very little for them, then spend all their money (and then some, I'm sure) fixing them up. One family paid only $60,000 (US dollar equivalent) for an enormous, ancient, beautiful castle. We're talking forty plus rooms here, complete with wood-burning kitchen and servant's quarters below. For ten years, they have been renovating the castle. It still isn't done, but it is amazing. They put their own modern apartment in one "little" section of it (one little section about as big as our whole house), and they live there while they renovate the rest true to period. It is also a bed and breakfast, as most of the castles we learned about seem to be.

On an unseasonably warm January day last week, I re-painted the trim on our barns and sheds, with the intention of finishing them off with little French signs starring sunflowers (our take on Van Gogh's sunflowers) and titles in French. We painted the sunflowers on the signs today while the babies were napping. I still have to paint the words, so pics on those later.

And what was our soundtrack to all this French focus? Why, the French Cafe Radio on Pandora, of course. It provided the perfect backdrop for both inward-focused January in general and all of our activities al francais.

(And on a side note, it made Mama want to find lots more music by Pink Martini.)

I can't speak for Sassy, but I have several take-aways from this study. The most significant came when we did our Van Gogh-inspired sunflowers; more on that in the next post. The other is how badly, badly, very very badly I want to go back to France. And Ireland. It hurts, it is an ache. I want to go, and I want to go now.

But I think the girls would also enjoy it so much, especially when they are a little older. So my pragmatic Europe-bound goal for this year is to get our passports. I'm sure if recent political history is any gauge, then it will only get harder to get a passport with each passing year, so procrastinating in this instance would surely be a fool's slack.

christmas spirit

  

the village

the carol-

ers

the advent wreath

gingerbread cookies

We wrapped up our focus on all things gingery this morning when we finally decorated our gingerbread cookies.

They were delicious. The recipe I used made cookies less in the tangy ginger vein and more in the sweet, spiced cookie vein. They were mild tasting, the dough was easy to work with, and they ended up perfectly crisp - just right for decorating and for dipping in afternoon coffee.

We made ginger tea tonight as well. Sassy said "Umm...too strong for me. Too ginger-tasting." I thought it was pretty good, but was surprised to find it so inviting each time I went back to the fridge tonight. "Maybe just one more sip?" it would whisper to me.

We started the next unit. This week we'll be learning about St. Nicholas. Since she finally realized the Santa Claus gig was a ruse, her interest in St. Nicholas has gained momentum.

I printed off many stories and activities from The St. Nicholas Center. We bound them together at the top with a hole-punch and some yarn to make a little book.

More on St. Nick as the week progresses....

gingerbread characters

Tuesday, we had a run-run-run kind of day. Miss Sassy had some money she had been saving and she was determined to take it to a little store we like to go to. The store is more or less a Big Lots of food, and it's where we get amazing prices on organic food that is a wee bit past its expiration date. The back of the store is a pioneer-loving girl's dreamland. It is stocked to the brim with toys, and since the store is run by an Amish family, there are many interesting finds there we don't see anywhere else.

This was grounds for a wonderful lesson in money. I decided a month or so ago that she needed better basic understanding of money. Okay, I decided she should know how to count money. Period. So I'd been trying to teach it here and there, but getting a little resistance. I suppose it was sinking in because she did quite well.

A little German music box caught her fancy right away, and she marched up to ask how much it was. $35 was the response. She was a bit disappointed, because she quickly realized she would need $19 more dollars than what she had. (She started out with over $20, but gave $5 to her sister so she would have "spending money" and another $1 to a little girl we didn't know who was browsing the toy section with her. Can you say proud mama??)

So instead, she purchased a little farm set for $7, and decided to save the rest until she could add to it and go back to get that music box. What a magical music box it must be!

Wednesday, Sassy and Tiny Mouse got chicken pox.

But Sassy still had enough energy to do an art project. All that gingerbread talk this week inspired this:

Although it might not look like much to our adult eyes, this is actually a play scene. See, each gingerbread character is put onto the house with double-sided tape so that they can move around on the house.

Right now, Sassy is upstairs. Magpie is outside. Mommy is holding baby ("Mommy! Did you notice where the baby is? Hmm? In your arms!!"), and Daddy is on the roof. ("I put Daddy on the roof because I kind of ran out of room, so he's putting up some decorations.")

Yes, Daddy is indeed the only one brave enough to climb onto the roof around here.

Her project inspired a super Christmas gift idea, but mum's the word on that for now.

We are hoping to make real gingerbread cookie dough tomorrow so we can make houses and people and awesome fun cookies.

gingerbread funschooling

We're looking at all things gingerbread this week. What's up with that spicy sweet treat that is so fun to decorate?

Today we made gingerbread garland. Very fun. Here's our take on the project.

This little short story about ginger tea will complete today's activities.

A generally peaceful, rainy little advent day.

a little Christmas joy

I am going to out myself here as a total lover of All Things Christmas.

I am that person who puts on the Christmas station on Pandora in the middle of October. (Just once! I mean, the weather suddenly turned cold and the ground froze over by the morning, so I pulled on a sweater from the back of the closet and stayed warm listening to "I'll Be Home For Christmas." Can you blame me?)

I also love all the Christmas decorations. Decorating my house for Christmas is so worth the joy that I don't even mind the clean-up in January okay, February.

I love the candlelight service on Christmas Eve. It's so hushed, so dim, all those candles passed from one person to another. I love the Candlelight Service so much I still go out of my way to look for Baptist Churches that are holding one so my now Catholic girls and I can go there on Christmas Eve.

And if these aren't proof enough of my love for Christmas (also known to me  as "the only good thing about winter"), I even love Christmas shopping. This year, sadly, I don't have any money to go Christmas shopping, but that's okay. With even twenty dollars in my pocket, I love to go to that bane-of-all-that-is-local-and-fair-trade - the mall. It's really not about the buying. It's about the atmosphere. Christmas music everywhere, jingling bells outside the entry doors, villages where you can pay to tell Santa what you want and have the picture to prove it. I love it!

The only thing that wears on me is that it is a holiday that revolves around gifts these days. Personally, I neither want to buy needless, thoughtless things for myself or others, nor do I have the money to buy for the sake of buying. I think I enjoy the mid-October Christmas music the most of all because the gift buying stress is a long time off. No need to worry over that now, I think. Let's just feel warm and snuggly and happy right now and fool with all that later.

Every year, I tell myself I am going to spend more time on things that I want to do at Christmas and less time on things I feel I have to do. "This year," I will say, "I am really going to enjoy it - all the way through to December 25th."

Well, this year, I believe my dreams will come true -whether I'm ready or not. Two years of underemployment plus one new house plus one rather unexpected bonus baby has taken its toll. Discretionary income is non-existent, the credit cards have reached their limits, and my priorities are pretty clear: food, utilities, and loans (that carry heavy fees and penalties if not paid), pretty much in that order.

So what will this Christmas look like instead? Let's see....

Decorating. We are in a new house with its own, unique characteristics. I can't wait to decorate this house for Christmas. Where will our Christmas village go? How about the tree? How about outside decorations - what can happen there? Anything by the road? It's all so exciting! Finally, we can bring out all the decorations we haven't been able to unpack in smaller spaces and enjoy them.

Pictures. I'm not sure if I will take my girls to a portrait studio this Christmas, but chances are good. I know certain deals are out there for portrait packages as low as $13 with no sitting fees, and I always said once I had more than two children, Christmas would be the occasion for taking family portraits rather than birthdays. Plus, how fun it will be to take pictures of the house after we decorate!

Crafting. I once asked Sydney what she likes to do together, with me. If we had our own Mommy-Sydney time to spend, what would we do? "Crafts," she told me, without missing a beat. "We would have a little craft project and we would sit down together and work on it and each make our own thing." Well, I'm in. I'm not sure just what we will make yet, but I am thinking ornaments, soap, decorations, and a few toys to start. How about some freezer paper stenciling for gifts? We like to peruse the catalogs that come this time of year and think about how we could re-create the things we see in them.

Baking. Of course. We love to bake. Lately I've noticed Sydney seems to not have as much of a grasp on fractions as I think she should by now. This is a lesson begging to be learned in the kitchen.

Candlelight service. Yep. For sure this year. Last year, I waited too long to find one but this year I am keeping my eyes open early.

Now on Christmas morning, of course there will be stockings filled with goodies and packages under the tree. They will be enjoyed for the few hours we will have at home before we head out for the day. But will they be remembered?

Do I play Christmas music in October because of the gifts I received on December 25th?

No. I play Christmas music because of the power it holds to make me feel instantly warmer. It conjures images of villages, trains, lighted trees, a full house: aunts and uncles and cousins.

I see the Christmas tablecloths covering tables set with poinsettia china, gravy boats overfilling, my grandma busily filling the table with more food, smiling, humming Christmas music.

I see my grandpa poking the fire, hauling, arranging, and re-arranging the logs so we can sit on the brick hearth warming our backs.

I see my other grandpa with his wide smile, hugging me as I walk into his house. I hear him patiently answering all my little questions about this and that and the other, making me feel welcome, knowing in my heart he loves me.

I can honestly say that while I remember several of my favorite toys, I don't remember a single Christmas morning of opening anything specific the way I remember that dinner table, that fire, that wide smile.

And I can say also that while I remember the candlelight service being so very special, I don't recall any library "Christmas program" or any planned  "Holiday party" or really, anything at all about what I did with my friends around Christmas. I remember very much what I did with my family, though.

This is important for me to remember when I'm tempted to plan and attend and drive and host and go-go-go. Every four hours spent in commuting to  and attending an enriching program is four hours I have not relaxed with my children. A friend used to call that putzing around the house time "moodling." Without time to moodle, nothing extra gets done. The dishes and counters might stay clean, sure, and everyone is dressed in clean clothes, but that's it. The mind has no time to wander, and the hands have no time to create. Moodling time is absolutely essential.

I have plans to mix some lessons and ideas I want to introduce with some Christmas creations. These ideas come to me on relaxed, at-home days. I have a feeling December will hold much more real-life learning and many fewer workbook pages.

And then there's blogging. Today's post is the end result of a good hour of moodling. Lately, I've been focused so much on writing for a paycheck that I've felt guilty to write for myself. Not only have I felt constraints on my writing time to be spent in pursuit of something financially viable, but I've also felt constraints on my writing style. Certain venues might be a fairly reliable income source, but they are particular in your voice, your subject matter, your point of view.

Then there's my own self-imposed constraints. I know that if I put something on my own blog, I won't be able to sell that for first rights or full rights anymore. At that point, I have self-published. That has been a hard pill to swallow.

But I've begun to realize that when I can't spend time in my own creation, my writing itself suffers. My skills grow in process, while I'm working, in the middle of the essay, in the middle of the thought process. With all those constraints I lose the freedom that allows that growth to happen.

Maybe, just maybe, creating things with the children for Christmas will inspire me enough to take the risk of self-publishing, knowing that although that article can never be sold, it has given me the moodling space in my work that I so desperately need to stay interested - and interesting.

What do you hope to accomplish this Christmas?

God grant me...

Maturity and emotional temperance

Love and acceptance instead of bullying and control

Gentleness in my hands

The desire to listen and understand

And a mouth that uses soft voices to speak kind words

It's been a long time since I've put anything here, and I've been in limbo whether or not to keep this blog up. But occasionally, things ask to be recorded in a more private space than Heirloom Homestead.

As usual, I don't have much time to write again. I thought I was going to get 20 minutes or so, but in come the others from outside already, with their litany of problems they must explain and try to find answers from me.

It's exhausting. It's exhausting and frustrating and overwhelming to my senses to have this constant diatribe thrown on me from all directions. I long for my own space. Some days, I long to drive off into the mountains, leaving the whole lot of them behind. How can one grouchy person change the moods of three other people for a whole day? I don't know.

I do know that I've been coping in rather unhealthy ways. Instead of trying to influence others in the house in a good way, I let myself get caught in the tide of whatever negative comes up. Instead of being proactive to make the home feel safe and secure for our little ones, I've displayed reactive, knee-jerk reactions, the hallmark of my immaturity, in my opinion. Instead of trying to understand why the house feels like a whirlwind of anger and sadness, and how I might help the person trapped in the center, I've tried to blame that person (whichever it may be that day) for causing it all, and tried to bully or manipulate them out of their mood.

At some point, I have to accept that I cannot control my environment right now. I can never control my environment completely, as long as I choose to be in relationship with others. But especially right now, my environment will be a daily crap shoot.

I also can't control others. Assuming that I am choosing to stay in relationship with others (which I am), I can't control anyone else, but have to let them be who they are. Some of us have the hardest time letting this happen with one of our children. For me, it's my spouse.

The night before last, I had rare time for reflection. And I started writing the prayer above. It has motions, actually - roughly the same as those in The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit that we do at church, except ending on the mouth. Prayers, even oft recited ones, seem to stick with me better when a physical component is added.

In our adult formation class the other night, Father Whittington talked about the continuum of virtue versus vice and how they become habit. Essentially, his point was this: your greatest achievement doesn't happen when you struggle with right and wrong, and eventually choose right. This is much more interesting, perhaps, and can indicate growth, but your greatest achievement happens when the "right" becomes habitual. There is no struggle involved because you're firmly planted in doing the right thing already.

My reactions have become habitual. When I become angry with someone in my family - depending on who it is - my thoughts (my reactive, knee-jerk, angry and hateful thoughts) have become completely habitual. I think the exact same hateful thoughts in the exact same order with the same feeling of fury behind them. The only thing that might change is their intensity. Since I keep repeating them to myself, they somehow become less "blowing off steam" and more "let's consider the reality of this for a bit."

My hope for my relationships with those in my family would be that the reactions indicated in the prayer above could one day become the new habit. I know habits are hard to break, and I know they aren't changed overnight.

But I also know that if you don't try to change them, they can - and will - go on indefinitely.

In the Thick of It

There’s only the thick
In the thick of it
Twenty-four seven
Three hundred sixty five
Always on, always with
Never alone
In the thick of it
Early work, evening work
Dinner laundry breakfast lunch
Dinner laundry breakfast lunch
“Mama will you read me a story?”
More stories than time
More babies than laps
In the thick of it
Joyous screeching, angry screaming
Noisy running
Happy giggly noisy chaos
Swirling around and around and around the little house
“Mama watch this!”
In the thick of it
Lessons to plan in the wee night hours
Stealing moments of silence
Tired babies to tuck in
So tired mama can get tired time to be her tired self
And to do the things that should be ready
When the first eye pops open tomorrow
Twenty-four seven
Three hundred sixty five
In the thick of it
There are new friends, old friends, hurt friends, friends hurt
Boyfriends, girlfriends, best friends, not friends
There’s “See you tonight, dear,”
As he heads out the door
And passing in the hall
Is when you see him most of all
In the thick of it
Drivers’ licenses make him stay up now
Papa’s turn to be tired
Spending tired time
Hoping his baby is not too tired
And the other drivers are not too tired
Mind wandering
Pushing away thoughts as fast as they come
In the thick of it
There is a family
In a bubble
And there are babies
Big now
Pushing, pushing against the bubble
Elbow here, fist there, knees everywhere
Pushing, pushing until the bubble that holds them
No longer has smooth round skin
But distorted, lumpy, pushing spots
Where the membrane stretches so thin it becomes nearly transparent until
POP!
There is driving, there is a dorm room, there are classes, there is long highway
There is now a Self
You are both so proud of her
You are both so scared for her
In the thick of it
There is more pushing
There is more stretching
There is POP! POP! POP!
More work
More tired
More highway
More hurry money deadlines now

And then

You are at last alone
In the thin of things
It is quiet
Quiet in the garden
Quiet during movies
Quiet reading novels
Quiet in your chairs
Having quiet conversations
In a quiet house
You are looking at each other
“I love you,” you say
“I love you,” he says,
Quietly
The heavy, deafening quiet throbs in your ears
You look down
You see your lap
You feel your lap
It is empty
It is empty and weightless
The emptiness is crushing
The longing makes your legs hurt

“I WANT TO BE IN THE THICK OF THINGS!” you scream.
I want to be in the thick of things
Twenty-four seven
Three hundred sixty five
Is it feast or famine?

Then I choose feast.

I will eat it up, drink it up, nourished, full
I will feast.

I will choose to feast.

organic coupons

You know those organic coupons you can get at Whole Foods? They're called Mambo Sprouts and they are booklets of coupons, including many higher value coupons. Well, now Mambo Sprouts is offering to send you a book in the mail every 3 months for free if you sign up on their site. Some of these foods are processed foods, organic or not, and they are almost always from an organic line owned by a bigger non-organic food giant (like Kraft, General Mills, etc.), but not always. Plus, I'm sure we all eat some processed organic foods, whether they are staples or treats. So, why not save on them?

I've added the link to my sidebar under "Deals and Steals" so you can always easily access it. They also have e-coupons you can print out right now if you don't want to wait.

Mambo Sprouts

screened

Last night, we had a small party where Jeff set off the rest of our fireworks that were rained out on the Fourth. One of his work friends came with his wife and their newborn baby, his 7-year old daughter and her 6-year old daughter. Sassy was thrilled, of course. I thought it was probably a good night to have guests since I was feeling a bit in a funk and figured being forced to “fake it ‘til I make it” was going to be the easiest way to improve my mood.

My dad showed up a few minutes before this other family, and we all sat down on the porch to watch the show. I didn’t have much in the way of snacks, so I set out some dried apple rings from TJ’s and popped up a quick batch of popcorn.

When I came outside with the popcorn, my dad commented on how good the apple rings are. “They were chewy,” he said, “Didn’t expect that. But the flavor was so good it made up for it.”

I teased, “Well, they were dried fruit. What did you expect? Crunchy?”

My snarky joke went way over his head when he nodded and said how he thought they would be like a chip. You know, he said, like those apple chips they sell.

The work-friend’s wife nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, those are so good. That’s what I thought they would be like too.”

I said, “Oh, I see. I figured they’d be chewy like raisins.” (Hint, hint. Raisins = dried grapes.)

“Oh…I never thought of that,” she said.

“Those apple chips are so good, aren’t they?” my dad asked her.

“I wonder if there’s a way to turn chewy dried apples into something more like apple chips,” I mused.

There was a 15-second-ish pause while they seemed to consider this. Then my dad said, “I think it would be easier to just go buy a bag of apple chips.”

Then they both had a big hearty laugh. In fact, this obvious assessment deserved even a rebound laugh on both their parts, where the hilarity started up after it had died down, just thinking about it again.

I was, in fact, not embarrassed or offended that they didn’t want to consider the possibilities of turning chewy apples to crunchy ones. Instead, it gave me a brilliant idea. That’s it! I told myself. A one-question, right-on-the-nose screener to let me know if the person I’m meeting is someone I want to pursue further or someone with whom a relationship would be superficial at best, or plain irritating at worst.

I’ve been thinking through each of my friends and mentally replaying the conversation last night, but inserting them into work-friend wife’s role. There are several of my friends who would have been interested in crunching up chewy apple rings simply for the creative challenge it would provide. “Hmmm….” the conversation might have gone with them. “I suppose you could put them in a dehydrator. Or maybe toss them with oil and cinnamon and nutmeg and put them in a low oven.” Some of these friends might have gone on to other things I could do with chewy apple rings instead of making them crunchy. Apple turnovers, perhaps, or a cheesy-apple-biscuit creation. Yum.

Other friends might have realized that I probably wasn’t going to buy those apple chips even if they were sitting right in front of me because of all the crap I found in the ingredients when I stood in Big Lots reading the label a few weeks ago. From that understanding, they might concur that though I am perhaps stuck with chewy apples versus crunchy, it sure beats putting all that other crud in my body. Yes, indeed.

Still another type of friend might weigh out the options. Well, they might figure, you could just go buy a bag, but then you would have to drive 20 minutes at minimum to do it, drag your two kids into the store, read the label to be sure it’s OK, then come back home. The apple rings are here. But if you try to do something to them, you might ruin them. And that bag probably cost at least $5.00 at TJ’s. I think I would eat them the way they are. Or if you do modify them, make sure it’s not something too risky, unless you absolutely don’t like them the way they are, they might tell me.

A few of my friends would say, “Just go buy a bag.” I still love them, and I still love my dad. That’s not my point. My point is that I now find myself in the middle of farm country where the people around me think an hour away is a “good neighbor,” but my hometown folks see a road trip. So I am, for better or worse, forced to find some more local folks with whom I can pursue friendships.

Past situations have yoked me with some “buy-a-bag” types, and I’m glad to have done so, loving these friends dearly. It’s not necessarily a case of not being able to think outside the box for them. They might be more mainstream thinkers, unable to figure out why anyone wouldn’t choose the easiest route. Or, they might be creative folks that have other things that are far more interesting to them than a bag of apples.

But I am interested in apples. And cooking and nutrition and eliminating driving and shopping and other hassles like these and weighing my financial options and knowing how to improvise and learning tightwaddy skills and making something out of nothing. And I think a screener like this is sure to tell me much of what I’d like to know about you, potential new friend, in five minutes flat.

on my mind

I’ve taken quite a long hiatus lately. It wasn’t intentional, trust me. At first, I couldn’t write because of writer’s block. I powered through, wrote it out, and was over it about a week ago. I was anxious to get back on the horse so to speak, but Magpie has had different ideas about what I do with my time.

So what’s been on my mind? A few things: habitual negative thinking, the evil of plastics, and nature-based learning. Let’s see how far we get.

First up: nature-based learning. I’ve decided to use the Enki curriculum for Sassy next year. I’ve been focused on finding a curriculum to use next year and ultimately decided this one was a strong contender for a good fit. I wanted something that would keep me focused and energized. Something that would allow us both creativity – me as her teacher and her as the student. Something that would teach the teacher new skills, especially more traditional skills. And finally, something that would focus on learning through experience and projects.

Although I can’t say Enki is or isn’t any of this, since I have no first-hand experience, my good friend C does. I trust her judgment implicitly, so I’ve decided if it’s right for her family there’s a very good chance it’s right for ours. Done.

Next: the evil of plastics. This is a baby topic in my head right now, just taking form, but I’m connecting little dots here and there and wondering if the USA – make that the world, the entire world – wouldn’t have taken a completely different direction had plastics never been invented & introduced into our available goods.

Think about it. What if everything we purchased were still made of wood, metal, or some sort of cloth (including leather). How would our lives be different?

Sweatshops in China? Probably gone. Wal-Mart? Definitely gone. Family businesses could stay alive. Woodsmiths, metal workers, seamstresses, all still in business. Landfills would be tiny compared to what they are now. Packaged foods? Difficult to achieve, and more expensive due to their packaging.

Would our woods all be stripped, our mines tapped out, our farmland filled with genetically modified cotton? Or would we have purchased things that were made to last and not purchased again for a long time, never getting a taste for the world of disposables. I suspect the latter.

You would pay $300 for a sewing machine, but then you’d expect to have that machine for the rest of your life.

Can you imagine this world? William Dufty in his book Sugar Blues claimed that the devil couldn’t have created a better food than sugar to cause the nutritional downfall of an entire society. I don’t think the devil could have created a better product than plastic to create a greedy, centralized consumerist culture.

I’ve been dwelling on the old adage “penny-wise, pound-foolish” lately. Jeff and I went through a long period where we made many “pound-foolish” decisions. Lately, I’ve been closely examining those purchasing habits. I’m looking beyond cost to lasting value, not because we can suddenly afford much better, but because the whole plastic-dependent consumer machine pisses me off. Don’t you dare sell me a $100 espresso machine that has a cheap plastic wand so it will break as soon as my 30-day return period is up.

I now have another reason to add to the growing list against using plastic. It’s a rip-off, plain and simple, and it is a major contributor to the destruction of lives, traditional skills, small businesses, and the environment.

So if you have alternatives to common plastic items like Ziploc-type freezer bags, portable storage containers, etc, please let me know.

And finally we’re down to the psychological arena: the habit of negative thinking. I’ve been thinking quite a bit about my pattern of thinking negatively. I’m talking about self-doubt, insecurity, anger, resentment, self-pity, jealousy, envy, irritation, frustration – basically all of them except for true grief. True grief isn’t in the realm of habit. True grief is necessary and allowed and circumstantial.

I’ve been thinking about negative thinking because I just went through a nice little period of slight depression. It’s unusual for me to experience depression, so it made me examine what my brain was doing. I realized my brain was being negative with nearly every thought that popped up and I wondered if I could think of a time in my life when I wasn’t in a pattern of thinking negatively. I couldn’t. I wondered it it might not just be a bad habit, like smoking, or sugar, or caffeine. I wondered if I could more or less re-program my brain to make the first thought positive rather than negative. Turn a natural distrust and cynicism into a natural trust and optimism.

So I’ve been practicing. I’ve told Sassy what I’m trying to do, in a way. For example, I went outside the other day, frustrated, hurried, and found that Jeff had put shoes where I didn’t want shoes.

“Why does Daddy have to do this all the time? I’ve told him!” I started. Then I stopped. “Wait, I want to try again.”

“Daddy is good to us to try to get so much done this morning before work. It’s a shame he forgot his shoes. Let’s put them away for him. It’s hard to break a habit of putting things somewhere after you get used to that spot.”

Well her little face lit right up. “Yeah!” she said. “It is hard. Let’s help Daddy!”

My internal dialogue says, “I am so irritated I’m getting no time of my own to write.”

I change it to, “I’m so happy I have this baby to rock and nurse and cuddle.”

My inner dialogue says, “I hate living in a mobile home that seems to fall apart around me.”

I change it to, “I love not having a big mortgage payment and a little financial wiggle room right now.”

My inner dialogue says, “I wish Jeff would find a better hobby and interest than automobiles.”

I change it to, “Jeff has learned a lot about cars now. It’s good he has such an interest in it because it motivated him to teach himself and save us a lot of money on car repairs.”

I could go on and on and on. My inner dialogue spits these things out all day long so I’m changing it around all day too. I’m shooting for 31 days. If I do it for 31 days, will it be more automatic? Will my inner dialogue internalize the change?

Along with blatantly changing a negative into a positive, I’m also trying to do what I’m calling “assume positive intent.” Sometimes (not always), I assume negative intent with other people when none was intended on their end. I’m not sure why I do this, and it doesn’t particularly matter to me either. I’m sure it’s an evil stepmother, mom dying kind of childhood bullshit that makes me this way, but in the end, knowing why you do something never actually fixes the problem. I think that focusing on why someone ended up the way they did was one of the worst turns the field of psychological therapy ever made. (Cyndi, I’m expecting a comment now.)

So I’ve decided to practice assuming positive intent until proven otherwise. Jeff has been the nearly constant recipient of assumed negative intent, although he probably never knew it. Isn’t that terrible? For a long time, I don’t think I even knew it.

Now I do, I’ve recognized it, and I’m going to work on changing it. I wonder how my marriage will be different after 31 days of assuming positive intent and creating positive thoughts. I’m excited to find out.

be yoked then with your wife

There’s this story in the Bible I was thinking about today. Maybe it wasn’t even a story. Maybe it was more of a commandment (outside the Big Ten). The gist of it is that when you get married, you are then yoked with your new spouse and you are instructed -- commanded, in fact – to leave your birth family and go with your new family.

I’ve been thinking about this today because of a very big argument I got into with my grandmother Friday. Well, to me it was a big argument. To her, perhaps it wasn’t much of anything.

Here’s the background. I’ll be succinct and limit myself to one paragraph.

My mom died when I was 8. My grandmother raised me from that point forward. My other option was to live with my dad and evil (truly evil) stepmother. I wanted to live with my grandparents so they went to court and gained custody. She was the best surrogate mother I could have asked for, always loving, always supportive, always encouraging. When I was a teenager, I rebelled in a fairly normal teenage way, though my attitude was probably over-the-top rude. I moved out at 18 years old, spent the next 8 years in college living on my own, being supported off and on by my grandparents. I quit accepting any financial help from them when I was 26 and just recently began accepting their offers again here and there. She has never forgiven me nor let me forget how rebellious and rude I was between the ages of about 17 - 23. She still finds a way to work it into our conversation every. single. time we see each other. That is the long story very very short.

So on Friday, Jeff had a car accident on his way to work from Sassy’s party. He wasn’t hurt, but his car was broken and he had to fix it the next morning. I had to call my grandma to let her know Sassy’s family party on Saturday morning at our house would have to be cancelled, in case she was planning to come.

She wasn’t.

Since we’ve slowly begun to talk more on the phone and since she is like a mother to me, I told her the sordid details of the accident. You see, we found out after the accident that Jeff didn’t have insurance on his car. Yes, he was driving without insurance. We didn’t even know. When he registered his car, he registered in our new state. When he called our insurance company, they gave him a policy in our new state that was a completely separate policy from the one I was paying on. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a mailbox at our new property at that time, so all bills were returned to sender.

I didn’t realize this was going on. I thought I was paying for all cars on the policy I paid each month.

So all of a sudden, we are now figuring any and all proceeds from our old house, if and when it sells, will have to be handed straight over to the guy he hit. We can’t allow it to go to court at all. Jeff’s job depends on him having a CDL. If he loses his license due to driving without insurance, he’d lose his job, since I would not drive him to work an hour each way with a newborn in tow, and he’d lose his CDL, making it even harder to get another job.

You know why I share any of this with anyone? With my grandma? You know why I point out the worst case scenario first thing? I like to be prepared for the worst case scenario, that’s always my style. Prepare for the worst, be pleasantly surprised by anything better. But even more, I like to conquer. I’ve mentioned this before. All my blog posts follow that same pattern. I present my problem, then I share how I conquer it, or accept it, or view it differently. It’s all about coming out on top, rising victorious, right? That’s probably why I tell my grandma these things. So I can claim victory over them. That, and I like to share. And if I’m going to share, then let’s share worst-case because if I’m going to share, let’s at least be interesting, for crying out loud.

Jeff asked me what was I thinking, how could I not have known to keep that to myself.

Well….I was tired. I was weak. I was too trusting. I was needing a little support. And I was seeking a real connection.

My grandma said to me, “You two have more problems…”

I asked her what she meant by that.

“I don’t know,” she said, “Some people, problems just follow them around. You two, it’s like problems search you out.”

I told her that was a very hurtful thing to say, and it wasn’t even true. I didn’t say a few things I wish I’d thought of at the time, like:

“Well, that just makes me an excellent problem-solver.”

Or, “Yep, we do have major problems, we’re homeless, I’m hooked on heroin and my husband’s in jail.”

Or, “WTF is that supposed to mean you crazy loon?!?!”

OK, not that last one. That’s my emotions talking again.

Honestly, if your “mom” says to you that problems seem to search you out, you and I, all of us, we know what that means. It means, “I think you’re a loser.”

Needless to say, I was pretty hurt. I know her idea of success is very different from mine. Her idea of success involves how big your numbers are on your various investment account statements. My idea of success involves how many children I have and how many acres we live on. Her idea of success involves what title you have at your job. My idea of success involves being able to do what I want, even (especially) if that means not having a career at all.

But still? Will she ever let it go? Sometimes it seems she purposefully hurts me, though I’ve never seen her as mean-spirited.

So I told her it was a very hurtful thing to say, especially coming from her. I told her it only seemed like I had more problems that anyone else because I told her everything, since she was like a mother to me.

To which she said, two days before Mother’s Day, “Not really.”

Ouch. Okay then.

I cried all night Friday night. I wanted to cry all day Saturday. And then all day Sunday too. It still pains me to remember it. So, I’ll move on to the victory part. The realizing and the conquering.

Sunday evening I started thinking maybe the lesson I should learn from this is that I shouldn’t be so dependent on an earthly relationship. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so dependent on the approval of another human being – an imperfect human being. I think the lesson in this is that it isn’t in God’s plan for me to desire my mother’s approval for my whole life. Nor anyone else’s, except those in my immediate family, for any decision I make affects them as well.

If I keep seeking her approval or anyone else’s approval, I will never have the courage to do as God intends me to do, which is to use my inborn gifts for Good. I do not believe that the love of money is Good. It isn’t my path. For example, if I ever must use my investment accounts as a marker of my success, then I will be wildly unsuccessful for the rest of my life. When I seek her approval, I spend too much time upset about my lack of investment accounts and her ensuing disappointment than I do using my gifts for Good.

And as I explained all this to my good friend K on the phone today, that Bible verse struck me and I thought, “A-ha! That is why you must become yoked with your spouse and LEAVE your birth family.” In this modern day and age, is easy driving distance actually LEAVING your birth family? Not really.

I was nervous that this move would put Jeff and I at each other’s throats all the time. We can be prone to arguing, and with no one else around, I was afraid there wouldn’t be enough distraction when we needed it.

It’s actually turned out just the opposite. We argue less, if anything, and we actually cleave to each other. Cleave? Is that the word used in the actual Bible verse? I’d use the internet to find out if I could.

At any rate, it looks like the Bible is right again. It no longer surprises me; rather, I’ve now reached the point where I believe what is written as truth first, then always come to realize it on my own, in my own way, with my own experience later.

stepping out

When we decided to move from the close quarters of suburban America to 15 acres in rural America, one of our goals was to step out of American culture. I know neither Jeff nor I actually iterated this – to each other or to ourselves – but I now know that we both were thinking it in our own ways. The mass consumerism so rampant in our country was psychologically and physically making us sick. We knew there was a hole that needed filled & we knew we were trying to fill it with the same things every other home on our block was using….and we knew it wasn’t working.

Was the hole really there or was it a figment of advertising? Did our consumerist culture create the hole & then offer a convenient, albeit expensive, way to fix it?

I suspect this to be the case. After all, any Marketing 101 class will teach you that the standard tactic in sales is to first point out the problem, then offer your product or service to fix the problem. Turns out, most folks aren’t aware there even is a problem they need to fix with your product or service unless you spell it out for them. There are a few different ways to do this. Playing on strong emotions is by far the most effective, and the top contenders are fear for your family and love for your family. You love your family best when you are not risking terrible things happening to them, things that could easily be prevented with Mr. Widget. Don’t you want happy, healthy puppies and babies like Mr. Widget has? Puppies and babies always sell widgets.

Perhaps my babies will be adorable in clothes from Land’s End, stylish yet rugged, washed in Tide Free, so tender to their skin, fluffed with Downy, rendering them soft as a baby’s own skin when they come out. It’s an easy example. It’s one I could spout a hundred different ways, a hundred different products, a hundred different scenarios. But spouting a simplistic example such as this makes you think if you only avoid the advertising, the slick marketing, the top-educated, top-dollar, top-notch P & G executives, you’re in the clear.

When we decided to move out here, we decided to ditch television. We could always catch our favorite shows on DVD or download them from iTunes. We refused to get sucked into the TV habit again, especially starting the day with PBS cartoons and ending it with Family Guy or Desperate Housewives. We have fifteen acres outside our back door. How on Earth could we justify continuing with our TV habit?

Happily, I ditched the digital receiver box. Happily, I picked up TV shows on DVD from the library and Blockbuster. Happily, I downloaded the latest episode of Desperate Housewives onto my iTunes, popped my popcorn, and watched it.

I loved every minute of those commercial free episodes. Then, afterward, I felt sick.

Turns out, I don’t think it’s the commercials alone that are causing the hole. I think that the hole that can be conveniently filled by Mr. Widget is so pervasive in current American culture, that you would have to actually step out of the culture to recognize the hole for what it is. Or at least step away from video and internet media altogether.

Fringe made me upset at the sadness in this world, especially the sadness of children.

The Office made me cringe at the fact that there are countless folks out there that justify a cubicle existence that they don’t enjoy and never will enjoy because in their heads, it can be funny -- should be funny – like on The Office, you know. So they settle into this $15/hour crap job, happy enough with their window view and their gray-blue half-wall day prison. If they’re not amused and content, then the problem is with them, not the situation. Jim and Pam are perfectly content after all.

If they watch the evening news, then they’re “just happy I have a job at all.”

Big Love made me think I needed a new wardrobe.

Six Feet Under depressed the crap out of me.

Even The Simpsons or Family Guy leaves me spending too much satirical energy and not enough revolutionary energy.

I’ve noticed the old shows – Little House on the Prairie, Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Brady Bunch, Last of the Summer Wines, Keeping Up Appearances – none of these have the same effect. This leads me to believe that it truly is a rather recent change in American culture that leaves us with a big hole waiting to be filled by Mr. Widget. Current American culture really is depressing the crap out of us. And it really is changing us into something so far from what God intended us to be that we are becoming hardly recognizable.

Jeff and I can now see that the suburbs were making us sick and we never knew it. We had become immune to the disgusting shows of spending and the thoughtless wasting of resources around us. We didn’t need a big-screen TV to absorb the messages we were being fed. They are just as loud and just as clear on 13 inches of screen and a big fat window facing the street.

The conspiracy theorist in me wonders how intentional the change in American TV actually is. A country of people who will allow themselves to be sold into slavery to mortgage companies, credit card companies, car loan companies, and banking institutions, all the while feeling “fortunate” and “blessed” to be in that position would have to be brainwashed by messages more prevalent and insidious than 30-second TV commercials and billboards. Wouldn’t it be an intelligent plan to create advertising to promote this attitude, advertising that showed very good-looking and successful people happily and humorously living as these slaves, call it entertainment, and sell it for $1.99 a pop on iTunes? Have a bag of Doritos with it, please, so that your MSG-clogged mind will never wake up.

We are so lucky to live in a society with free communications, aren’t we?

tending the fires

You know what’s fun? Blowing up when you are really mad. It is fun to stomp around, slam doors, throw things, yell & generally blow off steam. Not only is it fun, but it feels really, really good. It feels like a giant release…a big furious sigh, a poo that’s been building for days, finally pushing out the baby. I know how the proverbial tea kettle must feel when it finally gets past the boiling point into the loud, grating whistle. Ahhhhhh…..

In fact, blowing up like this is so fun, and feels so good, that it rather smacks of a lack of self-discipline and, well, immaturity. You expect these blow-ups from a toddler and you accept them to some degree. Children are naturally explosive. Mothers probably should not be.

I’ve known this for a long time, about as long as I’ve had children. Yet, I still do it. Why? Because I enjoy it. But following in the path of cigarettes, weed, long nights drinking and flirting at the bar, this too must give way to a more mature demeanor.

I’ve recently realized that blowing up like this is in fact, extremely irresponsible. As surely as it is my responsibility to cook dinner for my children, to dress them, to comfort them, to teach them, and to hold them when they fall, it is also my responsibility to provide a household that feels secure. Blowing up in anger at them, at Daddy, at myself, at a situation, at the dog – it doesn’t matter – creates a household of insecurity. And although it feels really, really good to do it, it is part of my parental responsibility to not give in to that desire. Pretty simple, actually.

But wait! I hear you saying, It has to go somewhere! You can’t hold it all in!

Or maybe, Sounds great for you, but I just can’t help it – it’s uncontrollable!

Though I used to spout the same arguments, I’m not buying it anymore. How many times have I been stomping around in anger when a business call comes in and I suck it right back in and put on my business phone “smile?”

Or how many times have I been furious about something or other and begun talking to a friend? I might vent to my friend, but I don’t scream at them. In fact, their calmer attitude and sense of humor makes me feel better by the end of the conversation. Wouldn’t the same apply inside my home?

Maybe it’s not about sucking it in or letting it out. Maybe it’s more like a snowball. You can keep it small and let it melt itself out quickly. Or you can let it roll….and roll and roll and roll.

I was burning some of our garbage today and heard all those old adages in my head about fueling the fire and fanning the flames. A temper is a hot thing, a thing that can get out of control quickly like our fire. Or it can be smothered and it will peter itself out in minutes. How big the fire goes is completely the choice of the person tending it.

Would my home not be better served if I make the choice not to let the fires of anger explode? I think so. And I actually think I can do it.

news alert: i am not perfect

Well, alert the presses, news is in. I am actually not perfect. What? You’re not surprised? Well I am!

This is a post about my husband, with whom I’ve been arguing, fighting, pecking, & generally grousing about for a few weeks now. High stress in our family = high levels of arguing. Go figure.

Now in case you’re unfamiliar with my stance in arguments I undertake with individuals in my life, it’s this: I’m right, I’m perfect, you’re an idiot & I’m now rethinking why the hell I’m yoked with you in the first place. I’ve always had an uncanny ability to turn an argument about, say, a toaster into a litany of reasons why I’d be better off without you, enumerated and catalogued by year and date, if necessary. Yeah, I’m that partner. My readers, you’ve had that partner before, haven’t you? Or, like me, maybe you are that partner?

Jeff has sometimes accused me of “blowing things out of proportion” or “expecting him to be perfect.” Well of course! Since I am clearly perfect, why shouldn’t I be married to someone else who is?

It takes a unique special rather arrogant person to need a mid-night insomniac moment to realize, revelation-style, that they are in fact, not perfect. This is how it occurred to me.

I woke for the 4th time the other night. My family members had each taken turns waking me that night, but the 4th turn I somehow took myself. As I laid there thinking about everything and nothing in particular, in this busier-than-ever deadline weekend, I thought perhaps if I took that time to be thankful of things that were going right rather than fretting over the things that were making me insane, maybe I could get back to sleep. Utilitarian gratitude, it warms the heart of the Creator I’m sure.

I’m always thankful that I have a husband who will support my decision to stay home with the kids (without complaining about it very often) so I threw it into my list. It was then that the thought struck me that if the situation were reversed, if I were the one who was going to the chemical plant day in, day out for years on end, I couldn’t – wouldn’t – hack it.

And I remembered what an amazing thing it was that this other person, the one that I can fight with at the drop of a hat, the one I complain about in my head, the one that, yes, I laugh with and cook for and seek companionship with, but that I also show irritation at daily, would go to work at a job he doesn’t enjoy for 9 hours out of the day, just to bring home a check & hand it over without complaint.

99% of the time, this amazing arrangement isn’t even brought into our conscious daily lives. Occasionally, he will be upset that I don’t seem to grasp the fact that he doesn’t have any time to do what he wants or that I don’t appreciate his work ethic. The rest of the time, it isn’t even mentioned.

Now here’s what I know about a hypothetical role reversal.

Number one, I would mention it and complain about it all the time, and I would basically expect the other person to kiss the ground I walk on if I were going to a job I hate more than 40 hours a week, while they stayed home, made their own schedule, and didn’t get a whole lot accomplished most days.

Number two, I would have to really, really love my spouse to allow this arrangement to exist.

Number three, I would burn out quickly and eventually devise a way to flee.

Jeff has a Major Flaw that I always seem to dwell on in my head, and that is his temper. Thing is, his temper is quick and then it’s usually over and he’s coming around to say he’s sorry. I also have this flaw, it just doesn’t show itself quite as often as his.

But looky here, it seems I have my own Major Flaws. It seems that I am not cut out to support a family without constant resentment, if I would do it at all. It seems holding a full-time job would make me crazy. It seems I don’t recognize the level of love and support that is proven by simply handing over years’ worth of time to another person.

And, most importantly, it seems that I like to point outward quite a bit, while patting myself on the back because I’m not laying blame out loud.

So you see, turns out, I’m not perfect. Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.

random thoughts on a simple kitchen

Glassware

Why do we have so much of it? There we are, always caring for glasses, looking for glasses, toting glasses around the house. Then there are the jars. The canning jars, the recycled jars, the spice jars, little, big, many sizes in between. All of their lids fill an old coffee can, which we comb through looking for the right fit, over and over in varying degrees of frenzy, depending on how late we are at the time. Why do we do all this? There is a much simpler solution & it’s called wide-mouthed canning jars.

They are glasses, they are storage containers, they are canning jars. They have lids of uniform size. They have a classic look that fits in any farm kitchen. And best of all, they are easy to clean…no bottle brush necessary.

Trash

Again, why do we have so much of it, number one? And what would happen if we made thoughtful decisions about incoming based upon a conscious awareness of outgoing? How would our purchases and collecting habits change if we didn’t have anonymous folks carting off our unwanteds each week?

Consider this for a moment, as I am these days: is it actually possible to walk the environmentalist talk if you allow someone else to deal with your garbage? It certainly isn’t possible to be completely independent that way.

If you were your own trashman, you would have 5 options for what normally hits the landfill, and they are: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Consume & Burn. In reality, this would mean all of your daily life would function a little differently.

Vegetable scraps would go to the chickens (consume) or into the compost (reuse). Meat would go to the dogs (consume) and bones to the firepit (burn). Wood brush would hit the firepit while leafy yard waste would hit the compost pile. When shopping, you would always bring your own bags because you wouldn’t want to have to dispose of the plastic ones. You’d choose paper whenever possible because it would burn. You might buy cookies based on which box had the more disposable packaging. You might bring small paper bags to fill at the bulk bin.

You’d likely check the bottoms of all detergent bottles, dishsoap bottles, shampoo bottles for recyclability before bringing them home. You’d realize a trip to the recycling center would be necessary as much as once a week if you consume lots of things in bottles & cans or just once a month if those aren’t in your usual diet.

This would definitely be more work, but once the routine was down, it would be akin to giving up the microwave for the stove. It throws other people for a loop though your own family doesn’t notice it anymore. It falls under the category of a “simple kitchen” because it’s the type of change that would encourage (and often require) more simple living.

The benefits? No money out of pocket to the garbage collectors, complete self-sufficiency with your family’s waste, and the end of any and all opportunities for your family to be environmentally obtuse.

Greens

It’s that time. Dig out your seeds. Peas, lettuce, spinach, kale, cabbage…they’re all ready to be planted sometime between now & April. Our only conundrum is whether to plant them here or on the land. One thing’s for sure, I can’t plant them in containers & cart them there or I’ll be carting dead plants. My garden survives only because I receive generous help from Mother Nature herself.

The Never-ending Stream of Artwork

One of my projects today is to put all of Sassy’s loose artwork into a 3-hole binder. The back of each sheet will be my notepaper. I’m tired of shuffling her art from place to place and I’m tired of looking for notepaper when I need it (or worse yet, notepaper I wrote something important on but now can’t find). When it’s full, it will be a slice of our life – hers on one side & mine on the other. Date it, file it, start over.

And speaking of the never-ending stream of artwork, we’ve recently begun buying inexpensive blank sketchbooks for Sassy to do her artwork. It keeps it contained & already bound, plus it eliminates the wasting of so much computer paper.

birthing support

There were a few details I left out of my original birth story. They weren't facts, like the rest of the story. I don't even know if they were real, and if they were "real," then in what way? A real dream? A real visualization?

At any rate, this is what happened. Friday afternoon, my labor started when my water broke. That whole day, I didn't really progress, just had spaced-apart early labor contractions. I was supposed to sleep that night, but I couldn't really sleep. The contractions woke me up enough to make sleep impossible. So I laid downstairs on the couch by myself and slept lightly, dreaming & day-dreaming all at the same time. You know, that state where your mind kind of floats around on top of sleep & dips in every now & then?

In this half-dream, I started to see my mom. I always wish she were here in times of stress or upset, and especially in times of pregnancy & new birth. This night, it wasn't so much the wishing that came first, but the seeing & feeling her. In my awake-dream place.

I sensed felt thought - really, what's a good word? Dreamt. I dreamt that this new baby was part of her. I dreamt that she would be born with dark hair. I dreamt that she had a part of my mother's soul. I dreamt that my mother was behind me (literally), supporting me. I dreamt that she said made it clear that she would stay throughout the birth.

And as I dipped in and out of dreaming into thinking, floating on top of the dream, my thoughts turned to all of those people before me in my family who had also given birth at home without drugs, without the hospital staff of strangers killing their birth spirit. I started thinking about these different women in my ancestral past, and I thought of my Native American great-great-grandmother, my Irish great-grandmother, my English great-grandmother. I vividly remembered the picture of my Native American great-great-grandmother that my great-grandfather had shown me at his house when I was a little girl. I remembered her face and her hair. I thought about where she might have given birth. I thought about what she might have sounded like, looked like then.

And then when I dipped back into dreaming a bit, I dreamt of her, and my other ancestors, woman after woman, many generations back, forming a circle one by one around my little house. After that, there were others, there was my mother, my grandmother, my great-aunts, and then true friends, many of whom read this blog and would read their name here.

In my awake-dream, there was a circle of these women around my house and they chanted something. It was Native American in feel, the sing-song went up high, back low, up high, back low. They formed a chain around my house, there were not words -- if there were, I can't remember them now. Just the chant, up high, down low, up high, down low.

And then I woke up for real. No dreaming, just awake. I lied there awhile, how long I don't know. Labor always comes with a time warp. I lied there trying to see my wake-dreams from the night in the concrete light of consciousness. I held to their residual feelings and burned their images into my waking mind. Then I got up and put curtains on all my windows.

One day soon, I'll probably forget those residual feelings and images in the day-to-day busy life I have. I wanted to record it before it completely left my mind, because it was very interesting. I am not a person who has spiritual experiences, so I'm not calling it that. But I will say that if there is ever a time in your life where your body is prepared and open to a spiritual experience, uninterrupted birth would be that time.

As much as I wanted my mom to be physically here after the birth, in a terrible way, emotionally I didn't miss her as much as I did with Sassy. Sometimes I think she was and is still here, gently, maybe dipping in and out of our home and our reality like I dipped in and out of my dream.

My little Magpie does have a piece of my mother, and so does Sassy and so do I. And she did come out with dark hair. Funny.

the life you want: the dirty kitchen

I haven’t written about my list lately, but it isn’t because I’ve forgotten about it. Quite the contrary. I started by prioritizing nutrition & health for myself and my family, and I said I wouldn’t move on until I felt that I had that completely under control. I’ve been making big strides, and I think I’m almost to the point where my new weekly routine will stick. But, I’m still not quite there on my daily routine. Too many times, I ignore my body’s daily needs for other projects or errands or chores.

As I’ve been working on putting diet and health first, I’ve realized that maintaining a clean kitchen is an integral part of consistently making healthy meals for us. I noticed that we almost always eat more junk food and eat more carry-out food on the weekends. It’s not because we don’t like to cook, because we all three do. Part of it is due to running around more on the weekends. But part of it is also due to the fact that our kitchen quickly becomes a disaster on the weekends, and we don’t want to clean enough space to cook when we’re already hungry.

I’ve been waking up Monday morning to a huge mess to clean up every week. Often, it takes until Thursday to catch up on the backload of dishes along with the new ones we generate each day.

So I’ve added “keeping the kitchen clean” as my next step in getting The Life I Want. And how can I do that so it actually works?

Well, as I mentioned before, logistics are huge for me. A simple logistical problem can keep me stuck in a bad habit for a really long time. With the dirty kitchen, for example, I’m stuck on emptying the dishwasher. Right now, I can’t physically empty the dishwasher because I can’t bend over that much without re-opening my birth tear. Other times, I put it off because I don’t have a good place for, say, glass jars and our baking dishes. Cabinet space has always been lacking here and the places we have for those items are extremely inconvenient.

So I’m looking at this chain of events and how it is affecting my life. It goes like this: the dishwasher is sitting full of clean dishes with a clean kitchen around it. We start generating more dishes and as they build up, I don’t have anywhere to go with them because the dishwasher is full. But I put off emptying the dishwasher because there’s no quick place to go with some of the bottom rack, heavier dishes. The dishes continue to pile up, and then we start pulling clean ones out of the dishwasher when we run out of some high-demand items.

Meanwhile, we’re cooking and generating food trash and regular trash around us. The counters are already so full of dirty dishes and crap that we don’t notice more trash if it ends up on the counters. Or a book or a crayon or the phone or an envelope or a hat. They’re too full by now to focus on anything in particular. They continue to build up and then they get so full we are simply not inspired to cook anymore. So we eat packaged, quick foods.

There are some creative activities that I do where I feel trying to maintain a spotless home would greatly hinder my creative process. Cooking isn’t one of them. The cleaner the kitchen, the more I want to cook.

Since I’m trying to analyze the logistics – the part of the process where all my good intentions go straight downhill – I can see that maintaining a clean kitchen clearly breaks down at the point of emptying the dishwasher. I thought through possible solutions and I’ve come up with two.

First, having a more convenient place for bottom rack, heavy dishes would certainly help. Perhaps I don’t need all those heavy dishes anyway. Perhaps clearing some out to ensure I could find a good eye-level spot for them instead of shoving them way back behind the mixing bowls at ankle-level would be a good start. In our next house, I plan to arrange our dishes according to what is used most rather than simply what fits best where.

Second, I had to admit that I am simply not reliable when it comes to emptying the dishwasher each day. Of all the tasks I currently have on my plate, this would be the first one I should contract out. Unfortunately, Jeff isn’t a good dishwasher emptier either. But Sassy could be. I’ve started requiring Sassy to help me empty the dishwasher in order to “earn” the sweets that she wants each day.

So, as it sits now, I’ve made quite a bit of progress on the first item on my list – preparing nutritious foods for myself and my family and putting our diet and health first. Here’s a quick recap of the new changes:

• I have a printed schedule reminding me to drink several glasses of water throughout the day, take my supplements, give Sassy hers, and prepare food for snacks and dinner before we are going out.

• Each Sunday, I take stock of what we have in the refrigerator that we need to use up. I then make a quick menu plan of 4-5 dinner or lunch meals, 3-4 breakfasts, 2-3 snacks and 2-3 sweets for the week.

• Each Sunday night or Monday morning, I grocery shop for the meals on my menu plan.

• I ask Jeff to choose one or two meals that we can eat as a family for lunch before he goes to work, so we are sitting down for meals together a few times a week again.

• I try to keep the counters clear and the dishes caught up. I’m using Sassy’s help to empty the dishwasher so that the dishes don’t pile up like they used to.

• And probably the most significant change is that I have designated nutrition and health as my greatest priority, so when I’m doing the unfocused, here-to-there, whizzing brain thing where I can’t focus on any one task because they all seem to draw my attention, I know what to focus on first. This one change alone has helped me to actually get things accomplished again.

I hope I’m not boring you all on my progress toward The Life I Want. It helps me quite a bit to articulate and synthesize my thoughts on my progress. I hope reading mine helps you to do the same for your own goals.

babies in america

Okay, here's your fair warning - I'm probably about to step on your toes in one way or another. I'm in a venting mood & I'm about to tell y'all about it without tempering my opinions (much). I apologize in advance, and friends, I love you. That isn't contingent on how you raise your babies in America and this isn't about you.

But now let me say how irritated I am today with those stupid bucket infant seats that every mother and father carts around like a damn extension of their baby, here to there to there to here, never considering that they could just pick up the baby.

As I was carrying M around today, part in an ABC carrier and part just in my arms, I never realized how odd it is for people to see someone carrying a newborn who is not in their stupid plastic carrier. Why have people fallen for this big sham? Why have parents decided that they are incapable of carrying their babies outside of the plastic contraption?

At first, I noticed the odd looks I was getting from people, and their reluctance to smile at us, even though there was a darn cute baby being carried around, if I do say so myself. I then noticed a few different tables (we were at two different restaurants for carry-out today), look, judge, & snicker among each other. This floored me! I am just not used to people finding baby-carrying odd anymore I guess.

So I started to notice all the other young babies around me and all of them under the age of one were carried in their buckets. The babies had become the buckets. The buckets had become the babies. They were as one. They announced, "I have a baby here! Baby! Right here!"

And what about us?

We announced, "Weird, strange, no bucket. That baby's naked! Where is its bucket?! Is that even safe?! Is it even legal?!"

I caught a glimpse of us in the windows outside Penn Station, where I was carrying her outside of her carrier, just in my arms, and I was struck by how odd it looked. I realized I never, ever, ever see people carrying their newborn around outside a sling or a bucket in America.

And this made me very, very sad.

My M likes to be in my arms. It can wear on me, trust me. I would very much like to be able to sew right now, but little M likes to be in my arms all the time. You know, when she is in her little bucket, riding in the car even 2 hours, as she was today, her little eyes are more anxious & worried. Jeff said she had worried eyes tonight. I told him she'd had them for the past half hour. She likes to be in my arms.

Parents in America would call her 24-hour desire extreme, Mama needs her space and all, Baby needs her independence. But is it really extreme?

Isn't it more likely that all babies want that?

But I have the luxury of actually doing it, because I'm a stay at home mom. I can hold her all damn day if I want (and I usually do). The work out of the house moms don't have a choice but to transport Baby in a bucket far more than Baby probably wants. So when you go to Bob Evans on a Sunday morning, why not ditch the bucket and give Baby some of the in-arms time he's missing during the week?

I don't think I have any work away from home readers, but if I did, I probably don't now. My apologies...you were forewarned.

the life you want, part 2

After I wrote my blog post the other day about moving toward the life you want instead of the life you live out of habit, I asked Jeff to read it. He and I then talked about the changes he wanted to make when we move to the land, and I was glad to learn that he and I are seeking a strikingly similar path. It doesn’t always happen that way. We managed to get 45 minutes of uninterrupted conversation time, thanks to Martha Speaks, some wooden blocks, and a certain 5-year-old’s drive to build a garden and farm scene out of them. It’s rare that we get so much time to talk about our longer-term goals instead of the usual daily logistics.

I decided after our conversation that it really was possible for us to live our daily lives more closely aligned with our values; it didn’t have to be a dream that could happen “one day”…*sigh*…if we could only get more organized.

Throughout that day, I noticed my scattered behavior pattern in everything I tried to do. Laundry was interspersed with decluttering and cleaning up the basement. Cooking was interspersed with 2 minutes of dishes, then 2 minutes of freezing extra food, then 2 minutes back to cooking, then 2 minutes of cleaning off the counters.

Obviously, my scattered brain is a major player in keeping me from moving forward toward a more organized life. So what to do?

I decided I needed to use the wonderful list I actually took the time to write out and prioritize it. For me, fixing nutritious food for myself and my family, and taking the time to take care of our health, was the number one priority. During my pregnancy with M (still need a good screen name for her, suggestions appreciated!), poor Sassy was pretty much on her own with food. With Jeff on second shift, nightly dinners didn’t happen. She would say she was hungry and I would point her to the kitchen. “Then get something,” I’d tell her. Luckily our home isn’t stocked with much junk food, but nevertheless, I knew that wasn’t something I wanted to let continue for long.

Just after M was born, I went on a major caffeine & sugar binge myself. I quit taking my supplements. I’m not pregnant anymore, I thought, woo-hoo! I can eat whatever I want! I can drink all the coffee I want! It’s just MY body I’m potentially harming! YEAH!

Of course, that didn’t work for long either.

So yesterday morning I decided to organize this one item on my list, this one part of my life. I wrote a quick schedule for 4 key times during the day: waking, noon, 5:00, and 8:00. On the schedule were different tasks all related to our health and nutrition. For example, at noon, my list tells me I have to drink a full glass of water, take 4 supplements, eat lunch with Sassy and/or Jeff, make a plan for dinner, and pack snacks if we plan to go out in the afternoon.

This is stuff I should have been doing as a matter of course, but I’d veered so far off course, I needed to write it out to get myself back in line.

I also decided it would help if I had a meal plan for the week. I didn’t feel like I needed to decide on every single meal, but I wanted to have 4 dinners planned, a few snacks, a few breakfasts, and a few sweets, because who am I kidding? I can say I’m off sugar, but in reality, that means I’m driving through Proverbs to pick up my chocolate chip cookies instead of buying the ingredients at the grocery.

I prefer to cook most things ahead of time or whenever I’m in the mood to cook, so yesterday, I had a big cooking morning. It was an interesting change since I’d made the decision to prioritize nutrition over cleaning. I was so very tempted upon walking into my messy kitchen to clean it before I began cooking, but I kept telling myself that nutrition was my priority. I could clean after I made good food for myself and my family.

It was so hard to keep myself on this task alone! Countless times I found myself starting to get diverted to cleaning out of habit, and I had to reign myself back in. But in the end?

In the end, after 3 hours in the kitchen, I had a double-batch of biscuit dough made, a double-batch of pie crust dough, chicken a la king made, vegetarian tacos prepared, lunch shared at the table with my family, the table cleared, the dishes loaded into the dishwasher and the dishwasher running, the counters cleaned off, and the floors swept. And Sassy had helped me all morning so I could cross “baking with my kids once/week” off the list. (Not that I want to limit it to once/week – she is really a big help now!)

So this week, at least, we are going to focus on this one item, health and nutrition for our family, and try to turn it from a scattered part of our lives to an organized one. If I feel like it still needs more attention next week, then I’ll keep focusing on it next week too. I’ll keep it in the forefront until I feel I’ve worked out a good system for our family, then I’ll move onto another item.

Z, I noticed your comment on the last post where you said you’re on a similar journey right now. If you make a list (hint, hint) on your blog, I will totally read it & comment! Lara, you too! It would be so easy for me to take this desire to change out of focus in a couple weeks and fall back on old habits. Having others around me to talk about it with would definitely help me stay focused. What about you?

On a quick side note, most of you know how my job was handed over to my maternity replacement at the eleventh hour. This irritated me far more than I let on at the time. I had quickly gotten used to having some extra pocket money.

I now see this as a blessing, though. Having an outside job definitely kept me securely in the scattered whirlwind, playing constant catch-up. I’ve now decided that I won’t be seeking or accepting any outside employment until my domestic and homeschooling life is in order. This should be added incentive to get “the life I want” since I can’t make any extra money until I do.