Cycles

Things I like to do in theory but somehow don’t quite work out that way

1)      Line drying my clothes, except the towels.  In theory… this is fabulous.  I love the crispness of line-dried clothes, I love the $$$ savings on my electric bill.  But I don’t have much line space, so unless I commit to doing two loads a day, every day, I flop at this.  However!  I’m managing to line dry the sheets most weeks, and there is NOTHING more heavenly than a line dried sheet.  J

2)      Head-covering.  I like head covering.  Honestly I like it best at home.  I feel more clear-headed, more focused, more … covered, when I’m covered.  But I obsess about what to do about it in public, how much to cover, and then the darn things slip and slide off my hair and never quite match what I’m wearing and ARGH.  So then I don’t, quite.  But I miss it… and .. yeah, I suck.  I bought some fabric to make bun covers out of and I have endless beads… hopefully I can get those made up so I can just slide them over my omnipresent buns.

3)      Doing Nourishing Traditions food.  Yes, I make my own broths, and they are NUMMY.  But I don’t have space to make my own sourdough, and frankly bad things happened to it when I tried.  I don’t have space to do the soaks on much of anything… sigh.  I need more veggies in our diet… we do well, then slide (some of the slide atm has to do with the bad veggies lately – we got spoiled with summer flavor and late fall blandness has set in.  Blech). Actually, while I’m thinking of this… I notice we slip from the homemade when we’re really busy (think the week we moved furniture/painted constantly) or when we’re sick.  And then we feel rundown and sickly when we eat processed food, and then… nasty spiral.  Always something to drag back out of.  (writing this, I decided to have a brown rice/lentil/kale stew that was in my freezer for lunch, with an orange).

4)      Gardening.  I *do* know what to do about my garden, and thanks for asking.  But I am saddled with adobe and it’s a pain to work with (remember my husband, using a pickaxe and only going down about 6 inches?).  Plus I’m great at setting things up but not so great about maintenance.  Oh, you mean I need to weed? I’ll get ‘round to it… eventually.  :p 

5)      Breadbaking.  I went a year and baked 85% of our bread, and it was good.  I miss it… but if I want to sew, I have to scootch something off the schedule, and homebaked bread is what lost out.  I MISS good bread… L

6)      Handsewing, embroidering, quilting.  LOVE THEM.  Never make the time for them.  And I’m not very accurate or perfectionistic.  It’s on?  It’s good.  Let’s go on. I have a LOT more embroidery patterns than I’ll ever manage to use.

7)      Dieting.  Although I don’t think I make much of a pretense of being good at that.  J  If I’m tired, I don’t want to skimp, or cut my portions.  And I get tired when I diet… ah well.

I would get more done if I didn’t hang out with my husband and friends every night and play Warcraft.  But those hours are important – important to my marriage, important to my mental health (no I don’t care about whacking things with my sword, it’s the time to hang out with adults in a group, the time *not* away from husband while he’s physically at home). 

There’s always something to work on.  It’s a never-ending circle.  You start something, you get a good chunk done on it, and you slip up.  And you get busy with something else and then you notice how it’s slipped and you growl at yourself and then you get up and do it again.  Cycles.  I’d like to say that everything is always running at 100% but nothing is, really.  But that’s the good thing about Mondays, the starts of new years, the starts of new months, or even the start of the next hour – you can always start again.

I am not ever going to be perfect, life is always about cycles.  This time in my life is a cycle of good and harvest.  A place of plenty and peace.  I am, I assure you, not taking that for granted.  I am putting the hours in here and there and everywhere, trying to provide for the future, making memories, filling my heart to the fullest with the happiness presented on every side.   And I am delighting in it.  Cycles of happiness come and go, but a life of joy is a thing tied to obedience to our Lord and Creator.

Oh and a final thing? I used to be a good and thoughtful blogger, but that seems to have slipped too… I hope you will forgive me and challenge me to better things.

Much love to all…

Hearth who hears her ironing board calling……….

Had a really fabulous week

#1 to update all of y'all... grandpa is doing so very well that they are planning to move him back to the regular part of the home (the room he's been in for the duration) on Monday.  Praise the Lord!  :D  And yes, Grandpa is built tough.

I had my birthday this week and it was *wonderful*.  Actually, I'm a few hours out from the official birthday celebration with cake - sharing it with my mom, whose birthday is on Wednesday. 

My birthday started with being woken up by my husband peering at me with his flashlight at 5am, but I went back to sleep until 630, when I staggered out of the bedroom to find a jewelry bag on my desk - and two bags of dried cranberries.  So after I wrote to DH thanking him for the pretty necklace, I asked, "thank you but *why* do I have cranberries?" to be informed that the kids got those for me since I don't enjoy candy as much as I used to.  Had a nice relaxing day and then he took me out for dinner that night at our favorite place.  Oh, and did I mention the two bouquets of roses?  :)

Having been thoroughly spoilt by my hubby, of course my best friend had to get in on the fun.  We went out to breakfast on Thursday, and then she topped it off by giving me two patterns that I've been lusting after - and spending all morning with me in fabric stores to find *just* the right fabrics for them.  Such a pretty dark green wool blend... will end up as an edwardian walking skirt.  It won't be until after Christmas that I'll be able to do something about it, but I"m REALLY looking forward to it, drool drool. 

And then last night my folks gave me the best present of all... a quiet night with my husband.  We have so many projects in progress that the time together was perhaps not romantically used, but we certainly had a lovely relaxing time together, which is the point.

Musings... I have a lot of thoughts which keep being meant to be blogged, and then I don't.  Not sure why the lack of bloggy goodness lately, but I hope to get back to it soon.

It's going to rain this weekend and into next week.  Our first multi-day rain of the year.  Very exciting, although I did forget to buy galoshes.  I guess I'll be getting my legs wet as is usual.  Bah.  (Our sidewalk floods if it rains much).  If you want to get yourself properly excited for rain, first you must spend substantial time on water restriction and mourn the burnt-looking edges on all of the tender leaves in your garden.  Predictably, our rainy seasons starts with a nod and a smile in November, and then sometime about now we get a few good storms.  We generally tend towards damp and drear in late January through the first part of March, and then it's temperamental through April - sunny and perfect one week, windy and cold the next.  But after that, grey or bright, we don't see more than enough rain to dampen the concrete until November comes again.  Believe me, everything is FILTHY and we are ready for it!  I wonder if wearing my combat boots would be useful... probably not.  I hate having wet sandals.  Oh well, the sacrifices !  ROFL.

It's time to finish getting ready for the party this afternoon - I have ironing to do.  See y'all soon... I hope!

Rain, and myriad minor thoughts

It's raining!  Glory, hallelujiah, it's raining!  :)  I think I can hear my lemon tree singing, and I'm pretty sure my rose bushes are dancing when I'm not looking right at them.  Everything is SO thirsty.  I love the rain.

My heart needed the life-giving water too.  Had a hard afternoon yesterday, went to visit my grandpa in his nursing home. 

I think I finally figured out why alzheimers hurts so much.  At least with my grandpa, who still recognizes us (mostly, he thought my mom was his girlfriend for a while) it's exactly like dealing with my children when they were babies.  All the love and trust is there in their eyes, but they're confused and hurt because things are happening that they don't understand.

Any mom worth her salt would let a doctor stick a dirty dagger in her foot rather than let them nick her baby's foot for a blood draw.  It's the same thing.  You know they have to be where they are because they need to be there, but they don't get it and it kills you.

Grandpa doesn't understand why he's in a hospital bed.  He's forgotten that he had pneumonia.  He doesn't remember that he's too weak to walk.  He doesn't remember any of... well, anything really.   He looked in my eyes and said, "Don't you think I should be home?" -stab- Of COURSE I'd rather you were home, Grandpa.  Please, go back to the man you were ten years ago!  Everyone would rather you lived in your own home.  Everyone.  Or lived in the assisted living places where you started out - before you couldn't find your way out and tried to rappell off the balcony (once a Marine...) and ended up in lockdown.

He kept saying the same things over and over and it was upsetting him for me to be there, so I faded out of sight.  Sadly (or not?) he, like a baby, forgets what's out of eye-range.  I've watched him do that on happier occasions (my mom breaks him out of the home quite often, one of his recent visits, we were collecting the children to go home and left eyesight, 3 minutes later we were back in eyesight and he said "Hello!" all over again... urk), so this isn't a new deal.

He really seems to expect me to get him out of there.  He has since he went in.  Oh it hurts.  It's the trust, the love.  And I can't do anything about it.  ((pain)).  I'm an only grandchild, the light of his life.  My grandpa personally came over for an inspection tour for EVERY place I ever lived... to make sure his grandbaby was taken care of properly.  (A 30 second inspection tour, and yes, my husband thinks this is charming).

It hurts.  I hope I'm a grownup now, and can just say it and not try to fix it.  It hurts, it's going to go on hurting, and that's the way it is.

But today the rain has come to wash off the dirt off my spirit. 

Today I make another turkey for my hungry family, because they ate all of the first one already.

Today I will potter about and rearrange the decorations and do some badly needed dusting in the living room my husband and I just rearranged/repainted.

Today I will go to church and sing hymns and praise my Heavenly Father and recharge my soul.

Today is a new day, and the rain has come.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Bullet Blog for Thanksgiving

• I have so much to be thankful for!  We can start with my restored relationship with my hubby, then go on to my family, to my friends, to the material provision, to the … well, I can make a very long list.  J
• Thanksgiving and Christmas are the only two days of the year when I peel the potatoes before I boil them for mashed potatoes.  I make very good mashed potatoes, skins or not.
• 5yo’s contribution to this morning, “When you die, Daddy will make us breakfast”.
• I’m not sure if this means she’s secretly tired of chocolate toast or what.
• Alton Brown’s turkey roasting method is the way to go.  Nothing is easier.
• DH *loves* turkey dinner.  I should make it more often.  But it tastes so odd in, say, June.
• Love that my parents took the kids to run on the beach before dinner.  Good appetites, more importantly, less wiggles.
• I run early for pretty near everything.  I always have to call people and tell them to come on over already.
• Dinner was good.  Winner?  I think either the apple tartin or the pecan pie.  My pumpkin pie taught me a lesson – don’t play with the amounts of ingredients, especially not when tired.
• I’m TIRED.  And relaxed.  And ready for a nap!

It's time for another blogroll

I keep finding these excellent blogs and then I keep them (bwahaha) all to myself, which seems unfair, since I get good blogs off of other people's sidebars all the time.  But... no linky sidebars here, so here's my current blogroll:

First off, our own Xangan Anna... the reason I have a xanga account at all.  Anna always has something interesting to say, and she's not afraid of controversy.  http://anna.xanga.com/

Domestic Felicity is how I start my days, Sunday through Thursday.  She's an orthodox Jew living in Israel, and her writing is full of peace and love... and opinions, gently and firmly held.  http://www.ccostello.blogspot.com/

The Nourishing Gourmet always has lovely food, healthy ideas - and she's on a tight budget, so when you cook her food, so are you.  http://www.thenourishinggourmet.com/   This is my favorite food site, excepting maybe the nutrient breakdown site, which is *not* a blog, and is here: http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/legumes-and-legume-products/4327/2

Blogs on hiatus, possibly permanent, but both with excellent writing and good reading links: http://www.makinghome.blogspot.com/ and http://terrysoapbox.blogspot.com/

The link for Candy.  If you don't have it.  LOL.  http://myblessedhome.blogspot.com/

Good regular reading, occasionally very thought-provoking: http://www.generationcedar.com/main/

I very often don't agree with this blogger, but she does THINK - and then say what she thinks.  Very good for popular culture argument.  http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/  And hey, sometimes you want to read someone that gives you someone to argue with in your head while you fold the laundry.  Or maybe that's just me.  :)

Found this blog (through another blog) yesterday and was gob-struck over how she totally hit the nail on the head for me.  If someone could sift through my thoughts, chaotic and illformed as they are, and write them down... well, the few of her blogs that I've read, they're there. http://parunak.com/pursuingtitus2/

I have a few other places that I visit regularly, like my drug-of-choice, antiquedress.com.  And cakewrecks.com.  And whatnot, friends' sites, etc.  But I like these, and hope maybe someone else here enjoys them too.  :)

Happy Thursday!

- hearth