Something I Can Do

I appreciated hearing from some of you after my last post, that yes, you make yourself look and care, too. Even when it haunts your dreams and you carry the weight with you throughout the day and the only thing you can do is pray. Look at the little children squeezed in those masses, caught up in a chaos where innocence and routines are shattered.

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Refugee children

See them carrying burdens too heavy for them. Burdens too heavy even for the adults in their lives who are worried every day. And yet. Look at them. Still little children.

Iraqi children

There are makeshift schools going on in the camps in northern Iraq, a sad reminder that life in the dispossessed world of the tents in the wilderness is indefinite. On the bright side, the children are learning and have something to do during the day. There are volunteers teaching English classes. Many of these households average 8 children. So much potential and energy!

One day while this was heavy on my mind, a thought flitted through. “You know, you could do a fund raiser and send those children books.” It startled me a little, because I hadn’t really thought about being able to DO something. Usually that is my default mentality: I just want to be able to do something to make things better. And I hate feeling like I am powerless, so sometimes I rush in when I should stay out, you know. I decided to wait a good little while to make sure this was not an impulse I had just cooked up on my own.

Meanwhile. A small stash of savings that I was cherishing hopes to use on a bit of unnecessary spending got delegated to another need. I have to be honest, I really struggled with this. I just wanted to buy what I wanted this time. Also meanwhile I kept seeing so many GoFundMe’s and St. Jude’s Hospital at the checkout, and Salvation Army bell ringers. I realised again that the causes dear to my heart are not always the causes that others feel drawn to support. With a little spanking from God about my uncheerful attitudes and the reminder that there are many ways to care for the world, I decided to ask my husband what he thinks of the fundraising idea.

He said sure, go for it. I contacted Plain Compassion about shipping the books. They said they like the idea and will be glad to arrange shipping. They said it’s fine to use their name in the fundraiser, as well. I certified with Usborne Books to do fundraisers, and here we are.

My ambitious goal is to ship a whole skid of books to the refugee camps in northern Iraq. I want to send them phonics readers with bright illustrations, beginner science readers with easy text, picture books, even coloring books and activity books of all sorts.

Of course, I share all this with you, my kindly readers. 🙂 In doing this as a fundraiser, I am using the Literacy for a Lifetime provision, which matches all sales or donations with a 50% grant.

If you feel a tinge of desire to share in this endeavour, here is how it works. I set up my Usborne sales page so that all sales will benefit refugees (not me 🙂 ) by 50%. You can buy books, really nice books at this site, for the children in your life and the refugees will get half the amount in books with Usborne’s matching grant money. Or if you want, you could donate here and your donation would be matched 50%. All this to say that $10 will stretch to $15.

I am hoping and praying that many of us can do a little bit each and send a great big pallet of educational supplies and story books to these precious little children. Everybody should have a bedtime story.

We Have to Look

Is there anyone else out there who can hardly bear to read the international news these days? Something about the plight of homelessness in winter strikes me as unbearable hardship. Add to that the loss of loved ones, the gouging of life savings by unprincipled men taking advantage of desperate people, the mud and the trekking in the cold and the uncertainty of when life will ever get better and it is just more than I can stand. I look at the photos of refugees huddled around small fires built out of bits of scrounged trash, the chapped lips, the bloodshot eyes with a film of hopelessness and I can’t stand it, but I can’t look away. Because it could be me. By some accident of grace (is there such a thing?) it isn’t me, but it could be.

All last week Gabe and I were fighting off a cold/cough that kept sitting hard on our chests every morning with that ugly feeling that it was settling in to stay for a while. We fought it with all the stuff in our cupboard: the Vicks rub, the eucylyptus oil, the Emergen-C, the echinacea by the handful, the Immunotea with raw honey, the elderberry syrup, the grapefruit seed crush to gargle for sore throat. And we won. It never did get a chance to settle in. Every time I fixed another cup of soothing tea, I thought of those refugees shuffling miserably through the mud, wiping a runny nose on a coat sleeve, hoping for asylum only to come up against a barbed wire fence. No comfort and no hope. I can’t stand it , but I can’t look away.

I keep reading opinion bits here and there on the interweb about short term missions and how ineffective they are. “It should have been sold and given to the poor,” Judas said about the priceless ointment Mary used to bathe Jesus’ feet. That is what some folks say about youth group missions trips. All that money spent on tickets for 6 weeks in a foreign country. It’s a waste. You could feed hundreds of people with that money. It’s not a good use of funds. They go, take a bunch of pictures of themselves being the angel of mercy to post on their social media, and they go home again and feel good about having done their bit, and then they buy the next generation phone. I suppose there is some truth to that, and the funds may be wasted sometimes.

But. What if that youth can never be the same? What if she is impacted profoundly by the dignity of a lady singing as she bends to her twig broom, sweeping her packed-dirt courtyard outside of her mud hut.. what if she thinks about this countless times when she wants to grouse about the state of her kitchen floor? What about the pastor who is spending his entire life in evangelism, living by faith, cheerfully serving the youth team cooked spaghetti noodles and fruit compote and they bless the food and are truly grateful… what if she remembers this when she serves bread and soup to her visitors and she doesn’t apologize because hospitality is not just food and she learned this in a village in Ukraine? What if she thinks about the mile walk to the well for water and the small amounts allocated to washing and general cleanliness because it is just really far to that well… and she cannot find judgement in her heart for the dirty begger standing by the intersection because without easy access to water, who can be clean? What if she met someone who literally never had a chance and she learned to care about the family that is all across the world? What if she learned an entirely new and perfectly acceptable way to peel a banana and got thoroughly embarrassed by her own condescending ideas of how things ought to be done? What if that short term missions trip changed the way she lived her whole life, made her see how much she has been freely given? What if she could never just not look because the people are all God’s people?

I don’t even know what this post is about. You are allowed to do that on a blog, I have heard. Maybe it’s about investing in a plane ticket, or exposure to the miseries and inequities in the world, about stripping away the insulation that keeps us self-centered and absorbed in our entitlement to more and better stuff. Maybe it is just plumb stream of consciousness. But we have to look. We have to see around us. What can we even do about it? As much as I would like to be there at the barbed wire, handing out hot coffee to the refugees, I am here and my children want popcorn.

Still. What if we all look at the brokenness and let it settle on us and know that there is only one solution, so we lift it up with groaning and pleading. What if all our collective whispers and petitions rise and God moves to change the affairs of nations? What if we don’t look away and we see what is coming with eyes of faith, so that we start investing in a better place “where righteousness dwells” instead of busily attempting to make heaven on earth?

As hard as it is, I really think we have to look.

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. 🙂

Five Things You May Not Know About Nurses

Tonight my husband came home 8 hours later than we had expected. The relief nurse didn’t show up and there were emergencies and problems tying him up. Other people’s problems. That’s the thing about nurses: they spend their entire day caring about problems when people are in the most susceptible places. I didn’t like that he couldn’t come home at lunchtime, but it was okay. Four o’clock wouldn’t be so bad. Then I got the text that he was going to be detained until 7:00 and that meant not going to church tonight. When he told me that he got to help stabilize a critically ill child, I was really glad I hadn’t spent any energy being mad about the hours. Sometimes I do that, you know.

A while ago I wrote this list and was reminded of it tonight. I would make a horrible nurse. It isn’t my gift. But I have observed my husband as he exercises his gift and I feel some recognition is due. So here you go,

Five Things You May Not Know About Nurses

Nurses work extremely hard. They routinely take more than the 10,000 steps recommended for daily fitness. That is five miles, by the way. They lift tons of people and I mean that literally. They do this in 12 hour shifts with about 1/2 hour break if they are lucky. They work at night and on holidays and on weekends when everybody else is out camping. One time another lady and I were discussing packing lunches for our husbands and she mentioned that I probably don’t have to pack as much food as if he were working hard. Well. I didn’t tell her how often he didn’t even have time to eat the stuff I packed because other people’s needs were more important than his own. Nurses are knackered when they get home. They need food and drink. They deserve to use the bathroom in peace, take a long hot shower. It is best to wash off all traces of MRSA.
Nurses really do enjoy sticking in IV’s but nobody wants to hit that vein the first time more than they do. That is why they like to stroke your arms, looking for good veins. It’s a funny way to show affection and practice their craft at the same time. If you have great veins, you will occupy a special little place in their hearts. If you don’t have good veins, you represent a challenge, and they can think of lots of places to try next while you shiver in horror. Probably I wouldn’t need to mention this, but I have an extreme aversion to needles.
Nurses have an unorthodox sense of humor. “Hey Hon, come check out this neat Youtube clip,” instantly raises suspicion after just one look at “World’s Biggest Booger” or “Boil Popping on Back of Neck”. I mean, ewwwww. One can never un-see these things. It is my opinion that this dark humor is a way to cope with all the yuck and gore, a chance to laugh at things that are even stranger than the stuff they dealt with that day.
Nurses have vast repertoires of interesting stories, most of which you will never hear because of patient confidentiality. They might tell you about the patient who was crawling with bugs or the man who had no idea who he was, but you have a much better chance of finding out on Facebook that your friend was in the hospital than from that friend’s nurse. And that fear that women have, that somehow the nurses will leak how much they weigh? Not even a chance. They value their jobs and the patient’s dignity much more than that. As a nurse’s spouse, I really don’t find out much about his work unless I listen to the stories when a bunch of nurses get together. That is when the tales come forth that would make a stoic sniffle. Or a maggot gag. It just depends on what is being discussed. You can’t really shock a nurse, and they aren’t afraid to talk about anything when with their own kind.
Nurses are not in it for the money. This is a myth that I would like to dispel. The vast majority of people wouldn’t even touch this work without a lot more pay. It may be a cliche, but it’s true: Nurses are kind souls. They are trained to cheerfully respond to the irritating person who is constantly ringing the bell for attention. They change diapers on adults. They have to be able to care about their patients, yet expect little thanks. Many times they provide care for those who are dying and carefully explain what is happening to distraught family members. These are not really things one does for money. When a patient returns to the hospital, healthy and full of gratefulness, thanking their health care providers for attending their needs in a vulnerable time, it makes a nurse’s day. That is why they do what they do. They really like to help people.

This is my favorite nurse. I am so grateful that he is using his gift to help bring healing and comfort to the world. (The schedule does stink, though, but that is just my personal opinion.)

Of Dreams and Syrian Refugees

Gregory has discovered a way to wake up when his dream is not to his taste. He says he figured this out one night when he was riding a motorcycle extremely slowly back and forth until he was so bored that he looked for a ravine to plunge into so that he would wake up and quit the dumb dream. I thought it was a good idea, right up there with how I figured out as a child that if I wanted to keep on with a good dream, I could concentrate really hard on falling asleep again and make it play out how I wanted it. 🙂

Last week I had a nightmare that haunted me for a long time. I don’t usually pay much attention to my dreams, because I have so many of them, and they are mainly bizarre. But this one was so real that I woke up exhausted, like I had been fighting all night instead of sleeping. It seemed, in my dream, that I was fleeing through hostile territory with my children. My husband had died and we were alone, without a safe place to hide. Over and over evil men would approach us and try to snatch one of the children. I cried out repeatedly for help in Jesus’ name, and we would be left alone for a while in our endless wandering. If I could have found a ravine to drive into to make it stop, I would have. In the end we were all chucked over Niagara Falls because we wouldn’t deny our faith.

I struggle to make sense of this sort of thing. Without over-spiritualizing things, I felt like God was saying, “This is really how life is, and this is the fight you put up for your children against evil principalities and powers. You don’t need to be afraid, because you have the power of Jesus, but you need to be aware.”

A few days later I read an article about the struggle and privations that Syrian women refugees endure in their enforced homelessness in Turkey. It was like someone described my nightmare, complete with husbandlessness and evil men snatching the children. Maybe it was a dream to give me empathy so that I pray more. A few days after that I started a book set during the Spanish Inquisition. I am having a major case of story grip. But what is with this sense of deja vu?

Do you take dreams seriously?

Maybe you can tell me about that Niagara Falls bit? 🙂

If a Butterfly Flaps its Wings

The boys and I had one of those conversations at the lunch table today. So, if a butterfly flaps its wings, could the result be a tornado on the other side of the world? I have always felt like this sort of stuff is over my head. Alex’s seventh grade science is dealing with the variables that cause weather and life to be unpredictable beyond a certain point.

Months ago I picked up some of Madeleine L’Engle’s books at a library sale and today I was proofreading “A Swiftly Tilting Planet.” I am not quite done with it, but what I got so far is the main character time traveling to mend “Might Have Beens” in the past where people made catastrophic mistakes that snowballed through the ages. I suppose it is a cautionary tale of what can happen when one makes bad choices, the evil and woe that affects entire generations. I am not sure the book will go on the shelf, because I don’t really respect the author’s use of a unicorn to time travel, but it has given me a lot to think about. Sure, God is not limited to time, but the way I see it, He uses redemption to clear up horrible mistakes. We don’t have the luxuries of “do-overs”, no matter how earnestly we wish we did.

On the same subject, did you ever wonder what significance you really hold in the world? The little dot that is you in the Universe; the blip that is your life? Does it really matter whether you flap your wings or not? I read a wonderful article on Desiring God that I think you will enjoy too. God’s Glory in Your Extraordinary Story starts like this:

“Statistically speaking, you should not exist.

Think about it for a moment. How unlikely was it that your parents ever met? And even when they came together, you were just a bad mood or argument or headache or television show or phone call away from never being conceived.

Take a generational step back, and ponder your grandparents’ stories. What were the twists and turns and near misses in their experiences and relationships — any of which, had there been even a minor change, would have resulted in your non-being?”

…………………

“And your extraordinary life is continually shaping, and being shaped by, many other lives, human and non-human, as you move through time. In ways both witting and unwitting, your words and actions are influencing the course of other lives. Your choice of a parking spot or your seat on a plane could have a life-altering affect on someone else. Your choice of church, school, and workplace certainly will…” -Jon Bloom

It helped to cement in my heart again that the choices I make today, the words I say, the little, seemingly inconsequential things in life… all make ripples that effect others. It seems a little scary, but I truly believe that all are divinely ordered and organized to fulfill God’s purposes. I stand amazed. (I also like that all three of these separate “conversations” occurred almost simultaneously. 🙂 )

Linky Love

My sister-in-law shared a link to an article that blessed my socks off and convicted my heart of ungratefulness at the same time. I have often pushed aside the thought that mothers, especially homeschool mothers, tend to whine about how hard life is, how busy, how crazy. That is because it is hard and busy and chaotic. I Signed up for This is an excellent article. I love how she points out that this is what it is supposed to be like. Only in the last century have women had so many choices to make life easier, and still we complain. After you read the first article, go here and be blessed by all the other things you signed up for. Thank you, Mrs. Gore, for the humor and logic you brought to this situation.

I have another link from a blogger friend who posted about her favorite therapy. The photos she posted of her work with pen caught my eye. I knew that my children would love trying it. They are incurable doodlers, at least three of them. Somehow they got a little confused and started calling their drawings “Pendoodles”. Gregory was learning about the ocean in his science, so he took off with that theme.

He likes gel pens and has been drawing ocean life since he was a tot, but he never blended it quite like this. I like it.

The other son, who is getting to the age where he doesn’t like when I name him in posts, did some neat work with sharpies. Here is a sample.

And now the sharpies are all worn out, but that is small price to pay for hours of absorbed concentration. I made a few doodles too, but I have to say that I am not a natural. 🙂

Last, but not least, I made some really amazing scones yesterday for my mom’s 60th birthday party. These are really easy, very petite, just right for a party where you want small servings. Find the recipe for Petite White Chocolate Cranberry Scones here.

The only thing I did differently from the recipe was to make a glaze with lemon juice and powdered sugar instead of using the white chocolate. From past experience, white chocolate and I cannot come to agreement when it comes to drizzling. It is very humiliating to be beaten, over and over, by such a simple thing. Nevertheless, I wasn’t feeling top-notch and I played it safe. I am pretty sure the lemon glaze tastes better with the scone anyway.

Go ahead. You know you want them. 🙂

And that concludes the link love for today.

If You’re Not Happy and You Know It

Last week the children and I made turkeys and wrote things we are thankful for on their tail feathers, that perennial craft for this time of year. They did all the family, home, friends, food, stuff. My list is a bit more off the wall, but sincere.

I have been pep talking myself for a few days, over the persistent blue-ish awareness that life is much too complicated and full of trouble, that I am likely past my prime and still haven’t learned so many elementary things, etc. You know, blah blah, and here I am raking leaves two days before Thanksgiving because I hadn’t gotten them done yet, and why does the soup taste funny, and will I live with this headache the rest of my life?

I don’t know what you do when this happens but usually I read something inspirational and listen to the wisdom of ages when it comes to life and praise and prosperity. Yesterday I read Psalm 104, 105, and when I got to 106 I told God that I am sorry for not feeling thankful, but I will just move on out of my self absorbed funk and make French toast for my family.

This morning between the hours of 3:50 when Addy needed help to find the bathroom and 4:50 when Gabe’s alarm buzzed, I lay sleepless and felt the cares pulling me under again, including the nagging headache. This time I decided to listen to Genesis on audio, because I needed continuity, to see a bigger picture unroll with a Plan and a Wise Provider behind the affairs of man.

As I listened from “and God said it was very good” all the way through the blight of sin and the time when man wanted only evil continually, I saw the thread of patience, of persistent, outrageous, redeeming love. What really got me was the genealogies. Centuries and centuries of people and who am I but one little teeny mention in time. It cheered me up immensely to step away from my assignments and look up to the Faithfulness that goes on forever.

I got permission to stop taking myself so seriously, if that makes any sense. I am not shucking off my responsibilities, but neither am I responsible for the outcome of my faithfulness. He is the One who starts and finishes our faith, our life, our work. Today I start with that on the top of my list of thankfulness.

Next to that is gratefulness for Advil for Migraine. Who knew that taking it on an empty stomach would produce such a pleasant sort of buzzy feeling?

We are getting our first snow and the children are tickled beyond delight. I over- provided snow pants in my thrift store shopping this summer, so they each have at least one pair without holes and an extra when that one gets wet. In my entire childhood, I didn’t have a single pair of proper snow pants. Maybe that is why I buy them whenever I see them cheap.

I have Southern Pecan flavored coffee to drink this morning. With real cream.

We don’t have to go anywhere today and there is boxed mac n cheese with corn dogs on the menu for the beginning cook to prep on his own. And broccoli, just in case you were feeling sorry about our vitamin-less state.

I will be cooking up salted caramel for sauce on the Thanksgiving dessert. Or for in coffee. Or even just to sneak by the surreptitious spoonful.

My oldest son no longer asks for complicated birthday cakes. Just so they taste good. Yay for 12! I am going to see what he thinks about carrot cake with fresh ginger.

Dredging down real deep, I find that I am even thankful for the 28 hours of overtime my husband had in a two week pay period. He has steady work, and he hasn’t had to wear the ebola suit that they spent so much time practicing to put on properly.

Last but not least, I do not have to live 969 years, like Methuselah. Hallelujah! (and a shout-out to Max McLean for reading genealogies without a single stumble over all those odd names.)

Life is Like That

I feel like the train derailed on this blogging thing, and now I don’t know how to hitch it back up. Oh well, maybe I will just start with this past week, in which we had our thirteenth anniversary. We believe that the best thing we can do for our children is to have a vibrantly happy marriage. So we went trotting off without any children. Do you want to know how it felt?

It felt really, really strange. And it was so much fun. You could even say relaxing. Five children seems a bit much to drop on one person, so we left the girls with my parents and took the boys up north to be with Gabriel’s parents, which was close to our destination at Watkin’s Glen. We have never camped without the children, so this time we decided to go all minimalist. One kettle to boil water for hot drinks, some cheese sticks and power bars. Apples. Ramen noodles, just in case we got too hungry before we hit a restaurant. I am not kidding. And high quality chocolate, of course. A duffle bag for each of us and bedding to sleep in the conversion van we borrowed from my folks. That was it.

We hiked the Glen and biked all the trails at the campground, then needing a little something, we shared a grape pie sundae. A few hours later we went out for Chinese. This is something you don’t know before your tots come along… Very quickly they will take up your hands wherever you go, or else you will be clutching at them to hang onto them in parking lots and stores. Taking your children to a buffet style restaurant is so… involved. The luxury of just having each other for a few days is just that, a luxury, only one hand to hold, and it isn’t trying to run away!

We slept as long as we wanted, which means that when Gabe asked me if I was ever going to wake up and it was 10:30, I actually wanted to get up. Did I mention that we relaxed? I missed the children like everything. It was so odd to read and read by the campfire and nobody complained about being hungry. Campfire cooking is really fun, but it is also kind of exhausting, keeping ice in a cooler and washing greasy pans in lukewarm water, so this was a nice contrast. On the second day we traveled north along the Seneca Lake to the vineyards, stopping enroute for dessert and coffee at a funny little cafe, just because.

We picked 10 boxes of grapes to bring along home in just under 2 hours, then found the home of our friends, Nelson and Amy, who graciously served us a lovely supper and gave us a gorgeous guest room for the night.

The next morning it was time to collect the children in a 6 hour process that involved picking up the boys, stopping at an orchard and picking 3 bushels of apples, then coming on home for the girls. Life felt so do-able again, crazy schedules, complex responsibilities, needy people and all. It was good to get away, but it was even better to come back.

Remember the bit about the grapes and apples? There was no option but to don the apron and get to work. Half the grapes were for friends, but even so we steamed 58 quarts of juice. That should last a while. 🙂 While the steaming process was going on, I peeled a half bushel of apples for pie filling and to dry. It was a fun project, not one that I really had to do. By the end of the day, I was a little tired.

Early the next morning I lay in bed trying to decide if I had the stamina to make applesauce that day. It was a toss-up between wrapping up the canning all in one fell swoop or leaving it for another day when I wouldn’t feel like doing it either. I decided on the fell swoop, whatever that is. Alex got a day off school and we applesauced away. When the last batch was simmering on a cooker on the deck, I asked him to check on them while I ladled the sauce into jars. He thought they looked “almost ready”. By the time I checked on them, they were scorched into a brown mass on the bottom of the kettle.

It was the last rite of canning season… a hopelessly scorched kettle to scrub and soak and scrub and soak. I started in on it and quickly realized that this was the worst, horriblest scorched kettle ever. Google brought up a solution that turned on light bulbs in my head. I share this with you because I surely am not the only person who wants to throw kettles into the trash and slink away.

Just in case you ever have apples permanently stuck to your sauce pan, here is what you do: Pour peroxide into the kettle to about ½ inch depth. Sprinkle in a few teaspoons of baking soda and simmer it on low with the lid on for about 20 minutes. Touch the scorched spot with a wooden scraper and watch in delight as it lifts off the stainless steel bottom and floats gently upward.

Then you thank Jesus and pass the word along. Because nobody should spend hours scouring pans when they are dog tired from canning. Amen?

It is cold outside and the hot drinks are waiting. They are calling me to come play Settler’s. Cheerio!

Empty Bowls, a Book List, and a Lot of Links

This winter I tried to find different ways to make my children aware of the hungry, homeless, less fortunate, even beggars. Sometimes it is hard to know how much information about the sadness and brokenness of the world I should share with my little guys. Yet I believe that they need to learn compassion and thankfulness, and one of the best way to learn this is to help them see how hard life is for many others.

We read A Single Shard, the story of a homeless orphan in 12th century Korea. The main character spends his days scrounging for scraps of food and longingly watching the master potters in the village. Eventually he persuades one of them to take him on as an apprentice, receiving for his wages a bowl of food every day.

The Family Under the Bridge is another book I highly recommend for children. It is the story of a crusty old hobo who has his own favorite spot to live under the bridge. He has chosen his lifestyle because he likes it, but one day a desperate mother with her little children invades his space. Slowly he starts to thaw and become more kindly to the people around him. Almost against his will, he learns to care about them and does his best to help the mother keep her little family intact. It is a book with humor and grace mixed into the sad bits.

Another book we really like is Star of Light, a story of little beggars shamefully misused by their stepfather. It is a beautiful tale of how they find the love of a Heavenly Father.

I also have a photojournalist’s collection of portraits of titled Precious in His Sight. It is a powerful visual aid… What if I were the little girl selling bananas in the middle of that crush of cars at the intersection? Suppose I was the little farmer boy in Malawi who spends days and days alone, herding the family’s cows so they don’t wander off or get stolen.

A percentage of the sale of this book goes to Compassion.

And there is yet one more photo journey that I suggest for little children. It is titled Where Children Sleep. It is an expensive book, but I am glad I bought it. We have discussed why it is that some of the poorest little children with only one little car to play with and a bed of filthy blankets on the floor look just as happy in their photos as the children with everything their hearts desire. You can find a lot of the images from the book here.

So, how did this post turn into a book list? I suppose it may be because they are my main tools for instructing my children. 🙂 But aside from books, how do we do something that makes a difference? That is the real question. The boys helped me cut patches out of fabric scraps and sew them into comfort tops for the ladies at church to turn into warm blankets for somebody cold.

I hoped to find a soup kitchen that needs volunteers, but the only local thing I could come up with was a fund raiser called Empty Bowls. This is a grassroots movement to help feed the hungry. Local potters hold workshops where volunteers get to make soup bowls to sell at the supper they host. That immediately caught my attention because of my pottery making dreams. We made pinch pots, starting with a ball of clay that became the base of our soup bowl, then adding coils of clay and smoothing them out to form the sides and rim. It was a lot of fun. We decided we wanted our own bowls back, so we went to the supper and claimed them.

All the food was donated by local restaurants and businesses, the proceeds benefitting our local food pantry. It was a lot of fun, an event I hope to make an annual thing for us. Here are the girls with our bowls.

So far I don’t feel like I have accomplished much except helping my crew to notice inequity and to want to help. I need more practical ideas. 🙂