May to Date

What in the world have I been doing, I asked myself when the children wanted to know the date for the Sunday school lesson to study. I couldn’t quite believe it’s May 22, but there it was, on my phone which doesn’t lie. I made a list, just for clarification that I haven’t been dawdling. *Insert sounds of guffaws*

 

  • We started with this line-up on May Day. It looked pretty promising.

spring florals, May 1

  • I employed myself to a program of outdoor maintenance at my dad’s decking/vinyl railing business. This included about 4 trips to the greenhouse to get everything looking gorgeous for their annual open house. Then it rained most of the day and people didn’t even walk around the grounds. And then we had a surprise frost that nipped the pretties right back to square one.
  • I turned 39. Yep, I did. That morning I determined to make myself a luscious London Fog cake but I forgot to take it out of the oven and I left for a solitary stroll at a nearby park. Halfway around the lakeside trail, I remembered and sent a frantic text home, but the vanilla cake was quite dry and sawdusty by then. When you are 39, you should know better than that, but at least you have learned not to give up too easily. I already had the Earl Grey infused cream for the icing, so I mixed another batch of batter and made cupcakes after I got home.   I also picked up pizza for supper. With spinach and sriracha sauce because it was my birthday, and if you don’t like it, you don’t have to eat it!

Burnt cakebirthday cupcake

 

  • I got to visit with our friends, Motz and Paige, he being a sort of unofficial little brother from way back when. At the same time, my actual little brother and his family were in the area, so we had a grand catching up time. Unfortunately it was an evening that Gabe had to work, so he missed out on the reminiscing. (Thank a nurse today.)
  • I celebrated Mother’s Day with five of the most dearling  (Addy’s new word) children, again a day when their father had to work, and yes, I feel a tad bitter about nurse shifts on these occasions. (Thank a nurse’s spouse today.) However, I do not believe that it is in anyone’s best interests to marinate in the inconveniences of hospital employ, so we went on a hike that day and found a bunch of wildflowers. (Don’t they look like little rascals? But I wouldn’t trade them for anything!)

Mother's day, 2016

  • We all 7 had dentist appointments in one forenoon, with one orthodontist appointment to make, 2 follow-ups for fillings and 1 in six months for sealing of molars. I could happily forgo dental appointments all my life, for real. I HATE it. The hygienist always compliments me that I have no plaque, but I end up being the one who needs fillings. I blame it on gestating and lactating and freely offering up my calcium to others for all those years. It can’t be eating gummy candies, in any case.
  • There was a doctor’s appointment in Pittsburgh; I took three little girls along for the ride on west to Ohio to my sister’s house where a gorgeous tea awaited us on arrival. I had carefully selected my favorite scented jar candle from my stash because Rachel had told me that she always ends up giving away as gifts the ones she likes best. When I handed my hostess gift to her, she got a funny look and said, “I gave you that candle at Christmas.” I thought I remembered picking it out at TJ Maxx, but who knows who is right? After all, she is pregnant and I am 39. At any rate, we each gave our best. 🙂 The ride to Ohio included picking up freezer beef for us. Have you ever driven four hours with styrofoam coolers squeaking against each other at every bump in the road? It does help to listen to “The Boxcar Children” on audio really loudly, but I don’t recommend it.
  • I prepared, if I calculated correctly, about 462 individual meals, plus a few extra on the day that Gabe had friends over to help him with a barn raising project. It was my pleasure, and especially once I had a freezer full of beef to work with. Approximately every 3 days a meal includes asparagus, which is of itself an item of great cheer. Just occasionally I would give up my French press for an in-house cook though.

Barn raising

  • I got to try my hand at messing with clay on a real potter’s wheel, compliments of my sister-in-law Ruby, who set up a training session for my birthday. It took us two hours to drive to the studio, but we had so much fun and I have been dreaming of a way to set up my own operation. Rather many $$$ would be involved. And a lot of time and more strength than I had any idea. It looks so effortless when you watch an artist draw that pot out of the lump of clay, but my shoulders were sore for days. Here is another sister-in-law, Rhonda, who will be having a birthday soon too, and who also had fun because someday her luck with finding pottery at thrift stores may run out and this would be a valuable skill. (I might add here that I went through three towels on my lap and still had clay water smeared down my skirt. The other two came out fresh as daisies. How do they do that?)

pottery making

  • Last, but definitely not least, we finished school, as in all wrapped up, portfolios, achievement tests, evaluations, and a party with the pretty dishes on the lace tablecloth! A field trip to the Lincoln Caverns and a very soggy picnic later, we are done!

I feel a bit like someone put me into a salad spinner and wrung all the moisture out, and that is why I intend to actually dawdle as much as I can in the next week.

Here is one final photo of the barn project as it stands, startling me when I look out the kitchen window because I am not used to it yet. Isn’t the timber framing elegant? One of these days I will look out and be startled by sunshine instead of this grey sky. I believe it! Oh yeah, and one of these days I will be picking 12 rows of peas. Dawdling will be a distant memory. Also one of these days the front of the garden will be bordered by callas and dahlias and zinnias. I can hardly wait!

barn skeleton

Senses

“Hmmm,” he mused as he sipped the tea he had just poured from the puddle left over in the teapot early this morning. “It tastes a little like Earl Grey or Vanilla Caramel, but with a sort of fruit flavor.” I looked at Gregory, my jaw dropping. He had no way of knowing that Gabe had adulterated our pot of Earl Grey last night with some butter rum and green apple flavor. I knew he messed with the tea, but I didn’t know what he had done. It was experimental, a joke on me, because I will never live down a funny mistake I made soon after our marriage.

Some of Gabe’s aunts and their families had gotten together for a picnic, bringing their specialty dishes to share. They are all fabulous cooks, and the fare was topped with homemade ice cream that had traveled 1 1/2 hours packed in ice. Everyone was having conniptions about the ice cream, so even though I was avoiding sugar because I was pregnant, I had to have some. It was smooth, creamy, better than anything Ben and Jerry’s produces. It was a light brown. I savored a dainty bite, then turned to ask the ice cream making aunt, “Wow, how do you get the caramel flavor? Do you use brown sugar?” She looked at me blankly, then chirped, “It’s COFFEE!”

Later that night I related the story to Gabe and we howled at the newly-wed niece making polite and clueless conversation with the artist-in-the-kitchen aunt. To this day, Gabe likes to fix flavored coffees at the gas station, then get me to guess the flavors. I have been around long enough to know his is creme brulee and mine is preferably French vanilla, but he thinks it is so fun to mix it up and stump me. Then I say, “It’s COFFEE!” And I am always right.

I can’t differentiate smells so well, either. He has about five favorite scents that he wears, and while they are all “my man” to me, I can’t tell which is which. If I guess right, it’s just because I got lucky. I don’t wear perfume unless I want to sneeze all day. There was a time, though, when I smelled an electrical fire and he didn’t. I insisted something stank. Sure enough, the hot water heater was putting out an awful fume of burnt elements down in the basement. At least I know if something stinks or smells good.

In blink, Malcolm Gladwell describes the work that professional tasters put into their craft. They spend years and years honing their expertise so that they can break down an Oreo cookie into ninety attributes of flavor, texture, and appearance. They can tell the Nabisco company exactly what happens when they change their cookie recipe. What’s more, they are so highly skilled that their assessments appear to be nearly effortless, like first impressions.

While I find that fascinating, I don’t aspire to anything more than tasty food, the right amount of salt, no lumps in the gravy, cookies that don’t crumble all over the floor, etc.

I have other senses, though. There’s a finely tuned sense of humor. Sometimes it gives me giggles at a funeral, which is highly inappropriate, but stress relieving. I can have the worst day and lie in bed in tears, when suddenly I find myself laughing because all the craziness in the day piling up is just too funny for words. I would rather be able to laugh at myself than taste 45 differences between Coke and Pepsi.

I can tell when a child has a burdened conscience or a wounded spirit. Sometimes I just know and carry the burden and pray for clarity so that they don’t have to live under a cloud. It’s a sense I want to hone, especially with teens in the house. I would love some input into the process, because I am really green here.

I can sense when people don’t like me. That sounds childish, but I mean it in an objective way. It’s something I read in their faces, some micro-expression that can’t be masked by a smile. Recently we changed to a different family practice because the doctors and nurses were so snobbish and unhelpful at the one where we were taking our children. Whether or not they liked us, they didn’t act that way. And I didn’t like them talking to me as if I could barely understand English, much less why we should give our children every vaccination that was ever developed. It’s easy in that sort of situation. You can quietly move on. Most cases where I feel someone doesn’t like me, it is best just to assume they do, but try to stay a little out of their space. As an oversharing someone who likes (almost) everyone, this is hard to do sometimes. I don’t take this sense too seriously, but I have it, no doubt about it. Probably most people do.

There is one more thing that I would like discussion on. I love conversation. With anybody. Exploring ideas and cultures is so much fun; everybody has a story to tell and I would genuinely like to hear it, especially if it has an accent. It bugs me when I am trying to be friendly to someone and they just drop the ball repeatedly. I know conversation is a sort of learned art, much easier for some than others. Listening is the same way. When I ask someone, “So how was your day?” I am making a sincere effort to hone my listening sense. If they say, “Good,” and stand there waiting for me to ask the next question, I start to feel scrambled and like they really wish I would just bug off. Can someone, preferably an introvert, tell me what is best in this situation? Does this mean, “I don’t want to talk to you; leave me alone.” Or maybe it means, “Please find the topic that sets me going. Then I will tell you all.”

Last night at our annual widow’s dinner I sat opposite a sprightly little lady with a gorgeous silver pompadour. I had never met her and made small talk about where she lives, whether she has family nearby, etc. She answered with a bare minimum of syllables and I soon decided she didn’t want to converse, leaving her in peace during the main course. About dessert time, something she said to her friend about reading on her patio gave me an idea. “So what books do you like to read?” It was like I pushed the button that lights her up and for the rest of the evening she talked and talked and talked. She told me all about her book collection and a lot of family history as well as her philosophy on cooking and housework. As we were leaving, I told her how beautiful her hair was and she said, “I hope I sit opposite you again next year.”

That just warmed my heart to the cockles and goes to show that the “doesn’t like me” vibe can be very wrong.

And now, my windowsill on this glorious May 1. I have no words, only a heart of thanks for every single bloom.

spring florals, May 1

Rabbits Like Bananas, and Other Who Knew? Moments

Queen, the lop-eared rabbit with the patchy springtime fur, was a little surprised when Rita offered her, instead of the daily pile of dandelions, a very overripe banana. It was a “let’s see if the rabbit will eat this” experiment. She delighted us by chowing down the peelings, leaving the fruit until last. Queen is lonely. She eats dandelions endlessly, just for the pleasure of company outside the cage. We plan to find her a boyfriend so she can belong to a family.

Last week I bleached all my baby broccoli plants in a sincere attempt at protecting them from the elements. Folks, it got cold as anything so I lovingly set buckets and quart jars over all the plants. Apparently the sun was bright enough to heat it up to cooking temps inside the jars and that was the end of the windowsill starters.  I went to the green house this morning and at first I thought my old-order Mennonite greenhouse lady was sold out of broccoli. All I could find was purple cabbages and cauliflower. Score on purple cabbage. I love it.But not cooked. It looks sicky grayish then. Anyway, I stumbled upon some really little broccoli plants being coddled in a corner and brought them home with me because the lady sells out of broccoli every year, and I think to myself, “Why wouldn’t you learn that you need twice as much?” Of course, I don’t say it, because she has been greenhousing for 25 years and if she wants to run out of plants, that is her business. This morning she was telling me her new scheme of lining her planters with Depends under the soil to keep them from drying out. It’s brilliant, wouldn’t you say?

Addy in bike helmet

Our baby learned to ride her bike solo tonight. As you can see, she felt mighty pleased with the accomplishment. Someone dug an old helmet out of a muddy spot and she wore it with pride. If you would like to see a short video of her efforts, with an amused mother giggling in the background, click here.  After her first successful wobble across the lawn, she rushed to her sister with a mighty hug and said, “Tell all my friends I can ride a bike, will you? Tell Anicia and Kiersten and Gretchen and Jenna and Allison.” I might mention that the child will definitely be needing a proper helmet. She is as accident prone as anyone I have ever seen, sporting bandaids and bruises year round.

Today is my dad’s birthday. Every day we have discussions about how soon Rita will be 7 and what about Addy turning 5 and what shall we give Doddy for his birthday. After a small tiff this afternoon, Rita said, “I know what. Let’s give Addy to Doddy for his birthday and then we can babysit her when he goes to Florida.” Addy thought that would be fun. She was seeing an endless vista of marshmallow peeps and Tom and Jerry episodes. But Rita changed her mind, “That would be giving away the present God gave us and that wouldn’t be right.” I thought that put it rather well.

This forenoon I was working on assignments for the last 10 days of school. After lunch I took a break, looked around at my house and realized in a sudden fit of depression that every single room feels grubby and tired from much occupation over winter. I was standing in the kitchen, looking up at the ceiling, wishing for Mary Poppins someone to just tell me where to start when I saw the cobwebs above the curtains. So there I was, and there was the thing to do, and I just did it. After I scrubbed down the walls and shined the windows, I looked around and felt real good. One room down, five to go. I wonder if I can pull it off- get my house shined up before we finish school so that I can do my annual Week of Loafing without any guilt. I aim to try!

How about you? Have you made any interesting discoveries lately?

Jaunting About

Jaunt: v.

  1. an excursion undertaken especially for pleasure

  2. archaic :  a tiring trip

We are jaunting about like everything these days and it is so much fun. It is a fast way to wear out, but it is great way “to blow through life without a budget,” as Rachel Jancovik says.

I am taking walks every day except when it rains, just noticing how things bud and burst open and it changes in every 24 hour stretch. I applaud the skunk cabbages along the roadside ditches from the first purple spears to the brilliant unfolding green leaves. I cheer the forsythias across the road, now very nearly at their peak of screaming hilarious yellow. And I got out the vases because my children are bringing me any and all blooms they find. There are no more daffodils or hyacinths outside because they all came into my kitchen.  I have plum blossoms and pansies on the window sill and baby broccoli too.

Yesterday I couldn’t resist and pulled out two baby evergreens that were growing beside the road on a deserted stretch. I wanted to plant them by the pond, and rationalized that the road crew comes along and whacks everything off for visibility purposes anyway. Gabe thinks I poached them off someone’s property, so now I feel conflicted about my baby trees, even though the state owns the road frontage: 20 feet from the middle of the road puts state property boundaries right at the edge of our front porch. So my trees come from state property, which they routinely deface with chain saws and whackers of various sorts. (I am making excuses here, I know! A preacher I know stops and picks up nice rocks beside the road to build chimneys. Is this different? :/ ) I did plant my tiny trees. If they die, I will know I shouldn’t have pulled them. My defense in court would be, “Spring made me do it.”

Last week I spent a sunny afternoon digging dandelions out of the asparagus bed. It was very satisfying. They are the most persistent things! Every year I do this, and every year they gird up their roots and try again. Now I am willing the asparagus to appear!

Spring means lemony desserts to me. I just got done lovingly assembling a Greek Yogurt Cream Cheese Lemon Cake for guests. It is a rite of April. I am pretty sure I posted about this before, but for your benefit, this is what it looks like:

Greek-Yogurt-Cream-Cheese-Lemon-Coffe-Cake-7

And here is my recommendation that you go show Lovely Little Kitchen some love and make this cake today.

Grating lemon peel always makes me feel happy. This morning I was busily mixing and pouring and was surprised to find myself feeling annoyed. It certainly wasn’t the gorgeous citrusy aroma or the cream cheese. I isolated the cause to a Pandora music station that I had playing with popular worship songs. I had chosen it because I wanted to hear one song in particular and here I was, listening to the next ones in the queue and getting really irritated. This is not to minimize anyone’s taste in music, but as a lover of language, after the 47th time of “I could sing of your love forever…” I want to say, “USE YOUR WORDS, HONEY!”

I was raised with the grand hymns of the church and am well aware of the “outmoded, outdated, outgrown” arguments concerning church music of the past. However, after something truly beautiful like:

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessèd, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, Thy great Name we praise.

Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting, Thou rulest in might;
Thy justice, like mountains, high soaring above
Thy clouds, which are fountains of goodness and love.

To all, life Thou givest, to both great and small;
In all life Thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
And wither and perish—but naught changeth Thee.

I simply can’t get into the modern worship songs with their overwhelming emphasis on how I feel and the music that croons to God like I used to croon to my babies. I love the substance of the old hymns, the descriptions, the grasping to know a glorious God who is so amazing that our best language cannot describe Him. I need music to remind me that God is so much bigger than I am.

*that creaking sound of a person gingerly stepping off a soapbox*

Anyway, the cake is now baked to perfection and the house awaits the weekly clearing away of stuff that didn’t get put into its proper home this week. I scored a great victory last week. I actually threw away the sweater vest from the ’90’s. And I replaced the beloved pair of shoes I bought when I was expecting Gregory (He is 11. You can do the math.) and couldn’t fit my swollen feet into any of my regular ones. I loved those shoes, even though they flopped when I wasn’t pregnant, but it was time to let them go.

I have a goal this spring that I am almost afraid to verbalize. I want to assign everything a place in this house, and if it doesn’t have one, it needs to go. This could be both cathartic and painful! My small treasure hoarders will need to be out of the house when I do their room, but they have a whole playhouse where they have free rein and can decorate their little hearts out. Now that it is warm, I am shooing them out there every afternoon after school. They have beds with old blankets and books and a plastic table with squatty little plastic chairs. It’s the perfect way to learn cause and effect in housekeeping. 🙂

Gabe has PTO for 8 days! We are working on building the critter barn and sandwiching in a field trip to DC with my big brother and his family. More jaunting. Hurray!

 

 

 

Winners and Celebrating, in Season and out of Season

I did the drawing for the winner of my giveaway. My method was convoluted and random, just like March weather, which has turned a little stinky cold, by the way. Still, this morning I awoke to only a dusting of snow instead of the three inches predicted for the first day of spring, so hope is alive and well.

Oh, wait, the winner. I looked at the entries and picked my favorite person. Actually, no, March might be that capricious, but I would never be. I love all of you who told me your favorite places and I wanted you all to win. I felt like you all deserved some books; I was really interested in how many of my friends are perfectly happy at home with their families. I did think that someone might mention the bathtub as their favorite place. Anyway, thanks for weighing in with your opinions.

usborne giveaway

The random drawing falls on the lovely Hillarey who commented:

“My favorite place in “de whole wide world” is : snuggled up with my man at the end of the day, kiddos fast asleep. It’s where I feel the safest and most loved.

My Alexei-who-is-three says, “I want dat train book!” I unabashedly hope to win! And now I must go corral the Alexei-who-is-three because he is helping himself to a snack.

PS- Your kids are charming!”

I am glad that Alexei-who-is-three gets his wish, aren’t you? I will put in an unabashed plug for my Usborne business here, saying that I can facilitate lots of free books for you with a successful Facebook or in-home book show. And no, I had no intentions at all of putting in an ad when I decided to do the giveaway. That just slipped in for your amusement. 😛 And books. I always give away books. It’s the loving thing to do.

Resurrection Garden

In other news, I have daffodils blooming in a vase on my kitchen windowsill and baby broccolis and tomatoes sprouting and 12 rows of wrinkly little pea seeds in the soft dirt of the kitchen garden. We also have a resurrection garden with green moss growing over the little flower pot tomb. We put a flat round stone in front of the tomb’s opening, ready to roll it away so we can put a lighted tealight inside on Easter. I was firmly under the impression that Easter was yesterday. At church I was so bugged that we didn’t sing a single resurrection song when it should be such a glorious celebration. Then we had some friends over for lunch and they said, “But it’s not Easter today!” So I rest my case that I am losing my mind. You may note that I am not “loosing” my mind, therefore all is not lost.

Our church choir gave a special program last night and I sat there with tears dripping down  my cheeks as I let it sink in again, How Deep the Father’s Love for Us. How about you? Do you have special Easter celebrations that point to the empty tomb?

 

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”.

fa051221

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.)

 

Because You Are So Nice: a Giveaway

I promised a giveaway back in the middle of February on the day after I skipped a post. It’s a penance and appreciation gift, as well as a celebration! Because we made it through the rough part of the winter and I had a collection of pretty fabric and an idea. Because I have so much (so many books) and I love to share them. Because you all are so kind and tell me about yourselves and how you look forward to reading what I write after I mention my insecurities.

This is a giveaway open to anyone, but if you are a man, I hope you have a woman in your life who wouldn’t mind you carrying a floral bookbag. Better yet, just give it to her.

First I will show you my Addy and her petalled skirt sewed onto a chipper spring shirt. She dances and twirls through her days (and tumbles and flips). This child is all-out, fizzy and full of pop. She can handle a skirt with many colors just fine. This photo was taken during a 5 second lull.

Addy in petal skirt

Here is the first book bag I made, unabashedly copying one I saw in a Craftsy ad. I decided to keep this one for myself since it was experimental and the one blue stripe is a little too dark, as my sister kindly pointed out when I asked her if it seemed odd. It needed wider straps too, to match the strips on the bag. These small anomalies are not a problem with 3 little bag ladies in the house. “Yook, it’s camofyaged with my dress!” (I will mourn the day the child learns to say “l”.)

Addy with bag

Then I made a small carry tote for Olivia to carry her Bible and Sunday school book, pencils and tissues, etc. to church. And an even smaller squat bag that Rita uses for treasures and bags of apple snitzes she likes to have on hand to sustain her in case she gets hungry. I am down to the last strips of these fabric patterns. There is enough to make something small and cutesy for a doll. The projects were so much fun that I neglected a lot of other things just to work on them. I hope we get to sew in heaven.

In the photo below Olivia holds the one I made expressly to give away. As you can see, it has the wider straps and when you sling it over your shoulder, it fits precisely under your arm at the side unless you are not grown up. Then it hangs down lower and you can dig in it while the strap is still over your shoulder. Inside it I sewed a special pocket so that you don’t lose your cell phone in the bowels of the bag while you are at the library. There is space for keys and a library card too. I am naming it Sprightly Spring Satchel.

Addy, petal skirt

As you can see, this particular bag will be stuffed with some goodies. I am just delighted to share some of the books I have collected from Usborne, those wonderful publishers of children’s literature. I will show you three books that will be in it for your enjoyment, but there will be a surprise title or two, depending on the interests of the person who wins.

usborne giveaway

Would you or someone short and cute in your life like to own these books? All you have to do to qualify for the drawing is comment one sentence describing your favorite place in the world. If you want to write an essay length comment with many sentences, great! But you don’t have to. If you feel shy about posting your real name, you can make up a pseudonym. But you can’t be anonymous. Just don’t forget what you called yourself! Anyone living outside the U.S. can enter the drawing as long as they have an address of someone in the lower 48 to whom I can send a package should they win.

The drawing will close on Saturday, the 19th of March, at noon. Let’s hear from you, my friends!

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.

  1. I sat in brilliant sunshine to eat lunch. Outside. In bare feet. And I had chocolate covered strawberries too.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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”.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.

Recap

Well, here we are leaping into March!  My children have these circular discussions about whether it would be cool to be born on leap day or not. Would you have four cakes and four presents from everybody to make up for lost time? Would you freeze some cake for the next year’s un-birthday? Could you really say you were only 20 for 4 years, then would you be 21 or 24? Would you pretend you were a day older or a day younger so you could have parties every year? It sure gets complicated; birthdays are serious stuff! I didn’t even tell them about the whole proposal thing yet.

635908173360534274580851622_old-cartoon-woman-proposing

Today was brilliantly sunny and bitterly cold in patches. I looked out the window and saw Rita, all bundled up but playing barefooted on a dirt pile. Later she had her boots on but no coat because the sun was unveiled by the clouds for just a little while. It has real warmth in it these days and we feel in our bones that we have survived.

Recently we watched a documentary called something like  A Year in the Life of a Moose, set in Jasper National Park.  “Boy, this is gonna be one long movie,” Alex said. It started out with calving time and the photographer literally shadowed the mother and baby pair for the entire year, camping and filming to try to see what is decimating the moose population.  We watched two mother/baby sets as they nibbled twigs and dove in lakes to eat water plants and then the snow fell and the danger descended. One day wolf tracks joined the moose tracks and you heard ravens calling and then the little pile of fur and bones that was left from the baby who couldn’t run fast enough to get away through the deep snow. We were all holding our breath. It was such a let down, because he had almost made it to the spring thaw.

Addy caught on that this was in Canada where the bloodthirsty wolves were. I had just read her a story where Anna Hibiscus is going to Canada to visit her grandmother. “Wow,” Addy asserted, “Anna Hibiscus had better be careful!”

Speaking of survival, I just want to take a little time to thank the Lord for coffee and tea, gallons of it, laced with cream.  Then there are candles to light and those amazingly cozy microfiber throws that are for sale everywhere these days, even at Aldi’s. I thank Him for the vitamin D caps that I took regularly during the short grey days, absorbing the internal sunshine. I am grateful for the flowers from the grocery store, the little 88 cent pots of brilliant primroses blooming in a row on my windowsill. There is also this innovation called the heated seat, which removes the discomfort of traveling somewhere in subzero weather. There are books that take me far out of myself and my knotty little problems. Not the least of the things I thank God for is the crowd of friends and loved ones I have who rally around me and cheer me on. Even in February! The truth is that I am so surrounded by ways to keep the wolves at bay that I am embarrassed to complain about cold toes or pale skin.

Anyway, we made it! Thank God, we made it!