February the One’th

Here we are! I have been thinking about my February tradition of a daily post and worrying about it just a little bit. All my spare time has disappeared alarmingly into the maw of daily algebra lessons. Not to make too big a deal of it, but if I don’t know this stuff anymore by the time I am fifty, it won’t be the fault of Pensacola Christian Academy’s Algebra 1 teacher. Her homework assignments are quite rigorous enough, thank you!

Tomorrow I plan to give you A Day in the Life, just so you are kind if I don’t make it with my daily posts. I do relish the challenge, though, and I really love the connections. I actually even made a plan for some of my posts so that I don’t scratch bottom too hard. This is a huge departure from my usual winging-it style. No outlines though. Not yet.

We are deep into projects at our house these days. The floor can only be described as “rubble-covered” for a great deal of the time. There’s mud outside, with occasional blanketing snows that only last 24 hours, thanks to our indisputable global warming. The younger children are drawing and coloring, taking turns to read aloud from our current favorite storybooks by Elizabeth Enright. After we finished The Saturdays and Four Story Mistake, we went on to the Gone Away Lake set. I love stories that were written in the 1950’s and 60’s. Sometimes I wish I could go back and raise my children then.

In wintertime, I make a point of stepping outside the house every day, usually for a walk and some outlook renewal all by myself. Today I felt so annoyed at the chaos that accumulated from our “normal” living that I figured it would take a really long time to step it off. It was colder than I thought, though, and I hadn’t dressed warmly enough. I came to my senses speedily and was glad for shelter inside my own front door again, despite all that mess. So then I did the logical thing. I fixed my bed and cleaned out a drawer. It was 4 PM. Haha. At least there is one restful place for me to go and one organized drawer I can open and feel good about. (It harbors a super-secret bar of dark chocolate, which is actually where the good feeling comes from.)

I had been out long enough to make up my mind about supper. It was definitely going to include a chef’s salad and mac n cheese, since these are dishes my kitchen-duty son could handle. I decided to do the stripes of goodies myself, just because cooking should always be this much fun.

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It’s February! Shall we travel it together? When we come out at the end, spring will be just around the corner. HE PROMISED.

A Thrill of Victory

We had a moment aglow with achievement yesterday, my son and I. Ever since the beginning of 9th grade there was a bit of a thundercloud hovering over the Algebra 1 coursework. “It’s too hard! I don’t get it and I never will. There’s no point in learning something I will never use, etc.etc.”

If you have ever tried to reason with a teen on the merits of discipline and HARD WORK when they see no immediate personal gain, you know how futile this feels. We looked at the chaos of his bombed quizzes and tests and my husband tutored him whenever he was home, but this was not reaching around to the everyday frustration. I would look at his assignments and dredge back into my school years, coming up with… nothing. I realized that I had never covered this coursework, having only done pre-algebra.

Well. Nothing for it then. We went back to the second unit and we did all those bombed out lessons again. I did every homework problem that Alex did, and we checked our work together. Guess what? I got an F on my first quiz. This was a new sensation for me and humiliated me a little. I had to go back and review the first unit, memorizing formulas and forms and a ridiculous amount of basic rules for order of operations that I had forgotten.

There was a spot where it was all so muddled in my head; I would stay up studying until Gabe got off work, then whine to him about how hard this was for my brain crammed full of so many other things. He would unscramble my problems in a few concise sentences and I would go to bed with at least that day’s classwork done. “I don’t have time for this,” I would mutter. But I knew if I quit, my son would see the bad example of wimpy-ness that I was not allowing him to use as an excuse.

Slowly we scraped and scrabbled our way out of the pit of sucky-mud defeatism and climbed our way to consistent C’s and then we started getting B’s. It was shoulder to shoulder all the way, every day. And yesterday, oh yesterday! My son reached the pinnacle of a perfect score on his test! I made a dumb mistake and got 94%, but I was so happy for him that I could live with that!

I will savor the taste of the expression on his face when he saw that 100% for a long time. It will get hard again, but we can do this. It’s only Algebra, but it’s life too.

You can do this, Son.

The Claustrophobic Kingdom

That phrase hit me square between the eyes when I read it in an article by Paul David Tripp. He was talking about our words, the power of them to destroy or to build, but the part I kept thinking about all week is my little kingdom of one.

“You live your life in the utterly mundane. And if God doesn’t rule your mundane, He doesn’t rule you, because that is where you live.” P.D. Tripp

In other words, few of all the people in the world ever go into the history books. In a few generations you will only be a faint memory even to your loved ones. This is not to be depressing. It actually frees me to live TODAY, this minute, and make it above normal for the people around me, because that is where it counts. Mundane is not synonymous with unimportant. It’s just everyday, okay? We all have everyday, where the hair is messy and the toes get stubbed and the bathroom needs to be cleaned. Again. Still, if I do not clean the toothpaste out of the sink and brush the snarls out of the hair, what happens?

It is easier for me to live sweetly when the pressure is on, the people are watching, and company is here. But what about the grinding sameness of deep and dark winter with grey skies and squirrelly people underfoot? Oh, then… when the words slip out sighing or sharp or sarcastic because the people are all so familiar and the very same situation happened yesterday and the day before that and the day before that? (Will they never learn? How many times have I told you?) That is when I need Jesus to broaden my vision beyond the claustrophobia of my little kingdom.

How do I get out of the trap of living for my own comfort, arranging the people who are willing to be arranged, struggling with those who are resistant to my efforts at controlling my kingdom for my own ends? Because I cannot stand the boots all over the floor, but they know, oh they know when I am in it for just myself. This doesn’t mean that it is not okay to make the child go back and line up his/her boots in the row. It means it is not okay for me to scold and rant about such a silly thing as boots.

I dislike when small people who love to eat complain about the food. It is not wrong to teach them gratefulness, but it is not right to sigh, “You guys just eat, eat, eat. All the time. But you don’t like these sweet potatoes or the green beans that I spent the last two hours preparing for your supper! Maybe tomorrow you can just eat cereal all day, huh?” (Well, actually that last line would not work here because they would gladly take me up on it.) There is something really stinky about a passive-aggressive mom who makes herself out as a martyr in order to guilt her children into better behavior.

I find myself at times in a negative holding pattern, where nobody is writing neatly in their lessons and the math is taking too long and the missing commas are distressing me with their portent of ignorant little homeschooled children being launched into the world and showing me up as a terrible teacher. It’s my own little claustrophobic kingdom and it requires some shaking and repentance to break out of it. I doubt I am the only one who has such a kingdom… please tell me I am not.

When this happens, I need a broader vision. What is really going on here? Who is in charge of the circumstances of my life? How do I fit into the story that God is dictating? Is it really as miniscule as lost gloves and muddy carpets? Or am I perhaps missing the point here?

I can constantly bang my head against a wall of futility, because my little kingdom wobbles out of the shape I would like to keep it in; it requires no effort to think about me, my needs, my lack of white space, all the reasons I excuse my stinky attitudes and withered soul. But there is a much greater Kingdom where the merciful receive mercy, the pure hearts see God, hunger and thirst for righteousness are filled, and blessing is measured by life-joy instead of stuff. I am part of that Kingdom by faith! When I embrace the love lavished on me daily, it expands me and spills out like sweet water in a thirsty land.

This is living large in my small space and has a way of curing me of the childish tempers of self-absorption. Jesus takes every space I give Him and glorifies it with His beauty. Possibly this includes the days and days of grey winter space. And the space where the boots and coats and muddy dog prints mix on my tile floor. If my husband is reading this, I am sure he is nodding in agreement.

“[Redeeming love] reaches into the private recesses of your everyday life. Look for opportunities to be in someway an agent of that transforming love.” (P.D. T.)

I will end with a funny story about Addy. We were sitting in church when she suddenly noticed that Rita had a tablet and a pencil and oh dear! she had none. I told her she doesn’t need to write and kept on singing. Looking down a bit later, I noticed her little face full of reproach and she whispered in my ear, “Mama, do you even understand tragic?”

It is so easy to see the hilarity when it is a child speaking, but I am pretty sure God looks at me with exactly the same mix of exasperation and humor as I do when my daughter is overly dramatic. (I wonder where she gets it?)

Let’s live audaciously! Let’s do our small things out of the abundance of great love within! Nothing will be wasted that we give away. He promised.

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The Smartest Kids in the World

“The sign at the door says the purple tags are 90% off,” I mentioned to the clerk. “Does that include things like these roller blades?” She looked blankly at me for a bit, then said, “Yeah, 90% off all purple tags.”

“That’s great. I will take them,” I replied. It was a good deal. The blades were tagged $24.99 and looked new. I dug in my purse for $2.50. When I looked up, the clerk was gone, threading her way across the store with a calculator in hand, calling for the manager. I heard the instructions, “Just take 24.99 times point 10. That’s your price.”

I didn’t want to show my incredulity, but really??? Every 5th grader in our great nation is supposed to learn percentages and 10% is the easiest one to do in your head when you are 11 years old.

I just finished reading The Smartest Kids in the World, where the author explores how it is that American school children are scoring so very low by international standards. Why is it that entire countries full of children (Finland, Korea, Poland) tend to score much higher than our American students in matters that require common sense and thinking through problems?

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I have always thought that my goal is to teach my children to THINK. Yes, I want them to enjoy learning, but that is my secondary goal. If they cannot apply what they are storing in their heads, it doesn’t do much good.

There is a relatively new test called PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) where we U Sers are getting our butts whipped, especially in math. This is the language of logic, of disciplined, organized thinking. There are rules to follow and when you follow them, you get the right answer. I quote Ms Ripley, “Mastering the language of logic helps to embed higher order habits in kids’ minds: the ability to reason, detect patterns, make informed guesses.” (pg. 70)

As a nation we do a lot better in reading comprehension, which is good news. This also means that without the background of logic, we are a nation of people who can feel for others, empathize, recognize problems, etc, yet have no foggy idea of any absolutes or certain outcomes that follow certain behaviors. Add to this the self-esteem movement, where teachers and coaches dole out praise trophies for just showing up, no effort required. There was a huge outcry in some states when it was proposed that high school students cannot just put in the time in class, but must actually pass exams in order to receive a diploma. Again I give you a pithy quote, “Vague, insincere, or excessive praise tends to discourage hard work and attempting new things.”

The poor children raised under the “You are the specialest person in the world and can always have anything you want” quickly find out in the adult world that they are pretty small stuff unless they are actually prepared to work hard and think carefully about their choices.

PISA also has a lengthy section after the academic questions where participating students spend nearly an hour answering a questionnaire on their background, motivation, and family habits. The interesting thing about this survey is that there are no right answers. The researchers are looking for diligence, to see if there is a link to overall success. Well. Duh. Those kids who had learned to persist, even through seemingly meaningless assignments, tended to score higher overall.

The author calls it rigor. It is what they have in Finland, where people have been determined survivors of long, sunless winters and the neighboring Big Guys for centuries. They focus on motivation, self-control, persistence. We might call it character. They don’t skip recess either, even in bad weather. Turns out rigor is a bigger deal than interactive white boards in every classroom and multi-million dollar sports programs where the vast majority of the students sit in bleachers and cheer for the favored few.

Admittedly, there are big problems when education is so dead serious that Korean children have been known to become suicidal if they fail a test. Recognizing this, the government actually has task forces assigned to patrol at night to be sure the tutoring schools close before midnight. These children literally go to school all day. They know how to think, but they don’t really have a life.

Then there was Poland, a country that scored discouragingly low in the first PISA test they participated in, in 2000. The next year they introduced some sweeping reforms: dumbed-down textbooks got replaced with rigorous ones, many of their teachers were required to improve their own education, and fundamental goals were set countrywide with accountability in the form of standardized tests. By 2009 Poland outperformed the U.S. despite spending half as much per student. They don’t have the fancy stuff in their classrooms, but they decided to implement the grit that has kept them alive through some of the most horrendous wars in history. They quit expecting failure in school.

What really matters? How can we best help our children learn to think? Toward the end of the book, Amanda Ripley condenses a vast subject into a few fairly simple expressions:

Conscientiousness > smarts

Self-discipline > IQ scores

Rigor > Self-esteem

In my head I knitted all these concepts about educational systems with our cultural bias against sweat and rules and moral absolutes, and it all makes sense. We are in trouble here in America, but we do not need to despair. We can teach our children to think and to work past failure. Someday it will save them.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is concerned about their child’s education. It will put some steel into your spine when your child/student thinks Algebra is dumb and research reports are too much work and nobody should ever have to do speed drills. Too bad, sonny. This is about your survival! This is about how much I love you. (This is so that you can instantly figure 10% at the cash register.)

A Material Post

That’s not fabric, for any who may feel concern. I am embracing my maven side to share with you some of my favorite products, specifically those acquired during the last year. Ever hear the term, “You vote with your dollars”? That’s what I am talking about. Certainly money cannot buy happiness, but it can buy stuff that puts sparkles on the happiness you already have. Let me just take a spin around the house and show you a few products, how about it?

I start with office supplies. Always I have felt that a skipping, scratchy pen is the worst implement. It depresses me worse than a rubber spatula that has gotten knicked in the blender, and that is saying something. It deserves to die. These days businesses give out decent pens all the time. These are the ones you put in a cup beside the phone for all comers to use. The pen you use for writing a letter or drafting an essay or journaling… that is another pen entirely. The right one makes the words flow like silken threads and even the ruthless edits feel slightly elegant. My personal favorites in this genre are the gel ink untra-fine tip Uni-ball style. You can buy them in a range of colors and sizes at any store that has a good stationery section. I just bought a year’s supply for $7 at a Staples sale, and I have to admit, they make me happy. In the year 2000 a friend introduced me to Bible journaling and the suitable pens for it. It marked the new millenium for this girl! I have been loyal to the brand ever since. They do not bleed through the pages and you can write super-small and legibly right in the text if you want. These are the Sakura micron pens; the 005 size is the one I recommend for Bible marking. The links I am providing are just for the visual, or what comes up first when I google them. I buy them when they are on sale at Christian Book Distributors (also a great source for journaling Bibles) or in craft stores. In this day you may not ever use a pen for writing, but I feel a little sorry for you if you have never experienced the pleasure of a pen that is a friend. I leave you to your own opinions about keyboards.

I decided to get the older children quality mechanical when school started this year. Each has a different color and I have been pleasantly surprised at how well they keep track of them. I did tell them that if they lose them, that’s it until next year. Aren’t I the sweetest mama? 😀 My idea was to remove the ultimate school child stall of grinding away at the pencil sharpener. It hasn’t exactly worked out that way because it turns out there are about 15 ways to mess with lead and run out of lead and twist or break the nifty erasers. For times when they feel a need for a stroll, they can dredge up more dull colored pencils than you would believe possible that simply must be sharpened for map skills study. At least we don’t have horribly smudgy homework done with a stumpy Dixon No. 2.

How about we trek to the laundry room? This year I did my laundry with Norwex detergent, just to see if it was what is was cracked up to be. The very worst aisle in any store for me was the detergent one. I would nip in quickly, grab my unscented Purex or whatever, and leave before I sneezed my head off. I had a very expensive and frustrating washer repair where the expert said I am using too much detergent and it gunked up my HE machine. Allrighty then. When I compared prices, I discovered that Norwex compares to Tide for price per load, which I sometimes resorted to when things started looking dingy from the lower priced soaps. I am very happy to put this little bitty scoop of detergent into a ginormous load and have it emerge smelling, not like Irish Spring or somesuch, but just like nice, clean clothes. And it doesn’t make me sneeze.

Then I thought, what about those dryer balls? Everyone is supposed to know how toxic fabric softeners are, even the unscented ones. The wool balls have been a really good investment. They really do cut down on drying time. If I do 4 loads in a day and it takes 10 minutes less per load, that’s a whole 40 minutes saved, or 25%, just like the company says. I no longer use fabric softener for anything except stuff that doesn’t go through the dryer, because I cannot stand static in winter and I haven’t found another solution. I can even hook you up with the best little Norwex consultant you ever want to meet. 🙂 Hi, Rose!

A kind friend gave me a wonderful tool for hair time. Sometimes after baths I look at the mass of tangled heads and wonder about dreadlocks. Well, not really. But my girls have the tangliest hair. Enter the Wet Brush to the rescue. You have to feel it to believe the difference! They panic when I pick up the old brush, and actually manage to get most of the snarls out by themselves. Thanks, Ellen.

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“Work smarter, not harder,” the successful people say. In my quest for household fluidity, (is that even a thing? maybe it is just an elusive quest…) I noticed that my old vacuum cleaner was ready to put to pasture. I had used my mother-in-law’s rollerball vacuum cleaner and liked it so much that I started watching eBay for a replacement. I endured months of email notifications and Facebook ads before I found an affordable deal on Black Friday for the Dyson Ball Animal cleaner. We chose that one because we have animals and we have children who love animals. I feel like a clean freak when I vacuum my house and empty out the dirt canister. It’s a novel feeling and it makes me more than a little happy. Was I happy before? Absolutely. But you have to clean your floors, whether you like it or not. This is just a different layer of happy, a fascinated thrill that the dirt is no longer in the carpet.

Our favorite property investment this past year is our barn, representing days and days of sweat and splinters. It swallowed up our spare time for the year and taught us a lot of skills, some we never hope to need again. (Like putting on the ridge cap.) Sometime I will do a start-to-finish post on that project, but here it is: the view from my kitchen window this morning. We feel actual affection for that structure!

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My husband is a master of repurposing, wouldn’t you say? But wait until you see what we put in the bottom story!

The little girls are thrilled! They love all creatures, but especially furry or feathered ones. First thing in the morning, before she has even rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, Addy asks to gather the eggs. She doesn’t care if it’s cold and nasty outside. Sometimes it takes her so long that I worry she may have gotten hurt, but when I check on her, she is just holding a chicken or petting the piglets. There are 25 pretty red laying hens and they all look the same to me, but they can easily recognize the favorite. One day they came in breathlessly excited, “Mama! We can ride our goats and they don’t even sag!” I thought surely the thrill will diminish, but it has been months and they are as enamored as ever, completely undeterred by yucky stuff on their boots and multiple baths. Expense and extra work aside, the animals have been a good investment. The three goats are all very pregnant, so the thrills continue!

In the photos of Addy you can see her favorite accessory of the year, the very popular puffer vest. One of the cousins had one, and then we found 4 of them at Goodwill! Alex is still waiting for one in his size, but he is a hoodie kind of guy anyway. Our children hate to play in coats, unless of course, there is snow. With Pennsylvania winters turning mild, this is just the ticket for outdoor play. Don’t be too shocked. Children in Siberia run into the snow to play in their undies for a few minutes every day in order to build up their immunities. This is a much discussed fact around here, and at least the vests are a little warmer than that. 😛

Well, I seem to have meandered outside and my time is up. As a career SAHM, I send you cheer and my best recommendations for some stuff that may make your life easier. This is a pretty rough career I would say, but one I am happy to pour my life into. Blessings on the new year! May your pens never sputter and your Goodwill trips be fruitful! May your laundry smell fresh, no matter how you do it. May all the tangles in your household hair come from healthy activities and may God be the Sun you crave upon your face.

Talking About Favor

I read that paragraph again and again,

And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.” (Luke 2:28-30)

That word “favor” puzzled me. We know about favor: someone paid for my coffee at Starbucks, someone put gas in my car, someone gave me a house. Post it on Facebook and there will surely be cryptic comments: Favor, man. The favors are as varied as the people reporting them and the assumption is that God must really love them special. I don’t doubt that He does, but I had two questions: Why does no one ever proclaim it “favor” when unfortunate things happen, like missing a plane? What if favors are sprinkled all through life and they don’t always feel good? Could it be that our short-sightedness is blinding us to loads of flat-out-favors because we won’t acknowledge them unless they look pretty? (I know, that’s three, but the last one is purely rhetorical.)

I got out some study materials and looked up every single reference to “favor” or words related to it in the Bible. Then I wrote them down with their meanings and roots and cross referenced them. I am not sure what I was looking for… maybe some huge oversight in our current use of the term so that I could challenge our narrow ideas. But there it was, “bend or stoop in kindness to an inferior… acceptance… good deed… merciful kindness.” There are lots of references to this sort of favor is in the Old Testament. David especially used the word a lot to describe the unique blessings of the righteous. Sometimes it is translated as “acceptance”. However, in the New Testament there is only lowly little Mary receiving favor from God. The word seems to change to “grace”, which is a term I like a lot better. I think it’s interesting that our prosperity-loving culture picks up an OT term and flings it around so recklessly.

Doubtless the person who missed his plane on 911 realized what a mercy that was just a few hours after the initial frustration. And those stories of people having flat tires that keep them grounded safely away from a pile-up at the intersection? What looks like disaster turns out to be favor: pure, undeserved grace.

Look at little Mary again. She was greeted with “the Lord is with you.” That was the whole foundation of her favor. It was what enabled her to move beyond being “greatly troubled” to saying, “Behold, the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.” This is a very strange teen pregnancy we are talking about. It had to be excruciating to have that conversation with her fiancee. There was a terrible donkey ride in her third trimester and fleeing in the dark of night from an angry tyrant. Then there was the prophecy of Simeon about a sword piercing her heart. And remember how Mary had all these things she hid in her heart as her son was growing up? Then there was broken weeping at the foot of her son’s cross as He died. She did not have the book of Luke to read or the whole picture to gaze at. She just had promises and the Spirit of God pouring grace onto her.

It wasn’t all free lattes and fuzzy slippers for Mary. I take a leap of fancy here and assume that she would hardly understand our narrow interpretation of how we can tell that God loves us. Someday I want to talk with Mary, but for now, I want to be like her. I want to live richly in the fact that “the Lord is with me” and that is favor, no matter what the circumstances. I want to rest in that.

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Have you found ~~favor~~ grace recently? What did it look like for you?

Efficiency Tips for Martha

We all need more white space to ponder and pray and take care of the really important things, right? And how, we ask, do we make this space to be like Mary? The stuff to do keeps coming at us and it isn’t going to quit anytime soon. I have compiled a list of things I have learned about keeping house. These are tips for homemakers, okay? Don’t laugh if you have never been one and maybe you think we just sit and drink tea. You. have. no. idea.

Never go up or down steps without checking if there is something that needs to be carried up or down. The same goes for room to room. Don’t step over the brush in the hallway 11 times. Scoop it up and put it into the bathroom while you are walking that direction anyway. It’s a lot easier than mounting a full scale search party when it’s time to brush your child’s hair before church.
Throw away ALL junk mail immediately. If it’s a company with a website, don’t keep the catalogs. If it’s a Lego or American Girl catalog, let the children look at it until it is soggy with drool, then immediately bury it deep under the eggshells in the trashcan.
If there’s a load of laundry, just do it. Don’t ever worry about running out of laundry. Keep your used towels and washcloths in a separate basket/hamper so you can do them often and avoid that stinky, musty smell.
Do not put stacks of folded laundry on beds or on top of dressers. It might take 20 seconds to open the drawers and put them away. The same 20 second rule applies to hanging up coats instead of draping them over the nearest chair. Buy hooks until every piece of outerwear has a place to hang out when you aren’t wearing it.
Do not store stuff you don’t need or have no sentimental attachment to. If your cupboards or closets are stuffed, sort through them and donate anything you haven’t used for a year to someone who will be grateful for it. (Or put it in storage out of sight.) Stuff can seriously bog you down, did you know that? If you have stuff that nobody would want, well… what are you doing with it?
Buy a tote for each child to store their sentimental keepsakes in. Help them decide what they want to keep when you are deep cleaning their room. (Within reason. Some children cannot seem to part with anything! But they probably won’t ever look at those Sunday school papers from 10 years of childhood. Sometimes you just have to disappear things. Unless, of course, you have access to unlimited space for totes.)
Keep your fridge organized. It is so much easier to find the ketchup if the ketchup has a spot to live in the fridge. This is not to say that the absent-minded child won’t stand there and gape for the longest time before they find the ketchup. Also, it is much easier to use up food before it spoils if it is visible in the fridge. Buy clear storage dishes. Odds are pretty high that leftovers stored in old cottage cheese containers will grow mold.
Avoid ironing clothes if at all possible. Learn how to tumble-dry the permanent press clothes and hang them on hangers while they are still damp. If you forget to get them out of the dryer and they get sadly wrinkly in there, just give them a quick rinse cycle and try again. Life is too short to spend hours ironing.
Mulch your garden heavily. And your flowerbeds. Mulch everything. Put newspapers under the mulch. Do not let those weeds come up and spread their noxious seeds.
Invest in cleaning tools that your children can use, preferably tools they fight for the privilege of using! That mop with the little water tank that squirts out when you press the trigger?.. Those microfiber window cleaning cloths?..The fun feather duster? Even the Lysol wipes… All these things will make your life much easier than just scrubbing away with a rag cut out of old shorts. Seriously.
Delegate. If a child can do it, then let them do it. See above. ^^^Learn to be okay with imperfection.
Have a pair of scissors/gluestick/tape roller/sharpie that is verboten to all but yourself. So many motions are wasted while we scurry hither and yon, tracking down the missing household item that someone carted off to make a kite in the garden. I know this.
Whenever it is practical, double up your meal prep and freeze the extra. If you are frying a pound of burger, you might as well fry 5 pounds and freeze 4 of them for later use. When you have chicken, make bone broth in the crock pot overnight and serve it with the leftover bits of chicken in a nourishing soup the next day. Make friends with one-dish meals.
Keep a schedule, as loose or tight as you need to feel happy. If you know that Thursday is downstairs cleaning day, you can calm down about the mess on Wednesday because you know it will get hit the next day.

Of course, these things do not mean you don’t have to work hard to keep your home free of chaos. The goal is to work smarter, not harder. Ever heard that one? You can then discover a little pool of white space and just enjoy it. Maybe you can find a piece of paper, or if you are artsy, you can get some paint and a board and make yourself a motto:

“Smile! It’s life and you’re living it!”

And now, do tell, what are the ways you have learned to simplify your homemaking?

My Odd Thankful List

I challenge myself every year to think outside the thankfulness box of plenty, food, and clothes, although I am very grateful for them. But, I ask, “What are the things I am most tempted to gripe about, or to rebel against, or even just to resist?” Then I write them down and I look at them upside down and inside out. It is funny how that exercise helps me adjust my attitudes. Sometimes I blog about the list, and you may remember some of these from other years. I don’t learn too fast, apparently. I know I have wasted too much time on some of these, and it is good to examine them again. I think my perspective changes, thanks to the first one on the list.

The inevitable march of time
My husband’s work schedule
Living in such a public place
Homeschooling pressures/obligations
So many meals to cook
Interruptions

So, I am getting older. I have lived through enough to merit having grey hair. I really don’t care. And I can laugh when my little girl whispers in church, “Are you pregnant… or are you just plump?” I know my style and it doesn’t matter so much anymore if it’s nobody else’s style. I can do Thanksgiving the day before Thanksgiving because my husband has to work on Thanksgiving Day. This will not ruin our holiday because I have discovered that I have the power to choose to be thankful.

This brings me to the long shifts and mandatory work days on other people’s holidays and weekends. I admit, when it first dawned on me that nurses work these shifts, like, all the time, I cried. Now with a few years of dealing and perspective, I see it a little more realistically. A work week goes by very quickly in 3 twelve hour shifts. It is a dream come true to work together developing our property and having the opportunity to go on short trips and campouts and hikes on those strings of days off. How can I fuss that they aren’t on the weekends and the holidays? (I do it still sometimes. Ask Gabe. I am not Polly Anna.)

We live 20 feet off the road and have kind of gotten used to other people minding our business, such as someone calling the police when our girls were sliding on the frozen pond while their father was working right there in the pasture, after he had checked to be sure the ice was safe. Sometimes I get really tired of being in the public eye, right here between two intersections. We let our children build fires and make shelters in the woods and sleep outside when they want to. They own hatchets and knives and sometimes they build barns instead of doing school books. Occasionally the whole troop is outside chasing goats and screaming. People get very concerned about this sort of thing. But at least we are never far away from help. All we need to do is stand out beside the road for half a minute and someone will drive past and we can flag them down. Not that this has ever happened, but it could. We are also 1/4 mile from the north/south interstate and 6 miles from the east/west interstate. I mean, that is linked in!

(Here is our front porch with some withered gourds, our lane with some excited little girls in the first snow, our picket fence with some dead flowers, and The Road with no cars at the moment.)

girls-in-snow

I will not elaborate on the ways that homeschooling stretches me, because right now it feels like we have hit our stride and I do not want to tip the delicate balance. I am thankful for the chance to learn stuff about Teddy Roosevelt in my son’s library research report and to plug away every day with my older son’s algebra lessons. I got a 78% in my last exam because I got terribly confused with some terms we were supposed to have memorized. That simply is not good enough, so we dig more neural pathways every day! Homeschooling also keeps my heart turned toward my children. How could it not? We hang out together every day. It is, most assuredly, not all fun and games! But it keeps me begging for mercy and wisdom and that is a good place to be so I am grateful.

The food… honestly, sometimes I just get so tired of all the necessary food! Practice has helped me get better at it though. I don’t panic about visitors at mealtime if I have any sort of advance warning at all. I can adjust quantities and stretch a pound of ground beef, no sweat. I can now get up and cook a turkey and all the trimmings for a feast. I have even managed a kitchen for a wedding meal. So all this food is teaching me stuff. I know my bread recipe by heart. I can make soup out of fridge leftovers that tastes actually really good. And here is the thing. There is always plenty. I may have to hide the treats sometimes to keep them safe from the ravenous horde of children who ought first to eat their vegetables. But the treats are there and all I had to do was put some ingredients in a bowl and bake them. I can do this. I am grateful.

Okay, interruptions. Interruptions come from a very full and busy life. Which means people are depending on me to find their shoes and put salve on their hurt fingers and pick the burdocks out of their hair. Never mind that I was trying to answer an email in a coherent fashion right then. And then I remembered that I should hang the sheets on the line and while I was outside I noticed that the dog chewed a hole in a bag of trash and scattered it all around. The porch could use a brush off with a broom too. There are shoes and a jacket right smack inside the door and a child needs a reprimand. Let’s see… Oh, yes, that email. But it was only one of a million things to think about. As chaotic as it may seem sometimes, I realize that I have a life! I am truly grateful.

The Weekend

We returned yesterday from a weekend trip to Wisconsin, not your ordinary 3 day jaunt for fun, as you might guess. As I extracted my bones from the vehicle at 7:30 AM, about 16 hours after I first folded them into the backseat of a Honda Pilot, I hardly knew what to do with the grateful rush of feelings that is HOME.

It feels like we have been grieving my grandpa for a few years, so that his passing last week was more of a rejoicing that he finally got his new body. It is such a strange mixture of grief for a loved one gone and relief for the caregivers left behind. Dementia had been stealing him away, the person who no longer knew who he was and often didn’t know who others were either.

doddys-tractor

This is Grandpa with his tractor, (photo credits to my brother-in-law) a few years before he started wandering away, getting lost, feeling the frustration of having his keys taken. He was always a sharp thinker, careful with his finances and record keeping. Suddenly he found himself going to the wrong bank, getting ready for church on the wrong days, reliving childhood memories, yet sometimes unable to remember his wife. It was heartbreaking, and if anything has made me grateful that we don’t have to live in broken bodies forever, this did.

I swiped a recent picture from a cousin’s Facebook wall. I think this was when my grandma had heart surgery this summer, and Grandpa walked the halls at the hospital and got lost. You can see the confusion in his expression. I loved that all the worry lines were gone after he died. He looked 20 years younger, more like the Grandpa who used to tear around with us, tickle us with his beard stubble, and take out his false teeth to give us a rather awful thrill.

doddy-and-mommy

While Grandma was in the hospital, someone overheard Grandpa quoting Psalm68:19, “Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation.”

It was a random moment, but later they realized that it was the last verse he ever quoted.

For those of you who know my sweet Grandma, would you pray for peace to surround her as she adjusts to the sudden, extreme quiet? In a few weeks it would have been 65 years that they were married.

The weekend consisted of a lot of travel, a lot of wonderful connecting with beloved cousins, a lot of crying together in our mixed-up grief. The Miller clan is a very close-knit one, and my emotions got jerked all over the place. I was glad we could be there, all the same. I don’t enjoy the rituals of dying, and yet we seem to need them. It’s like a bookend to the rejoicing of birth, the mystery of passing onward and upward to another place that we, grasping, only vaguely comprehend. For those who do not grieve without hope, it is also a rejoicing.

P. S. The most dreadful moment came, even though I was on my guard, when I got the giggles. In the solemn quiet when everyone files past the casket for a final viewing, I watched the backs of the people walking down the aisle. Gabe and I saw him at the same moment: a young boy following his father and diligently digging out a wedgie enroute. When the left hand didn’t suffice, he helped rearrange his pants with the right hand too. I shouldn’t have ever stolen that sidewise glance at my husband. I shouldn’t have even let the first escalating giggle within a mile of bubbling out. I shouldn’t have listened to my brother making muted sounds that were almost the sounds of grief, but they weren’t. I scootched way down in my seat and tried to think sad thoughts, but that was the trouble. I had already overloaded with them. If you are not one given to messy, emotional giggle fits, you cannot understand how disagreeable they are in an Amish funeral. There was no excuse. But I did feel better afterward.

Fallish

I found my photo card with pictures of our jaunt through the White Mountains. It was very cloudy the day we drove the road that loops through the best views, so the views were shortened, but so were the crowds of leaf peepers. This suited us fine. Without further ado, let me show you a glimpse.

We would drive around the bends in the road, thinking surely each one would be pinnacle of color. It was a feast for the eyes and soul, a worship experience.

Entire mountain flanks, covered in flaming deciduous trees with creases of evergreens in the ravines: this is what we saw for hours. Our cabin was in Maine, just one mile over the NH border, but in a very different landscape. The lane in to our little lake looked promisingly secluded, although you would not believe how many tiny cabins are tucked away in these woods. I only saw one other person out and about in the four days we were here. He was a deaf gardener at one of the fancier places where the shrubs were manicured, and he shouted at me that he liked my shoelaces after I smiled and remarked inanely about the beautiful day.

cabin-lane glamping-cabin

This was our Air B&B glamping cabin. It was a compromise between posh accommodations and primitive camping, a sparely furnished place with a fridge, heat, and hot water. It was perfect. We went out to Portland one day, where we saw the harbor and the way they used to make their living compared to how they make their living now. I know the tourists are the bread and butter of many of the shops and restaurants in the area, but it makes me sad to see all the manufacturing places abandoned, the railroads grown up in weeds. I would have liked to see this harbor when it was bustling with commerce. We ate our lobster rolls and crab cakes at a small shack on the pier where there was a faint smell of rot and fish, so that seemed nice and authentic.

portland harbor.jpg

We love the way New Englanders have so practically built their barns and garages in attached L’s to their houses. How smart is that when the snow is piled up? And we like how they drag the rocks out of their pastures and build fences. It’s such a sensible solution.

We came home to this crew with renewed contentment to just be us: our family. Gabe had to get back to work that weekend and I had a long Sunday afternoon with a bunch of kiddos who had forgotten a little how to be siblings and listen to their Mom. (Somebody invent an emoji for that. It’s too hard to describe.) I couldn’t think of anything better to do than wear everybody out on the nearby mountain. 🙂 It was cheering to see what the fresh air and romping did for everybody’s spirits. When the littlest girl whined about being cold, her brother shared his jacket and when she whined about being tired, he carried her, which was more than I was prepared to do.

After stuffing our pockets with treasures and building a small fire to warm up, (never underestimate a young boy with a flint and steel in his pack) we were rejuvenated and all the people who had fussed about hiking in the drizzle retracted their fussing and felt mellow and sweet for the rest of the evening. Even me. I was still in “curl up undisturbed with a book” mode, which wasn’t working anyway. Nature is such an amazing panacea for grumpiness of spirit! Wow, look at that! God is good! The world is a lot bigger than I am! I need other people. Solidarity and kindness restored: all is well.

It has been a good fall, quite possibly the busiest season of our lives to date. I doubt we could have gotten much more done if we tried. I hit November with thankfulness, which is appropriate, of course. But ordinarily I dislike November intensely. This year it is still balmy. My petunias still look like this with a few more maple leaves sifted through them:

I am grateful for every spot of color that is left.

And I got to finally go see my sister, who had a baby and only lives four hours away and here he was, a month old before I saw him! It’s an odd feeling of going back in time to see Rachel with four little children and to realize that three of hers are younger than my baby. It brings back the days of endless wiping and sippy cups and the bleary-eyed wearying joy that is babies. We were blessed with bare-foot weather and the children spent the entire time outside, leaving us to sip coffee and cuddle little Zachary.

It was a good time. I look forward to the rest of fall. In an effort to be totally candid here, I have to confess that last week I finally took down a swag of (fake) forsythia that I had twined around a sign in my living room back in May. It says, “Home is where your story begins.” I decided to be daring and twine a bit of fall foliage around it. Hopefully I won’t forget to switch it out with holly. I figure some day my children will mention that their story definitely did not begin with a perfectly appointed house, but if they remember the times their mother dragged them outside of themselves and onto a trail to somewhere else, I will be glad.

How about you? How are you savoring the season? Double points if it doesn’t include pumpkin lattes.