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.

Stand Up! Stand Up for...terrible music

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Horatio Spafford wrote the hymn It Is Well With My Soul after losing four daughters in a horrific naval accident.  The second verse reads: 

                                    "Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,

                                    Let this blest assurance control,

                                    That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,

                                    And hath shed His own blood for my soul."

Alternatively, here's a verse from a popular worship song called Resurrecting, by the group Elevation Worship:

                                    "By Your spirit I will rise
                                    From the ashes of defeat
                                    The resurrected King, is resurrecting me
                                    In Your name I come alive
                                    To declare Your victory
                                    The resurrected King, is resurrecting me
                                    By Your spirit I will rise
                                    From the ashes of defeat
                                    The resurrected King, is resurrecting me
                                    In Your name I come alive
                                    To declare Your victory (c'mon!)
                                    The resurrected King, is resurrecting me
                                    By Your spirit I will rise
                                    From the ashes of defeat
                                    The resurrected King, is resurrecting me
                                    In Your name I come alive
                                    To declare Your victory
                                    The resurrected king, is resurrecting me"

Some friends and I had a conversation this past week, not our first such conversation, about current Christian music in churches and how...different...some of it is.  And I thought these two examples would highlight that difference better than my own words could.

Maybe before I say anything else though I should mention that I actually quite like a lot of modern Christian music.  My car radio station is tuned to the three Christian stations I can get en route to the grocery store and I hear a lot of it and most of it is not awful.  It isn't all my style necessarily, but I can see past that and to the essential merit of the song itself.  And alternatively, I can see the merit in more traditional songs that are also not my style.

There are certainly reasons to dislike some contemporary Christian music, but style shouldn't be one of them from a purely detached viewpoint.

Here's something you can't sweep under the rug, though.  That second piece of music up there is complete rubbish.  It might be catchy, it might be upbeat, but it is categorically bad music.  It's stupidly repetitive, badly written, and theologically inaccurate.  In fact, it sounds like prosperity gospel set to a high school battle of the bands ditty that Todd figured out on the bass in his garage.

But...but WHY is this the case with more and more modern Christian music?  Well, I have a theory, which I haven't really researched or anything so feel free to disagree with me about, and it goes a little something like this:  Purpose.  What's the purpose of you writing or singing this song anyway?  And for a lot of these bands the purpose is commercialism covered in a thin veneer of Jesus culture. 
Beyond the pat standard Christian musician answers of 'glorifying God', what is the purpose behind these songs?  Does "The resurrected King is resurrecting me" bring glory to God?  No, of course not, it brings all the focus right back to numero uno.  Not to mention sounding utterly ridiculous because no, Jesus is not resurrecting you currently.  No he isn't, Todd.  

And if you're rolling your eyes at my nit picking well, I shall leave you to study your Bible and come back to me about the verse where Christ says "And verily I say unto you, you shall never be defeated or anything at all because by my spirit I shall make everything great!"

The thing is, if you live in the Western Christian world you are one of the wealthiest, most fortunate people on Earth.  You probably have food, you probably have some kind of shelter, you probably have access to education.  Four of your children are unlikely to die in a naval accident en route to England.  You aren't a sailor on slave trade vessels and so you could never write, as John Newton did:

                                         "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound

                                         That saved a wretch like me.

                                          I once was lost, and now am found

                                        Was blind, but now I see."

Because you probably don't think of yourself as a complete wretch, even if you are one.  And maybe that sort of horribleness is what makes the great Christian hymns, well, great.  Not necessarily to everyone's musical tastes, of course, understandably, but still very much The Great Music.  You might not listen to Beethoven, but you're certainly not going to say he wrote bad music if you want to be taken at all seriously.  You might not enjoy reading Tolstoy, but he was an author of great and lasting importance and that's just all there is to it.

So maybe Elevation Worship and the like are writing from where they are - writing from their world of Big Southern U.S. Western Church Life.  And that's what they can write, because that's what they know.  I don't know and I'm not going to waste my time digging through the biographies of the band members because the point isn't that one particular song, which just happened to be one that struck me, but the problem of bad Christian music in general.  Maybe the question isn't 'shouldn't we aim for a higher standard?' but 'can we even write well anymore, now that we're so comfortable?'  

Seven Quick Takes - March 29th

1) It is time to buy bathing suits.  I want to say I'm having anxiety about this but upon further reflection it's actually closer to a sort of floppity apathy.  Like a fish.  A big ole bathing suit wearing fish.

2)  Here's the issue with bathing suits.  It is the ONLY BATHING SUIT ISSUE.  All other issues stem from THE bathing suit issue.  And this is it.  Are you ready?  Bathing suits are too small and too expensive but the ones that aren't too small are uncool and the ones that aren't too expensive are still too small.  That's it.  That's the whole problem with bathing suits right there.

3)  I mean, do I want to wear this?

Link, in case you DO want to wear this.

 Well, no, not especially.  I imagine there is a small market for such garments.  Actually, you know what?  Maybe I do want to wear this.  Then I could just shave my legs up to my knees.

4)  A few years ago I left the bathing suit purchases until the last minute and was faced with exactly what you might expect, except worse.  Strangely, one store had a suit that could fit me, and I bought it.  It was red.  Well, I mean, it still is red.  Because I still have it.  It has a halter top that detaches to make the whole thing strapless which...bahahahahahahahah!  Sniff.  Ah, that was funny.  Also it's red.

And it has ruching (spell check is insisting this is not a word but it's the little fluffily bits on the front that are all wrinkly) which I think designers must assume all women want at this point.  You either want a bikini or fake wrinkly fronts.  That's what on offer, ladies.

5)  And this year I decided I made it too easy on myself previously and so I went shopping while also watching my children tear apart a clothing display!  Hurrah!  I grabbed two suits, went into the change room, decided I didn't want to take my clothes off so stood depressingly in front of the mirror holding the suits up to myself, chose the black one, and bought it.  The cashier told me I could return it within something something amount of days but frankly I like to keep clothing that doesn't fit me in my wardrobe so that Marie Kondo has someone to dislike.

6)  The suit I didn't bother to try on does fit me but ALSO is very entertaining because it has some sort of modesty encouraging chest padding situation going on that I was unaware of.  Except the padding MOVES.  It's very amusing, as you might imagine, to be readjusting one's suit constantly.  I can just picture the peaceful beach days now.  Also it has jingly jangly bits hanging off strings on the sides!  And I already lost one in the dryer!

7)  There's no possible way I can wear the jangly weird chest suit to family camp, and the red one is starting to show its age.  I'm going to need to buy a third bathing suit.

Ministry Update - End of March 2019

So unlike my last ministry update, which, while true, was written tongue-in-cheek for a bit of fun, THIS one is a bit more along the staid and serious lines.

We have decided, the husband and I, after a lot of discussion, that it is time for him to continue his education.

As a recap - when we accepted this pastorate, five and a half years ago, we understood that we would be moving a distance from any university where he could finish his degree.  We knew this, and we were okay with it.  We came here, we began ministry, and during the course of that we decided to work on David's ordination.  Now, in our denomination ordination has three major components.  The first is two years of full time work in a congregation.  The second is the filling out of paperwork and passing of interviews by the local board of ministerial development.  The third is fulfilling the educational requirement.  While the first and second requirements sort of are what they are, there is a bit of flexibility in regards to the third.  One can choose to fulfill these educational requirements through the course of their degree or they can take part in something called Flame Courses. Flame is the name of the courses that are shortened to the essentials and presented either in one week intensive formats or through distance education.  Essentially they provide a way for ministers to get ordained while still remaining ministers, or else they offer the opportunity for called individuals to pursue training while keeping their workaday lives relatively intact.

Anyway, this is what my husband did, since we were far away from other options.  Also Flame was faster, and SIGNIFICANTLY (like, by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars) cheaper.  And that mattered to us a lot.

So he took the Flame courses, he finished the required classes, and then a few summers ago he got ordained.  While we had thought about his degree that was started years ago, Flame seemed to provide us with what we needed/wanted for this next stage of our lives.  And while we assumed at some unknown point in the future he might go back to school and finish his degree, we were okay with what we had.

Maybe eight months ago or so we started to talk more seriously about him finishing his degree.  It was a challenge to figure out how to do this.  First of all the schools nearest to us are still quite a distance away and wouldn't accept all of his credits so we would have to attend the school in another province where he began his degree years ago.  However, this school wouldn't accept as credit any of his Flame courses, which makes some sense seeing as they were never intended to substitute for a university credit, but was still frustrating.  With the number of courses needed, the degree would financially be well beyond our reach without taking out student loans - which we had no intention of doing.

In addition to this problem we had the issue of location.  We knew God was not asking us to leave our pastorate right now, and yet there appeared to be no distance education options available at this school.  How to finish the degree without the necessary money OR being in the right location seemed to be an insurmountable problem, but it was laying heavily on our hearts all the same and we had many discussions about it.

Well, a few months ago we discovered that there was a solution to one of our problems at least - the school did have the option of courses taught 'by directive' which were offered essentially as distance education options.  Not all courses were offered by directive, and the courses couldn't be taken whenever the student was ready but were started and ended at set periods, but they were available.  This was excellent news for us because it meant we could continue our ministry here and not have to leave the province.

The second decision we made was to drop from a bachelor's degree to an associates degree.  The associates degree is a two year program that would use the largest percentage of David's current credits and allowed him to graduate as quickly as possible.  Since our goal is ultimately for him to get a bachelor's degree, this associates degree will set him on that path and give him something for all of his hard work while opening the door to other universities with more flexible distance ed. options to upgrade to a bachelor's.  With the associates degree option he has six courses left to take.

Once we made this decision we contacted the school and they informed us that they were hosting two directive courses this coming summer and that David could enroll in them both.  He has since filled out the paperwork and sent it in, and also we have paid our deposit to hold our place in the courses.  All that remains is to pay the balance on the courses and purchase the texts and he will be a student once more.

I have to admit that I'm nervous about this upcoming season of life.  I remember well the year before ordination when David took something like ten Flame courses over a twelve month period of time in order to be prepared to be ordained.  Every day was a push to finish coursework and email it in.  Several of those Flame courses were one week intensives offered at specific locations and so we managed at home without him for one week while he was taking courses in Houghton, NY and another week while he was in southern Michigan and a third week while he was in Brockville, Ontario.  It was a hard year and I'm not eager to repeat it.  On the other hand, I can't wait.  I can't wait to have this piece of paper he has worked hard for and wanted so badly framed on our wall and out of the file folder in my mind labelled 'Things We Should Do Someday'. 

If he takes two courses by directive this summer, that brings him down to only four courses left.  Ideally the school would offer one of their university credits in the fall in an intensive format where he could travel there for a week.  I'm not counting on that, but it would be excellent if it could happen since those one week intensives used to be a mainstay at the school.  It wouldn't be impossible for him to even be done in time to graduate next Spring with the graduating class.  It will be a large financial burden, but in the end, it will be worth it.

Seven Quick Takes - March 22nd

Gifts My Husband Has Actually Liked (And Maybe Yours Would, Too?)

Other than books, which he always loves, and would happily take on every gift giving occasion.

1)  A shaving soap I don't mind the smell of, and a shaving brush, both well priced so he can get a brand new set every year in his stocking, if one were so inclined.

  








2)  Rechargeable batteries and a charger set.  I don't pretend to understand why this is a good gift but there you have it.

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3)  A 400 disc dvd storage binder because we still watch dvds and are apparently Amish for doing so.

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4)  I'm pretty sure this is the pocket multi-tool I bought, but it is one of only many, MANY multi-tool options out there for all price brackets.  My husband uses his all the time and it is definitely one of my gift giving hits.

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5)  I would be underwhelmed by a portable booster pack but my husband is very happy with his.  Good gift.  I won't tell you how long I had to browse online to try and find the one we bought because I am too lazy to go look in the car.  And then I couldn't get the picture anyway because every time I clicked on it it kept zooming in.  Anyway.  Here's the link.  My understanding is that modern cars have computers in them and if you try and boost your battery you could, theoretically, fry the computer chips.  Also there's the problem of boosting a car if you can't find someone willing to help you.  This happened to us last year, in the winter, in a parking lot, in the cold, with three kids in the car, as the sun was setting.  So don't think it can't happen to you.

Also I have been informed that 'boosting' means stealing, in some geographical areas.  Where I'm from it means charging the battery.

6)  Again, linking to a very similar but not exact product.  These LED lanterns are great!  You pull them up as much as you want to vary the intensity of the light, and then push them down to turn them off entirely.  Light.  Easy.  Always handy.  I see this particular one is water resistant.  No idea if ours is but I think that sounds like a good idea.

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7)  When in doubt, give them candy.

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Learning Notes - A Look At March 11-15

Monday

It's the first day of March Break for the public school kids and I didn't want my children to feel completely left out of the 'fun', even though they are not getting a 'break'.

We drove into a the city as a family (I read two chapters of A Child's History of the World aloud in the car) and saw the movie The Grinch, put out in 2018 I believe.  It was a good film and had different depths from previous grinch movies where the green guy is just crabby and then gets less crabby.  Then we all crowded in a photo booth for a crazy family picture, had lunch at a taco chain restaurant, tried all the free teas at a tea store, checked out (and did not buy) anything at the chain bookstore, and sprayed air fresheners all over a Bath and Body Works.  We also saw someone feeding masses and MASSES of ducks in the parking lot.  Maybe a hundred?  Crazy.

After this we went to the big public library in town, each kid got a free book at the library book store and we played mini-putt.  They read their books in the car home.  This is what the 8yo picked:

I love it!  It's so...odd!  Essentially arithmetic but with weird drawings of monsters or something and visual 'math webs'...it's hard to explain and I can't find a picture of the inside.  I think it just has to be a book your visual math kid loves, or doesn't.  We came home and finished the family puzzle we had started Sunday night.

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Tuesday

Started the day with math and spelling.  The 8yo finished 1/2 a math review lesson and almost all of a spelling lesson.  The 6yo finished two math lessons and 1 spelling lesson and then finished reading this:

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Everyone has been fascinated with Google Earth these days, especially since the oldest recently discovered that you can look into space, including the International Space Station.  When I managed to get them away from looking around the world on the computer we discussed what we're going to do for our upcoming science fair projects and started going through books bookmarking relevant passages.  We discussed our Lenten projects on the Fruit of the Spirit.

I had to go to the church so took the 8yo with me and he practiced the piano for 30 minutes.

Then all three went to the library with their father and checked out books, including this series which the librarian special ordered for them:

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When I got home from the church I took everyone on a nature walk to enjoy the sunshine and pick up as much flotsam as we could find to glue on our new diy birdhouse that I'm trying to get outside before the birds all decide where this year's nests are going to be.  We saw deer and rabbit tracks, I explained how hip joints work with a ball and socket design, we experimented to see what would happen to a snowball that is dropped in a puddle and there was a discussion as to why pine needles turn brown.  The 6yo informed me that the route we walked was a lowercase 'a', which prompted the 4yo to hand me a stick she found "shaped like an 'L'"!

We had a 15 minute quiet time once we got home.  The girls read books and the boy did puzzles until it was time to go to our neighbour's for supper.  I read the children a chapter of The Moffats before bed.

Wednesday

We woke up to a sleety day and worked on our new puzzle and read and looked at Google Earth.  Then we went out to breakfast at the diner and then walked up to the grocery store so it was almost 10am by the time we got home.  I pulled out some books on weather and we read about sleet and rain and then looked at snowflakes and discussed symmetry.  Here are the books we used:

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The girls decided to make houses out of cards while the boy set the stove timer and did his 30 minutes of silent reading.  Then the 6 yo did her silent reading.  Finally I sent them with their math, spelling and the Planet Earth dvds over to the church where their father was working so I could have the house to myself for a bit.  While they were there the 8yo finished the math and spelling lessons he had partially completed yesterday, and also started reading the bookmarked sections in his science research books re: his science project.  The 6yo did a full math and a full spelling lesson.  They all watched Planet Earth Ep. 1 - From Pole to Pole and then Ep. 11 - Ocean Deep.

After lunch we listened to Mozart's Magic Fantasy (sort of a children's retelling of Mozart's Magic Flute), worked on our next puzzle and then went for a walk.  We managed to pick up enough leaves and pinecones and such to be able to finish our birdhouse.

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 We finished our puzzle in the afternoon.  At supper the discussion was the whale sharks and vampire squid they saw in the Ocean Deep episode - apparently vampire squid have their bio luminescence located on areas that can withstand a bite by a predator.  Huh.  Who knew?  Before bed I read a chapter of The Moffats.

Thursday

Everyone wanted to play games on the computer this morning.  They used the website tvokids.com and took turns doing that for an hour or so.  It was raining fairly heavily off and on all day but that didn't stop them from rushing through breakfast and heading outside to burn off energy.

I hadn't slept well the previous night so I was dragging myself through the day.  In fact as the day progressed I just got floppier and tireder and was eventually just sitting in a chair waving my hands at the children.  Fortunately they all deal with instructions pretty well.  The 4yo coloured and practiced writing letters, the 8yo did a spelling lesson and then they both pulled out all the Lego and built stuff with it together.  The 6yo did two spelling lessons and finished Spelling Workout A.

And then they all went outside again and played for hours in the wet snow.

It wasn't an impressive, exciting or even particularly productive school day, but these sorts of days are one of the reasons I work on school year round, up to six days a week.  Because not all of those days do we manage to accomplish much.  It's important to remember that 1) Life is school, too and 2) We're playing the long game, here.

I read a chapter of The Moffats aloud before bed.

Friday

Usually Friday morning is the time I take the 4yo to a play group but today my husband had a meeting and then a doctor's appointment and wasn't going to get home until lunchtime.

Instead we made churros and then I took all three children up to the library where there was a children's St. Patrick's Day party going on.

After this we had errands to run all afternoon and into the evening.  I read a chapter of A Child's History of The World in the car while we were stopped at a store for my husband to run in.  We're up to Alexander the Great.

Saturday

The 6yo decided to sew this morning and made a little blanket for a doll's house bed on the sewing machine, which she is learning how to use this year.  The 8yo went to the church to practice the piano.  Then all three children went outside to work on their latest fort.  When they came in it was lunchtime.

After lunch we buckled down a bit more.  The 6yo played Uno with the 4yo to practice her colours and numbers.  She's got these down well, but constant repetition is key.  The 8yo did his math, which today involved adding the eleven times tables to his graph book.  This turned into a discussion about perfect squares, which turned into watching a Doodling In Math Class video about the Pythagorean Theorem.  Before we ran down too many rabbit trails I put him on a video call with a friend of mine who teaches high school math - she had agreed to explain the concept of area for him better than I could.  Both older children set the stove timer and did their 30 minutes of silent reading.

The 4yo's reading lessons had fallen by the wayside quite a bit this week, but when we sat down today to look them over she had remembered all of her sounds (s, t, m, a, e, r) and we did a lesson and a half in our reading book.

Then I heard the book narration from the 8yo about the book he got from the library on Tuesday.  He is on chapter 11 so far.

We had a family game night today with Skip-bo (I wanted to see how that number review had worked out earlier for the youngest), and then I read two chapters of The Moffats before bed.

Seven Quick Takes - March 15th

Seven Household Things That I Find Invaluable

1)  Full disclosure: I have no idea if this is the brand I purchased, but mine look like these, and they are awesome.  First off, they actually really do scrub pots clean, which a lot of scrubbie sort of kitcheny things claim to do and do not do.  In fact they are rough enough that I have scratched my hand on them when I got skin in the way of scrubbing, but they are soft and pliable when you aren't applying pressure.  Plus you can wash them.  And they don't wear out quickly at all; I bought two this summer and have used them constantly for multiple loads of dishes per day with no sign of wear besides the colours fading slightly.

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2)  This rectangular unglazed stonewear baking dish is my go-to casserole and I probably make something in it five nights of the week.  Mine was a wedding gift and is by the company Pampered Chef, but looking online I see you can buy them from the website and this model is $52.  I mean, it's a lot for a casserole dish, I agree, and I probably wouldn't have purchased it for myself, but it would be a great investment.  The stone turns a lovely burnished gold colour over time.  I also have a deep circular baking dish, a pie plate and a cookie sheet in the Pampered Chef stonewear line and they all are just as good.

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3)  By far the stupidest name for a cleaning product ever, but this powdered oxygen bleach works really, really well, is chlorine free, and you can buy it at the Dollar Tree.  It's as good as products much more expensive and if you can get past the fairly obnoxious marketing you will have a laundry booster that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

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4)  I know it's expensive, but this is the best hairbrush you will ever own, hands down.  I describe my hair as having the texture of a horse's mane - it's very thick and heavy but also the individual hairs are coarse and rough.  Nothing smooths out my hair to produce that shiny curtain you see on models!  And until this brush nothing could even easily brush my hair.  In fact I have broken multiple brushes while trying to get them through my hair.  This brush, however, will actually brush my hair.  And I've never broken one yet.  

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5)  I have a love/notlove relationship with food storage containers.  I keep trying to find ones that aren't plastic that I actually like and use, but the battle is uphill.  I chip the glass ones, I break the little seals on the snap lids, sigh...anyway.  THESE metal containers work really well.  They were recommended to me by a friend and I reach for them constantly.  They are snack size, but the company, U Konserve, does seem to have larger ones.  And they stack inside each other for easy storage.  I bought mine years ago and they still look brand new.

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6)  I love this company for their notebooks, and have for years, but every year my mother in law buys me a planner for Christmas and this year she got me a Moleskine brand one, and now I love them for their planners, too.  They are just so classic and clean and simple with nice, thicker paper that shows ink so well.  And those fonts, and the little crisp lines...sigh.  I'm just a Moleskine junkie.

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7)  This is my standard go-to all purpose cleaner that I use for everything I possibly can.  Now, I have linked to A.mazon, and I see they have it for some ridiculous price and please let me assure you that price is crazy.  Buy it at the grocery store.  Also I feel like I should mention that the EWG (Environmental Working Group) that helps customers choose eco-friendly cleaners, gives this one a terrible rating.  Also it smells really strongly of grapefruit.  I realize I'm not selling it well but this is my list of favourite house stuff so who cares!  I like the smell!  I'm happy with it!  It works great!

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