The Only Way a Towel Can Kill You

At the advent of swimming season this year I considered my options for sanity and decided that one way I could save on a lot of laundry would be to buy each child a vastly different print of beach towel so that there can be no question of whose is whose. If you are wrapped in the one with gaudy pineapples and it belongs to your sister, you are out of line. Yours has palm trees. Even the most absent minded can remember that, even though you apparently cannot remember that white bath sheets do not ever go to the pond bank, not even when Mama isn’t looking. What’s more, I can tell at a glance who hasn’t hung up their towel to dry because there are no hibiscus flowers on the line.

There was a day of intermittent showers and sunshine, the kind of day where raindrops just squirted out of the sky with little warning. The children had a blast dancing through the puddles and wiping out in the grass. I looked on indulgently because this is a rite of childhood, after all.

Suddenly everybody was chilly. The beach towels, one for each child, their assigned towel to take care of and hang up to dry after every wet episode… Well, they were all either hanging on the clothesline or sprawled across our canoe trailer from the swim in the lake the night before. Five bath towels got handed out and everybody dried off. I failed to make sure that all these towels got hung on hooks. They didn’t. After all, we have plenty of floor for towel disposal and I, the mother, was retreating for an hour to read and relax behind a locked door.

There was a knock on the door. “It quit raining! May we go swimming in the pond? It’s really warm. We checked. Please???” All five scampered off, little ones dragging life jackets and what was that I saw draped around their necks? MORE TOWELS? Clean bathroom towels for drying off from the pond? But the beach towels, one for each child, their assigned towel to take care of and hang up to dry… They were undeniably wet from hanging on the line during the rain.

I sighed and gave it up. The only way this can kill you, lady, is if you knuckle under and let it smother you, after all. I saw myself, one feeble arm reaching out from a mountain of soggy terry cloth. “Help!”

No, I am tougher than that. I would remain chill about it.

An hour later they all trooped up on the deck. “We’re cold! Can we have baths?”

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Life on a Loop

Notice that I did not say life in the loop, because I am so busy running faithfully in my own space that I hardly have time to stay informed as to the world at large. The hamster wheel was spinning dizzily this morning as I pedaled along full tilt, doing laundry loads and checking tests and quizzes and filing them in 4 separate portfolios. I had brewed the very last of my coffee beans from Honduras, taking special care to press them exactly the way they should be pressed and it was the fragrant coffee of dreams. Of course, one cannot sort laundry while cradling a mug, so I set it on my desk until that task was done. When I pulled out a teacher’s book, I nipped the edge of that mug and there went my coffee, my beautiful coffee, all over the tests and quizzes.

A few frantic minutes of mopping and draping of papers over the edge of the trash can later, and I could at least check them well enough to give my sons credit for their grades even if those particular tests won’t be filed. Then I remembered that I had saved the last cup of coffee for Gabe who was still sleeping after his long night shift and didn’t need it anyway. I went for a refill. Right there I made a strategic mistake: I used the same mug. It is pretty and green and has a leaf imprint, but it has this weirdly tapered round bottom that should be illegal. This time I set it on my sewing table while I did some mending on garments that were cycling through the laundry in a disreputable state. I picked up a pair of pants, and there went that stupid coffee mug again.

I know. I don’t let my children use that word, but sometimes under extreme provocation… There were no more refills. If I weren’t so frugal I would take that mug out and smash it on some rocks just for fun. I wonder if that would feel better than saying “stupid”.

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I keep doing this loopy stuff. On Sunday I couldn’t seem to quit driving to church. I was already struggling a bit with daylight saving time, getting the family dressed up nicely by myself since it was Gabe’s day to work. (You need to go brush your hair, Buddy. And clean your ears. Yes, I know nobody cares about your ears, but go wash them anyway. Do you know your Sunday school verses? Let’s practice while I do your hair. What? You don’t want a bun? Okay, your turn, Olivia. What? You want two braids? Sorry, that takes too long. I will make you two braids tomorrow. Alex, can you help Addy put on her good shoes? etc. etc. etc.) We had fellowship meal food all ready: a special layer cake Alex had decorated with yellow marshmallow Peeps and a crock pot of Taco Chicken. I was combing the last little girl’s hair and called out to Alex to take the cake out to the Suburban and load up everybody else. I twisted an elastic on the wispy little ponytail, sent the small girl outside and whisked the crock pot and my purse off the counter. We were actually going to get to church before the singing started. I felt a little proud of this feat, especially since my little girls even had socks on, not just bare feet in boots.

As we pulled in at church, Alex gasped, “The cake! Did you bring the cake?” Well no. I didn’t. It’s only 3 miles, so we u-turned and went back to get it. If I hadn’t forgotten my phone, I could have texted Gabe to bring it when he got up. He had been mandated to stay at work longer the night before due to short staffing, so he hadn’t gotten home until 4:30 AM. We got the cake and the phone. After church I texted him about bringing a plate of food home and he said sure, but he had to leave again soon for his next shift. I hurried the children away from their friends, and took that plate of food home, hoping we could visit a little before he was off for another 12 hour shift. Alas, he was sitting in the car, ready to leave when we got home. There was no time for anything but a quick kiss and a food hand-over.

Then Alex said, “Um, I forgot the cake plate again.” And everybody clamored, “Can we go back and play for a while?” So we did. We went to church again for the cake plate. I found a circle of friends and sat there and visited for another hour. And I ate a piece of my friend’s marvelous lemon raspberry cake (yes, the same friend who made the salted caramel shortbread bars last month) with cream cheese icing. I needed that bit of fortifying and endorphin-boosting.

I ordered some pantry-organizing Tupperware for my mom’s birthday weeks before her February birthday, but didn’t actually receive it until this week. I had bought a lovely card that I was saving to give with her gift. Meanwhile my desk got conscripted into a poster making project for a safety fair at the hospital and the card disappeared without a trace. I settled for a generic one and gave my mom her present. Two hours later I found the card that I had been scouring the entire premises for. I don’t know what to tell you. The really scary thing is that all these items should be/always live “right there”.

But remember that journaling Bible I lost before Christmas? I found that while I was looking for the card. And my phone charger turned up just recently too, after Gabe had borrowed it and mislaid it. That too, was something we had searched for with diligence. Again, I don’t know how to explain this stuff. If you were to come to my house, I think you would consider me a reasonably orderly person. We do have Alzheimer’s in the family and that is too frightening a prospect to even consider. So I am letting my brain off the loop and I am going to walk in the woods and laugh hysterically whenever I feel like it. Take that, hamster wheel.

(Just for your information, if you want to enter for the giveaway I posted last time, you have until noon tomorrow. Go ahead, don’t be shy.)

7 Spring-Madnesses to Try

I just amused myself with a lame click-bait title. Hardy-har. Yesterday my Facebook feed offered me the worst one yet: 15 Reasons You Should Give Your Dog Coconut Oil. I am sorry, but this is just preposterous on so many levels. Who has time to research and write about the urgent health benefits of coconut oil for dogs? Who has money to spend on coconut oil for dogs?? What’s next? 5 steps to teach your dog oil pulling? There was a photo of a dog licking out of a squat little container of the really pricey stuff and I just giggled and did NOT click on it.

March has been gorgeous, gorgeous, warm and balmy! This is my season. I roll around in it, figuratively speaking, of course. My children do it quite literally and when they are done in the bathtub, there is a layer of silt on the bottom. I get back energy that I forgot about, and no, I didn’t start drinking Plexus recently. It’s my built in solar panel booting up the systems for an all-outdoors bash. I did a few things in the last week that made me feel really alive again.

I sat in brilliant sunshine to eat lunch. Outside. In bare feet. And I had chocolate covered strawberries too.
I saw a Craftsy project that I really wanted to do, but I didn’t want to spend $20 on their kit, so I bought a whole bunch of gorgeous fabric and trims and buttons for $16 and made it myself, trial and error.
I sewed more than one project with the fabric: a petal-skirt dress for my smallest flower, and some pretties I will show you tomorrow. And then I will give one away to one of you.
I pruned the grapevines and raspberries, pulling all the weeds that had flourished and died out over the winter. Then I asked Facebook if anyone local wants the extra raspberry plants and the first ones to reply were from North Carolina and Ohio and Georgia. I may need to do an instructive post on the meaning of “local”.
I treated those plants to composted horse poo and I enjoyed doing it. I thought to myself, “Goodness, I am turning into my mother!” when I remembered how she would haul barrows full of poo from the barnyard to the flower beds while we children went EWWW.
I trimmed my lavender hedge that lines the stone walkway to the backyard. A lavender hedge is romantic and lovely when abloom, but requires rather more maintenance than I knew before I planted it. Have you ever spent a therapeutic hour plucking maple leaves out of twiggy stems? At least it is fragrant work.
I tilled down the cover crop in the kitchen garden, so that I can plant peas by St. Patty’s Day. That is my hope. I could have planted yesterday already by the condition of the soil. We are Zone 6, folks! It would definitely have been an early record for me, but I remembered the fiasco last year, how our peas didn’t germinate because we hadn’t killed the cover crop first.

I told you it has been amazing and warm. That is some of the reason why I dropped off the face of blogdom again this March. Also, after I have scratched out 28 posts in February, I feel a bit dry, so I just sink into it for a while and get all private. One thing that perplexes me and even makes me feel a little queasy is this: who am I actually writing to? Who is my target audience? Am I writing to homeschoolers? Maybe to their children, who I have been told read my stuff. What about the men? Yikes. I am suppressing all my birth stories for their sakes. Well, not quite. What if I write something insensitive to someone who is hurting? What if I write something unflattering about someone and they recognize themselves? What if I want to write a childhood story about a girl at church who had halitosis and she ends up reading it? It’s just this bit of paralysis that strikes occasionally and I realize I am taking this way, way too seriously. But I gave myself a break.

I will tell you a secret. When I get stuck like that, I write to Becca, my sister-in-law who was first my friend before she married my brother. She is the one who kept telling me to blog and she “gets” me and encourages me, so I just told her my 7 Spring-Madnesses to Try and I am saving a bunch of raspberry roots for her, even if she lives in North Carolina.

Brain Dump

My assignment for today is to try to set up a plan for a regular feature on the blog. It’s a good idea, really, but I don’t have any idea how to narrow down the options. What if I don’t feel Wacky or Wordless on Wednesday? Suppose Thursday slips by without a Throwback? Maybe Sunday Salute won’t work every weekend.

That’s why they gave the assignment: impulse bloggers like me, who wait to write until the words swarm, are supposed to get a bit of structure and discipline so that people can count on a regular post. We are supposed to have posts ready ahead of time and scheduled to publish whether we are online or not. That’s what serious writers do as a courtesy to their audience. Sometimes I don’t even have a clue what will be for dinner on Wacky Wednesday and I just start stirring around in the fridge until something pops out. I could probably learn to do the same with writing if I had a little help. Here are some examples.

Stream of Consciousness Saturday
What’s Underneath?
Sweet and Sappy Stories
Making of a Mom
Day in the Life… of someone..?
Homeschool Highlights
Routines for Rest
Growing Goodness
The Dish on Dieting
Best Books to Buy

Okay, see my problem? I can’t think of anything catchy or clever enough to hit me between the eyes. Besides, I am running out of steam here. I feel like a chicken that has laid 24 eggs in rapid succession. That’s where your help comes in. Please, tell me what you would like to see as a regular feature. I will set out a list and you can give me votes or suggestions. I won’t make any promises, but it would help me. Don’t bother with number 9. It was a joke.

Wonderful Wordsday

I have been writing from my little girls’ vantage point, but there I will stop. It’s one thing to post an occasional humorous bit about adolescence and a whole other thing to write an entire post about it. 🙂 My oldest son has said, “Mama, please don’t write about me on your blog. Total strangers have come to me at church and said, ‘Hey, I recognize you from your mom’s blog!’ and that is embarrassing!”

As we all know if we have any memory at all, one’s entire early-teen life is fuel for embarrassment. Having “Happy birthday” sung at fellowship meal is enough to make one wish to disappear. I am striving to be respectful to my boys and there I draw the curtain. I level with them when I want to post potentially incriminating details before I hit publish. This idea of handing them the spotlight for a day would never pass their filters for what is okay to write.

Once I met the daughter of Dorcas Smucker from Life in the Shoe. I have read her blog for years, so of course, I recognized her daughter immediately when she visited a friend at our church. I said those infamous words, “Hey, I think I recognize you…” and she finished for me with a little sigh, “…oh yeah, you probably read my mom’s blog.” Mrs. Smucker says she paid her children for especially good stories that begged to be told. That’s an idea, and one I may try on my easily embarrassed offspring in the future.

Today’s prompt for a post was to pick out some great words that are not really common and tell why you think they are interesting. I learned a few new words recently. The first is “blego” which is a blogger’s sense of importance online. I squirm with the suggestion of narcissism implied by blego and think maybe I would be a lot better off being completely anonymous. I would have name assignments for my children like First Son and Third Daughter and I could call my husband Sig-Other or something slightly more original than Hubby Dear. That would spare us any repercussions from too much blego, don’t you think?

I also learned about “digital dieting” which is a necessity ever since there is documentation that internet addiction exists and complicates people’s lives. A digital diet is when people limit their screen time and go for long walks to reconnect with nature, or force themselves to eat out without taking a single foodie photo to post on Instagram.

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Last on my list of wonderful new words is one we all know we have needed for a long time. After all, “okay” is so generic, so unsatisfactory to convey the subtleties of layers of meanings we need to convey. So I think I will just go to bed now, mmkay?

How to Clean Your House in One Hour

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The house was a wreck. I am hardened to mess, but this? It was what my mom would have called a Royal Mess. The sun was shining outside and I knew I needed to harness the man-power before it disappeared out the door. My strategy was a simple cleaning blitz, which is what we do when somebody calls and says they would like to stop by in a little while. It’s all hands on deck swooshing away toys and marching shoes to closets. It’s fast and looks great, though not totally thorough, if you know what I mean.

We had six rooms on the main floor to contend with and six people to be contenders. I divided us into three teams. Alex got the little sister who adores him unequivocally. I got the little girl who tends to sit and sigh despairingly at the sheer scope of what she is being asked to do. The two middles got each other and a kitchen with a lot of problems.

“Okay, guys, we have one hour before the sanitation officer comes! Let’s be done by then.” Dividing the huge chunk of picking up and putting away is the best motivation I know for staving off disheartenment. Even so my helper kept languishing and had to be encouraged with itty bitty jobs, one at a time. The middles very diplomatically divided the kitchen work and churned through it in record time. Alex’s team was done first, sitting on the couch with books long before the rest of us were ready for inspection.

Each person then got to inspect one room and the persons responsible for any problem spots had to accept the critique without fuss and fix the issue. I liked this way, because I always end up being the impossibly picky sanitation officer and now they got a chance to do it. They were quite detailed in their inspections. Even one of my rooms didn’t pass.

Lest you think it was all peaches and cream, I should mention the child weeping because her teammate made the bed with wrinkles and he walked off in disgust because she wouldn’t tell him what was wrong. The team that was done first had toys stashed in corners and coloring pages behind the couch. And some of the things went into drawers and cupboards where they definitely do not belong. Also, you shouldn’t go down to the basement. But that is one way to do it-clean your house in one hour.

Anatomy of an Excuse

I am not sure what happened to yesterday’s post, but all good excuses have three parts, as my children have demonstrated very ably through the years: The Reason You Need One, The Excuse for What Happened, and The Action to Fix It.

The Reason in this case was that I committed myself to a daily post in February. I let you down, my friendly readers who depended on me for at least some morsel, inane or otherwise, to prove that I am a woman of my word. I had planned to do a book recommendation. It was even started in my drafts folder.

The Excuse is long and convoluted. It was Sunday morning, Valentine’s Day. Somehow the morning got swallowed up in prepping food for a fellowship meal and combing three little girls with the wispiest, unruliest hair and stacking the cereal bowls quickly before heading out the door for church. I left my freshly pressed coffee on the counter, untasted for lack of time. Somehow the usher seated us up where only people with well-trained or grown-up children should sit and I ended up with three who weren’t exactly doing so well without a personal bubble of space while Gabe happened to have the two that behave themselves on his side. We shall have to strategize better in future.

I already had a dehydration/tension headache before lunch, then unwisely sampled the dessert bar because I knew my life would be better with one of my friend’s annual luscious salted caramel shortbread bars. It was a lovely dessert, and I paid for my sugar rush with an escalating headache during the afternoon service. I kept dabbing my Chill Out essential oils onto my temples, very surreptitiously, of course, while the speaker inspired us with visions of heaven. On the way home Olivia longed for a bit of the bar I was taking home for my Valentine who had already left for work. We decided to share it and not tell anybody.

With Gabe gone I didn’t have a guard at my bedroom door to ward off needers while I tried to nap. The rest of the day was spent moving very carefully so my head doesn’t decide to drop off or even worse, split right in front of the children.

I have lived with headaches for years and migraines were an unsettlingly regular part of life. Right after my pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving last year I decided to go off sugar and see what happens. After the initial withdrawal symptoms, I noticed something. It wasn’t weight loss, more’s the pity. I wasn’t having headaches anymore. For a while even one cookie would bring on a warning feeling that was enough to sober me up. I have been cheating in fits and starts the last month and thought maybe my prolonged sugar fast had sort of cured me of my sensitivity to it. Not so. Boohoo. I am cheerfully resigned to occasional lapses of poisoning at fellowship meals or birthday parties.

My children, bless their hearts, tucked themselves into bed early and I slept off the ache and wakened quite fresh. There you have The Excuse.

The Action: I will be doing a giveaway to show my appreciation for your forgiveness for my breach of trust(tongue firmly tucked in cheek here). The giveaway will actually be just because I like you all. You are helping my February fly by fast as anything. Stay tuned.

The Present That Is Today

It’s a giddy feeling when the day stretches out, ready for anything. What I mean is that we aren’t doing school lessons today, since the boys are on a field trip with their dad. It’s just the girls and I and our whole empty day! I vacillated between cramming it full of projects or sitting in a chair and reading for hours while the girls watch nature documentaries and snibble absolute mountains of papers with their clever little hands.

First things first, the lunches got packed, a very unfamiliar sensation for home-schooled kids and their mothers. It was a celebration! They mixed up grape juice for their thermoses. They put food coloring in their plain yogurt. They lovingly thought out and executed sandwiches. After the guys left I thought of the laundry and hustled a few loads in and out of appliance doors. In the eyes of the pioneer woman, I am already hopelessly idle. Surveying my domain, I realized that I should probably do dishes, since my bigger helpers are gone for the day. Then I started looking around and cleaning the place in my head. I am not falling for it, though. If I scurry around productively, I will not get to open the present that is today.

Coffee, I thought. Make coffee and write for a while. I bought a French press last year because I needed something small and easily stored in a little cupboard corner. Then I figured out how to use it, and in the process I found out I was quite edgy in my coffee making choices. Oh, just standing here, grinding my beans, you know. Why not start making it bullet proof? At this point I am equally happy with cream in my coffee, but there is an extra sharp crease in the day because I just blended it with butter. You may laugh. I just did.

Here is the plan as it stands now. In one hour we will walk out the front door, close it gently on the rubble that is inside, and head over to my Mom’s house because she is back from a month in Florida! Tea. Cookies. Chatting. Just chilling. I have decided on my version of a field trip. Have a great day, everyone. Don’t forget to celebrate something!

The Farmer’s Wife Says, “Enough”

The farmer’s wife wanted to make noodles: long, straight, eggy noodles. But she found that her kitchen was too small for the long noodles and she was exasperated as she went in search of the farmer. “Dear,” he sighed, running his calloused hands through the sparse hair on the back of his head, “you know we don’t have the funds to enlarge the kitchen.”

“It’s the whole house,” she shrilled. “I can hardly move in the bedroom either, and you know how it is when your cousin comes over with his wife and ten children! People sitting on the floor!”

“I will go see Neighbor Wiseman today,” he promised wearily. Neighbor Wiseman was old enough to have seen most any trouble you could bring to him, so old that he usually suggested startlingly simple solutions. There was nothing complicated or expensive about his advice and the farmer trusted him. After unloading his problem he waited patiently while Neighbor Wiseman stared at the clouds.

“Errhrmm,” Wiseman cleared his throat and looked around vaguely for the farmer. “What you need to do is bring the chickens inside.” The farmer was a little surprised but he remembered how well he had been served by Neighbor Wiseman’s insights in the past.

The chickens pecked under the table, messed a few times, even laid surprise eggs, but his wife was still unhappy. The old man kept suggesting that they bring more animals inside until there was a goat eating the curtains, a dog napping on the bed, and a cow parked smack in the doorway looking out over the porch.

The farmer had to crawl out of a window to get out. “This is terrible advice! Our house is too small for all these animals and it is not helping!”

Neighbor Wiseman smiled and suggested one more change, “Ask your cousin and his family over for dinner.”

“We would love to,” the farmer said, “but they wouldn’t even be able to get inside the door!”

“You are ready to take out the animals,” Wiseman observed sagely. So they did. They pushed that lazy cow off the porch, banished the curtain-eating goat, woke the annoying dog, and shooed the constantly scratching chickens out to the yard. The farmer’s wife looked around her home and and smiled.

“I never knew how big our house is! And look at all these eggs!” Singing a cheerful little ditty, she got out her mixing bowl and some flour and started to make noodles.

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So that is my paraphrase of a story I read with Olivia. It spoke to me in an every-day-ish way. I am currently the farmer’s wife sorting out the superfluous things that are crowding my house. It is one of my February goals, along with writing every day, so you can be quite sure you will hear more about it.

I have now removed several cattle from the boys’ bedroom and the traces of an annoying dog who spent time in the school room. Yesterday the flock of chickens in my reading room went to their proper roosts and now it is a restful room again.

Today? I will probably just make noodles.

A Broad Range of Conversations

We had another of those What I Want to Be When I Grow Up conversations last week. Gregory has a good plan, “I know what I want to do when I grow up…” I waited for him to sort it out and tell me more. “The only problem is that I keep forgetting what it is. I know it’s a really good thing but I can never remember for more than a few days. The next time I think of it, I am going to write it down!”

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Rita confided to me that when she grows up and has children, she will spank them when they are naughty. I raised my eyebrows, a little surprised that this aspect of child rearing held such importance to her. “I will do it because I love them and don’t want them to be brats. And they will probably ask me if I am Amish. I will tell them, ‘No, but I have Amish blood. From my mom!'”

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There are various projects going on currently in our immediate family. Gabe and his brother Thaddaeus are both building small barns and Grandpa is always making something. Olivia had an astute observation for us, “The thing about Peight men is they all like to dream.” I believe some would call it visionary, and she is right. They all do have that quality.

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My teen friend from the Old-order Mennonite community was telling me about their disappointment in the lack of serious winter weather. “I don’t care about snow,” she explained, “so long as it chust gives ice for hockey.”

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Recently I did some babysitting for a friend. It was breakfast time and the children were hungry. “My mama makes the best pancakes!” the little girl said. I told her we were having eggs, which she thought was a good idea, with just a small variation. “Sometimes my mama makes eggs and pancakes! She makes the best pancakes!” I grinned and asked if she is disappointed about not having pancakes. “Oh no!” she hastened to say, “this is fine.” I poured water into cups for each child. “My mama sometimes gives us milk to drink,” she said politely. “And she makes the best pancakes.” I think I need to ask my friend for her recipe. 🙂

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The original idea for Gabe’s week of vacation from work was to travel somewhere where the sun actually shines. (Here? It has been grey for about 93% of the days this winter, with only occasional patches of brilliance. We have had lots of warm days, though, even balmy, so I cannot complain, even though the children pray daily for snow and ice.) But then we thought about spending two of those vacation days traveling, and we came up with a different plan. Something about driving long distances with children just changes one’s perspective on travel.

Have you ever tried winter camping? We haven’t either, but we hope to. In a state park’s log cabin, with heat, with a kitchen, with bunks. Just one small thing: without a bathroom. This is just a minor glitch, no problem. But January. Little girls who need to go potty in the night. I envisioned us bundling up in coats in the pitch darkness, making sure anybody who remotely may need the facilities wakes up to trek along a flashlighted path through the bushes to the toilets. I actually lost a little sleep, thinking about solving this problem. A little research brought up lots of ideas, the most portable being a luggable loo seat that snaps onto a standard 5 gallon bucket. I ordered it from wonderful Amazon at 3AM on Friday morning.

When Gabe got up, I did that thing I do sometimes, assuming that he knows the whole backstory in my head. I started telling him how I ordered a luggable loo seat because there is no way I want to walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night. He looked at me in shocked disbelief. “Hon, it’s all of ten feet from the bed to the bathroom.” After my own shock wore off, I understood that he thought I was planning to install it in our bedroom at home.

Communication. It’s pretty important, folks. Also listening. Context helps, too.

And, just for funny:

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Here’s my personal challenge for this week: Put down your phone. Look at people when they talk to you. Really hear the words your children say. Write it down if it is delightful or wise. And don’t forget to actually visit. It wouldn’t hurt to make great pancakes some morning, too.