Sabbath, City Thoughts,

I love Sunday, and do you know why?  No, it's not because of church or brunch...it's because Sunday is the one day of the week when my children are allowed to play video games, and they are silent.  It's so silent in my house right now, while we wait for David to finish recording and uploading his sermon.  Then we drive to a nearby church that offers a parking lot service, and we sit in our car and listen.  And afterwards we let the dog run wild in the field.  

Sunday isn't my sabbath day of rest, I'm afraid.  Never has been.  If you work 40+ hours a week and DON'T have a wife at home to do all the home stuff, then you come home and collapse in exhaustion and then the days you do things are Saturday and Sunday.  That's just reality.  It was a bit easier when I was a student, because there were often long gaps in between classes when one could run to the grocery store, or do a load of laundry.  But, of course, now I'm at home with three children and I'm homeschooling them, and going to school myself, and all the other things.  So, no, Sunday isn't restful.  It's a workday - a day when my husband is off to church to work, and a day when I am herding people through reality.  

But that's okay!  While I think the concept of Sabbath is critically important, I also think the idea of everyone sitting silently in a front parlour as a family is incredibly outdated.  The video games give ME a sabbath from listening to people clamour for my attention and services.  Here I am, in silence.  I will take my sabbaths as a dozen little moments of peace throughout the week.

A Whole Bunch Of Things I'm Currently A Little Obsessed With Thinking About Endlessly. As One Does.

Is it true that British children's books are better than American children's books?  Isn't that sentence itself such a huge class indicator?  As if those were your options - British/American.  Imaginative/Moralistic.  Gah.  That article frustrated me.  Golly, I wonder what's better - Peruvian fairy tales or Maori fairy tales.  Let's see if the Atlantic will print that.

I don't need to take this class - but I want to.  AND IT'S THREE POUNDS!!

Here is another class I don't need to take!  But oh...oh I do want to take this class.

Here are some things I do not need to buy...

One of these slow-stitching kits from Wattle and Loop.

Or this tapestry pillow kit.  Which is adorable and would go very well in my livingroom.

I don't need to buy any of these pots for houseplants...

I also do not need to follow this tutorial and attempt to make anything I own look like antique mercury glass.

I don't need this wool blanket.

I do not need everything from this pottery store.  Especially not the little clay stakes for garden herbs.  I def. should not buy those.

I do not need to buy new jigsaw puzzles showing pages from The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady.  Sob.  I don't.

The salvaged plants

As children my sister and I learned quickly that one of the most exciting days of the week was garbage day, because you never knew what treasures would appear on the curbs of our middle-class neighborhood.  If you were especially fortunate, there would be a mostly dead plant.

I say fortunate because my mother loved nursing those dying little green things back to life and she was skilled at it.  We lugged home a potted palm once that remains, in my memory, a giant of a tree; my mother repotted it and it lived very happily for years behind my sister's kitchen chair - the receptacle for all the things she didn't want to eat for supper.

Mom couldn't resist the charm of needy plants, or even potentially needy plants.  Once I discovered a grocery store booklet on a shelf that explained how to grow a luscious indoor jungle out of food scraps and seeds.  At the time, this booklet was utterly captivating and made me think of lemon trees in the house and cucumber vines pinned along the ceiling, dripping fruit.

One does not simply grow out of the joy of sticking bits of your lunch in the dirt!  And this mild insanity much be hereditary since my middle daughter has joined the ranks of the afflicted.  Our windowsill holds three grapefruit trees and my Northern Ontario porch contains an enthusiastic mango tree( all courtesy of my daughter's penchant for making a hole and popping in a seed.

I can't point a finger, though, since alongside those grapefruit trees is an Aleppo pepper, a rosemary bush growing from a grocery store sprig, and a two foot tall avocado, all of which are my fault.  I'm also to blame for the African violet, which I was plant-sitting for a neighbor who said I may as well keep it since she didn't have luck with plants.  (Is there a sentence more likely to rustle the savior complex of the devout plant enthusiast?)  I couldn't let it go home to die, I insisted!

The little, unnamed succulent was salvaged (at $2.99!  What a bargain!) from the sale rack at the grocery store.  Oh, that we could all save a life for such a reasonable price!  The miniature orchid was carried hospital-bound as a gift, but the patient had been released, and the orchid just...never moved on from my shelf.  The spider plant was a cutting, and so was the other spider plant (And the third one, as well.  Shhhhh, hush now; it's fine, everything is fine.)

It spreads outward, this leafy desire of mine, into the garden filled with bulbs plucked from spoil heaps and peonies my father didn't want anymore and sweet peas grown from dried peas handed to me in a Ziploc bag from a friend.  At one point I had lettuce growing in the lawn, which is what happens if you don't pick your lettuce in time and it goes to seed and then you refuse to mow it down.  Lettuce makes such pretty lawn.

I have no logical reason for this.  I can't think why I do it, besides the tiny thrill of joy that comes from one, perfect, new leaf.

Things we've found to occupy ourselves

Let's be honest, school, life...nothing's been going well.  So here are some of the things the children and I HAVE been doing copious amounts of recently!

YouTube/Video Games/Online Comics - Our internet/computer rules are s.t.r.i.c.t.  You can only use a device with permission, Dad or Mom have to know what you're looking at, you must use the device in a room with an adult, you may not hide the screen from view, you may not navigate away from your page...so, you know, the computer isn't a free for all.  But the kids still enjoy stuff!  Here are some of the creators we love:

Mr. Maker - do you remember this guy from ages ago?  He's just the right level of craftiness for the soon-to-be-six year old, but the eight year old is so artistic that she does all of the crafts, too.

Simon's Cat - A funny little cat cartoon for my cat-loving 10yo.  Many of them are 'shorts' of under 10 minutes, but there are a fewer longer full-length cartoons.

Half-Asleep Chris - We like this guy's cat videos as well!  Now, he also has other videos on various topics, and while I can't picture him discussing anything inappropriate I haven't actually watched all of them so, preview if it matters to you.  But he's very family friendly.

Breaking Cat News - a really funny online comic.  Cats are big around here these days.  If you haven't noticed.

Prodigy Math - I've talked about this before!  My children love the online Prodigy Math Game.  It's free to play, although there are upgrades, which we don't bother paying for.  Children are little good wizards who solve math problems to progress through levels and fight bad guys.  There's no gore or unpleasantness at all.

TVOKids.com - Ontario's public broadcasting children's network.  You can play educational games online at a preschool or school age level (Really, nothing above maybe grade 6 level).  There are no ads.

Jacquie Lawson English Garden - If you've liked her e-cards, and you've taken my advice to buy her Advent Calendar, then you might like this game, as well.  She has an interactive English Garden one, and also a Curio Shop one!  Each game slowly unfolds over twelve days, and then is available forever for you to play.  The girls especially enjoy planting gardens and cleaning the greenhouse and what have you.

America's Test Kitchen - Let's Get Cooking.  Very popular DS game with the 8yo mini-chef, let me tell you.  She made maple glazed pork chops for us from the instructions on here.

Puzzles, of course.  At the beginning of quarantine we did essentially every single puzzle in our house.  So we were a little puzzled out.  But we just picked up a new one so I have a feeling we're about to ramp up puzzle time again.

And speaking of puzzles, adult-level paint-by-numbers are a thing!  I thought I wouldn't like them because I couldn't stand adult colouring books but surprisingly I LOVE THEM.  Here's the one I'm doing right now:

They take quite a while, obviously.  But I think the reason I'm enjoying it so much is that unlike colouring pages, these require absolutely no thinking.  I just put the numbered colour in the numbered square.  Sometimes you need mindless.

Various Things that Have Annoyed Me In July So Far.

You know, when I was a kid playing in the sprinkler, the kid pool or the hose was a mainstay of summer outside entertainment.  And I've tried to replicate that with my children but I'm finding it an uphill battle.

First attempt - I bought a slip and slide type plastic thing that attached to a small inflatable pool at the bottom.  A slip and slide, if you aren't familiar with the term, is a water slide that is, essentially, a tarp.  It's a flat, smooth runner of plastic and you put water and possibly soap to add to the slipperiness, and then you run along and slide on it.  Works best on a hill.  I bought a child sized one of these and since we had a small hill beside the house this was perfect for the children to play on and then fly into a little pool of water at the bottom.  Then the house next door at the bottom of the hill sold and now we can't use the hill, and therefore the slip and slide.

Second attempt - I started using a hard plastic kiddie pool.  The children fought constantly about it because, unsurprisingly, they couldn't all sit in it at the same time.

Third attempt - So devoid of the slip and slide with pool option and the hard plastic pool, I bought a sprinkler.  It was a fun one that spurted water in all directions and, I hoped, would possibly also double as watering the grass.  It lasted just over a week before the town instituted a water restriction that means I can only use a sprinkler between the hours of 5 AM and 10 AM on odd numbered days.  This effectively squashed the sprinkler option.

Fourth attempt - I bought an inflatable pool that I could set up on the deck and would fit the children at the current larger sizes they are.  It took an hour to inflate the first of two parts of it, including stopping for breaks to let the air compressor cool off.  And then I accidentally poked two holes in it which necessitated applying puncture patches and waiting 30 minutes for them to cure.  Then I re-inflated the already inflated part I had punctured, and inflated the second part, and it all took a ridiculous time by which point it was past 10 AM so I couldn't actually use the hose anymore to fill the pool.

I just remember standing outside playing with the hose, or running through a sprinkler, so I can't understand why this is so complicated.

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So this past week the children went to day camp, by themselves, for the First Time Ever.  And they had a great time but I have had a week of repetitive stress as all the little things about camp worried me.  And now today is the last day, which is so good because now I can relax a bit knowing they aren't going to get lost in the woods or drown at the beach or discover that they really ARE allergic to bees or any of the other extreme scenarios my mind made up for me to helpfully fuss about for five days.  On the other hand, David and I thought 'the kids should write thank you cards for their counselors'.  And herein lies yet another worry.  Both of the 7yo's counselors have creative names that are spelled with unusually placed letters, and I'm not 100% certain I am spelling them correctly.  And also I told the children they had to compose and print the cards themselves, and their spelling is ATROCIOUS.  What if no one can even READ them?  And also the 7yo expressed displeasure at my Thank You card selection.  I'd just bought a pack at the Christian book store that said 'Thank You' on the front and was brightly coloured but she didn't like the look/Bible verse/something something I don't know, and now I'm stressed about ALL of those things.

What all of this means is I have three horribly printed and spelled cards with mis-spelled names on them in patterns no one likes.  Looks like a real win.

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The other day David turned to me and said 'where are all of the little coloured plastic bowls?' and I had no idea.  Had I thrown them away?  I thought it was possible because I remember thinking I should throw them away since they were several years old and looked it and also I'd like to get a better quality bowl.  But had I actually thrown them away?  I was very stressed about this because I couldn't remember at ALL.  And this was several bowls I'd lost, not just misplacing the sugar bowl in the freezer or putting my keys in a potted plant or something.  And then my mother in law called and asked me if I might have left a bunch of coloured plastic bowls at her house.  So THAT'S where they were!  And let me tell you why this is infuriating.  Before I leave her house I always ALWAYS go all over the house making absolutely certain I haven't left anything behind.  And yet, so often I have left things behind.  A sock disappears, or a stack of plastic bowls, or a box of tea I brought with me and didn't bring home, or a pen, or something.  And it isn't that I begrudge the gods of misplaced things their due, or that I expect perfection from myself or something, but I can't understand how I can look so closely over and over again and not see these things!

Early Summer Nostalgia

Every once in a while I still get caught in the sweeping undertow of nostalgia for the life we (and I) used to have.  I think there's this unfortunate belief that Christians are just constantly happy all the time with wherever they live and, uh, that's not reality.  No, losing my old neighbourhoods and ways of life have been a tangible loss for me; a deep missing that I still feel, although not all the time, but especially in the summer.  It's getting warmer, and the sky is light for longer, and I was not surprised to discover a sense of sadness the other day when I left the children's swimming lessons and drove home.

I was raised in a city, you see.  I loved the city.  I know many people have dreams of leaving the 'urban sprawl' and setting up the little homestead lifestyle, but I did not.  I really enjoyed our holidays in the countryside, but I also really loved my life in the city as well.  When I went to university, it was in another city, and it follows that I met my husband in a city, we were married in a city, and we lived in a city.  Because he had also, you see, been raised in a city.

And let me tell you, cities are great.  They're amazing places.  They have architecture, and hidden neighbourhoods to explore and there are always new things to see and restaurants to try.  And museums!  Boy, I love museums.  And my husband loves movies, which are also great in cities because those city theatres get all the indie films and the niche films and the IMAX films and the documentaries.  You learn so much in a city - there are always lectures to attend or new people to meet and learn from.  And there are nice, big libraries and beautiful parks with things like baseball diamonds that are maintained and also that have TEAMS playing ON them!  And swimming pools! And ethnic grocery stores so you could possibly make a recipe that calls for an unusual ingredient!  Perhaps most of all, cities have choice.  If you don't like that cab company, you try a different cab company.  If you don't like that walking trail, you walk on a different trail.  You never have to say 'this is the only place to buy toothpaste, so if I need to buy toothpaste, I have to do so here.'  In a city, there are probably 200 places to buy toothpaste and half a dozen specialty stores with weird natural toothpaste brands and also at least a few seminars on how to make your own toothpaste and probably a farmer's market to buy it if you don't feel like making it and, and, and.

So that's a long love note to cities right there.  Which may not make sense if you knew me because...I don't live in a city and haven't for about 10 years now.

Shortly after we got married my husband and I moved for his school/work, and we moved from a big, vibrant, cosmopolitan city to...a town of about 4000 people.  It was a huge culture shock for me, let me tell you.  I don't even think I could explain how lost I felt for the first few years we lived there.  If I couldn't buy it at Walmart, it was almost as if it didn't exist for me.  There were three grocery stores in town, a small mall with...I can't even remember the stores, but nothing so exotic as a food court or anything, just a few little stores, and a thrift store, and a Walmart.  There were a couple of diners, and a McDonald's, that sort of thing.  I have trouble bringing up in my mind what stores there were now.  A hardware store?  And I can remember this intense sense of loss; where WAS I?  What was happening here?  Where was...where was LIFE?  It was very grey, especially in the winter, and I felt very little happiness about our surroundings.  At first we lived in an apartment, which was horrible, but eventually managed to move to a house with a backyard.  And about four years in to our stay in that town, which I never got used to by the way, even though everyone said I would, my husband was called to a church.

In a village of approximately 600 people.

Fortunately I could see better now why God had us move to that first town!  Comparatively speaking, going from 4000 to 600 was much easier than going from millions and millions to 4000.  Still, there were some more adjustments.  Now there was only one small grocery store.  There was a smaller, small town library.  There wasn't a hospital anymore, or a dentist or a vet in town.  Everything now required a drive.  I joked for a while that the next place he would bring me would be, like, three houses on a stretch of highway.

We have lived in this village for almost six years now, and in some ways it HAS gotten easier, or at least more familiar, but never comfortable.  After ten years away from the city you would think I would be thoroughly 'countrified', but I am most assuredly not.  I haven't embraced snowmobiling or owning a large dog or clothing in a camouflaged pattern.  I miss the city intensely, but at the same time I have had a few opportunities to be in large cities over the past few years, and I find them overwhelming in so many ways.  I'm not used to the press of a hundred people in a subway car anymore.  I'm not used to the huge amount of grime on everything, and the panhandlers, and the endless garbage and the TRAFFIC.  When I leave, it's with this frustrated sadness now because the city life I love is almost closed to me - I can't belong there because I've been away too long, and I can't belong here because my heart has always stayed in this semi-mythical past city that doesn't exist anymore.  

What sometimes hits me is realizing that my children are country children.  They've never lived in a city.  They haven't had the childhood I had, which I've also mythologized as some sort of Childhood Idyll.  My children say things like "Look at all the deer!" on the way to the grocery store.  And I can't stand when people tell me how 'lucky' we are to live here, even though I also say that to people, but I take it from others to mean "how lucky you are to live here, as opposed to in that terrible, horrible urban wasteland." And I wonder to myself if they have even lived in a city.  If they've seen what fireworks on Canada Day look like when they are put on in a big, impressive, thirty-minute, non stop display.  Or what it's like to order in a restaurant where the entire menu is in another language.  Or if they've gone exploring and found something new every single time, even in their own neighbourhood.  How can that be the terrible, horrible city?  When I say how lucky we are to live here, I mean 'How fortunate, that this place we live in, is such a clean, nice place to live', but I don't mean 'This is my favourite place.  This is the place I would be, if I could be anywhere.'

Toilet Gratitude. Worst Title Ever.

At the risk of sounding like the sort of person you would literally cross the room to avoid at a party, here is something weird that happened to me this week.  And it involves a toilet.

This was a hard week for me.  There was a lot going on and I was worried a lot and I got a lot done but at the expense of sleep and sanity.  A few times I found myself thinking that there was just all too much stuff happening, I couldn't do even one more thing.  I couldn't think what to make for supper; how could anyone possibly expect supper from me in this crazy season?  What sort of insanity was this, that required the feeding of people multiple times per day?  What was God thinking when He invented such a time intensive nutrient delivery plan?

The phone would ring and I would think "Ack!  I can't get that!  I can't help that person!  I can't even find the phone!  I'm drowning!  I'm drowning!"  The smallest things were deeply, deeply infuriating to me, as they often are when I'm overwhelmed and stressed to the limit of my endurance.  The ice on the step outside wouldn't budge, and it haunted me.  I found myself doing other things thinking about that ice.  And yet, the getting of the shovel and the going over to angrily chip away at it seemed just completely beyond my capabilities.  Yes, much better to sit here and think about it.

This brings me to Wednesday.  On Wednesday I woke up early and went with another volunteer to paint the church bathroom.  At the same time I had all the children set up at separate tables doing their schoolwork.  And I was trying to stir the paint and it wouldn't stir.  And I was trying to get the cd player to work and it wouldn't work.  And I was trying to get the six year to Just. Write. The. Sentence. Down. in her spelling book.  And my husband was off at a doctor's appointment and then he was back to work at the kitchen table and then I was bringing the children back home and washing out paint brushes and trying to find lunch for everyone and then my husband had a video chat meeting which meant I had to take the children to the library for two hours and there was a lot of shushing.  And I left the expensive pork roast out after lunch and it was on the counter for a few hours before I remembered and I had to throw it out and I felt terrible and it was cold outside and that felt like a personal affront and I went to my 2:30 meeting forgetting the coffee shop we were meeting at was closed and and and...

When I finally caught up with my Wednesday meeting and we found ourselves another (open) coffee shop and settled in, I was hoping to feel that sense of vacation that sometimes happens when you sit down with a friend.  I had a worrisome doctor's appointment the next day, I had many miles to go before I slept, and frankly I wanted this break.  I wanted to feel that loosening of all the little knots in my brain that had tightened up over the past few days.  And to some extent I did, but I couldn't shake the anxiety and the weight of it all.  The too-muchness of a long, long week only halfway over.  

Some people thrive on this stuff.  I am not one of those people.  I like to do things and keep busy but I'm a creature of the shady, quiet places of the world, and not the hustle.  This is not my country; these are not my people.

At one point I excused myself to visit the ladies' room and I noticed in passing how new looking the toilet was for such a down country type establishment as the one we were frequenting.  And suddenly those little knots let go, and I felt that restful relief I had been seeking for several days.  What a nice toilet that was.  I'm so fortunate to be here, in this restroom.  It's so peaceful and the light is streaming in the window up there.  It's quiet - quiet for the first time in days.  And no one needs me right this moment and no one expects me to leave this room for at least another few minutes.  And frankly if you're going to have a moment of peaceful thankfulness I suppose there's weirder places to have it than in a clean, relatively nice smelling washroom.  Maybe.  

There's no blissful, fairy-tale ending to this story just like there isn't one in the real world.  I went back out and talked to my friend.  I finished my coffee and went to the grocery store and then home.  I went inside and handled making supper and cleaning up the detritus of the day and then shepherding all the children through showers and a game of Monopoly Deal and bedtime stories and medicine and, and, and.  The peace of the diner restroom did not stay with me; it was not a little quiet spot I could peer into when I was anxious in the evening and find rest there.  That's sometimes how those little glimpses work; that's sometimes how thankfulness helps form our everydays, but it isn't always, and it wasn't this time.

But that's not really the point, and it's one of the things so often missed by the proponents of 'counting your blessings'.  The blessing was that it happened at all, not that it stayed with me and gave me all the wonderful feelings.  The wonderful feelings are transient and unpredictable but the reality of that quiet restroom was real, a brief respite from it all, and it changed me whether I get to keep the emotional lift or not.

Cleaning House - Schedules That Don't Work For Me, Things To Whine About, A Few Ideas That Have Worked.

Authentic image of someone who cares much more about ironing than I ever have, or will.

I'm at home all day with my three children, but I'm teaching, or reading, gardening, making stuff or cooking something.  Activities I enjoy doing, for the most part.  The part of staying home I'm not that fussy about is keeping my house clean and tidy.

I don't want to do it, but I like it having been done.

Also, I find that a clean, organized house is actually much easier to live in.  I know where everything is, for real, not like in my messy house when I SAY I know where everything is but who knows if I really do.  Also those things are much easier to access.  I can very easily walk over to the shelf with the book I need instead of plowing through a pile of Lego, moving a chair, shuffling a bunch of papers around, and THEN getting the book off the shelf.

I have tried a lot of ideas to keep the housework from getting me down, and for the most part none of them have really worked.  Partly this is because I can't commit to an actual system for more than a few days/weeks since my life isn't structured around housework.  Any schedule that says 'On Monday clean the bathroom' assumes that every Monday I'm waking up to a clean slate of time that begs to be filled with bathroom cleaning.  Some Mondays, sure, I clean the bathroom.  Some Mondays I have three dentist appointments scheduled in a row and our library books are overdue and I need to hit the grocery store and my husband is going out of town the next day.  I'm easily confused by these life events - what am I supposed to do?  Wake up at 5am to clean the bathroom?  Delay making supper to clean the bathroom?  Ask my eight year old to clean the bathroom?  

So cleaning schedules don't work for me.  Every day is just too different.  The only way I could guarantee to get any scheduled task done, I realized, is if it was so very small that it could be fit into any day.  Like 'make your bed'.  I could find time to make the bed every day even if the rest of the day was packed to the gills.  And that's great but it doesn't clean the bathroom, or mop the floor, or any of the other things.

The other problem is that housecleaning isn't something I enjoy, and it isn't something I prioritize. 

If I happen to have 30 minutes to myself I'm likely not going to fill it with sweeping.

Anyway, with that long, whiny explanation over, I have collected some ideas that DO work for me.  Mostly.  Somewhat.

1) No Unfilled Time.

A Youtube cleaning video taught me the idea of 'No Unfilled Time'.  You fill the little free moments of waiting (for a kettle to boil, a cup of tea to steep, an oven to preheat, the washer to finish the last 3 minutes of the cycle, someone to take you off hold on the phone, a child to find their other shoe...) with some task in your immediate vicinity.  Straighten the shelf of books beside you, wipe the counters, etc.  I keep reminding myself of this and when I implement it regularly it makes a difference.

2) Trash First.  

One blog I used to read a lot suggested the idea of doing a first sweep through any area to be cleaned with a trash bag in hand.  I do this all the time.  Even if I'm absolutely certain I have nothing to throw out I always, ALWAYS have something to throw out.  The old teabag sitting on a plate, a child's crumpled tissue... a broken crayon...what is that on the floor?  Toss. Toss. Toss.

3) Clean As You Cook.

My father liked to say that you should clean as you cook.  I try to do this. I've sauteed the onions and now, rather than moving immediately to the next thing, I wash the saute pan.  Takes a minute.  One less pan after supper to wash.  Cough.  Like I'm washing the dishes right after supper.  Cough.

4) Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.  

A Clorox wipe over the toilet and a squirt of shampoo in the toilet bowl, swish, scrub, flush.  Done.  You know what that's better than?  It's better than nothing.

5) Use one tool for as much as humanly possible.  

One cleaning product, preferably in a spray bottle, to clean as much as you can.  One vacuum to do the rug in the livingroom, to run over the shelves as 'dusting', to vacuum up things around the edge of the kitchen, to run over the sofa cushions.  Just one.  Complexity will make me throw my hands up in the air.

I've stretched this to other areas as well when decision making fatigue has taken over in my life.  One meal plan (Cook meat in the oven, defrost a frozen vegetable in the microwave, serve store-bought, seedy whole wheat bread.  Every evening meal.  Until the stress goes away.)  I buy one kind of bread, one kind of milk, one kind of snack, one kind of apple.  If I can manage the decisions, then that week you'll get the fancy mangoes and the weird leafy green we're going to try for the first time.  If I can't, you get what you get and you don't get upset.

6) Figure out the blockage.  

There is always a point in a chore where you hit a wall, and although you may not have thought about why that wall exists, it's there for a reason.  This was the case for me and laundry.  I was happy as a clam to toss a load in the washing machine, switch it to the dryer, and then put it in a basket.  But that's where my blockage was - I simply couldn't seem to manage to fold and put away the clothes.  I tried folding from the dryer, and that drove me crazy and just moved the blockage earlier into taking things out of the dryer.  Now laundry got backed up earlier in the system.  I tried getting the kids to sort the clean laundry into piles for me so at least I didn't have to sort, but that didn't work either.  Trust me when I say I tried all the techniques I could find to just get myself to FOLD THE LAUNDRY AND PUT IT AWAY WITHOUT A GIANT FUSS.  And they didn't work.

You know what worked?  Figuring out why the blockage was there.  What specifically did I detest about sorting, folding, and putting the clothes away?  It was the process.  I didn't like all the bits and pieces of the process.  I found it all very frustrating and overwhelming and annoying and I delayed having to do it because of that.  So I thought "how can I remove the whole blockage from the laundry system?"  And I realized if I sorted the clothing before I even washed it, according to type, then the end product would require zero decision power.  Now I wash according to the following groups:

Stuff for the boy
Stuff for the girls that gets hung up
Stuff for the girls that doesn't get hung up
Stuff for the parents that gets hung up
Stuff for the parents that doesn't get hung up
Sheets and bedding according to the bed
Kitchen
Cleaning rags
Other categories as necessary

I don't sort according to colour or fabric.  I don't wait to have a full load.  These things are sacrifices because I would prefer to do them but I have to remind myself of  #4 - Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.  Better to wash this 1/4 load worth of kitchen towels and dishcloths than wait until I have a full load but no towels and am all stressed out.  Do it imperfectly, but at least do it.

7) Something In Every Room.

When I leave a room, or enter a room, I try to do one small thing.  I don't want to have my hands empty as I walk.  If I'm going into the bathroom, I'll take the thirty seconds to tie up the bathroom trash and carry it with me to the kitchen when I leave the room.  Now I'm in the kitchen and I can put that cup into the sink from off the table.  And as I head back into the living room where I was to start with, I can put the dvd into it's case and tuck it in the cupboard before sitting down to hear lessons.  I was going into the rooms anyway, and three more little things got done.

8)  Keep A Spot For Donations.

I keep a cardboard box on top of my chest freezer and throughout the day I put things there as I find them to donate.  It's a box I will also donate, so I don't have to worry about changing out the container when it's time for it to go.  Also it is not too big, or bulky, just a plain cardboard box.  I only put in items that are already clean and ready to go so that there isn't another layer of 'I have to remember to wash those hats first and make sure the books don't have bookmarks still in them before I send off the box."  When the box is full, I put it in the car.  And put out another box.  Books and media to the public library donations spot, clothing and household goods to the thrift store.  Period.  No deviations from the system.

9)  I Am Not Responsible For The Emotional Well Being Of My Things.

Continuing from #8 - my stuff is stuff.  I look at the options for how to get it out of my life, I pick a good choice, I stop thinking about it.  Again, #4 - Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good!  Maybe there is a needier charity, a more environmentally conscious recycler, a generally worthier place to give my things.  Maybe.  But I have made a choice, and I don't spend MORE valuable time and energy researching better choices.  The thrift store I donate to is not a charity, it's a business.  They are going to sell my used stuff to customers.  But it's better than the landfill, it's right on the route to a lot of my shopping, and they'll give me a 20% off coupon if I donate a box of things.  Decision made.  No more thinking.

10)  Find A Way To Include Others That Isn't Horribly Dull

My suggestion here is the powerful weapon of The 10-Minute Tidy.  Gather the peoples.  Explain that for 10 minutes we will race around as fast as possible and clean up.  When the timer goes off we will stop.  It helps to give newbies to this process a few hints and ideas of what they might do so you don't end up with someone playing with dolls and whining "I don't knoooooow what to dooooooo!"  Then set the stove timer and work as fast as you can.  Upbeat music helps.  Lots of yelling and shrieking and encouragement helps.  Frantic, comical running around like a crazy person helps.  There are five people in this house and that equals 50 minutes worth of high energy tidying.  If everyone is focused it's enough to tidy my whole house.

Image of ironing lady is from here.

What is there left to eat?

Since all I seem to be talking about is food now, here's a more practical post that continues what I said about going back to eating a healthier diet, and why food isn't good or bad.  I guess that leaves the question of what exactly we're eating!  Well, I should preface by saying that I am not dealing with any food allergies or sensitivities, and a very short list of things people absolutely won't eat.  Really, almost nothing is on that list.  I wish I could take credit for that, but I've always been an adventurous eater so maybe it's genetic?  I know lots of parents struggle with picky eaters and I'm fortunate that I don't have to.

Now, I mean, everyone has preferences.  If I served the children a big ole' plate of canned beans they would be less than pleased and it might take a lot of ketchup to get them down.  They also don't love stuff like liver, or raw onions, or anything really spicy.  But to be honest neither do I so it isn't really an issue - I don't make these things because I don't like them!

So here's what we eat!  At breakfast we have eggs, fruit, cereal, sometimes meat, occasionally porridge.  I don't make pancakes and such anymore because I don't have the time or the space.  Every once in a while I'll do a big, fried breakfast with eggs and bacon and sliced tomatoes, or home fries.  Not often these days.

For lunch we almost always have leftovers from the previous night's supper, or else we have a simple soup and bread or salad type meal.  Sometimes I will make a prepared food type meal, like a frozen pizza, or a box of macaroni and cheese, or something like that.

For supper we eat a lot of one-dish meals - either cooked as a casserole type dish or in the slow cooker.  We eat chicken and pork most frequently, sometimes beef if it is ground meat or occasionally beef in another form, like a brisket, and a few times a year I buy a turkey to roast.  I also make an effort to serve fish once a week, although often it is in the form of tuna salad at lunch, or fish sticks for a fast meal before a church event.  We eat pasta and rice very infrequently, usually our starch of choice is potatoes - white and sweet, and sometimes plantains, cornbread, polenta, etc.

The sorts of meals we eat at supper would be things like - chopped root vegetables roasted with chicken pieces, a sausage and potato bake with a fresh salad, something made with spaghetti squash, ground beef, a tomato based sauce (home made or more likely a jarred sauce that has been added to) and cheese, a big salad type meal with lots of vegetables, hard boiled eggs, leftover diced meat, etc., a platter of different meats and cheeses with a loaf of bread and some home made pickled vegetables, a lentil or bean dish with bread, etc.  We don't eat a lot of legumes, but they are there, usually in another dish like chili or cooked slowly with a smoked turkey leg.

It's all pretty simple.

Spring Thoughts, Better Eating

Two weeks ago I wrote that spring was here, and then winter thumbed her bitter nose at me and there were two more weeks of cold, including snow and full on storms and awfulness.  Now, a better and more nervous person than I previously was, I'm going to say it again.  Spring is here.

*ducks*

It's chilly, but sunny, and it warms up enough in the afternoon that I can hang laundry and send the children outside and the snow is leaving us very quickly.  Plus all the other non-weather springish signs are appearing.  The red squirrels are chasing each other around and around the pine trees at the end of the street, the sandhill cranes are making an ungodly racket down by the lake...

Now that it's warmer I feel more inclined to work on being frugal and healthy again.  There's something about winter that just makes you (me) want to curl up in a ball with a warm cat on me and eat all of the food, so the warmth is definitely helping me to get away from that and back into the swing of projects.  I'm reintroducing a lot of the whole foods oriented cooking methods I used to use as a matter of course, before my husband became incredibly focused on school and our lives got a lot busier with the church.  If you have been reading my blog since the beginning you will remember that I used to make everything that could be made.  I would make bone broth weekly and soak grains and make yogurt and bake breads...I did it all.  Somehow a lot of that stopped in the past few years and I don't think there's one specific reason why - lots of things contributed.  Adding a third child to our family, working full time in ministry, all the school, a new town without a lot of connections and without a farmer's market in town, lots of elements changed our eating style.  And I'm a big proponent of Doing What You Gotta Do - no judgement here if you eat frozen lasagna every day and use disposable diapers and take antibiotics monthly.  You do what you gotta do.  And certainly this past few years we have done what we had to do to make it work with three little children and the lifestyle we found ourselves living.

But I'd be foolish not to say I missed it, because I did.  I missed the work sessions in the kitchen, making lots of healthy real food and finding ways to trim the budget and learning new recipes.  I missed the research, with friends and family and books.  I missed talking to like minded people about what we were all doing to improve our health and our knowledge.  I loved that area of life; I've always loved food and keeping house, and I wanted to be GOOD at it and I was good at it.  I was really good for a while, and then I wasn't so much anymore and I'm okay with that - seasons of life and all - but I'm excited to get back into it.

Last night I made apple, pear, cranberry sauce with cinnamon in the slow cooker, set two big jars of sliced beets to lacto-ferment on the counter into pickles, roasted another tray of beets, made a jug of iced pomegranate green tea and started an experimental batch of a lentil and barley meat replacement to extend some ground beef.  It was soothing, puttering around in my kitchen, doing the sorts of daily tasks that used to make up such a large portion of my days - it was like lapsing back into your mother tongue.

I don't want to make elaborate plans on what to do because I don't want to be disappointed if things don't move as smoothly as I'd like them to but I feel optimistic.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go make some bread.

All places are the same

I've lived in four different towns or cities in the past eight years.  Some of them were a few hundred souls, some a few thousand and some a few million.  Tiny places, big places.  I've lived in a place with one, small grocery store with expensive food to shop at and I've lived somewhere where the food of the world was at your fingertips.  I've lived in a one bedroom apartment, a two story house, a bungalow.  And I was thinking about the future yesterday - where we might live in the future - would we ever live in a big city again?  I grew up in a city, would my children have that kind of childhood?  Or maybe we'd live on a farm, plants gardens, raise sheep (I like sheep, I'd be up for raising sheep...maybe not forever, but at least for a season of life) and be pastoral and quiet.  Will we have the opportunity to downsize all of our possessions and move into an apartment without a garden again, a high rise, like friends of mine are doing right now with their four children?

It's all just wondering of course - we have a ministry here, and a home (a nice home, one of the nicer we've had) and it's normal for people to wonder about the future.  But what really struck me wasn't the wondering, which is just for fun, what struck me was that all of these places have become the same.

When you live in one place for a long time, or in your childhood home or city, you feel as though it is the entire world.  And when you move from there then the next place you live, it seems like a foreign country.  Where is the grocery store, you wonder?  What, I have to pay to do laundry?  And everything, from the most mundane to the exotic, is exotic.  It's the first time you really come face to face with the daily lives of other people and try to live like them.  But as you continue to move around the fear leaves and the moves take on a different feeling.  There's a sense of confidence in your ability to navigate the world.  When you absorb the information that you'll be moving again, be it a few hours or a few days drive away, you calmly pull out the mental information What To Do When You Move, and you're off.

I can pack our house with my eyes closed.  I know which packing containers work best, what to write on a box label so you aren't crying in the new kitchen that first morning and sending your husband out to find 'any caffeine at all'.  I am confident in my ability to make a meal for five people that doesn't use a fridge or a stove or almost any kitchen tools.  I know who to ask if there is anything for the children to do in town, I have 'rules for choosing a restaurant', in short, I'm a good mover at this stage.

And the places we move don't scare me anymore.  There's still a rush of adrenaline when you walk out of the bedroom looking for the bathroom and it all comes back to you, don't get me wrong, but it passes quickly now.  I don't really concern myself much with 'fitting in', because I know it will happen.  I enjoy that first walk in the new neighbourhood - looking around, seeing what there is to see.  Oh look, there's the grocery store!  Let's take a peek inside to see what we've got to work with.

The places we have lived aren't actually all the same, of course.  There's a lot of local flavour and plenty of differences.  And I have preferences, obviously, because everyone does.  I don't like taking my laundry to the laundromat for example, and I would rather have an outdoor space, but I'm flexible and I can make anywhere a home.  What makes me happy at this season of life is that I can adapt, that the adventure of moving is an adventure and not a burden.  Going to a new place is something to look forward to and enjoy.

The Busy Parent's Guide To Bringing Up A Child In The Lord

I wanted to call this The Lazy Person's Guide, but then I got real with myself and admitted that I'm not lazy.  Overwhelmed?  Occasionally, yes.  Tired?  Sure, who isn't.  But mostly just busy.  Busy all the time.  There are probably a dozen things I should be doing right now instead of blogging and those dozen things will get done after I finish here and before I start the NEXT dozen things on the list - the list that never goes away, never ends, never even seems to shorten some days.  (That list, by the way, is called life.  I always thought other people just got their lists done - now I realize no one is done.  Just one giant cosmic hamster wheel.)

Anyway, you get the point.  But I'm also a Christian and our family is raising children and this brings up the issue of what to do in order to, as some people phrase it, 'bring up a child in the Lord'.  To train them in the Christian faith, to school them in what it all means, to rid them of false ideas they pick up like a boat picks up seaweed and replace that nonsense with truth - how can I do that, being, as I am, so busy?

Well, obviously the first step is to WANT to do it.  To prioritize doing such a thing, which we do.  If I have time to read one story and I have a choice between two books, I will try to choose the one that will start a Godly conversation, or has a good moral to it over the latest Barbie Princess whatever.  If I have some time alone with a child, say on a walk, I will turn the conversation towards God.  If someone hits someone else, I'll use the opportunity to bring up how we treat each other.  It's all about catching your chances to bring faith into the everyday.

But what else can someone do?  Well, we started by introducing grace at supper, and have progressed to grace before any meal.  It isn't always heartfelt, but it is said.  We pray before bed, as well, and I try to make certain that that time we go a little more in depth.  How?  Well, I ask a lot of questions.  'Is there any person you want to pray for?  Is there anything on your mind?  What about so-and-so - since they are sick.'  The questions are meant to be a starting off point for thinking outside of ourselves.

I also make sure the children see and hear me pray.  I know this is a challenge for a lot of people, and praying out loud was for me as well, for many years.  In fact I still don't like it.  But I do it, and I have gotten more comfortable at it.  I pray aloud for them at bedtime, listing good things they have done and thanking God for those pleasant and loving aspects of their spirits, and then asking for Christ's help in improving those areas that could use improvement.  I also pray for myself in their presence - that I would be patient and loving and kind.

Beyond those rather obvious ideas, my main technique is to constantly surround them with as much Christian good influence as I can.  Not all Christian influence is good, but I pick and choose and do my best.  We listen to Christian music in the car while we're driving, and I sing along.  We buy cds for when we aren't anywhere near a radio station (we live in the middle of nowhere).  We listen to Christian music at home as well, but it's more of a car thing for me; at home I prefer to put on the classical station.  If they ask for a movie or a show I will offer something with good morals first.  Not that they watch anything not good as a rule but instead of a junky cartoon, for example.  To this end we've bought a lot of Christian children's shows and older shows.  We love The Andy Griffith Show.  I buy them books and stickerbooks with a Christian theme.  Not all the time, but often.

We also try to talk a lot about our faith throughout the day.  "Daddy's at the church!  What's Daddy's job?"  "Do you remember when we read this passage in church?  What did it mean?"  Or if a child brings up the topic (which happens a lot) "Oh that's interesting!  Let's look in the Bible and see what it says."

So there you go.  Since the children are homeschooled I probably *should* do some sort of more formal Bible study program, but as I said - busy.  Too busy to teach the Bible, just to live it.

Let me know what you do.

Purging!

I woke up early this morning, way too early (thank you, small people in my life, for ensuring I never miss a sunrise) but I tried to make the best of it by purging some of the children's clothes.  A big pile gone now, mostly of baby stuff.  Clothing in this house has a tendency to get a stain and then continue to rotate through the wash-dry-put away cycle over and over again.  Anyway, a bit less of all of that after this morning.  And then since I was on a role, and up anyway, I re-organized the homeschool cupboard as well.  All the workbooks that were being stored in other places are nice and neat and in the cupboard.  I've started a list of Things I Will Need For September, but you can probably guess that I'm a fairly minimalist homeschooler.  The list will be small.

And hey, since we're purging, why not feed everyone the collection of leftovers!

week alone

So the week before last my husband had to head off to New York state to do course work towards ordination, and it was a hard slog for us at home.  A five year old, a three year old, a one year old, and little ole' me.  Needless to say, home schooling took a bit of a back burner for the week.  We did read some of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and a fantastic little book called Maybe Later and we did some art study, which we're all LOVING.  Here's how we do it:  I have a big coffee table book of full colour works of art and a little bit of info about the artist.  We pick one and then the children work with watercolours to reproduce it while we talk about it.  We might discuss what different colours there are, or aspects of the picture or what it depicts.  I bought good quality brushes at the beginning of the school year, and lovely art books and I don't regret it, but I stuck with just your basic set of children's watercolours and that has also worked well.  When we're done this set I might upgrade us to the set with more colour options but I don't think I'm going to worry about getting a better brand.  Sometimes while we work we listen to music - this is when I like to play a piece of classical music that they otherwise wouldn't sit and listen to.  Again, I'm thinking next year I might combine seatwork with an audiobook such as Story of the World.  Lots of options here.

I don't remember if I mentioned that we have backed off of intentional reading practice with the boy.  He's clearly ready for something, but I just would feel so much better if he had a completely firm grasp of the alphabet first.  And surprisingly enough as soon as we stopped working on it suddenly he's progressed wonderfully.  Ah, the relaxed approach.

We also hung up our wall map that we just got and spent a lot of time looking at it.

Anyway, the week was long and the weather was not very good so we were stuck inside a lot.  I had borrowed or bought a whole bunch of movies for the children because I was anticipating needing some help but we discovered that the boy is really sensitive right now.  Practically every movie was too scary or too sad so we ended up just watching the Andy Griffith show.

And when daddy came home there was great excitement.

Fall Nonsense

It's been very cold in the mornings here the past week or so.  I like to keep the thermostat set very low all the time, but first thing in the morning I get up and turn the heat up to luxurious, extravagant heights - soccer team and organic food heights, and then I sit around in my pajamas and feel the air temperature rise up to what I imagine other people's houses feel like.  This only really works if I get up before everyone else does which fortunately hasn't been much of a problem lately because I've been up before five most days.  Was it Simcha Fisher who wrote the 'early morning worries' post?  The one about lying in bed thinking "Oh Lord, there's so much rhubarb".  Hahaha.  Yes.  Oh, Lord, there is indeed flowing from your merciful hands a wealth of rhubarb.  Please reign in the rhubarb slightly.  Sincerely, your humble servant.

Anyway, I apparently also wrote a post about this, looking back, although I can't find it.

We're in the thick of fall insanity over here - especially in regards to David going to school.  He's off to New York State soon to do some courses towards ordination and then back and then two more via a distance program and then a bit of a break and then two more through the same program, another through a different program, and then rounding of the school year with the final two in Michigan State.  New York State is first, though - I have to get through that without dying.  I deeply, deeply dislike the times I solo parent.

We're about halfway through running the Alpha program at the church, and I have stepped away from Bible study because the children are attending Awana on the same night, so we're pretty busy.  Once Alpha is done, the first rush of courses should also be done, and it will be Christmas.  Mustn't let the stress overtake the season of Advent, I tell myself, heaping yet more pressure on my head.  Mustn't flail about.

Coming home

Gah!  Time flew away from me again and I lost the momentum on my couple-times-a-week posting schedule.  Back on the horse.

My mother has been staying with us for the past several days because David went out of town for school.  You'll remember from the endless ministry updates that I used to do (and don't anymore because there's almost nothing to update once you actually ARE a minister) that David is working on finishing all the courses he needs for ordination.  This past week he went to complete two of them that were being offered about 12 hours away and he arrives home today, which is terribly exciting news for me because even with mom here parenting solo is hard work.

Stress

It's been a challenge here in the last week - the children are shrieking and fighting when they're not making huge messes (I'm looking at the mop water all over my kitchen floor right now) and refusing to sleep or eat.  "It's a stage, it's a stage, it's a stage" is my constant mental refrain.  When I feel angry and overwhelmed, as I do a lot right now, I have a tendency to micro-manage, which I am doing my utmost to control.  I like to channel this desire into massive cleaning and purging sprees, as though by organizing my outside environment I will somehow also organize my interior environment and wake to a blissful, peaceful, FUNCTIONAL reality.

This likely explains why I just rearranged the livingroom furniture.

But this is also the time when I download, or brain dump, onto a piece of unlucky paper and begin another Big List.  You'll remember the last one, which was only a few months ago I think.  Let me check...ah, here it is.  Actually, it was two months ago; that sounds about right.  When I mentioned the last Big List, it was because I had fallen behind on Things That Needed Doing.  Lots of little chores, and some big ones, and lots of multi-step (have to call this person before that person and simultaneously do this thing and THEN I can do that thing...) tasks.  This is one way in which I utilize the Big List.  The other way is what I tend to refer to as a Family Re-Evaluation, which is what I'm doing right now.

A Family Re-Evaluation isn't always accompanied by a list, although pretty much everything in my life has a list attached to it in some way so likely if I'm in charge, there's going to be categorizing going on somewhere.  No, the Re-Evaluation is generally when everything is Not Working.  In this case bedrooms are not working, bedtimes are not working, meals are not working, the car seat situation (again with the little car chairs, Lord) is still, STILL not working, the car in general is not working, life isn't working.  It isn't working.

Sigh.  ANYway, it's a stage, it's a stage, it's a stage.  And I don't live in a bubble.  Although like the main character in Mom's Night Out I think I would also find a white bare room to be relaxing.  But that is not going to happen so onward and upward.

Thinking About Previously Important Things

I became a mother 5 years ago, and about 6 months after that I started this blog where I have journaled (more or less) what life has been like for us.  Since I started I've had two more children, moved twice, once across provinces, and my husband has realized his dream of becoming a minister.  It's not surprising, then, that my interests have changed.  I used to blog a lot about the topics that most interested or affected me in early parenthood - there's a post on my indignation at the public health nurse who was upset that my one year old didn't like solids, there are a whole series of posts on my opinion on the trend of treating cloth diapers as precious, delicate items.  I have posts on how to be frugal and books to read on keeping house that I found helpful and so on.

My life has changed a lot in four and a half years.  I was thinking about this the other day when I was doing diaper laundry.  It used to be that when I saw a friend discuss their diaper wash routine I felt compelled to jump in, and that feeling isn't there anymore.  I don't really care about someone's laundry detergent choices!  Or if you use plastic or glass storage in the kitchen, or even, to some extent, if you breast or bottle feed your baby.  In some cases, like with breastfeeding, I'm confident with my choice and don't really have any desire to talk to you about your choice, and in some cases, like cloth diapers, I just don't feel the passion anymore.  I use them, but I don't have any attachment to my choice.

I'm not sure, actually, that I have any mothering or domestic passions now in the same way that I had then.  A part of me is sad about this - when I felt really strongly about something I think it gave me an anchor, and now I'm just living.  Sure, there are topics that come up from time to time that spark my interest; I'm thinking meal planning, homeschool curriculum choices, crochet, making preserves in the kitchen, decluttering and organizing....but it's rare that I feel passion and deep deep interest in any of these topics.  They're just a part of life and spice in the routine.

Is this normal, I ask myself?  And I think it is.  I'm a big fan of the concept of 'seasons' in life (right along with the Bible) and this is a season.  It's a less exciting season in some ways, but it's also just as wonderful in other ways.  I'm not obsessed with eco-friendly cleaners at the moment, but I'm also present with my children and my life and I'm living through these days in the best way I can and that's also worthy and important.  I think, actually, that this is life, and what it should look like - a gentle interest in those around us and the topics that affect our lives.

This week...

It's been a housekeeping sort of week.  Yesterday I caught up on the laundry, and today I tackled cleaning out Lillian's dresser drawer.  I realize that doesn't sound like a big job, but it really is for me, and I was talking to a friend today and trying to figure out why that is.  Here's what I've decided:

I can't throw things away.

Revolutionary, I know.  :-)

Why is this?  I think it's a combination of the old 'it still has use in it and I can't *waste* something that is still in the category of perfectly good' and 'I have an emotional attachment to this item because my child wore it'.  Whatever it is, I have trouble getting rid of clothes.  So today I worked on L's clothes and passing along the ones that were too small, disposing of the clothes that were too stained, and packing up the rest.  Now, on to the rest of the clothes....

This afternoon I made ginger rhubarb jam, which is just one of my absolute favourite preserves.  And again, I think I make jam because I can't bear to waste all the rhubarb!  Clearly this frugality thing is deep in my bones.

Soap, foggy days, book rethinking

So I made soap yesterday and I didn't die or horrifically burn myself or anything.  It all went smoothly and I am the proud possessor of about a dozen bars of oatmeal bath soap that I can start using in about 4 weeks.  It was fun!  Alright, it was a little stressful but overall it was fun, and informative, and my arm is sore from whisking and whisking to get the mixture to 'trace'.  See, I'm already using the lingo - sure sign of a professional there.

Today was supposed to be sunny and unseasonably warm, but instead it was foggy and cool from yesterday evening all the way until noon today, which kind of ruined our plans - I had big thoughts of putting on the sprinkler and breaking out the popsicles - instead we have been stuck inside all day, tired, crabby, chilly.  Now that the sun is out maybe we can go outside and play.

I gave Ramona the Pest a good shot, but the children aren't feeling it.  I'm not sure if it's just a bit too far out of their realm of experience for them to enjoy it, or if it's simply not their cup of tea right now, but we've had no luck getting any interest in the book.  So I closed it up and tried Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (which I know is so much older) but the language wasn't doing it for them.  It's a challenge.  I've taken Gooseberry Park by Cynthia Rylant out of the library and I think it might have just the right mix of gentle adventure, short, simple story and nothing too old or too young.  We read two chapters aloud today while sitting under the lilac bushes outside.

While David is working, we're puttering around.  I managed to get two good sized mason jars of homemade chicken broth in the fridge, and the small stock pot is on a back burner and full of beef bones and a little lemon juice.  I have no idea if this works, but I always add a little acid to my broth as it cooks to help leach out the calcium.

I'm grateful that yesterday I had the foresight to make a double batch of spaghetti sauce, which we will eat with garlic bread and a lot of cheese before we all hit the hay early.  This spring cold has worn out its welcome.