I Just Wanted to Hang up the Coats

Back when we first thought the weather might turn cold, I surveyed the coat storage situation and divided the amount of space by the number of people in the household, coming up short every time. It’s just that the children’s coats keep getting bigger, we don’t have a closet for them, and I prefer them off the floor. Hallways are wasted space, in my opinion, so I used to have a picture gallery in mine. Then I got tired of dusting the frames, took all of them down and hung a row of hooks on white boards. Like this:

51JF7Hnh1+L._SL1200_

Nothing fancy, but they did the trick. And now I found myself without space for the “fat coats”. Needing another hook rail, I zipped off to Amazon, found what I needed, and two days later it was at my door. It was a ridiculously large box with an ominous rattle. I opened it to find a rail with two hooks attached, one rolling around loose like, and one missing altogether. Ugh. I checked my options, decided I didn’t have time in the near future to run to the UPS drop off store 7 miles away. So I checked off “Buy postage, get reimbursed up to $7.50” and trundled to the post office 1 mile away. When the nice lady behind the counter cheerfully announced $12 something, something, I said, “No, thanks, I guess I will take it to the UPS store, but thank you anyway,” and got out of there.

Amazon had immediately processed my return, and two days later another ridiculously large box sailed onto the front porch. This time the hook rail was swathed in bubble wrap and intact. They gave me a month to return the messed up one. I forgot about it for a long time (about 27 days), then my conscience smote me one day and I made a point of going to the UPS store. But I forgot to print out the prepaid return label. No big deal; how much could it really be? When the nice lady behind the counter cheerfully announced $16 and something, I exhaled slowly and said, “Thanks, but no thanks. I will come back once I have the prepaid label,” and I felt so cheap that I bought a really nice mug in her gift shop before I left.

I came home and immediately printed out the label, put that plaguey box right beside the door where I couldn’t forget it. Two days later, a ridiculously large box came sailing onto my front porch with yet another hook rail, this time swathed in bubble wrap and filled all around with airpacs. “No!” I wailed. Amazon had told me if I didn’t return the damaged goods within a month, I would be charged for two items. I only needed one. But I had already printed out the label for the messed up one. I know what will happen two days later if I return the third one.

I looked in vain for a number or email account to square with them about my order. It was a little like that time I couldn’t find the matches at Walmart. It wasn’t there. Nobody was there.

I decided to honor my original plan. Today. My glasses were in, ready for pick up and the kids had Book-it coupons for Pizza Hut, so I would be driving right past the UPS store from point A to point B. I loaded up everybody except the dog. It was raining and cold and I felt a little grouchy about my errands. But pizza. No supper cooking. It was 3:00 when I rolled up to the UPS store. The nice lady was not behind the counter. They are closed on Saturday.

The children were chomping pizza. No hair off their chinny chins. At 3:10 I parked across from Wise Eyes. They closed at 2 PM on Saturdays.

I went to Walmart and got toothpaste and shampoo. I forgot the matches.

Alex and I installed the extra hooks in my reading room, behind the door. I can hang my purse there. I am past caring. All I wanted was to hang up some coats.

Things to Do

Guess what was the first thing I did in the new year, right after supervising the gun-shooting boys in the backyard? It wasn’t drinking bubbly or eating cheesecake, not by a far shot! Oh well, you will never guess. The first thing I did in the year of 2016, 12:01 AM? I helped clean up a puddle in the basement made by a very excited dog who couldn’t hold her bladder in the blasting excitement of the shotgun. I am not superstitious, but it did irritate me a little.

It’s all fresh this morning. It is snowing! At last, at last the precipitation is coming down in acceptable form. We had omelettes for breakfast and French vanilla tea and coffee from Honduras. The dishes are cleared away, the husband went to work, the dog is outside, wistfully looking in, the children get the day off school, and I have a witty memoir to read. All is well.

I have no plans for complicated anything today. I may need to settle some fights and feed a few people and I do hope to clear out the boxes that are stacked in my reading room where the chair is supposed to be. Nine. Nine! Boxes of books for the refugee children. Not to crow, or anything, but you folks who so generously supported my fundraising dream deserve to see what we have done together. There are beginning English flashcards and ABC wipe-cleans and First Hundred Words in English and First Thousand Words in English. There are Thing to Spot and Mazes and sticker books and story books. There are dot to dots and doodle books and lots and lots of science readers full of bright pictures. I took them all out of the boxes and stroked them lovingly. I prayed over those books, and now I am sending them along up the chain. I have no idea what will happen with them all, but thank-you, thank-you, all who shared!

refugee books

There are a few things I want to do this year. Topmost among my goals, of course, is being a keeper of our home. Keepers (think zookeepers) feed and water and clean out stinky stuff and make habitats that are welcoming. I see this as a life work, with no apologies to anybody who thinks it is impossibly restricted and limiting. It is harder than you think. Can I hear an amen from the mothers present? Yesterday my little girls drew pictures for me:

This is how they see life right now and it makes me very glad. I am not raising my children in a bubble of happy, where nothing nasty ever happens. I show them sad pictures in the news and we pray for homeless people and broken situations. They know that these things are possibilities. But I am fighting fiercely for their innocence, for their purity, for their emotional stability. I am working toward kindness and honesty and no name-calling.

Recently we had a discussion about secret sins, Gabe explaining to the children that this is when we do things that we think nobody will find out. Like cheat on homework, or sneak someone else’s chocolate, or poach things out of the fridge when Mama isn’t looking. We all looked at Rita and grinned and she said, “Oh, yeah, I have secret sins. I mean, no, I just have secrets! Plans and stuff.” Those plans do include my sewing scissors oftener than I like. There is still much to do this year!

I want to write more. When I started selling Usborne books in August, my writing and reading took a hit, which is kind of ironic. I missed it. And I didn’t even read to the children as much anymore because I was busily getting books into other children’s hands. I love selling the books, but I am setting up some parameters for myself, having established the fact that we will never get rich from what I am doing, judging by the numbers at year’s end. It’s a part time job for me, one I love, with a steadily accumulating stash of wonderful books in my reading room. But I am not willing to let other creative outlets be stifled, so I signed up for two things to aid all of us in the house.

The children are doing a 31 day Read Aloud Challenge in January. It’s not too strenuous, but we will probably take some extra trips to the library. They are fondly hoping to win a Kindle, or at least a $20 Amazon gift card.

I signed myself up for a WordPress writing challenge in February, which coincides nicely with my annual daily posts in the short month. I am also continuing my daily diary entries. I actually made it without skipping one day last year, although sometimes I had to catch up a week at a time. Most of the days were not brilliant, but they got a record anyway.

That is life, isn’t it? I think the past is like a compost heap: The bumper crops are represented by piles of husks and peelings. The weeds that got pulled out are thrown in there too, all decaying together into something that becomes very useful indeed when applied to the gardening efforts of the present. It all matters when we recycle the past and learn from what went right and what went wrong. The future will be richer and wiser, the crops better for the organic matter gained by experience. With that inspiring analogy, I will add just one funny story.

I was at Goodwill with Livvy, standing at check-out behind an elderly grandmotherly sort of lady. They were running a special, an extra 20% off for anyone over 55. The cashier asked, “So, do you qualify for our sale today?” Obviously, yes, I thought. Then it was my turn. “So, do you qualify for our sale today?” I couldn’t help it. I laughed in her face. No. Obviously, no. But I am getting there as fast as I can!

The Common Household Mystery

My boys love mystery stories. They can spot the obvious clue a mile off. “Duh,” Gregory said, “these detectives are so dull! It’s so easy to see what is going on.” But of course, from the all-seeing perspective of the author you can solve the mystery. I wish they were as good at figuring out some of the things that remain unsolved in this house.

Top of the list right now is my missing journaling Bible. The cover is loose, but I was still using it because there is so much history in it and I planned to get it rebound. I love that Bible. And it is lost, lost. How does one even do that? It’s not under the bed or on my nightstand or in my reading room, all the usual places. Did I send it off to be fixed in a dream? Did a child use it to play church? All of us combined cannot seem to solve the mystery. I ordered a new one from CBD, along with new fine tipped journaling markers, but it feels like a stranger to me yet.

Here is one for the experts. How come my first attempt at making a simple cheese was beautifully successful. And my second and third. And then, when I tried cottage cheese, it refused to coagulate at all, so I put the milk back into the fridge and went to bed. The next day I decided to use it to make my simple spreadable cheese again because I knew I could do that, but when I heated the milk, it made ricotta. Hey! I am not complaining. The lasagna was fantastic. But I just wish I knew why the rennet acted so funny.

Where did all the shampoo/toilet paper/toothpaste/every other health and beauty aid go? Sometimes I think I might as well have a list with bandaids and hankies pinned to the top. The men of the house all despise tissues, so I am constantly struggling to keep them in hankies. [I think] sometimes they stay in the uniform pants pockets and the hospital laundress throws them out, even the monogrammed ones. But what do I know? I know that the boys use them for everything from parachutes to dog collars because I find them in the lawn.

What about spoons and forks? I only have cheap ones in the drawer for everyday use, but this fall I noticed that they were quite depleted. Nobody had any helpful suggestions until I jogged their collective memories when I turned up six forks in the flower bed right off the deck while I was raking leaves. “OH, yes… we were having a contest with the cousins, just chucking our forks over the railing. That is all.” I may have spoken a few choice words of admonition. They no longer question why I remind them after every picnic to produce the used plates and utensils before they go play. And while we are on the subject of silverware: How does all that grody gritty stuff get into the Rubbermaid tray in the drawer? Seriously? It’s not like we open the drawer and butter the toast over the tray.

This fall I also noticed that we were constantly running out of stamps. We don’t even send much snail mail anymore, but the boys both have a pen pal that they communicate with regularly. Still. Out of stamps again? Then a young sleuth (our favorite Nancy Drew quote… she is “the young sleuth” so often that I want to hurl a Thesaurus at the author) tipped me off on a certain stamp collection in a certain notebook where I found at least ten brand new Forever stamps neatly arranged in rows, as well as a bunch of postcard stamps. It really kind of broke the back of the stamp collection when I reclaimed what was mine, but he didn’t have $6 extra in his piggy bank, and we had had a very clear conversation about stamps when the collection started.

This morning started with a huge upset about six missing Lego figure hands. Yes, you read that right. Do you know how tiny those hands are? Can you imagine how awful? And nobody did it or knew where they were. Except maybe the dog ate them, but I am betting on the vacuum cleaner. I actually will stoop and pick up a Lego when I am cleaning, if I see it. Sometimes the vacuum cleaner rattles crazily and I just hope it was a pony bead.

I have to put in a blurb for some of our favorite fantasies about household conundrums. Have you ever heard of the Borrowers? They are these tiny people who live, kind of like mice, in the walls and floors of the big people’s houses. I am sure I have referred to them before, how they borrow whatever they need from what they find laying around, and that is why there are never any safety pins when you need them.

the-borrowers

If you see this book, or any of the series, just know that it will “explain” a lot of mysteries and your children will absolutely love them. The audiobooks are done really well too. (British!)

We have Christmas secrets going on right now, too. We have started on our cookie baking tradition, 2 down, 3 to go. Usually the recipe selection is based on pictures in the Taste of Home cookbooks: the more complicated the better, and I try to stay sweet about garish food coloring in dough and sprinkles all over the kitchen. I am hiding the cookies deep in the freezer this year because last year we had some sad children who were unrepresented on the cookie trays when their batch got eaten prematurely.

I also squirreled some presents away in the attic in a black garbage bag. Each child gets an article of clothing, a game or activity, and a book or audio. I hope they don’t think to look up there. 🙂 As I mentioned before, the children voted to give up some of the Christmas fund for the book fundraiser we are doing to send to refugees. I have ordered some books already, and when Addy saw them she pouted a little, “You are treating the refugee children better than us.” So, no, we are not nominating anybody for sainthood just yet.

Speaking of the fundraiser, I want to thank you, thank you, so much. It has been mostly blog readers who have been so kind in sharing. The donations on the website added to private donations is just at $1,700. That is really close to the goal, more than I actually dared to hope for! I plan to close the Youcaring site next week and place the completed order. I have been poring over the catalog and making selections with Davy and Janelle’s help. They were there and they know which books are most suitable. It is so exciting I can hardly stand it!

I know that has nothing to do with mystery except just maybe that we have no idea what God will do with these tokens of care and Christlike love.

One last thing. Our furnace has only kicked in a handful of times in the whole of December. What is up with that? It has been amazing, like a gift straight from heaven. Or is it just global warming? At any rate, it is a “problem” for the experts that I am thanking God for!

Underfoot or Out of Sight?

I sighed a private little gust of weariness when I saw those bags of apples on the front porch, still sitting there, getting riper and sweeter by the day. I mean, I don’t even like applesauce myself. Except maybe frozen/chunky/with cinnamon, and then only when I have pizza or casserole. I ate so much applesauce as a child, I completely filled my life-quota before I turned 16.

But my children love them some applesauce and it is about as cheap and easy a side dish as you can imagine. Not to mention “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” and all that.

So there I was, walking past those apples every day and pushing them to the back of my mind because we needed to do school or we had to fold laundry or it was raining or the leaves needed raked or the seasonal clothes swap was more important or the canner was full of tomato chunks in the freezer.

This year, for the first time ever, I needed to do 3 bushels, because we had been out of applesauce for months, except for occasional batches of chunky stuff we made fresh. So yesterday I was out of stalling material, except that two of the children were mopey with sore throats and headaches. We decided to just get ‘er done anyway.

Friends, we cranked out 60 quarts in less than 5 hours. That included washing the dishes, even the nasty, sticky food mill and the canners. Just me and the kiddos. I couldn’t quite believe we were done at 3:30, but there it was. And I had flashbacks to about 10 years ago when I only did 2 bags of apples and had a 1 year old and a 3 year old who were constantly pushing chairs across the kitchen and taking bites out of random apples and sticking their fingers into the sugar. I remembered how I would be cleaning up the mess at supper time and feeling as exhausted as if I had been attempting to employ a lively flock of gophers all day.

I also recalled how tempting it was to shoo them away, the little ones who pushed chairs around me, everywhere I went for at least ten years. There were just always these chairs to trip over. The floor in front of the sink became a lake by the time the apples were washed. They wanted knives to chop and I had a special set of really dull ones with bright handles for them. They wanted cutting boards. They dropped apple snitzes on the linoleum with such regularity that I quit picking them up until we were all done and then just salvaged the whole lot of them. They insisted that they were big enough to crank the food mill, then strained and panted as they slowly turned the handle and watched, fascinated, as the applesauce squished out.

It just took really long back in those days. I am not going to pretend that I was always sweet about that. We all know better. It is a special sort of therapy for adults with an agenda to include little children in their work. If you have ever tried it, you know how all the squirminess inside you has to simply slow down and just chill, you know, because it will be all right and we have plenty of towels to sop up the mess.

Here is the thing I can’t quite get over. It only took a few years and now they can actually really help. If I had sent my oldest son out to play or sat him down with a movie every time I did a project, then yesterday he would not have known how to assemble the food mill and exactly which picnic table bench we always use to attach it to and why we do it. If I had never bought those brightly colored dull knives for them, my middle boy may never have graduated to whacking skillfully with my chef’s knife like he did yesterday. If I had never let anybody mess with water, then my girls could not have washed those apples like a boss (sorry, I just like that phrase) yesterday, and without even needing to change clothes when they were done! I shouldn’t forget to mention that they hauled all 60 empty jars upstairs. Divided by 5, it’s not so bad!

This is an aspect that I didn’t really consider back when it was a trial to let the children help. I think I mainly involved them in what I was doing because then I could be sure they weren’t getting into trouble somewhere else. Honestly, I had no lofty goals about teaching my 3 year-old life skills. But that is how it works, and when I think back, I know that is how my mom taught me things. I have known how to make applesauce ever since I can remember because… we all had age-appropriate jobs when we made applesauce. The chicken butchering didn’t quite catch hold in the same way, no matter how much Mom said every girl should know how to butcher one before she gets married.

All this is just to say, you young mamas with your hands full and your long chore lists that you have to accomplish single-handedly and your small fry hovering around and breathing your air… Do you wanna work yourself out of a job? Don’t just hand them a device all the time and tell them to bug off. Let them “help”. Let them feel the importance of making a contribution in the household effort. One day you will pinch yourself when you realize that they are, indeed, making your life a lot easier and there is no need to dread applesauce day anymore.

(Love, love The Family Circus)

The Country Mice Go to a Resort

Last weekend we combined two events and made a family field trip out of the entire works. Family field trips are so much fun, starting with “Are we about there?” every five minutes enroute to “Make her stop singing!” and “I am starving hungry. Did we pack any snacks?” Then you finally get there.

“Does anybody need to go to the bathroom? Where is Rita? Yes, we will eat just soon! Everybody stay together. We don’t want to lose you!” And so on. But it is fun, really. “Please don’t touch! Maybe you will have to save your money for the next 20 years so you can buy that. Yes, I know this display is boring for big boys, but humor us for a little. Where is Rita? Wow, that is a really neat knife with that bone handle, but we don’t have 45 dollars hanging loose right now. Where is Rita? Here, you hold tightly to my hand for a while. Yes, I know you are hungry. Shall we get some popcorn?” We did have fun. This is just my running dialog of the stuff that makes me feel like I am developing a twitch.

Wanna know what we did? Every year Gabe has to take an Outdoor Emergency Care refresher course in order to stay certified as a ski patroller in order to get a free family pass at the slopes. The course itself is interesting for him: what to do with a patient in shock from whacking headfirst into a tree, how to splint that broken-up person for the trip up or down the mountain to an ambulance, or how to assess why that person is coughing blood. It gives me the willies, just looking through the course handbook.

Fortunately for us, there was another event held at Seven Springs that weekend. The Mother Earth News is a magazine that we subscribe to for ideas to develop our small acerage. They hold various fairs across the country, and this one happened to be at the same resort as the OEC refresher course. We bought a pass online and a room for the night, making it a two day affair. A real field trip for our underprivileged homeschooled kids. 😉

The fair was held mostly outside on the hotel grounds from the bottoms of the ski lifts to the outdoor courtyard, but it meandered through conference rooms and hallways as well. There were hundreds and hundreds of vendors, the nicest people you will ever meet. If you are country and going to a resort with a family, this is the time to do it. Earth-mother types like children and they don’t really dress up that much. I saw a lot more turbans and hippie skirts and Ugly Shoes than I have ever seen before in one spot. In the middle of all the herbs and chicken butchering equipment and log splitters there was one lonely booth for flu shots. I nearly laughed out loud. What? I would have hated to be that salesperson.

There were about eight stages with different breakout sessions, all the way from Keeping a Family Cow to Worm Composting. We split up so that we could cover more information.

I took

Growing a Sustainable Diet (Very interesting talk by a woman wearing a linen vest she grew, spun, wove and crafted)
Eating the Whole Plant (Meh. You can eat carrot tops and beet tops… Don’t throw them away! There were two men in the session who were unabashedly snoozing in the A/C. Also my girls were down to the crumbs in the maple-syrup-popcorn bag and they needed to go potty and get drinks.)
One Hour Cheeses (the most fun, as the children were watching How to Pack a Llama for a Hike and I could actually follow. It was fascinating. I bought her book.)

From various friendly vendors we got open pollinator seeds and useful information about saving seeds from one year to the next.. One woman bought corn seeds for meal 25 years ago and has saved them for her annual crop ever since. Another kindly dread-locked lady didn’t have the sweet pepper seeds we wanted, but she did have a few of the peppers and offered us one to save our own seeds. I turned around for a few seconds and looked at Rita just in time to see her eating the last of the pepper, ready to throw away the core with all those lovely seeds attached.

They showed us how and why we should grow mushrooms and explained the science of herbal remedies. I bought teas and tinctures that I usually pay lots of shipping on. My favorite vendors were the good folks from Beeyoutiful. They served the girls and I freshly brewed Immunotea and I bought my winter’s vitamin C supply for the children and essential oils called ProMiSe Blend. Some of you will get that. 🙂

The boys gravitated to the wilderness survival supply booths and the alternate power sessions. Alex has a list of supplies he needs to make an electric motor bike. Gregory now has a Life Straw for his bug-out bag. The girls got batik-patterned head bands and a tiny succulant plant for their windowsill. By the end of the day we were all funned out except for one more thing: the indoor pool. We went during the supper hour when it was deserted except for a few little boys. Alex cannonballed right in, just like at the pond, putting the lifeguard on high alert. So did Addy, only she didn’t have her lifejacket on and was too short even for the shallow end of the pool and had to be fished out. I realized that our children have hardly ever gone swimming in anything but creeks and ponds. They thought the clear water was a blast. By 8:30 they were all asleep and Gabe and I could sit on the balcony to compare notes and make a game plan for the next day.

That included me taking the children for breakfast at the hotel restaurant while he did his refresher course, then meeting somewhere at the fair around lunchtime. The kids were up bright and early, bickering and giggling by turns. I made sure everybody was shiny and well aware of ettiquette at a breakfast bar. The dining area was decked out with white tablecloths and goblets, buffet lines with polished silver serving covers on every dish. I was the only adult with that many children. A buffet line with a child in tow is never easy. Too many choices, they can’t see what is up there, they want to touch stuff that they won’t eat, and the plates are too heavy for the little ones to safely manage without spills. Add in heavy lids on everything and you have a true white hair producing situation. Add in crowds of adults who only want to get their bacon already and don’t know that your kid is counting the strips he is getting because that is what he has to do at home when we have bacon and then you know where the twitch comes from. Here is the dining room, only this web image has flowers and chair covers for a wedding.

Imagine my little country mice, freshly rested and full of ginger, there, around that table.

It did turn out to be a great breakfast. The only Where is Rita? moment was when she had ducked underneath the tablecloth for some privacy. They were very careful to only drink decaf coffee and choose their doughnuts wisely. I was proud of them. 🙂

We spent a good while in the hotel’s backyard, a rock garden area with a fountain and trails. The twitch had almost worn off when the acorn wars started. All this happened while many other guests were still blissfully sleeping and I could just imagine an errant acorn clattering against somebody’s window. I decided our best option was to hang around the animal tent. The little girls plucked up grass to feed the sheep and the boys examined all the rabbit options and chickens and pigs.

When Gabe’s course was done, we wandered around for a while before heading home with our heads just packed with information.

I have been inspired to learn more about foraging for edibles in the wild and growing interesting foods. Next year we want to have a plot for broom corn and zuka gourds. I have been a little obsessed with the One Hour Cheese book, garnishing my end product with flower petals and herbs. I did feel ridiculously happy with that.

We went on a hike yesterday and brought home some turkeytail lichens to make a tea in which “clever prodding helps us keep our systems on their toes, invigorating us in the process.” (Click on the link for an almost lyrical description of the benefits of the humble little turkeytail.)

I don’t buy into the theory that everything will kill you unless you do it the natural way, because I have noticed that everybody eventually dies, one way or another. Hopefully the weekend did open up some fresh neural pathways, possibly staving off alzheimer’s for a few years. Last week I had a vivid dream about an edible caterpillar foraging session that the boys and I were taking, complete with taste testing. I had to brush my teeth when I got up, just to get the taste out of my mouth. We aren’t quite that far gone, but I suppose if you see me coming around in clothes died with geranium petals and walnut hulls, subsisting on fermented vegetables and venison jerky, you may have cause for concern. 🙂

Impeccable Logic

I reproved my ten year old son tonight when he was stuffing his face with popcorn, both fists employed busily. “Hey, Borg,” I said, “we don’t eat popcorn that way! You need to be civilized and take only what you can with one finger and thumb at a time.”

“Seriously, Mama!” That being the standard phrase to express incredulity or just plain disagreement. “I am conserving Therbligs, you know. This is much more efficient.” It was my turn to be unenlightened. My thirty-eight year old brain couldn’t come up with a definition for “Therbligs” or even a reference to them. “What?” I asked the obvious, “are Therbligs?”

He was ready for me. “They are the 18 motions that the Cheaper by the Dozen people studied when they did their efficiency evaluations in factories. It’s Gilbreth, spelled backwards. See, when I eat popcorn like this, I am conserving motions. It’s more efficient this way.” He was really on a roll now, and I knew that he had just finished reading “Cheaper by the Dozen” for the third time last week because I found it out under the tree that he climbs to become invisible while he is reading. I settled in to listen.

“There is even a Therblig for thinking about things and often if you do that first, you can save a lot of the other steps. That’s why I think so much.” I wondered if he was thinking about the most efficient popcorn eating method when I asked him to bring the bag of 5 dozen eggs in to the house and he let them sit in the hot Suburban all afternoon. But I digress. After he had made his case for eating popcorn in great gobbling fistfuls, I made my case.

“Someday,” I said. He sighed gustily and settled in to listen. “Someday you will be sitting with your girlfriend, eating popcorn, and when she sees you stuffing it in like that, she will tell you good-bye politely and you won’t ever see her again.” He was not convinced. Because obviously a ten year old boy will never have a girlfriend and it only makes sense to eat popcorn like a caveman to stave off that awful calamity.

“Are you saying I may not ever eat this way? Ever?”

“Only on the far side of the moon, when you are all by yourself.”

“Okay,” he agreed. “Only where not even astronauts can see me.”

We called it a truce.

Things I Don’t Know About

I love a great pun. Reading a children’s book with the line, “I love you doggedly, like a flea,” just delights me. Clever words tickle my ears and I absolutely love that my four year old describes herself “rushing across the backyard” instead of the conventional running. So why, I ask, do I groan every time I see a church sign that is so punny?

Last night I drove past two different churches and both gave me a pause and an inner wailing noooo-just-please-nooo. The first said, “Son screen prevents sin burn.” A few miles down the road there was another, “Gardening with God brings peas of mind… Lettuce be kind. Squash gossip. Turnip for church.” I wonder who invented church signs, anyway? And could we stick with profound and simple instead of brain twisting word play?

(shutterstock)

Summertime here is synonymous with lost shoes. Every time we want to go away, someone ends up weeping that they can’t find anything to wear on their feet. Each little girl has sandals, crocs and flip-flops. You would think at least one complete pair would be in their shoe box, but we end up doing the rounds of the sand box, play house, Suburban, etc until everyone is properly shod. We met out-of-state friends on Monday night to visit for a while. When we left it was dark and I didn’t think to check for the girls’ sandals. We left not one pair, but two. A few days later, while I was driving to retrieve the missing shoes, I got a text from my mom: Girls left their flip flops here–Will drop them off later.

I feel like Little Bear’s mother, who kept making him more and more clothes to stay warm, but finally he stripped down to just his own little bearskin and was perfectly happy without any other clothes. What a relief that was! Having said that, I have to admit that bare feet are not always good, as Rita discovered when she was picking wild raspberries and cut a deep gash in her foot that required stitches. And I am certainly not suggesting letting our children run around in just their little skins, but hey, it was the first plan in Eden! Still. Imagine how much time we would save if we weren’t constantly washing things in a ceaseless effort to stay clean. ???

My boys are on a camouflage kick this summer. They wear their camo shirts and pants day after day, until I insist strenuously that they have to change. It seems to be the last word in tween boy fashion and it sure does save on laundry, but it’s a little monotonous. I wonder how long this stage will last?

I myself have been losing things the last few days. I couldn’t find my glasses one morning, searching until I had a headache. So I got out my spare pair with black plastic frames, very modern and hot they are (as in, they make my face feel hot), but at least I could see without strain. It was days before someone pulled my favorite pair out of a crack in the couch and how they got there, I have no idea.

I have been reading this lady’s story of how she went minimalist and sold and sold stuff and got rid of everything that wasn’t nailed down or made her truly happy, like her children. They pulled out the shrubbery so they wouldn’t have to waste time trimming it. She keeps saying, “You can always buy another [insert material good here] if you find you need one.” And she got rid of almost all her clothes and went and bought what she calls a “capsule wardrobe” which is just about fourteen pieces of clothing that pair well with each other in endless combinations. I think it sounds fascinating, but I have concluded that this is sort of a first world thing to do. If you are not wealthy, you don’t go buy all new clothes from name brand stores so that you can always look pulled together and your closet looks coughed out of Pinterest. No, you go to Goodwill and enjoy the treasure hunt. So your grill isn’t the last name in sophistication. The hamburgers taste great and you know you will not be replacing it just because it doesn’t quite make you as happy as that other one on the market. Except in the quite unlikely event that you find one at a yard sale. Or unless you have plenty of money. So there is this disconnect with simplicity and lifestyle that bugs me. And if we got rid of our two freezers that hound energy and hog space, where would we put our green beans? I just don’t want to live in a Tiny House, thank you very much.

Speaking of beans, has anyone ever experimented to see if green beans will keep making baby beans forever if you don’t pull them out? I am just curious. We knew we planted extra and have sold about 3 bushels of them, just because we really want some other stuff in our freezer too.

It’s August. I cannot believe it, but my ears insist it is true. The fall insects are in full cry outside my window, serenading the waning blue moon. I saw some bright red leaves beside the road, so naturally I just ate a bowl of ice cream with fresh raspberry sauce to reassure myself.

The children wanted me to join them in the pond today. I had 17 things to do, but I chucked them all and went and floated in the sunshine. The wash is ever with me and I can scrub the fly specks off the windows tomorrow. Addy keeps asking me if we can blow up balloons, if we can buy ice cream, if we can have friends over, if we can roast marshmallows… I have a habit of absent-mindedly murmuring, “Oh, maybe.” She had enough of it and asked in exasperation, “What does maybe mean?”

I hope your summer is just as amazing and cheerful as ours!

Next up: a guest post from my husband!

You Can Tell a Lot About a Woman By Her Purse

I like a great mystery story, you know the way Sherlock Holmes deduces a life story from the callouses on a finger of the left hand. I really enjoy observing people. I love forming long hypothetical nonsense in my head about things I see. Not that that puts me anywhere near Sherlock Holmes, but my inner sociologist likes to deduce things too. 🙂

So I am here to suggest that the woman who shoulders the purse tends to the needs of the world. I used to wonder what in creation ladies kept in those cavernous bags, back in the day when I carried a pack of tissues, gum, and a wallet in something like this:

I graduated to a small backpack in my traveling days, one in which I could safely carry passport, water bottle, facial cleansing wipes, a crossword puzzle book, journal, pens, granola bars, and extra cash.

Then I became a mother and I resisted the siren call of enormous bags bristling with pockets inside and out for as long as I could. I shuddered at those vinyl totes with pastel elephants and lions, settling instead for a green Eddie Bauer bag that I thought looked at least a little bit smart. After a while I couldn’t fit the stuff in, you know, all those wipes and extra clothes and teething gels and fat cardboard books with somewhere down in the bottom a lone credit card case rattling around. By the fourth child I succumbed. It still wasn’t technically a diaper bag, but it was definitely a Bag to Schlepp Things Around. It was washable, humble canvas, and it expanded beautifully. Like this.

Then my babies all got potty trained and I quit giving them lollipops in the car unless we were almost home, and just like that I didn’t need to have a box of wipes with me in the quite likely event of emergencies. I have actually downsized. To this:

I love this bag. When I bought it in a fit of color-starved spring madness, I loved it. Two years later I still do. It has pockets all over, deflates nicely when I am out on my own, is big enough to accommodate a hard cover book and a whole pile of staple mom-purse stuff. I told you I would show you what is in it, just for fun. Now I am squirming a bit, but you can laugh at me if you wish. I can even squirrel away an entire bag of Cadbury mini eggs in it. When I dumped it out on my bed, I counted over 50 things. Missing here are my phone, hand lotion and band aids. After a church service, I get the Bibles, Sunday school books, used tissues and candy wrappers from the visits with the Smartie Man.

It’s how I roll. Maybe it runs in the family. A cousin of mine once discovered a screw driver in her handbag just as she was about to go through airport security. These days I think she carries duct tape. :O

Now that I have been around the block a few times in the purse carrying department, I have an idea that the svelte wallet carriers either have plenty of money to buy at any time what they can’t carry or else they don’t have people depending on them to produce mosquito repellent, spare undies, extra socks, glasses fix-it kits, phone chargers, or Tylenol. The alternate theory is that they prefer not to visit a chiropractor after jaunts on the town.

At any rate, if you are a woman who routinely has in your bag just what the people need, I say you should carry it with pride!

*These opinions are entirely my own and subject to grave error.*

Growing Up

The conversation at the supper table was all about what we want to be when we grow up. Of course, the children have no idea what I want to be when I grow up, since they hold the erroneous assumption that I have now reached what I want to be and it’s all downhill from here.

Gregory likes art and books, so he may be looking at a life as a librarian or a teacher. Olivia wants to be a nurse and Rita is dithering between being a doctor or an artist, presumably once one side of her brain gets precedence over the other side. Alex isn’t saying, because he is old enough to know that he will change his mind, most likely. The other children say he will be an engineer or a preacher or an inventor or something leaderish. 🙂 As for Addy, she is earnestly anticipating a career as a peaceful Indian. She also has grand delusions about all the amazing presents she will give us all once she grows up, chests of gold and jewels for the ladies, cars for the boys, anything they want. Given her current circumstances, she had better look for lost pirate hoards when she gets big.

I was struck by something. In my somewhat sheltered childhood, I never mentioned any of the things they said they want to be, because it simply wasn’t done. (Actually, I do remember the librarian dream, because I couldn’t imagine any happier place than surrounded by books.) Higher education wasn’t done. People stayed close to their roots and happily raised families very similar to how they themselves were raised. I think the simplicity tended to an almost idyllic peacefulness. Sometimes I wonder what I would have chosen to study if I would have had the option of going to college. But I was much too conventional to push for anything that would have rocked the boat. It was part of the culture and I didn’t really consider venturing outside of the safety of our world.

Did you ever have a moment when you wondered, “This? This… hard work… is what I spent all that effort growing up for?” And you want to tell the children to just slow down and enjoy their Ranger Rick and Legos and being told what to do and when to go to bed. Not to sound negative, or anything, but there are times when I wish to run from responsibilities, to stop being the tired middle-aged person with all this stuff on her mind and this back log of things that need to be done, the passel of grubby children needing attention.

At those times, I hear this voice in my head, (It might be Elisabeth Elliot or Sally Clarkson or Rachel Jankovic or even Marabel Morgan…) “Stop whining,” it says. “This is life, all this stuff that needs to be done today is life, and you get to live it. What did you want? A useful sojourn in a coffee shop, scrolling through social media and posting gorgeous pictures of your outfit and your new sunglasses?” If I don’t feel sufficiently chastened by this inner voice, I want to be sassy and say, “No, but I would take a cook and a maid so I can at least be lazy over coffee and finish this book.” Then I laugh at myself and set myself to the task of learning to enjoy the things that need to be done. I make it a practice to look into my children’s faces, wash the grime off tenderly, feel the different bone structures, sense the miracle of these little people. And I look for things to laugh about.

Last week our blueberries came, the ones Gabe ordered for containers on the deck. Tophat blueberries, they are called in the catalogs. I called him, excited, and said, “The ‘tow-fat’ blueberries are here!” He was quiet in a Huh? kind of way, then kindly said, “Honey. Those are top-hat blueberries.” The resulting fit of giggles grew into near hysteria. It was precisely what I needed to release some of the stresses I was having a hard time dealing with.

Maybe someday I will be grown up enough that it all comes effortlessly. I hope that when I get big, serving others joyfully will have become my default mode. Raising a family certainly should give us enough practice, not?

I mentioned that I am reading Sally Clarkson’s new book, Own Your Life. I am being challenged to identify sources of chaos in my life, things that divide my heart and make me unthankful, interruptions that I bring upon myself. For this season, it is a very convicting read for me. I am taking it chapter by chapter, searching my heart and letting God’s Spirit speak to me. When I am done with the book, I will do a review. 🙂

Chin up, my friends. The best is yet to come! Oh yes, it is!

and now, just for fun… artist unknown.

A Tale of a Little Girl

When we found out we were expecting Rita, whom I call Daisy or Maggie or MARGARITE ELISE by turns, I wasn’t sure I could possibly manage another child. I had still not recovered from the neediness of the first six months of a medically fragile child. Another one? I couldn’t face the prospect. Oh, please, please, please, God, I want a baby, just let her be healthy and happy, please, please, please. I did that for the whole pregnancy.

Rita slid into the world tranquilly, pink and round and undemanding. I fed her on schedule, changed her diaper, she fell serenely asleep on her own, asking for nothing until it was time for her next feeding. I could not get over the marvel of it. She was the perfect baby.

About the time she became mobile, we realized that God did not give us just a healthy child; He smiled and gave us the most cheerfully self-reliant little girl He could dream up. When she was two, people actually pitied me. Life got a lot better for me and her both once I settled it in my mind that she was not trying to make things harder for me. She was trying to save me work by doing everything by herself. This included pouring her own milk and spilling the whole gallon. More than once. Then she helped mop the floor and spilled the bucket full of water too. She rarely whined about being hungry. Instead she learned to pry open the refrigerator, get a pack of hotdogs, then slit them open with a knife so she could have a snack. She ate the top tier of a birthday cake in construction and more hidden bars of chocolate than I could keep track of. She walked to the garden and casually picked a pepper for midday gnoshing.

One busy day before she was two, I found her sitting on the big potty. She had decided it was time to be done with diaper nonsense. There was nothing but disdain in her mind for the baby potty, even though she nearly fell into the toilet more than once. She thought she could run her own bath water and wash her own hair with quantities of shampoo. And she most certainly could get dressed by herself! When we told her she was too old for a binky, she sturdily threw it into the trash can and didn’t bother about it anymore.

She visited the neighbors all by herself when she was three, and scared the wits out of me when she put on her life vest and went swimming in the pond. When her hair bothered her, she cut it off, and if the cuffs on her dress were too snug, she cut them off too. She found the Sharpies and drew a bunch of pictures, also decorating my Bible. The child hadn’t heard of limits. Everything I never thought of making rules about, she discovered. More than once I prayed for God to help me keep her alive. It was not malicious, all that busyness, yet I am fairly certain that the majority of my white hairs are courtesy of Rita Who Was Three. The only safe course was to keep her right with me. Out of sight was trouble. But she was unfailingly cheerful and played for hours and hours with sticks and grasses and all the blooms off my rose bush and every single peony bud. To my knowledge, she has never complained of being bored.

When she turned five, she kicked the training wheels on her bike and persistently rode and crashed until she mastered it. She nurtured her own little garden plot and transplanted and watered her flowers to death. Her most favorite creative outlet is fabric scraps and threads. (You should see the unspeakable havoc of my embroidery flosses and my button box.) “Look what I made,” she grinned, and showed me a pocket she had constructed with calico scraps, threading her needle and knotting it on her own. I never showed her how to sew a seam, but there it was, marching unsteadily up and down.

This morning it was time to clothe the pet ostrich. It has handy dandy wing slits, but she is embarrassed at how the hat turned out. I took a picture anyway because I thought it uncommonly clever.

The moral of this story… well, there isn’t really a moral. But if you have a little child who is unceasingly, unbelievable busy, running circles around you -the concerned parent- just give it a few years. They will actually make your life easier sooner than you think. Those same clever little fingers getting into every pie will become cleverly useful. She can now wash windows and fold laundry and sweep floors when the right mood hits her. I expect to retire in a few years and let her run the house.

(She likes “Daisy” best.)