Portrait of the Artist as a Young Mom

Sixth Grade Sleep-Over, Montana Style

2012-02-11T10:46:00.007-07:00

When I was in the sixth grade, the classic sleep-over was a standard occurrence. It seems like I was always spending Friday night at someone's house or inviting a bunch of friends over to mine. We didn't do very much sleeping at those events, of course, so it was a bit of a misnomer, but terming them as they really were, all night parties, probably wouldn't have gone very far with our parents.

We would sit around and talk about everything, play Truth, Dare, Double-Dare, Promise or Repeat, and occasionally even wander outside to play Hide and Seek, Kick the Can or something similar that was equally interesting under the cover of darkness. But mostly, we just sat in the house and talked.

My daughter's own sixth grade sleep-overs are a little more active and exciting, it seems.

Last night Lizzie came over to spend the night with Ellie. The two of them are very imaginative when they get together and invariably end up in costumes, playing one role or another in a detailed and complex drama that can go on for hours. Sometimes it is themed on a book they are currently obsessed with; sometimes it comes purely from their imaginations. I'm not exactly sure what was going on last night when they found themselves in formal dresses (one formal from this current era and one from about 1865) to tramp through the snowy woods at ten o'clock. That doesn't seem out of character for them, though. It's certainly not the surprising part of this story.

It does present an interesting mental image, though, doesn't it?

As they trudged through the snow, they heard a noise--a crashing noise of something very large and heavy being startled from its hiding place by their intrusion. This was not a scampering field mouse (although they later caught one of those, too). They swung their flashlight beam in the direction of the noise and saw a large, tan colored body running away from them. They assumed, at first, that it must be just a deer, as we have no shortage of those on our property.

But then it took a flying leap. High up into a tree. Deer don't do that.

The girls looked at each other, wide-eyed, for only the briefest second and then screamed, "Ohmigosh, ohmigosh, ohmigosh!" repeatedly as they sprinted back to the house, picking up their long skirts (and in one case, ruffled petticoats) to keep from tripping on them as they ran. They burst into the house breathless, hearts pounding, tripping over one another's words as they spit out their story.

They went back out to that same spot this morning and found unmistakable cougar tracks in the snow.

Not many people will ever get to see a cougar in their lifetimes. They are reclusive creatures who prefer to stay hidden out of sight. We knew that we are in cougar territory, as we have seen tracks in mud or snow a few times over the years. This made me nervous at first, until I was told that they really prefer a steady diet of venison, so I needn't worry. As long as we have an abundant deer population, we would likely never spot more than tracks.

But now we've had a sighting. I'm not sure who was more startled, the two girls tramping through the woods, lost in their world of imagination and coming upon a cougar by surprise; or the big cat himself, out for an evening stroll in the moonlight, shocked to encounter two young girls in frilly dresses.

Ah, rural life.

All I Really Wanted Was a Second Cup of Tea

2012-02-09T17:16:00.011-07:00

The whole thing started innocently enough. It was mid-morning today and Ellie was busily engaged in her school work. I was quite busy myself, updating our little artist group's Facebook presence. I had worked on the project until late into the night last night and was back at it first thing this morning, as soon as I had seen Tano out the door for school and given Ellie a bit of guidance with her assignments.

I realized I had been hunching over the computer and my shoulders ached. I needed a break. A second cup of tea would be just the thing, since my first cup with breakfast had gone ignored for the most part in my rush to get back to my project. My favorite mug sat next to me at the computer now, its contents cold. I picked it up and walked to the kitchen, dumping the tea in the sink and setting it down on the counter. I took the teapot from the back burner, refilled it with water, set it back on the stove and turned on the burner. Then I went back to the living room to check on Ellie's school progress and wait for the water to heat.

This was not difficult or unusual, of course. I follow this same routine several times each day.

After a few minutes, I wandered back to the kitchen. I was anxious for that second cup of tea and the relaxing comfort it would bring. Just as I began to round the corner into the kitchen, though, I heard a horrific popping sound. I glanced at the source of the sound, the stove, just in time to see a 9 x 13 Pyrex baking dish shatter, sending glass in every direction and spraying dirty boiling water everywhere.

Because it needed to soak overnight and because of my tiny kitchen's perpetual lack of counter space, the baking dish had been set on the front burner of the stove to await washing. I had turned on the front burner by mistake. Oops.

I stared at the mess, stunned, listening to the sizzling and popping of the water, then reached in to turn off the burner. Glass was everywhere.

Everywhere.

As I considered the possible clean-up strategies, I was saddened to think that my water hadn't yet begun to heat. Now, I would not be able to heat it until I was done cleaning up, for there was glass and water filling all of the electric burners. They would have to be disassembled in order to clean them out. There would be no second cup of tea for me in the near future.

The clean-up process proved to be a larger task than I could have originally surmised. Did I mention that the glass was everywhere? And the dirty water--the water that had been loosening up the baked-on leftover casserole bits overnight--did I mention that the water was everywhere, too? Have you ever attempted to clean up shards of glass in water? It's difficult.

With my heavy leather gloves which I normally use for tending the fireplace, I managed to get all the big pieces up. Pyrex baking dishes are thicker than they look. Some of those pieces were huge and quite heavy. Between the glass and the water, the force of the explosion had actually knocked a small bag of carrot sticks onto the floor. I was truly grateful that I hadn't been even half a second faster at entering the kitchen, for I would have surely been injured by the glass shrapnel and boiling water. Andy brought in the shop vac and began to vacuum up both the standing water and the smaller bits of glass. When he had finished that, and I had swept the floor and wiped down all the counters, I began to tackle the big job.

The glass and the water were the easy part. When I disassembled the four electric burners on the stove so that we could clean the glass out of them and suck up the water that had flooded them, I discovered something peculiar. The stove, understand, is likely my equal in age or older. When appliances of that era were made, they were outfitted with a generous amount of chrome, just like the cars of the same vintage. Now, of course I have cleaned my stove top from time to time, but upon this close examination, I realized that my efforts have been only half-hearted. It has been a long time since I have seen that chrome. It had taken on a more matte finish, I'm afraid--a more up to date look, but at a great price.

I have since paid that price.

I used an entire SOS steel wool pad to its fullest extent, working up a sweat in the process, and sat back down at the computer to finish my project while I waited for the muscle fatigue to pass. I would have heated up some water then, but I hadn't reassembled the stove top yet.

After my "break," and some more working with my daughter on her schoolwork, I returned to the kitchen and used a second SOS pad, dropping both of their limp and threadbare bodies into the trash can when I was finally finished.

Whew. That was a lot of work.

The chrome now shines like the grill of a 1964 Ford Galaxie. My sweet, vintage stove is looking good.

By the time I had finished cleaning up after the Great Pyrex Explosion Incident (as it will henceforth be remembered), it was the middle of the afternoon. The rest of the family had already eaten lunch. I was shaky from the exertion of the chrome restoration project on an empty stomach, and still longing for my second cup of tea. I toasted a bagel and spread it with cream cheese while I waited for my teapot to whistle.

Before I could eat, however, I remembered a pair of phone calls that needed to be made. They were supposed to be brief, but you know how it goes sometimes. Even if a call to a friend is supposed to be business related, it generally turns into a very pleasant conversation--the longer, the pleasant-er. I got carried away. It's a peril of being an extrovert. I eyed my toasted bagel and teapot from time to time, but was loathe to crunch and slurp in a friend's ear--being that it was a fairly new friend. An old friend would have had to just put up with the noise.

Hanging up from the second phone call, finally ready to eat and make my tea, I glanced at the clock and realized with some alarm that it was 3:50 PM. That is precisely the time I am supposed to leave the house to drive my son to his filmmaking class in Hamilton. I looked down. I was still in my bathrobe! It had been a fairly busy day.

I sprinted down the stairs and threw on real clothes, sprinted back up the stairs, wrapped my bagel in a napkin, grabbed my purse and keys and ran out the door.

On the way to Hamilton, I thought about my tea. Had I only one extra minute to spare, I could have made a cup to go in my travel mug. But, alas, I had not had even one spare minute.

I arrived at home a little after seven o'clock this evening, warmed up some left over dinner and made...a cup of tea.

With my daughter and husband watching a movie and my son scrambling to do laundry and pack for the church's high school winter retreat, which starts tomorrow after school, I felt the freedom to sit down at the computer to write this post. I reached for my tea mug first and took the luxurious sip which I had been longing for since mid-morning.

And in my haste, I burned my tongue.

What--Me, Funny?

2012-02-09T08:06:00.002-07:00

Check it out--I'm guest blogging over here today. I'm afraid I'm not as crass and profane as most of her bloggers, though. Oh, well. Guess she'll just have to settle for plain ol' rated G me!

What is it About Flying?

2012-02-08T09:14:00.009-07:00

Last week, I had an amazing epiphany, one that would change my life forever.

I discovered that I can fly.

Now, mind you, I've thought I could fly twice before. The first time was about four years ago. I had a dream in which I realized that I could fly. I spent the dream soaring effortlessly through the air, enjoying my new found freedom. I'd never had such a realistic sensation of flying before and wanted everyone to enjoy the wonder of it all, so when I woke up in the morning, still groggy and not thinking clearly yet, I couldn't wait to share the good news with my husband. When I opened my mouth to explain to him the basic mechanics of human flight--and they were indeed very basic and I knew he would pick up the skill easily--I realized with a great deal of sadness that it had all been a dream. I couldn't really fly after all.

I was crushed at first, but then grateful. At least I'd had the opportunity to fly, even if it had been a dream. The sweet sensation lingered.

The second time I got to fly was a year later. This time was also in a dream and I was quicker to recognize the fact that it was only a dream, but enjoyed it anyway. Flying is truly a fabulous thing. I didn't have the urge to share it with everyone that time, but rather just savored it alone, smiling throughout the day at the memory of it.

But last week, it was different. I could fly. I had the strongest urge to lift off as I had done in my dreams previously, so I did. It worked. I could twist and loop, stretch out flat to gain speed, dive, recover, shift to the left or the right, slow to a stop and drop effortlessly to the ground again to walk like I always had before. It was amazing. I was free from the binding chains of gravity, using it only selectively, when I wanted to be bound by it. I was free, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world, like I had been meant all along to do this and was just now awakening to the truth.

But then I regained contact with the cold, hard ground of reality. This was probably just a dream again, like it had been twice before. I lifted off again, just to see if I had imagined it. No, I could really fly this time, it seemed. I pinched myself. No change. I went in the house and splashed cold water on my face. These are the things that would awaken a person from dreaming, right? Going back out into the yard, I lifted off again, just as easily as ever. It wasn't a dream. Oh, the joy!

I experimented a little more, perfected some of my maneuvering skills, and then had a sudden realization--I could make money off of this! I quickly lowered myself to the ground and looked around to make sure no one had seen me flying. It was good that I lived out in the country, blocked off from the view of roads by towering pine trees. The news media would pay dearly for footage of me flying, as I had certainly never heard of anyone else who could do such a thing. If there were others who knew how, they had not yet been discovered. The local media would want exclusive rights to me. I would do interviews and even give lessons--to the highest bidders only, of course. The financial woes that have plagued our family over the years were over, if only I could be smart about how to handle my newly discovered skill. I must be extremely cautious not to let anyone film me, even from a distance, for even grainy cell phone footage, published to YouTube, would cheapen the value of it. No, flying would have to be kept private until I had made a fair amount of money off of it, and even then, if I was really smart about it, it could continue to be a steady source of income for our family.

But then the doubts began to creep in again. Who was I to think I could actually fly? Unassisted human flight was the stuff of dreams, not reality. I began once again to go through the rituals people do to check and see if they are dreaming. I pinched myself repeatedly until it hurt and again I splashed water on my face. I didn't wake up. I tested my ability. Still there. It was real--better than any dream could ever be. Exhilaration flooded my soul and I launched myself up into the air just high enough to do a few twists and barrel rolls without being seen by anyone else. Caution and discipline were in order, if I was going to do this right and make maximum use of this amazing gift.

I continued to plot my course regarding how to contact and negotiate with the media. I talked to my husband and my kids, demonstrating my ability and making sure they were on board with the newly forming media relations policy. We were all so excited. I just couldn't get over the fact that it was real this time. I remembered the other dreams so clearly and they were great, but this time it was real. I could fly.

You can imagine my disappointment when my alarm went off.

It had all been a dream. Again. Even though I had doubted the veracity of the experience from within the dream and had repeatedly attempted to wake myself up from it, it was still just a dream.

Throughout that next day, several times, I had the urge to launch myself into the air again. I remembered how. My muscles seemed to know exactly what to do and actually felt restless to fly again. It was the strangest thing to have an actual physical sensation, this faux muscle-memory urge, to do something impossible, as if I had really done it. All of me, body and soul, longed to fly. Even now, as I write this, I can close my eyes and take a deep breath at the memory of it all and still feel the sensation of rapid elevation gain in the pit of my stomach--very similar to the feeling of going up in a very fast elevator in a high-rise building, but with the accompanying sensation in my arms and legs of not only lifting off, but also employing subtle shifts in position in order to affect course, speed and direction.

It is, at once, a glorious sensation, and a terribly frustrating one, for it comes with the knowledge of reality, the knowledge of limitations, the knowledge of the irresistible pull of gravity upon the human form.

So what is it about flying? Why does it feel so very natural in my dreams, like we were meant to do this all along? Why do my muscles still ache with the memory of it and the longing to do it again?

I am a firm believer in a heavenly afterlife to be spent in close communion with my creator, even though writing it thus looks so silly and uneducated to many. I have never been attracted to the images of heaven in which we all dress in poorly fitting white robes; grow chubby, cherubic cheeks; and flit and float about on tiny flapping wings beneath our sparkly pipe cleaner halos while strumming harps among the cottony clouds. Really, that sounds pathetically boring and not at all in line with the Biblical previews that I read. I do hope, however...hope upon hope...that we get to fly--like I did in my dreams, or maybe even better. Why would I have such a longing for it if it can never come true?

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. Proverbs 13:12

I will remember the sweet freedom of flying. And I will hope.

Brrr...Sounds Chilly

2012-02-02T08:14:00.002-07:00

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Found in Stevensville, Montana on Feb. 1, 2012

Four Months in a Starcraft--Philly and the Big Apple, Part Two

2012-02-01T20:07:00.014-07:00

To start at the beginning of this story, click here.

We hit as many of the major historical sites as we could in our one day in Philadelphia--the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, Ben Franklin's old haunts, a few historic homes. They served as powerful connecting points to written history for the kids, as I had hoped they would. Carpenters' Hall, even though it was swarming with tourists, was particularly moving--imagining the treasonous conversations held there by the members of the First and Second Continental Congresses.

We didn't get to see as much that day as we had hoped we would because there were reports of a terrible winter storm on its way and everyone seemed to be in a hurry to close up early and get safely home. We were disappointed again and again as the afternoon grew late, having walked dozens of blocks in the bitter cold to see something significant, only to find that it, too, had closed early in anticipation of the storm. By the time it started to get dark, we were very tired of walking and fairly chilled by the icy wind that was whipping around us, threatening to blow the storm in at any minute.

There were three unexpected highlights, however, that were unaffected by the weather.

On a whim, we ducked into the Arch Street Meeting House, the largest Quaker meeting house of its kind. A tour guide, himself a member of the congregation, showed us around and introduced us to the history and culture of the Quakers, particularly as they would have been at the time of Benjamin Franklin. It was fascinating, and I was glad we stopped.

On a less historically and culturally significant note, we noticed that we had parked the Starcraft very close to the Federal Reserve Bank. The Fed. We had to check it out. To even enter the building, we had to pass through a security checkpoint that would make the TSA blush. This place was serious. We were ushered in to a guest area filled with numerous high-tech interactive exhibits, all centered around money. Several of the exhibits were interesting to us, but what made us laugh was the souvenirs we were each given by an attendant on our way out: bags of shredded money, bills that had been taken out of circulation due to age and/or wear. The bags advertised that they contained approximately $100--before the shredder, at least. Seriously. It looked like dirty green confetti. We couldn't decide if we were fascinated or disgusted. I saved mine for a white elephant gift exchange at a Christmas party the following year.

And finally, the number one memory from Philadelphia, at least if you ask my son, was purchasing Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches from a street vendor's cart. It is really all about the food for that boy.

The snow had begun to fall in earnest by the time we arrived at our hotel that night and we were chilled from being outside most of the day. Staying at budget motels in winter climates often comes with the added perk of finding a freezing cold room upon check-in. No need to spend the money on heating unrented rooms, of course. Andy suggested we go out to dinner, but it was so cold outside and I didn't feel like going back out. I also didn't feel like cooking, however, so we grabbed the little flyer beside the phone and ordered a pizza to be delivered to our room. The room was still cold, though, and I was fighting waves of irritability exacerbated by fatigue, hunger and the fact that I could see my breath as I opened up my suitcase.

Andy came up behind me, patiently wrapped his warm and comforting arms around me, and suggested with a tender voice that we go down to the lobby to wait, since the toilet seat was up in our bathroom.

"What?" I pulled out of his arms and turned to face him, already on edge and now completely baffled. "Why in the world does it make any difference that the toilet seat is up in here? That is the craziest thing I've ever heard!" My voice came out as a high-pitched shriek.

His brow wrinkled in confusion, unsure of exactly what was happening and a little concerned that I was losing it so early in the trip.

In response to his silence and confusion, I restated what had been said. "I said I was cold and hungry and tired, and you answered with, 'Why don't we just go down to the lobby and wait? Toilet seat's up in here.' That doesn't even make any sense!"

A rush of understanding passed over his handsome face and he laughed as he wrapped his arms around his flailing and cranky wife once again. "I actually said, 'Why don't we just go down to the lobby and wait 'til it heats up in here?'"

'Til it heats up in here.

Toilet seat's up in here.

I began to laugh then, too--one of those weak and tired laughs--and was grateful for the strong arms holding me up. After checking to be sure that the heater unit was turned up to full power, we went down to the lobby to wait for the pizza delivery.

The next day, we would take a bite out of the Big Apple.

(To be continued)

Wordless Wednesday: The Great Chidwick Family Mandarin Orange Art Competition, 2011-2012 Season

2012-01-31T14:59:00.004-07:00

A Little Suggestion for the Husbands Out There (NOW UPDATED!)

2012-01-25T08:32:00.011-07:00

Guys, if you wake up on a January morning in Montana to find the weather unseasonably warm and steady rain falling, but your driveway is a solid sheet of ice from the previous week's record-setting snow, mostly plowed (for which your wife is thankful) with the remaining snow packed down solid, please know that the once walkable and drivable ice will no longer be passable by any method with the addition of that rain causing puddles on the surface. Any attempt at getting a vehicle down to the highway to put your child on a school bus will be futile. But if it is very important to get your son to school because it is only his second day, having been homeschooling for four and a half years, and so you, by some amazing feat of navigation, do manage to slip and slide out of the driveway, make the turn onto the road and safely navigate the downhill stretch (which ends at the highway), managing to stop at the bottom of the hill before being hit by the speeding cross traffic so that you can drive your son to school--since he would have clearly missed the bus by now--and then call your wife on the cell phone to go out behind the barn and check on the spare set of studded tires that has been parked there since they came off the last van you owned, in order to find the numbers on them and see if they will fit the new van so you don't have to go to the tire shop in town to buy a new set of studs, please remember to remind your wife that 1) she should bring along paper and pencil to write down the lengthy string of numbers or bring her cell phone to call them in to you from out behind the barn (one or the other would be sufficient, for without either one, she will be forced to memorize them and repeat them back to herself for the entire lengthy and treacherous trip back to the house), and, 2) she should not attempt to traverse the ice to the shop, then cross the untrodden snow to the barn and then dig through the heavy drifts of snow piled next to the barn where the snow has slid from the barn's roof to get to the old set of studded tires...in her open-heeled bedroom slippers. Please. I beg of you; remind her to put on socks and shoes first. Perhaps even boots. That is all.

UPDATE: In addition to all of the above, you yourself, men, should probably not head out for this type of morning in your own bedroom slippers either, just in case you find that, upon returning from the trip to school and the tire shop (having learned that you technically can use the studded tires stored in the snow bank behind the barn, although it is not recommended because of the difference in size), you are unable to get the van with its current tires back up the hill to the driveway. For, if you cannot climb the hill after several attempts and end up sliding backward into the ditch, you may then be forced to find some way to get your vehicle out of the ditch, find a safe place to park it where it will not be hit by other sliding vehicles, and then walk the third of a mile home over the treacherous ice covered with icy puddles of rain water...in your bedroom slippers.

An Unexpected Change of Plans

2012-01-24T08:35:00.007-07:00

I have heard that many people feel this way when their children start kindergarten. They weep as they let go of the hand of the little one and watch him/her walk away into the big world of school. I might have shed a tear or two at the novelty of it. But I didn't feel it.

Not like this.

When my son started kindergarten, I was happy to have the time to focus on my daughter, who was a bit of a spitfire and really needed some one-on-one time. When my daughter joined the ranks of the school kids, too, I was honestly excited--for me, as much as for her. Maybe I was even more excited for me. That's hard to have to admit.

I am not as much of a baby and toddler person as many moms; that is true. I have always felt that kids are much more enjoyable once they can control their own bodily functions, can carry on two-sided conversations of substance, and can crack a joke that is actually funny. But even beyond that, I had spent my early years of mothering somehow believing that children were a bit of a hassle and should be hustled off to school as soon as possible so Mama can get some free time. I didn't see much value in the mothering process itself. Particularly in the early years, it was something to endure, hopefully with a good attitude and generous amounts of hugs and kisses on sticky little faces.

It's so sad to see these words in print now, all these years later, but it's true. I was blind. I was immature. I was a total newbie at this whole parenting gig. I guess we all start as newbies, right? I just wish I'd had a little more sense. I wish I'd known how to truly enjoy my kids, how to take my eyes off myself and my own little kingdom long enough to get know them, to treasure them, to find value and satisfaction in my role as their mother.

But I didn't.

Now I do.

I have been educating my kids at home for the past four and a half years and having them at home with me has deepened our relationships in ways I could have never imagined possible. I know them so well and I like them so much. I love to have them around me.

This school year, we took kind of a half-and-half approach for my son. He started his first year of high school by enrolling in a state-run digital academy and spending part of his afternoon, several days a week, in the local high school's computer lab, with the rest of his work done at home. The system has not worked well for us, unfortunately. It is a brand new system, full of kinks and quirks still, and he has borne the brunt of it, finishing the first semester of his freshman year with very poor grades.

He asked if he could just come back home full-time, with the exception of his online Latin class, which has been wonderful, and his online AP Biology class, which he really enjoys and is learning so much from. I agreed. I was happy to have him back under my care and direction. I was excited about discussing literature with him again and watching his face light up as we discussed world-changing events in history. I was so pleased that I was going to get my boy back.

All that was left to do was to meet with the high school's assistant principal, the one overseeing his online schooling. We would need to make sure he was enrolled in second semester Latin and AP Biology and would drop the hours he spent on the school campus, except for a rare occasion when he wanted to be there for a particular reason.

Tano and I were both relieved, really, to be done with this experimental semester, which I had made him stick out until the bitter end. We were relieved to be returning to education at home. Tano mentioned, on the way to the meeting with the assistant principal yesterday, that he was really looking forward to doing English class with me again and we thought we might invite other local home schooled kids to join us, as we had done with our public speaking class in the fall. Tano suggested that I should teach "a whole bunch of classes" for the local home school community and we discussed which subjects I was qualified to teach to others at a high school level and what those classes might look like. We talked about modifying our home education to include more of a block schedule approach, focusing on fewer classes more intensely for shorter bursts.

The meeting with the assistant principal and the school's guidance counselor went well, I guess. The two of them were very attentive to our concerns and duly disturbed by some of the things we had to report about the new digital academy. We felt listened to and supported.

And then, the unexpected happened, as it so often does. The assistant principal offered that, instead of going back home, Tano would be welcome to move to the high school campus full time if he was interested. I reminded him that we had family business travel needs, and that although most of our travels for this year had been cancelled, we still had a sizable trip in March coming up, a trip of perhaps three weeks or even a little more. Next year, we might be back to our more lengthy trips in the middle of the school year.

The assistant principal didn't even blink. He assured us that he could take care of that, at least for this semester. He would make an exception and see to it that all of Tano's teachers were able and willing to send work with him that he could accomplish under my guidance. If we wanted to make a new decision for next year, based on more intensive travel, we could make that call then. He told us we didn't need to give him a decision right then, but could go home and talk about it. However, the spring semester classes did start the very next day, so the sooner we decided, the better.

We left his office a little stunned. This was not an option we had considered, honestly, because I know that three weeks of scheduled travel is generally not allowed. I was all ready to bring my boy back home. We would discuss great literature...

I told him it was his decision. I did not want him to feel obligated to the school, just because the assistant principal was such a nice guy and was making special provisions for him. On the other hand, I also did not want him to feel that he is obligated to me, just because I was looking forward to having him fully at home under my guidance again. He needed to make this decision for himself and not for anyone else.

By the time we arrived home, Tano had decided he wanted to give the local high school a try for this semester. I felt badly that my emotions came across so strongly. I was weepy on and off for the whole evening. I couldn't imagine being without his handsome, smiling face every day for so long. I would miss his smirky smile and his constant scrounging for something to eat, his funny one-liners and his single raised eyebrow. I would even miss how he comes up behind me and gently tickles me by surprise, then wraps me up in a playfully apologetic hug. I had to keep reminding him that I was not trying to make a display; I was not trying to guilt him into changing his mind. I was just overcome at how much I would miss him. It was not a decision that I've been preparing for. It was a total surprise. I supported his decision, really, but my emotions were not cooperating.

He is such a sweet boy and kept coming to me throughout the evening and putting his arms around me, repeating how much he loved me. This, of course, only made me cry all the more, as I am doing right now just remembering it. When did my boy grow up to the point that he can comfort me, his mother, with his strong arms and kind words? That's crazy, right? But he did it nonetheless and I accepted it for what it was.

So, he's gone now. He's in his fourth period math class right now, in fact. I am praying for him frequently and trying to focus on enjoying the unexpected one-on-one time with Ellie. She and I laughed our way through her geography lesson, comparing population density to different types of chocolate cake--from light and fluffy with lots of air pockets to the super heavy flourless varieties. We laughed about rich, dense chocolate so much, in fact, that I need to go make some brownies after I type this.

I am sure Tano will do fine at school. He is adaptable and well-liked and has already been on the campus several afternoons per week since September. I'm sure I will do fine, too, after I get used to the absence of my firstborn. At least he isn't gone away to college or worse. It may be rough for a few days, though, as I make the transition.

A batch of brownies couldn't hurt.

Four Months in a Starcraft--Philly and the Big Apple, Part One

2012-01-22T16:01:00.022-07:00

To start at the beginning of this story, click here.

We made it through the Baltimore show. Despite the lack of the all-important crate containing everything we needed for a successful show, Andy did fine. He taught his seminars and even found himself the sweetheart of the local news media. Twice, he was called in to do morning news show interviews. Since we were staying with old friends way out in Bowie* during the show, it was crazy-early to get the family up and moving on those mornings, but you don't sleep through opportunities for TV interviews. Ellie tried to catch naps when she could, to keep her energy level up for her burgeoning business.

Our next show would be in Springfield, Massachusetts, but between Baltimore and Springfield lay both Philadelphia and New York City. No one in my family except me had ever been to either place, so they were definitely on the must-see list.

I was nearly as excited to see Philly and the Big Apple as my kids were. I hadn't been there since the summer that I was twenty years old, and the brief visits I made to those cities then hardly count for much at all.

I had responded to a small ad in a magazine and found myself working at a summer camp in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Camp Streamside specialized in bringing inner-city kids from the housing projects of Philadelphia into the great outdoors. It was a wonderful summer experience for a college student, but extremely busy and totally exhausting at times. While there, I worked as a swimming instructor, camping and hiking instructor, canoeing instructor, volleyball coach, kitchen help, night watch-person, snack shop worker, craft barn helper and Bible teacher--all the while simultaneously working full time as the head counselor for a cabin full of middle school girls.

We were allotted one day off per week, although the 'day' actually amounted to about twenty-two hours, from the time we were dismissed at 10 AM one day to the the time we were required to check back in to our duties at 8 AM the next morning. Since the camp ran on a constantly rotating schedule, days off were also on a rotation. It was big fun to manage one's day off at the same time as some friends--new friends from all over the country and beyond.

On one such day off, a group of us went to New York City, only a two hour drive away. Honestly, I can't remember seeing or doing much of significance. We walked around Lower Manhattan for hours, taking artsy photos of each other posing with graffiti-covered walls and glassy skyscrapers. We saw the ill-fated Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and went up to the observation deck of the Empire State Building. We gazed across the harbor at the Statue of Liberty. We walked from Greenwich through SoHo to Little Italy, where we found a cheap Italian restaurant for dinner, then we walked for hours more. Finally, when we could walk no more and realized that our car was still dozens of blocks away, we all took our first ride on a subway--a very tense ride, extremely late at night, but with no problems to report.

The most memorable part of that day in New York was finding a grimy stuffed animal, a blue elephant, in a roadside gutter on Wall Street. It was criss-crossed with tire tracks and looked as if it hadn't had the best day, so we brushed it off and adopted it. We carried it around with us all day and then tucked it under a wiper blade on the car's windshield for the ride home in the hours just before sunrise. Since the stuffed blue elephant had been an urban version of roadkill, we named it R.K. Manhattan and kept it as a mascot for our little group of friends for the rest of the summer.

My trip to Philadelphia was that same summer, on another day off with some of the same friends. Like the trip to NYC, we parked the car someplace cheap and walked our legs off all day, briefly glancing at a few historic sites, but mostly just messing around and laughing a lot, blowing off steam from our very busy summer job. It wasn't until evening that we did something very interesting.

One of the camp staffers was a young man named Kevin, a former camper at Streamside. Grateful for his life-changing summers at camp, he had come back to work there. Kevin fancied himself a rapper and worked most of the year as a DJ at a rap radio station in a not-so-loving part of the City of Brotherly Love. He asked if we wanted to see where he worked and we jumped at the opportunity. Kevin took us through some very scary looking neighborhoods to his station's studio and we observed the operation, getting to know the station manager and the other staffers in the process. It was fascinating. When midnight arrived and their scheduled hot topics talk show was ready to begin, the station manager asked if he could have Kevin interview us all on the air.

And that is how I, a lily-white Christian girl from Southern California, ended up as a guest on a Black Muslim-owned rap radio station in North Philly--something that still comes in handy when I need an interesting and little-known fact about myself for an ice-breaker game.

I was excited for another chance, twenty years later, to see these two cities--this time with my three favorite people.

*I would have pronounced Bowie like the name of the musician, David Bowie (BOHee) but it is actually pronounced more like a fishing buoy (BOOee).

(To be continued)

Four Months in a Starcraft--The Entrepreneurs, Part Two

2012-01-21T19:28:00.012-07:00

To start at the beginning of this story, click here.

Whenever I have talked to my kids about business, I always try to remind them of some basic principles:

1. Determine an actual need or desire that a certain group of people have.

2. Find a way to meet the need with a quality product or service.

3. Manage your expenses so you can set a price that people are willing to pay.

4. Give your customers excellent customer service with a friendly attitude.

I am aware that the business world is far more complicated than that, but I thought it was a good start for a kid wanting to start a small business. It was that set of principles that set Ellie's new business in motion.

Having done three shows for each of the last three show seasons, I had noticed that lunch is a difficult thing for the vendors, speakers and show staff, most of whom are traveling and living out of hotels each weekend. Some managed to bring small coolers to the show with them, but then struggled to find a chance to get to them, being so busy with their responsibilities. Most opted to simply go hungry all day or find a chance to quickly run up to the concession stand for some overpriced, reheated food with minimal nutritional content. Going into this long string of shows, I was determined to feed my family sensible and nutritious lunches and avoid the fast food scene altogether.

This is how I came up with the idea of preparing sack lunches for the vendors. Since we would also be living out of hotels the whole time, it would require a great deal of coordination. Grocery shopping would have to happen frequently, sometimes daily during the shows. Order forms would have to be made and distributed, money collected, food kept refrigerated and prepared out of sight somewhere. It would be a very complex operation, but Ellie was all over it. "Ellie's Brown Bag Lunches" was born.

Before the opening bell of the first day of the Baltimore show, Ellie and I were busy getting ready to give the lunch business a trial run. I helped her figure out how to map the show floor, labeling the aisles with inconspicuous pieces of colored tape on the floor to keep track of where her customers were located. We reviewed her order forms. Customers could choose between a ham or turkey sandwich with their preferred cheese and condiments, and could add pretzels, fresh fruit and veggies, and cookies. Since she was not a licensed food service, she couldn't require payment, but only suggest a donation. We went over again the process of how to approach a vendor and introduce her new service. Most of the vendors already knew her from the western shows, but some would be regional. She practiced with a big, cheery smile:

"Hi! My name's Ellie and my dad is one of the speakers for the show. I'm starting a lunch business. If you would like, I can make lunch for you today--you choose what you want on this order form and I bring it to you. The suggested donation is $5.00. Would you like an order form? I could come back to get it in a few minutes."

With a final pep talk and the show about to begin, she began to make her rounds.

To say her business was a hit would be an understatement. That first day was not easy, though, as her young mind tried to keep so many details straight, so much to remember! Which booths said to come back later? Which aisle was I on when I stopped to run to the bathroom? Which vendor said that he would take lunch every day? Which vendor said he wouldn't ever be interested?

She actually came to me in tears at one point in the middle of taking orders that first day. It was just all a little overwhelming for a ten year old. I told her she didn't have to do it again, but now that she had started, she would have to finish, at least that one day. I gave her another pep talk, a big hug, and my unflinching vote of confidence.

Having completed her rounds that first day in Baltimore, Ellie came back to me with thirty completed order forms. Her eyes were wide with panic. She had no idea how she was going to make that many lunches in a short amount of time. She started to fall apart again.

"Well, Ellie," I began cautiously, trying to calm her down, "when business owners have more work than they can handle, they generally have to hire employees. I happen to be available and I'm well-qualified, having been making lunches for many years. I have lots of experience and I am willing to work hard with a good attitude. That kind of employee doesn't come cheap, though. I won't take this job for less than ten dollars an hour." It was hard to keep a straight face while I presented myself as a candidate for employment in my ten year old daughter's one hour old business, but I did it.

"Ok," she sniffed, "I would like to hire you."

"Great! Let's go make some sandwiches, Boss!"

And with a business handshake, we were off to a back corner of the hall, behind the curtains, where we had laid a table cloth over an empty wooden crate and set out all of her lunch making supplies. I showed Ellie how to set up a mass-production line for sandwiches and we got to work. When ten or so lunches were bagged up and ready to go, Ellie loaded them into a box and began delivering while I stayed behind to keep assembling.

There were a couple of more brief moments of panic on her part when she couldn't find a vendor's booth again to make the delivery, but eventually they all went out. We were grateful for the numbering system we had devised for the aisles and Ellie only had to consult with the show manager's floor map once or twice. She did it.

Exhausted but happy, and with an apron pocket full of not only lunch money, but also tips, the girl collapsed onto a box in our lunch prep area. I allowed her to relax only a moment before making her get back up and help clean and put away. Once completely finished, she promptly remembered to pay me twenty dollars for the two hours I'd worked, and then gave me a one dollar tip because I had done such a good job. I was flattered.

I asked her if she wanted to try to continue for the whole weekend. She did. The number of customers went up steadily until we were making nearly fifty lunches each day.

By the end of the three day show, she had become quite the phenomenon among the vendors, speakers and show staff. They loved her lunches. They loved her cheerful demeanor. They loved having the option of a better lunch for less money than they could get from the concession stand, and the ability to have lunch delivered so they didn't have to walk away from their booths. They loved that she was only ten years old; because of her height they had assumed she was older.

Ellie, of course, loved all the attention and the nearly three hundred dollars in her pocket at the end of the weekend--after paying for her groceries and my wages. The job was already getting easier for her. Her fledgling business was ready to take flight.

I loved my new job and my new identity on the show floor. From that weekend forward, I was no longer "Andy's wife." I was "Ellie's mom."

(To be continued)

Four Months in a Starcraft--The Entrepreneurs, Part One

2012-01-21T13:11:00.009-07:00

To start at the beginning of this story, click here.

As part of our home education during this road trip, I decided that I wanted the kids to gain some business experience. The November shows had been profitable for them already, but I wanted to find more work for them, to keep them occupied during the long months on the road.

In November, Tano had worked his way into a job through an unconventional, but brilliant method. He did not start out looking for a job; rather, he saw an opportunity for some free stuff and he took it. Let me explain.

As you might imagine, the children of a woodworker spend plenty of time out in the shop becoming familiar with tools and the process of making sawdust. Tano had learned to use a lathe and had been making turned pens and vessels to sell for the last year. He even had a blog displaying his wares and business cards printed.

At the Sacramento show back in November, he noticed that the "Learn to Turn" booth, sponsored by a turning supply company, was back for this season. They had multiple lathe stations set up and were teaching show attendees, young and old, to use the lathe and turn their first pens. Tano already knew how to use a lathe, but hey, free pen supplies! From experience, he knew he could sell his handmade pens for between $20 and $30 each, depending on the wood used. He sauntered over to the booth, got in line, and was soon being "taught" how to turn. His instructor began to get suspicious when Tano seemed to be moving on to each new step before being told what to do.

Finally he recognized him. "Hey," he exclaimed, peering at Tano through their plastic face shields, "aren't you that Chidwick kid?" Although Tano had grown significantly, the instructor remembered him from the previous year.

Tano sheepishly admitted his identity.

Rather than being upset with him for taking advantage of the system, however, the booth's manager hired the young upstart on the spot as an additional instructor. It was fun to see him teaching adults how to turn their first projects on a lathe. The boy was only thirteen years old. He was working for store credit instead of cash, but for a woodworker, it is pretty much the same thing.

Meanwhile, Ellie was finding her own way to make a junior living. Next to our booth was a very large display by a hardwoods dealer. They were needing to find a more effective way to get their brochures into the hands of show attendees, as well as get people to sign up for their drawing in order to pump up their contact database. Enter the cute and bubbly ten year old from next door. She was willing to interact with the public, was impossible to turn down by the most hardened heart, and was willing to work for product instead of cash. In fact, using their inflated wood prices already marked, she felt like she was being paid well--$10 per hour, paid in beautiful lumber!

Now, you might be asking yourself, what does sweet Ellie want with figured wood? She plays around in the shop a bit, but hadn't yet been trained on many power tools. With a little coaching from her parents, sweet Ellie figured out that she could spend her store credit on wood that her brother would be able to turn on the lathe. He bought her hardwood turning blanks for cash, then upcycled them into beautiful art pieces and resold them at a profit. It was brilliant. Both kids had work to keep them occupied during the long hours of each weekend show, pockets full of cash, and Tano still had store credit at the turning booth to further outfit himself with specialized tools and hardware kits.

That was the three shows in November. Now entering the thirteen show circuit, the main event, I wanted to make sure the kids still had plenty to do. I knew the turning booth and the hardwoods dealer would likely not be able to continue employing the kids long-term, so we put some work into figuring out new ideas for them.

At nearly fourteen and with the size and strength of a young man already, I was certain Tano would be able to pick up work here and there, offering his strong back to assist with the set-up and tear down of booths or working for the show itself whenever they were shorthanded. In addition, Andy had built Tano a collapsible work bench which would house a lathe and a drill press--the major tools needed for turning--with additional room to store chisels and other essential supplies. We had a small banner printed with his business name and effectively gave him a booth within our booth. He would do fine.

Finding meaningful and profitable work for Ellie was more of a challenge. I had an idea that I originally thought of for myself to do, as an extra income while out on the road, but when I mentioned it to Andy, he suggested I offer it to the girl instead. I thought she would be too young for such a big job, not mature enough to handle the work load and responsibility.

I was wrong.

(To be continued)

Four Months in a Starcraft--Broad Shoulders

2012-01-20T19:58:00.009-07:00

To start at the beginning of this story, click here.

Remember when I told you my husband has broad shoulders? It's true. He gets far too many chances to test out the strength of those shoulders, in my opinion, but he manages to pass every test. This most recent test was a big one.

Having spent most of a week on our drive from Dallas to Baltimore, our first of the thirteen woodworking shows, Andy received a phone call only twenty minutes from our destination, informing him that our crate would not be arriving in Baltimore. Mentally, he screeched the brakes. Fortunately, he did not actually slam on the Starcraft's brakes, as we were in heavy traffic on the outskirts of the city.

What exactly did they mean by 'it wouldn't be arriving'? he wondered, forcing his voice to remain calm. That crate has everything we need for the shows. It is 128 square feet of absolutely necessary stuff, crammed in to fit perfectly like the pieces of a puzzle. We would be arriving at the venue in twenty minutes to start setting up our space and the crate was in Chicago.

Chicago.

Would the show be willing to expedite the shipping to get it there in the morning so we could at least just set up a little late--under a time crunch, but still in time for the show to open?

No.

The freight company had already talked to the show's owner about the delay due to inclement weather, supposedly, but the crate had been picked up in Montana more than two weeks prior. We knew there was no reason for it to take that long. For an extra thousand dollars, the shippers could get it there by show time, but the show said to just leave it in Chicago and have it meet us at the next show in Springfield, Massachusets, the following weekend. It was extortion, plain and simple, and there wasn't a thing we could do about it since it wasn't our contract.

We would do the Baltimore show without the crate.

I watched the air go out of Andy's balloon. He had put so much time into getting that crate designed, built, organized and filled with everything we would need for the shows. It had several pieces of furniture in it, including one that was only partially completed to use as a demonstration of the process of building one. It also contained all his tools, lumber, promotional materials--everything. The whole point of going on the road with this show was to promote our woodworking school. Now we had nothing. No seminars, no booth decor, no tools, not even business cards.

And yet, somehow, Andy pulled it off. He borrowed a few essential tools from local woodworkers, some of whom he had met on Twitter and some of whom he met at the show venue during set-up. He bought some lumber. He borrowed a sound system. We printed some simple informational flyers at a local copy shop. The show went on. He was stressed out and disappointed, yes, but he didn't let it spoil our experience. There were some tense phone conversations, yes, but no tantrums, no tossing about of foul language, no breakdowns, nothing taken out on the family.

He is pretty amazing, that guy.

But someone else stepped up to the pretty amazing plate at the Baltimore show, too.

(To be continued)

Four Months in a Starcraft--A Boy and His Dinner

2012-01-20T18:37:00.013-07:00

To start at the beginning of this story, click here.

It is funny how much of an obsession food becomes when a boy is approaching his fourteenth birthday. Tano is a week and a half from this date and food has moved to his Priority Number One. Vying for second are napping and the precious little black umbilical cords that dangle from his ears, connected to a small rectangular machine containing his music, which he consumes like life blood.

Last night we were all hungry. I am generally not a fan of fast food and work very hard to keep my family from resorting to it, but we were in a desperate state and had many miles to cover before we would be stopping for the night. We scanned every freeway exit sign for a fast food restaurant on my coupon list. Traveling long-term, every dollar counts and I have a Ziploc bag full of coupons in the car door's side pocket. We saw a sign for Sonic at an upcoming exit and a general cheer went up in the vehicle.

Upon exiting, we saw another sign and an arrow. We turned accordingly, then turned again at the next sign. By the fourth sign with an arrow, we knew we had been suckered into a wild goose chase through a little downtown, but we were hungry so we persisted.

Coming over the crest of a hill, we finally spotted the burger joint. Artfully combining fast food with George Frideric Handel in classic Ellie form, the girl in the back seat burst into a spontaneous round of the "Soniclujah Chorus."

We pulled out our coupons to see what we would be ordering. We had Buy One, Get One Free coupons for a hamburger, a foot-long chili dog, a breakfast burrito, and an ice cream. To simplify things, Andy just ordered it all and added in some fries and two extra dishes of ice cream.

Once the order arrived, the kids were quick to point out that we needed to eat the ice cream first, before it melted. Point taken, much to their delight. We wound through the maze of downtown to get back to the interstate and we were on our way again. After the ice cream, Andy ate one of the ridiculously long chili dogs while Ellie and I dug into sausage and egg burritos. Tano busied himself with a burger.

"WAIT!" the boy called out with such urgency that Andy nearly stopped the van. I quickly asked what was wrong.

"There is no cheese on this burger!" Tano's voice fell somewhere between panic, indignation and mockery. He was joking, but only a little. "How can they serve a burger with no cheese on it?"

"Uh, Son, the coupon was for a hamburger, not a cheeseburger." Dad was the one to break the bad news.

"Nooooo!" he whined, clearly mocking now. "I must have cheese on my burger!"

His father remained calm. "If it's really that important to you, we can probably arrange to get you some cheese."

"Really?" Tano's deep voice cracked wildly, as it is still prone to do in moments of great excitement. He had visions of going back to Sonic dancing through his head and didn't see his dad wink at me and nod toward the big blue cooler sitting on the floor between us in the Starcraft's cockpit.

I smiled and opened the lid, reaching around for the cheddar cheese I had purchased back in Texarkana. Taking out one slice, I handed it rather unceremoniously to the now laughing boy in the seat behind me. "There. Now you have a cheeseburger."

"Thanks, Mom." The smile in his eyes twinkled in the glow of the infinity lights.

Between us, we gobbled up almost all of the remaining food. This morning, having only moments before driven away from the all-you-can-eat breakfast bar at our hotel, I glanced into the backseat just in time to see our man-child polishing off the last of the remaining food, a very chilly chili-cheese dog that had been well refrigerated overnight. The boy loves his food.

(To be continued)

Four Months in a Starcraft--Grocery Shopping in Texarkana

2012-01-20T12:05:00.009-07:00

To start at the beginning of this story, click here.

I am generally easy to please. Having lived much of my adult life without the option of overspending as a means of entertainment, I have learned to be amused with the simplest things. I can even be amused by grocery shopping. It's not hard, really, if you take the mindset of a writer, a person who sees everything in life as potential material for a story.

It is no wonder, then, that I had my trusty journal in my hands within minutes of leaving my parents' house, writing madly as the miles passed. Who knew we could have such fun on our first real leg of this business trip? I could be writing about touring historic Little Rock Central High School or walking Beale Street in Memphis (both of which were fascinating and topics that should be returned to when I get the chance), but as I said, I am a woman easily amused. I would rather write about Sandra and my trip to the grocery store.

Fairly soon after hitting the road, we needed to stop at a Verizon store for a maintenance issue with Andy's phone, but alas, we had left early in the morning and the stores we found weren't yet open. We drove on. By the time we arrived in Texarkana*, we were in need of bathrooms and gas. Pulling off the interstate, we could see a Verizon store in the shopping center nearby. I dropped Andy and the kids off to take care of the phone issue and I went down the block to the grocery store.

Looking back, I must have been shopping under the influence--giddy with the excitement of starting the road trip of my dreams. I found that I was absolutely delighted, walking around a grocery store I had never seen before in a town called Texarkana that I had never been to before, in a region of the country I had never explored before. I loved reading all the brand names that I didn't recognize. I loved seeing foods I wasn't accustomed to encountering.

In the produce section, I came upon five and ten pound sacks of peanuts in the shell. In the snack aisle there were no less than six different brands of pork rinds. The meat department featured parts of animals I recognized from my high school anatomy class, but I had been only vaguely aware of their marketing possibilities as food products. I had to remind myself several times to put things into my shopping cart, because otherwise I would have just wandered aimlessly down the aisles, browsing like one does at the mall.

I caught myself smiling absentmindedly as I shopped. Fellow shoppers probably thought I was just really friendly--or maybe a little disturbed. At one point a woman pushing a cart down my aisle looked at me, perhaps noting my friendly and open expression, and asked with wrinkled brow if I knew where the sandwich bread was located. I'm pretty sure I actually laughed with delight as I replied that I had absolutely no idea. What a dork.

Lunch meat, sliced cheese, pickles, fruit, easy veggies...must accomplish the task for which I have come--to replenish the lunch supplies in our cooler. Concentrate, Sherry!

The last thing on my list was sandwich bread and I had to admit, it was indeed strangely hard to find, but once my list was completed, I headed to the checkstand. My checker was Sandra, according to her nametag, and as my turn in line approached, I mentally tried out both SAN-dra and SOHN-dra, to see which one sounded like she looked. I couldn't decide and there wouldn't be any opportunity for me to find out gracefully. This left me feeling slightly unsettled, for some crazy reason that only my brain understands. I might always wonder. Sandra, if you are reading this, could you please tell me how you pronounce your name? I have no idea why things like these are important to me; it's really ridiculous.

Anyway, Sandra was my checker. Now you're wondering how to pronounce it, too, aren't you? She was a classic grandma if there ever was one and as she ran my groceries across the scanner, I politely inquired about her holiday celebrations. Apparently, her son and his family had come for Christmas Eve and then everyone went over to her daughter's house for a big breakfast on Christmas morning. All of her grandkids were together in one place. I was genuinely happy for her.

Next, she asked about my Christmas, and as each detail came out, she expressed an obviously well-practiced interest in my life with a syrupy, "Well how 'bout that?" Really, she said it after every independent clause that I spoke.

"We're actually from Montana..."

"Well, how 'bout that?"

"We got to spend a week with my folks in the Dallas area..."

"Well, how 'bout that?"

"It was a really nice visit..."

"Well, how 'bout that?"

"My brother and his wife, from Portland, Oregon, flew in to join us for New Year's..."

"Well, how 'bout that?"

Seriously. I can be prone to exaggeration, but not this time. It went on for quite a while, as I had picked up a little more than just lunch supplies, I suppose. By the end of our time together I was ready to hug Sandra, regardless of how her name was pronounced. She was easily the sweetest person I had met on the trip so far.

She had bagged my groceries onto one of those lazy-susan** things and as I began to reach for the bags, Sandra's practiced eye noted the number of bags on the turntable, the number of hands on my body, and the empty shopping cart. It was becoming clear to her that I was planning to carry all six bags and she was concerned.

"Hun," she queried, half asking and half telling, "you gonna need a buggy for those?"

A buggy. It took me about three-quarters of a second to realize she was referring to the shopping cart. A buggy! That was pretty darn close to the cutest thing I had ever heard. I smiled as I assured her I would be just fine without it.

Well, how 'bout that?

* I'm not sure if we were still in Texas or had crossed over into Arkansas already. Like Kansas City, the city spans both sides of the border and is essentially the same place, except for mailing addresses and tax laws.

**I have always felt badly for both Lazy Susan and Sloppy Joe. What terrible things must they have done to have been immortalized thus?

(To be continued)

Snowman Cafe′

2012-01-19T18:43:00.005-07:00

This is the kind of thing that happens when I am housebound by snow and ice for several days; I get all relaxed and start being creative and fun. The same thing happens when the power is out for more than a few minutes. Who knows? With freezing rain weighing down the power lines tonight, maybe we'll have both!

Four Months in a Starcraft--A Fairly Uneventful November

2012-01-19T08:36:00.031-07:00

To start at the beginning of this story, click here.

Our November travels to the shows in Sacramento, Portland and Denver were fairly uneventful, once we had recovered from the trauma of replacing the Brick with the Starcraft. Oh, but there was that one little incident in Sacramento. I guess I should tell you about that one.

While in Sacramento, we were able to stay with one of Andy's former woodworking students, Randy. He is a bachelor these days and has a spacious home in a really nice neighborhood just outside the city. As we followed the Blueberry (the name we assigned to the blue arrow on our phone's GPS) to Randy's home for the first time, our kids cycled between fascination and repulsion. I am not sure if they had ever seen so many large, beautiful homes in such a compact space before. These kids live in rural Montana: beautiful homes are kind of cool, but why would you want such a tiny piece of land with so many neighbors crowding all around you?

We enjoyed our time at Randy's and the weekend show was going well, as Andy is a bit of rock star among the woodworking community of Sacramento. Sunday morning, however, the doorbell rang repeatedly in the grey light of pre-dawn. We heard Randy stumble out of bed to see who it was, but we just snuggled deeper into our blankets, grateful that it wasn't yet time to get up. We would be leaving Sacramento soon to head back to Portland, so we had much to do to repack the van, but it could wait another hour yet.

The conversation at the front door didn't sound right, though. The voices were too loud for this time of day in a densely populated stretch of homes. We heard the door close and Randy's footsteps head straight for our bedroom door. He knocked and called through the closed door.

"Uh, guys, I hate to tell you this, but they got your car."

We bolted out of bed in a panic. What did he mean 'they got our car'?

We were thoroughly relieved, as I'm sure you will be, to find the Starcraft still in the driveway. A vandal had driven through the neighborhood in the night and shot out dozens of car windows. The back window of the Starcraft was one of them. We had owned the vehicle for a total of four days.

Still in a bit of a daze, pinching ourselves to see if this was simply a bad dream, but grateful to have a vehicle at all, we set to work cleaning up the broken glass. We would not be able to replace the window early on a Sunday morning and we had to pack up and get ready for work, so we patched the gaping hole with heavy plastic and lots of duct tape. We would have to look for a new window in Portland.

We were a little shaken and felt somewhat violated, but what could we do? Poor Randy felt horrible, as this type of thing simply doesn't happen where he lives. We thanked him for his hospitality, assured him we did not think less of him or his neighborhood, exchanged hugs all around, and drove away. The show must go on and all that.

The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful in my memory, and since it took place before I began keeping the travel journal there isn't much more to report.

Oh, except for...ugh...I had tried to forget about this part. I think this part of the story is one of those things that I will laugh about someday. But that someday has not yet arrived. Ugh.

We had still been in Portland, shopping for a van, when my scalp began to itch. It wasn't really that bad, and I assumed some rogue dandruff was to blame. By Sacramento, I was really itching quite a bit. I was a little concerned, but I had other things on my mind, like the woodworking show and the window being shot out of our new van. Leaving Sacramento, we had big plans for a few days of sightseeing before returning to Portland for the show there.

Our first stop was the Oregon Caves. They were truly stunning. It was a very cold day, as I recall, and it seemed funny to go into the caves and feel warmer, since the caves remain a constant 40 degrees at all times of the year. We enjoyed touring the caves, did a little hiking around in the blowing snow outside, and moved on.

Hungry from hiking in the cold, we asked Madame Blueberry to find us a buffet. With a growing boy to feed, we made all-you-can-eat places standard operating procedure as much as possible. It was at this restaurant that the itching became intense. I excused myself to go to the restroom and tried to discreetly examine my scalp in the mirror. I couldn't see anything so I returned to the table. I couldn't shake the terrible creepy-crawly feeling, though, so I made another trip to the restroom. Coming back this time, I stopped in an alcove and scratched my head again. To my horror, two bugs fell onto the floor. From my hair. Lice.

I don't know how to spell the thoughts or feelings that occurred at that moment, but I wanted to get out of there, buy whatever looked the most toxic from a drug store's shelf, and get to our hotel for the night so I could begin killing any remaining little critters and whatever they had left behind for posterity.

Pardon me while I take a break to scratch my head thoroughly and run around the house doing a little heebie-jeebie dance.

Ok, I'm back now.

It's a shame that I don't remember more about the Curly Redwood Inn in Crescent City. I think it was a really charming classic old motor lodge. I do remember that the room was larger than any I've seen before or since and was paneled with actual curly redwood--fascinating to this woodworking family. I would highly recommend it. I think.

It is not exactly convenient to deal with an infestation of head lice while on a family road trip and quite honestly, I don't feel like writing any further about it. Let's just move on, shall we?

You're welcome.

After the Oregon Caves, we spent a day hiking in the Redwoods. We hiked for hours with an icy rain falling steadily and a wind that cut right through. We didn't mind, though, because the scenery was so amazing, so awe-inspiring that we were warmed and filled with a quiet reverence, just to be among such ancient giants. Have you been to the Redwoods? If you have, you understand. It wasn't until that evening until we realized we were chilled completely through, but it was worth every shiver.

The next day was spent on the Oregon coast. Most of us enjoyed a midday meal of fresh sea food--all except for the fish-hating boy, who had a bowl of chili or something else decidedly non-oceanic. The remainder of the day was wisely invested at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. We have been there twice now, and have enjoyed it tremendously each time. What's not to love about walking through a plexiglass tunnel in the middle of an enormous shark tank? The kids were both very busy during our time at the aquarium, taking notes and studying for a school unit on marine biology.

Have I mentioned yet that we educate at home? I suppose you must have picked up on it by now, seeing that we are on the road for so long during the middle of the school year. So yes, we are one of those weird and unsocialized homeschool families. The kids did school work at each of the natural and historic sites we visited along the trip, as well as numerous other assignments while we were driving down the road for hours on end. My little road scholars.

After a day out at the coast, we made it back to the Portland area, checked in with the family and crashed at the home of some old friends. It was almost time to set up for the next show.

If you recall, the most interesting van in the world is still missing a back window at this point. Unwilling to swallow the price of buying a brand new one, Andy spent every spare moment during the Portland show on the phone with salvage yards. We found a place that had the exact window we needed, but it was quite far away. We drove all the way across town in traffic to pick it up, but once we got there, they couldn't find it on the lot. We started calling ahead to salvage yards in Denver, our next stop before heading home to Montana.

Once the show in Denver was in full swing, we were handed our next major surprise--the biggest one of all. The show management was realizing just how much added value Andy's little seminars were contributing to their shows. I had been trying to point this out for years, but they can be slow movers sometimes. They offered him a position as one of their main educational speakers for the rest of the season. The rest of the season! That would mean continuing on with our travels around the country until April!

For me, it was a dream come true, the opportunity of a lifetime. I have always wanted to take our little home school on the road for an extended period of time and watch the history, geology and geography of our country come alive for the kids. I was so excited at the thought of it really coming true that I couldn't concentrate on anything else. They wanted him for the rest of the season!

We spent the evening of our 18th wedding anniversary at a quiet restaurant on the Pearl Street Mall in snowy Boulder, Colorado. The kids were back home at a friends' house, where we were staying. Our last several anniversaries had been spent in the Denver area, as the Denver show always fell on the same weekend in November, but this one was different. Our eyes twinkled in the candlelight as we considered all that lay ahead of us. We would definitely have to go back home first to get our affairs in order and figure out how we could leave Andy's dad. His dad would not do well with life on the road. Then there were the two big dogs to think about, and our shop employee. Could he manage the woodshop on his own in our absence? We needed to stock up on firewood, and print more business cards and brochures, and figure out how to forward our mail, and...there were a thousand details to be arranged. We decided we would need to skip the Detroit and Chicago shows, scheduled for early December, and pick up the show again in Baltimore, the first weekend in January.

Oh, but what about Christmas? We had told my folks we would come to Texas to see them. It was going to be a crazy-long road trip just for Christmas, but they had just moved there and we all wanted to see their new place. We had hoped to visit them earlier in the year and had to cancel our plans, disappointing both them and our kids. No, we couldn't cancel again. We would have to leave for Baltimore a couple weeks early and swing by Texas on the way there.

The rest of that trip was fairly uneventful--nothing at all, really, compared to what was to come. And that, I believe, brings us back up to the present, right? We are driving out of my parents' driveway, waving good-bye and honking the horn after a final round of hugs by the crispy Christmas tree.

(To be continued)

Four Months in a Starcraft--By Way of Introduction, Part Two

2012-01-18T11:03:00.024-07:00

To start at the beginning of this story, click here.

To introduce the Starcraft properly, I need to back up a bit. I started this story, as you recall, just after the first of the new year with us pulling out of my parents' driveway in Dallas, but that is not really when our trip began.

This is actually our third year with the woodworking show. In November, before our little holiday jaunt to Texas, we had set out to do just the western circuit of shows, as we have done every other year. We planned to caravan with Andy's dad, who lives with us, to Portland, Oregon, a scant ten hour drive from home. We would drop Dad there at Andy's brother's house for a visit while we drove down to the Sacramento show. Then we would come back the following weekend for the Portland show and caravan together again to the show in Denver before returning home.

This is not anything new for us. We have done this route before. Our van, however, was not excited about making the trip this time. We didn't know this when we left home, of course, only two months after replacing the motor. We thought we had taken all the necessary precautions and would have a smooth ride. We had not factored in the Power of Umatilla (say YOOmaTILLa), which is stronger, apparently, than even a new motor and a good mechanic's clean bill of health.

We had broken down in or near Umatilla, Oregon before. Several times before. Seven times before, in fact, over five different vehicles. We are not superstitious people, but it has come to the point that we are always a little nervous running that stretch, just to the northeast of the Columbia River Gorge. We tend to get very quiet and crack little nervous jokes that no one really laughs at and we have to remember to breathe normally, as it is a long stretch in which to hold one's breath. You know the Bermuda Triangle lore? Umatilla is like that for us.

But we approached Umatilla with confidence this time. The Brick* was in excellent condition. We have not had great success with vehicles over the years, and I could tell many stories of our adventures as a result, but this time, we were in good shape.

They say pride comes before a fall, right? What a mighty fall it was.

I won't go into all the technical details of exactly what happened to the Brick, since I would probably get it all wrong anyway, but it was done for. Around Umatilla, the engine began to make a funny noise. We had not gone much further before the noise became something horrific, like a cartoon sound effect of an engine falling apart, with an almost comical combination of clanks and thunks, squeals and screeches. We limped the Brick into a mechanics' shop.

After two hours of deliberating with the mechanics, testing and prodding, we crammed our essential luggage into my father in-law's car and drove on the few remaining hours into Portland. We would figure out what to do at Andy's brother's house.

Once there, it was decided that we should look for another van and continue the trip. The shows were too valuable for our business. We spent a tense evening online, searching for an acceptable van in the greater Portland metro area. It had to be big enough to carry all of our gear, most of which was back in the Brick yet. Since the GMC Safari has significantly more cargo space than any other minivan, we knew we would have to purchase either another Safari or something bigger. The Brick was absolutely stuffed to the rafters; something larger would be much more comfortable for such a long road trip.**

The next step up in size is a full size van, the kind we used to picture in our minds when someone said 'van.' Those come in three varieties: the passenger van (too many seats, not enough cargo room for our gear), the cargo van (plenty of cargo room, but not enough seats for the four of us), or the conversion van (back seat folds down flat for a bed and four captain's chairs). Like Goldilocks selecting a bowl of porridge, we decided the third option was just right. We found several conversion vans, made appointements to go see them the next day, and dropped into a restless sleep full of questions, worries, and visions of a hideous blood-sucking creature named Umatilla.

The next day, on a blind date, we met the Starcraft. We didn't choose that name, mind you. It is a Chevy Express van with a Starcraft conversion package and Starcraft is painted across the back of the vehicle. We were all immediately smitten with it. We fell in love at some point during the test drive and were married within two hours. It was time, again, to get the show on the road--or to get back onto the road to the show, or something like that. We hugged our extended family members, headed back out the Gorge to pick up the rest of our gear, and made tracks for Sacramento, only a day behind schedule. We would miss some time with family and friends, but at least we were on the road.

We really did not get to know the Starcraft until we were on the road for this honeymoon trip to Sacramento. He is definitely the tall, dark and handsome type--imposing of frame, dressed all in black with dark sunglasses over all the windows. The interior is grey leather throughout, with rotating captain's chairs in the middle and a backseat stereo CD player with its own controls and headphone jacks. The ceiling is blinged out with several sets of unnecessary lights in impractical places. The most impressive of these is the one down the center of the van--a series of tiny LED's set into a mirrored panel, giving the appearance of a whole city of lights or a starry night sky above. Ellie quickly dubbed them the 'infinity lights.' The name fits, really. They are not enough to read by unless a kid is at a terribly suspenseful point in a novel (which actually happens frequently, as both kids are big readers and a 15,000 mile road trip without a DVD player is prime time for good books), but they look spectacular at night, adding a soft twinkling glow to the environment, not unlike riding in the back of a limousine.

Truth be told, I have never ridden in the back of a limousine except that one time in 1986 when I went to the prom with a group of friends, one of whose fathers owned a mortuary. We took the mortuary's family limousine and Mr. Kealy dressed up like a chauffeur to tote us around. We were undoubtedly the most celebratory and rambunctious group to have ever filled those seats. The mortuary's limo most definitely did not have infinity lights. So I suppose, now that I think about it, riding in the Starcraft is even better than being in a limousine, or at least the ones (ok, one) in my experience.

The Starcraft's charm stops just short of having a disco ball, but that would not be completely out of character for it. It is, we all agreed, the most interesting van in the world.

*It was a boxy, dark red GMC Safari van, identical in shape and color to a brick, thus, it was aptly named. Doesn't everyone name their vehicles?

**This was back in the days when we thought Montana-Portland-Sacramento-Portland-Denver-Montana was a big road trip, of course.

(To be continued)

Four Months in a Starcraft--By Way of Introduction, Part One

2012-01-17T13:45:00.017-07:00

Note: The following collection of posts, all labeled Four Months in a Starcraft for lack of a better working title, come from my journal and memories of last year's family business trip, wherein we followed the circuit of a traveling woodworking show around the United States for four months. I hope to transcribe my story here bit by bit, for you, my faithful few readers. If I come to the end and you and I think it's something that could be edited into a marketable form, I will think about pursuing it further. If not, then at least I've set down my family's story for our own future enjoyment. Hopefully, it will bring you some amusement and food for thought, as well. Enjoy.

I suppose for most people, pulling out of Grandma and Grandpa's driveway at the start of January, after one last round of hugs by the dried-out Christmas tree and a honk of the horn, it would mean the end. For most people, it would mean it's time to drive home, start back to school and resume the regularly scheduled programming of everyday life.

But we are not most people this year. This year, pulling out of Grandma and Grandpa's driveway outside of Dallas, Texas, honking and waving, marks the point where we actually begin. We are on our way to Baltimore from our home in Montana, to begin a several month stint following a traveling woodworking show. The geography students out there might be scratching their heads right now, wondering how Dallas is on the way to Baltimore from Montana. Never you mind. We've never really been the direct route types, and this convoluted path fits right in with the rest of our coming itinerary.

A Chinese proverb supposedly says that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. In our case, the journey of 15,000 miles began with this jaunt over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house. Actually, it was over several rivers, but still, it was our first single step.

Perhaps I should begin with some introductions. We're the Chidwick family. The role of Dad is played by Andy. He's 42 and has a huge heart. He loves baseball, roller coasters and a good hand-crafted porter--if it comes with equally good conversation. He can act, sing and dance when called upon to do so, can fix most anything, and has a seemingly unlimited reservoir from which to draw hugs and cuddles for his daughter and headlocks and half-nelsons for his son--all in love, of course. He is an artist in his soul, with his preferred medium being wood, and he is also an excellent teacher, so naturally he runs a woodworking school. He has a scruffy chin, eyes the color of the sea before a storm, and broad shoulders that are strong enough to bear any load, be it physical or otherwise. I'm kind of fond of the guy, and have been for the better part of twenty years.

At the other end of our family's age spectrum is our ten year old daughter, Ellie. Ellie sparkles. I mean that in every possible way. Her eyes, hazel green flecked with pure gold, actually appear to twinkle when she is happy, which is most of the time. Ellie is at that most confusing and delightful time of life--balanced precariously between the childhood and teen years, not yet willing to let go of one in order to fully embrace the other. On her birthday this year, we went to the mall to get her ears pierced, then celebrated with a ride on the carousel. She puts on her deodorant, then parks herself on the floor in front of her dollhouse to play.

She is slender and tall, taller than most everyone else her age, and has more energy than all the rest of us put together. Her body is in constant motion--running, jumping, dancing, tapping, clicking, bouncing, rolling. She's got most of the present participle action verbs covered. Oh, and she sings, too. A lot. About anything. About nothing. When she was an infant, she would sing herself to sleep. Seriously. If you ask her not to sing, she will hum. She has to, I think.

When Ellie was five years old she marched into the kitchen and announced to me that henceforth and forevermore, she was to be known as The Princess of All Joy. I added the 'henceforth and forevermore' part myself, but I assure you; if she had the vocabulary to support it, she would have said that. Her tone implied it. She even has a large rock out in the garden that is engraved with The Princess of All Joy. A rock. Engraved! She met someone once who has a machine that can engrave on rocks. After chatting with her for a short time, he was a believer. He went home, engraved the rock and shipped it to her in the mail. A rock. In the mail! I told you she sparkles.

Just don't cross her. Sparkles can easily ignite.

Our son, Tano, is also a study in contrasts, but for different reasons. At nearly fourteen years old, he is starting to try and define himself. He likes hard rock music, the louder the guitars and drums, the better. He loves Dr. Pepper and grapefruit, but suddenly dislikes any food that used to swim--unless he caught it himself. He loves air soft guns and medieval weaponry, but really doesn't care about most traditional sports.

The one thing Tano hasn't decided on is whether he is a country boy or a quasi-city boy. He is equally comfortable with either style and, surprisingly, pulls either one off fine. He looks just as convincing in his Carhartt jacket and work boots as he does with a flat brim baseball cap cocked at an angle and headphones dangling casually around his neck.

But Tano is more than just a small town kid in skater shoes. He's also a thinker. He likes science and philosophy, classic literature and Greek mythology. He thinks balancing chemical equations and answering trivia questions are fun, but then laughs about how his friends would think he was such a nerd if they only knew.

Like his father, Tano has a big heart. He has an impressive collection of little brothers, none of whom is actually related to him; he is kind-hearted toward little kids and they flock to him because of it. I smile to think what a good daddy he will make someday.

Oh, and Tano loves food. Given the choice between a plate of food and an entire chemistry lab, he would have a moment of hesitation...then sit down and pick up a fork. He is a growing boy after all. Tano's love of food even outranks his love of his shoot-em-up video games. And that's a lot of love.

Rounding out our family of four is me, but I have a hunch you'll get to know me pretty well by the end of the story, so I won't spend much time here introducing myself. Just know that I am a reformed city girl, surprised to find that I am a homeschool mom. I am a raging extrovert who is just as happy curled up in a quiet corner with a good book to read or a journal in which to write. I've lived all over the United States, so I don't really consider any one corner of it my home. Rather, I think of it all as my playground or perhaps my library. Those are pretty much the same thing in my book.

I would be remiss, however, if I didn't introduce you to one more main character: the Starcraft.

(To be continued)

Halfway to Thirty

2012-01-16T16:47:00.004-07:00

My firstborn, Tano, turned 15 years old today. The whole childbirth process can be a bit of a whirlwind, and as first births go, mine was fairly short. From the time my water broke at home in the late evening, to the time a little boy came out, pink and wailing, only six hours elapsed. I remember the nurse handing my boy to me and he stopped crying and stared into my eyes.

"Andy!" I called softly to my husband, right there next to me, "It's our son!"

I remember being struck by the fact that I didn't recognize him. Being a woman in her late twenties, I knew so many babies. My friends' babies were familiar to me. But this baby was, for that brief moment, a stranger. I'd never laid eyes on him before in my life. I know this seems perfectly reasonable to the rest of you, that I'd never seen him, but to me it was a revelation. I somehow expected to recognize him. I knew his every movement in my womb. I knew he liked to play the game I'll-Poke You-And-You-Poke-Me-Right-Back every night at bedtime. I knew he had one very sharp little heel on his favorite kicking foot (he had broken one of my ribs with it a month prior and I was amused to find that it really was a heel that had done the damage, just as I had deduced). I knew his every mood, it seemed, but I'd never before seen his face.

"It's our son!" I repeated, astonished. Then, as I gazed at him staring intently at my face, I felt myself instantly falling in love with every feature of his face, from his serious wrinkled brow to his piercing dark blue eyes to his shock of strawberry blond hair.

We named him Nathaniel, Hebrew for "given of God." We intended to call him Nate, but some friends nicknamed him Tano early on and it stuck. It has always fit him well.

Today, my sweet little Nathaniel, N'Taniel, Taniel, Tanyo, Tano turned fifteen years old. It hardly seems possible. What a joy he has been to us over the years. He is sweet and kind, respectful and bright, confident and funny.

And he is halfway to thirty. That's just downright sobering. He looks much more like a junior man than a little boy. He is six feet tall and lean as a rail. He shaves. Occasionally. His voice is deep and rumbling. He is generous with hugs for me these days, and doesn't try to pull away anymore like he did a few years ago. He even hugs his sister without complaining.

Saturday night, we threw a party for him. Six teenage boys and six teenage girls came over for an evening bon fire, a glow stick scavenger hunt around the property, and a black light dance party with Daddy as the DJ and Mama as the ever-present provider of food. The kids had so much fun. He has nice friends.

Last night, I asked him what he wanted for his birthday dinner. I told him I would make whatever he wanted and was mentally prepared to spend much of today in the kitchen. He asked for some time to think it over. Food is very important to him these days. This morning he gave me his answer. Pizza. I was prepared to do steak, ribs, lasagna, but no, he wanted pizza--with one stipulation. He wanted pizza with "lots and lots of meat on it." I knew it would be just as economical to buy a pizza with that much meat, so I stopped at Papa Murphy's while out running errands in Missoula this afternoon. I found a Five Meat Stuffed Pizza with nary a veggie in sight. Perfect. We eat in less than an hour.

Happy birthday, my sweet man-child. Where have fifteen years gone? Weren't you just a little boy last week?

I looked at him this morning across the breakfast table and for an instant didn't recognize him again. In my mind, I repeated the words again--the best and most appropriate words for this anniversary celebration:

"Andy! It's our son!"

Two-Part Parenting

2012-01-12T22:21:00.005-07:00

In a conversation with my daughter this evening, I heard some things come out of my mouth that actually made a lot of sense. Don't you just love it when that happens? Rare--yes--but noteworthy. Having tucked her in to bed, I wanted to write them down. I will keep it short and sweet this time. I know; mark this day in the record books.

Parenting is a two-part process. Like the clutch and gas pedals of a manual transmission vehicle, parenting decisions are generally made with consideration of both of these parts working together in harmony. The pedals are not depressed together, but rather, it is in laying heavy on the one and letting up on the other that the car functions smoothly.

The two pedals are these: protection and preparation.

Some of the decisions that we make as parents are directly for our children's protection. The making and enforcing of these decisions does not correspond with free will. On the contrary, these decisions are made when our children's free will choices would be dangerous. Our job in these situations is to protect. Put the pedal to the metal.

Other decisions we make as parents are designed to prepare our kids to make their own decisions. This is where we give them choices. This is where we allow them to make their own mistakes, hopefully small ones now that will help them to avoid larger mistakes later. Our job at these times is to prepare them for the time to come, when they will be without us.

When the situation calls desperately for one, you lighten up on the other. There will be time to push the other pedal later. But of course, there is that one moment when the two pedals cross one another, one going up and one going down. This is the place where we offer choices within the bounds of relative safety.

That's it.

Told you I'd be brief.

I Had Big Plans to Go Running Today...

2012-01-12T13:54:00.002-07:00

...but I seem to have done something to my Achilles tendon by...uh...carrying groceries in from the car. I'm now sitting in the recliner with an ice pack, feeling very old.

I had big plans to go running yesterday, but I forgot that my schedule for the day would keep me away from home from noon until after nine o'clock at night, taxiing kids around and attending meetings. The morning was full already with my role as home educator. Running in the early morning, before school begins is really not workable for me, as it doesn't get light until almost 8:00 and the early morning air temperature in January in Montana doesn't appeal to me much at all.

I had big plans to go running Tuesday, but when 3:00 came, the time my daughter and I had arranged to head out, it had clouded over considerably; the wind had picked up; the temperature had dropped and snow was falling in that least appealing form, the tiny little hard pellets of snow (we called it 'corn snow' when I was a kid) that feel like miniature weapons when they hit your face. Sorry, I'm just not that hard core.

Maybe I will go running tomorrow.

The Wisdom and Courage of Sir Ernest Shackleton

2012-01-11T17:15:00.020-07:00

I've just finished reading South, the tragic and heroic account of Sir Ernest Shackleton's 1914-1916 expedition to Antarctica. I won't spoil it all for you, if you aren't familiar with the story, but I will tell you that more courage and strength of character was demonstrated by the crew of that expedition than I've come across in any other true adventure story. If Hollywood were to make a fictional movie with this same plot, it would likely receive horrible reviews for being so fantastical and beyond the scope of reality.

Here are some passages I highlighted as I read:

The trappings of civilization are soon cast aside in the face of stern realities, and given the barest opportunity of winning food and shelter, man can live and even find his laughter ringing true.

We had flung down the adze from the top of the fall and also the logbook and the cooker wrapped in one of our blouses. That was all, except our wet clothes, that we brought out of the Antarctic, which we had entered a year and half before with well-found ship, full equipment and high hopes. That was all of tangible things; but in memories we were rich. We had pierced the veneer of outside things. We had "suffered, starved, and triumphed, grovelled down yet grasped at glory, grown bigger in the bigness of the whole."1 We had "seen God in His splendours, heard the text that Nature renders."1 We had reached the naked soul of man.

When I look back at those days I have no doubt that Providence guided
us, not only across those snowfields, but across the storm-white sea that
separated Elephant Island from our landing-place on South Georgia.

I know that during that long and racking march of thirty-six hours over
the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia it seemed to me often that we were four, not three. I said nothing to my companions on the point, but afterwards Worsley said to me, "Boss, I had a curious feeling on the march that there was another person with us." Crean confessed to the same idea. One feels "the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech" in trying to describe things intangible, but a record of our journeys would be incomplete without a reference to a subject very near to our hearts.

If ever a man had cause to be grateful for assistance in dark days, I am he.

1 from the poem "The Call of the Wild," by Robert W. Service

2 from the poem "Endymion," by John Keats

(And let this be a lesson to all of us, kids, to be so familiar with good poetry that just the right graceful line may spring to mind when we need it most)

A Rather Diverse Reading List

2012-01-10T19:07:00.008-07:00

When it comes to books, one could conclude that I'm a bit of a playa. I get around. I read a bit of this and a bit of that, never staying too long in any one place.

My last book post was of a collection of travel memoirs I read all in a row. I was definitely going with a theme there, rare for me, but it was an intentional theme. I was doing research for writing my own travel memoir. I was fairly singular in my purpose at that time, but fear not; I am back to my regular scatter-brained self.

So without further ado, I present the books I have most recently read. I cannot recall in what order they were started, but this is the order in which they were finished.

The Freedom Writers Diary, by The Freedom Writers, with Erin Gruwell

I loved this book. I was really hoping I would. When I first saw advertisements for the movie in 2007, I was intrigued. Having been a public high school teacher in a gang-infested neighborhood, I am always a sucker for teacher movies involving disadvantaged kids. I've worked in a very well-to-do academic magnet school, too, with the brightest of the bright kids in the district, kids whose parents are highly involved in their education and among whom, 'settling' for a state university would be a terrible humiliation. That first group of kids, however, the ones for whom nothing comes easily, the ones for whom every victory has been hard-fought, the ones for whom a caring teacher is often the most stable figure in their lives, those kids grab my heart. I love those kids. Plus, as an English teacher, I was intrigued by the title. I couldn't wait to find out more about the movie.

What a thrill, then, to find that the movie was based on a true story, a story that took place at my own high school only a handful of years after I graduated! A meager ten year span separated my own high school graduation from that of The Freedom Writers. I rarely see movies in the theater--perhaps one every two years or even less--but I went to see this movie and I loved it.

Then, much to my surprise, a paperback version of The Freedom Writers Diary showed up in my local library's discarded book sale this past autumn. I suppose most rural Montanans don't get as excited about a story like this as I do. I happily bought the book and dug right in every chance I got.

Bottom line, I highly recommend it. It is rough, friends. The language is not always clean. The subject matter is often very disturbing. But it is gritty and real. It is the real lives of these kids, kids from whom nothing academic was ever expected, kids who might have, save for the influence of one naive, optimistic dreamer of a teacher, not even lived to the age of eighteen, let alone graduated from high school and gone on to college. Best yet, it is in their own words. Two thumbs, way up. Prepare to be inspired. Prepare to be frustrated, angered, even infuriated. Prepare to cry. Prepare to cheer.

Sacred Parenting, by Gary Thomas

I don't even remember how I came across this book. Did one of you loan it to me when I visited at your house? If so, speak up so I can return it. Perhaps I picked it up at a garage sale or in a free box somewhere. I just can't recall. However it came into my possession, I'm grateful. It is excellent. This is rare parenting book that doesn't focus on how to parent, but rather on what parenting does to us, how it grows and matures us, how it turns us--as adults--into more than we ever could have been without raising children.

Try this on for size, regarding the sense of inadequacy and guilt that parents so often feel, regardless of whether they are brand new at this parenting gig or are old hands:

...we shouldn't look at guilt as a parking lot but as a car wash. When guilt feelings keep us self-absorbed, destroy our motivation, and make us discouraged, guilt has become a parking lot--not a good thing. But when guilt reminds us that we are insufficient, and when this insufficiency points us to God--his forgiveness, his empowering Spirit, and his provision of grace--then guilt becomes a spiritual car wash. You don't camp out in a car wash; you just go there to get clean! You drive through the car wash and come out on the other end with an entirely new outlook. That's one of the healthy roles that guilt can play for parents: pointing us and our children to God.

This book is filled with little nuggets like that. Here are some chapter titles:

"Vicious Vulnerability: How Parenting Confronts Cowardice and Builds Courage"

"Burning Love: How Raising Children Teaches Us to Handle Anger"

"Leaving: How Parenting Teaches Us to Handle Control and Fear by Leading Us to Trust and Hope"

So many parenting books are geared very specifically to parents of very little ones or parents of turbulent teens, but this book would be relevant to any parent with kids at home of any age, in my opinion. I found Gary Thomas to be very insightful, with refreshing perspectives on a variety of topics.

Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens

I'm not sure how I've made it thus far in life without reading this book, but I have. When my husband took a risk and surprised me with a Kindle reader for Christmas, I knew the first books I would download onto it would be old classics, as they are in the public domain and available for free. Dickens came up in my search and I was reminded of this gaping hole in my literary experience, so I loaded it onto the Kindle for the machine's first test drive. Before I'd finished the first chapter, I had lost any previously held prejudices against digital reading devices. A book is a book is a book. The irony of reading a book published in 1838 as my first experience with a touch screen digital device was not lost on me, though.

I should have read this book ages ago. I loved it. Dickens' typical dry wit does not disappoint from beginning to end and his mastery of irony is, as usual, brilliant. The characters are complex and intriguing for the most part--except that the women tend to be a little simplistic and the relationship between the Bumbles served only as an unnecessary distraction, in my opinion. The plot takes several intriguing twists and turns, but certain mysteries and previously unknown details come together all too easily in the final chapters and the typical terrible fevers and fainting spells are a little overdone. These things are all characteristic of the era in which the book was written, though, so they are easily forgiven in my opinion. The racist attitude toward Jews is truly disturbing by modern standards, and is very telling of the times to be included in a novel attempting to show compassion for the outcast and the downtrodden.

I expected the book to be a social commentary on Victorian England and a philosophical treatise on the controversy of nature vs. nurture. Oliver Twist was all those things, but it was more, too. The startling last sentence confirmed the suspicion I had throughout the reading that the book was very focused on God's mercy being made available to all, regardless of their station in life either by birth or bootstraps. To me, the book was less about the conditions one was born into and more about how one responds to God's mercy and provision. I highlighted a few favorite passages as I read--something I would have never done with a traditional book because I wouldn't have wanted to mar the pages in any way--so I will share two of them here:

Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision.

The sun--the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man--burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory. Through costly-coloured glass and paper-mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed its equal ray.

Although some will say that Oliver Twist is a simplistic introduction to Dickens' other works, I found it to be deep and insightful, and have pondered it at length since finishing it several days ago. I would encourage anyone else who, like me, has missed it over the years, to give it a spin and see what they think. The time spent is not wasted and the witty wordsmithing had me laughing quite literally out loud on numerous occasions.

Oh, and reading this book, I have finally figured out where my own peculiar style of punctuation has come from. Somewhere, somehow, in some strange way, I seem to have learned to throw around commas, parentheses and dashes from none other than Mr. Charles Dickens himself. I felt right at home with Mr. Dickens' writing and consider myself in good company--no longer baffled at my less-than-fashionable, overly-punctuated ways.

South, by Sir Ernest Shackleton

The final book I will mention in this lengthy post is the one I am still finishing, but I have gone far enough in this autobiographical account to have formed strong opinions already, strong enough to risk a premature review.

Wow. What an amazing account. I fear that I am forever spoiled for any fictional adventure story, as it will pale in comparison to the real-life endeavor of Shackleton and his crew of steel. I have on far too many occasions stopped my family in whatever of their own activities they are busy pursuing, and forced them to listen to passages from this book instead. Finally my Ellie, age 11, concluded, "I think if this same adventure happened to modern day people, they would have all just died." She is so correct. The misfortunes that these men went through, the courage which they were forced to exercise, the barest thread of survival that they had to cling to again and again are more than any of our 'reality' TV starts have ever dreamed of. And yes, Bear Grylls, I'm talking about you. I've seen you have to reach for the hand of a cameraman. Shackleton's crew didn't have such luxuries. This is an incredible tale and never in the history of seafaring has a ship been more aptly named than The Endurance.

Sir Ernest Shackleton is the consummate Englishman, completely in control of his mental faculties and emotions, even when completely out of control of his circumstances. As a sea captain, he feels responsible to communicate the latitude, sea depth and barometric readings, as well as geographical details and lists of rations and the like, far more often than would concern a landlubber like myself, but his unintentional mastery of understatement reads to a modern observer like me as wit. In the midst of the most stressful and suspenseful true account I have ever read, I have laughed again and again at such simple statements as, "The cold temperatures caused us discomfort," or "We were tired." If there were a prize for the opposite of melodramatics, certainly Sir Ernest would win it, even now, posthumously.

I have heard from others that there are simpler and shorter accounts of this expedition. I'm sure they would be worth checking out, but I am a sucker for an autobiography, so I decided to trudge through this one, knowing full well that it was written by a man who never set out to be a professional or even amateur writer, and relied on his own journals and memories, rather than employing a ghost writer. He is a sea captain and an adventurer, and his writing reflects his training and experience. But if he can patiently carry on in the horrific conditions he and his crew faced, I can certainly show just the little bit of endurance that is required to follow along with his story. For the patient, I would recommend Shackleton's own account. For the less patient or the young, I would recommend an easier version of this tale--one that skips most of the depth soundings and sticks to the overall plot.

I will recommend, also, that you do not plan a day out on a frozen lake with family and friends, playing and picnicking with dozens of people only a few mostly solid inches from an icy body of water, when you are in the midst of reading this book. It adds a bit of stress and distraction to the planned day of fun, for certain.

So, there you go. That's what I've been reading lately. How about you?

Open for Business

2012-01-06T20:04:00.002-07:00

The Girls International Friendship Trust is up and running. It has its own secure website, viewable by members only. It has an online application process that is simple and streamlined. It's everything my daughter and I could hope for without any real web design skills with which to work. Know a girl aged 10-17 who would like a safe place to meet friends from all over the world?

Here's the official statement:

GIFT, the Girls International Friendship Trust, was formed by Sherry and Ellie Chidwick as a safe place for girls to make friends from all over the world. The internet is, unfortunately, a very dangerous place for young girls, but GIFT provides a social network that has been pre-screened and approved by trusted friends so that, rather than hiding one's identity and being careful not to get to know one another too well, girls can be freed up to pursue genuine friendships with girls they would have otherwise never had the opportunity to meet--girls who live nearby and girls who live on the other side of the globe! It is our dream that GIFT will turn into a source of lifelong friendships and will provide global networking opportunities for many years to come.

If you are the connecting point between me and the applicant, please have her list you and your email address on her application under 'sponsor.'

It's going to be so fun!

Here's the application

The application also has its own tab up at the top of the page, for future reference. We would love to have you and the girls you know and trust from around the world join us!

Girls International Friendship Trust

2012-01-05T20:05:00.008-07:00

To read about the inspiration for this post, please click here.

My eleven year old daughter, Ellie, and I have been brainstorming all day on how to create a way for girls to meet new friends all over the world--girls with whom they can become true friends in the old-fashioned sense of the world, some who may become dear soul mates, as well as some who will remain only fond acquaintances, as so many of our own Facebook friendships are. We want to create a setting in which new friendships can be pursued safely, without fear of stalkers or predators, the lurkings of online wolves in sheep's clothing. We want to find a way for girls who wouldn't have otherwise ever met to get to know one another, regardless of the geographical barriers, a place where girls from all over the United States and all over the world can meet and learn about life on this big blue marble, promoting global understanding, whether they ever have the opportunity for extensive travel or not.

We are still working out all the details, but this is where we are headed: the Girls International Friendship Trust.

For those of you on the Punctuation Patrol, we are going to forgo the apostrophe some would wish to add after 'Girls' and treat it as simply a plural. It is a friendship trust, then, for all girls on the international level. A trust is something held securely that will continue into the future. Perfect.

The format of GIFT will need to be somewhat complicated, unfortunately, as we are dealing with matters of utmost security--our daughters. At this point, we are thinking that in order for a girl to join, she must be recommended by a sponsor, which will be defined for now as an adult that I know and trust. A sponsor may recommend someone who has, in turn, been recommended by an adult that he/she knows and trusts. Thus, there is a limit of only a few degrees of separation between any of the girls in the Friendship Trust. This is not as limiting as it may seem at first glance, and could very quickly and easily net a very large group of girls from all over the world. Simply put, my friends' daughters, granddaughters, nieces, neighbors, etc., can join on their recommendation. In addition, my friends' friends' daughters, etc. can join, but it can't go further than that--at least for now.

Ellie and I will create an application form to be filled out by each interested girl, which will be more of a profile to help other girls get to know her a bit, as well as contact information, an agreement to the group's terms, and the name of her recommending sponsor and that person's connection to me, if not readily apparent. Yes, this sounds a little egocentric on my part, but hey, it is our group that we are starting and a group has to start somewhere. If you wish to start your own group, I will be happy to fill out my own application noting how I am related to you.

We are thinking at this point that the group should be opened to girls who are between 10 and 17 years of age (junior members, 10-13, and senior members, 14-17). At 18 years of age, girls are reclassified as alumni (provided they were active members for a year or more before 'graduating') and kept in the listing of members under that new heading. Alumni may then act as sponsors, recommending new girls to GIFT and eventually taking over the leadership of the group altogether.

Eventually, I'd like to see the whole endeavor managed on a secure website, but I don't have the ability to make that happen just yet. Perhaps some of the GIFTs will be gifted in the area of web design. For now, the organization will have to be run from a file box, literal or digital, at my house. The profile/application forms will be available online, attached to this or a designated blog, perhaps, and can be either printed out and snail-mailed to us, or emailed back to us. The profiles will need to be updated at least annually--perhaps coinciding with each member's birthday. It will take some further thought to create a way to maintain security and protection of personal information from those outside GIFT.

I have lots more thoughts on this and Ellie and I will be putting quite a bit of work into pulling all the scattered details together into a single, simple format so that it can work smoothly and effectively--accomplishing the purpose for which it is designed: providing girls a safe social network in which an international spirit of sisterhood and understanding can be fostered, leading to lifelong friendships and future networking opportunities worldwide.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Really. Share, please.

UPDATE: The story continues! Ellie and I have created a website and an application. The GIFT society is coming to life. Click here for more information.

What Have We Been Thinking?

2012-01-05T13:43:00.006-07:00

I had an epiphany this morning as I talked to my daughter about her internet usage. It's a big one, friends, so buckle your seatbelts.

Being an extroverted girl, she has a desire to communicate and interact. This part of the story is not so revolutionary. Many of us have girls who love to chat with various friends for hours on end. Many of us are those girls. Two years ago, her social drug of choice was a website called Club Penguin. It is an animated site filled with cute games involving little penguins. Each user creates a penguin and the funny little birds can play together or hang out in chat rooms where they interact verbally by selecting from a list of pre-approved phrases.

From Club Penguin, she moved to Pixie Hollow. Similar in format, users customize little fairies and they get to do 'fairy things' together. The graphics on this site felt a little more grown-up, yet remained very much a little girl world. Both of these early forays into the junior social media world were approved, albeit somewhat grudgingly, because their privacy policies seemed fairly sound and there wasn't much way for a child's identity to be discovered by unsavory stalkers and predators.

This last year, Ellie has discovered and quickly formed an addiction to a site called Howrse, a horse-themed virtual reality world in which users buy, sell, care for, show and discuss horses--not an unusual passion for girls of this age. A local friend of hers introduced her to this site and I was slower about showing concern and disapproval because I'd become accustomed to this type of thing. Over time, however, I began to notice that this was definitely something different than Club Penguin or Pixie Hollow.

This site is more of a Neopets or Webkins meets MySpace, where caring for one's herd of horses eventually becomes secondary to decorating and personalizing profile pages with all sorts of flashy animations and images gathered from the internet, quotes, music, links to external sites, etc. In addition, the chat feature is wide open to the users' own dialogue and can be personal between only two 'friends' or in more of an open forum format. Acquaintances are made in the process of transactions: buying, selling or checking out the bloodline of one's virtual horses.

The more she has played on the site, the more concerned I've become about the inherent security risks I'm allowing in my home. I find her chatting with someone on the site and ask who it is, only to receive a shrug, "Oh, just someone I bought a horse from." My frown is met with, "Don't worry, Mom, I checked out her profile and she is from a Christian homeschool family." These are supposed to be the magic words that comfort me somehow, the words that remove all fear and doubt about my eleven year old chatting it up with a stranger online. Seeing my eyes narrow, she adds, "It's not like I'm giving away any personal information."

Then, this morning at breakfast, it all came down. She had big, exciting news. She had met someone on Howrse who is in the cast of the new Hunger Games movie, a film she is waiting for with a great deal of impatience. They had chatted for a long time about it and it's true! She really is an actress from the movie! Poor Ellie's father, brother and mother all began to fire questions at her at once regarding the veracity of this claim. She defended her new 'friend.'

But her profile picture is of the actress standing in front of the movie poster in Hollywood!

But when I asked her about what it was like to be working on the set of the movie, she gave lots of details that probably only the real person would know!

But she has photos from The Hunger Games on her profile!

But...

We launched into a lengthy discussion about how easy it is for a predator to assume a false identity, using just the information that would make him/her look trustworthy and desirable to the desired audience. We discussed how celebrities generally attempt to conceal their identities, rather than gather a crowd of fans around them. Gradually, her face fell. She wanted it to be true. We talked about the fact that, even if it is true, that she really is a movie star who happens to hang out on Howrse in her spare time, we don't place extra value on friendships with certain people simply because those people are celebrities. We get to know the person for who he/she is--not what he/she does for a living.

We began to re-evaluate her presence on Howrse. Her face fell even more. She liked meeting people there. More than anything, she just wanted to find friends.

And then it hit me.

(This is the epiphany part.)

The privacy-protected, choose-a-user-name-that-is-not-your-own, reveal-nothing-about-yourself world of junior social media is completely backwards! We are teaching our kids to form 'friendships' with complete strangers! We don't condone this in the adult world. We don't open the spam emails that are obviously from someone we don't know. We don't follow through with the requests to transfer money to a long-lost relative in Nigeria we've never heard of so that we can collect what was designated to us in their last will and testament. If we hear a story that sounds a little fishy, we look it up on Snopes. We only accept Facebook friends requests from people we already know in real life, or at least have met through a mutual acquaintance. If my teenage son receives a friend request from a person he doesn't know, he has been taught to delete it. The internet is too scary of a place to go galavanting around with strangers, but when it comes to children's sites, we say just the opposite--only use websites where you and everyone else using it can be completely anonymous; it's okay to become any stranger's friend, as long as you don't reveal anything about yourself.

This is crazy.

First of all, that is not a life skill we should be teaching. As older teens and adults, we choose friends BECAUSE we have gotten to know the person well and enjoy his or her company, not simply because he or she has a clever assumed name and likes to play the same game. Second, if what our kids long for is relationships, where is the fun and satisfaction in a bunch of superficial faux-friendships that are based on next to nothing--intended to make sure we don't actually get to know each other too well?

As I began to see the error of my ways and the real problem at hand--the fact that my daughter wants to form lots of significant communicative friendships with other girls, but is too young to use Facebook--I felt a solution bubbling to the surface. I have hinted at it on Facebook already today, and I will write about it in more detail tomorrow. This little novella is enough for today.

For the 'more detail' promised in the subsequent post, click here.

Call Me Lucy

2011-12-29T09:05:00.008-07:00

A well-known work of literature starts with the classic line, "Call me Ishmael." The story goes on from there and deals with very somber topics, epic struggles and significant life lessons.

My story, as related here, is decidedly not somber, epic or even significant. It is a little bit funny, though, so read on if you are in the mood for a giggle. Before the Lucy incident, however, we must set the scene with a little background:

My husband has been working for months on a dining room table for a local client. These people have commissioned items from him before. They have very discerning taste and an abundance of financial resources, but are lacking in some basic social skills. They treat Andy in a fairly demeaning way at times and can be very demanding. This doesn't sit well with the woodworker's wife, as you might imagine.

The table is nearly finished. It is not a style that appeals to me (or the artist himself, either), but for what it is, it is awesome. The quartersawn white oak was salvaged from the grounds of a castle in Scotland. The table seats ten comfortably and is embellished on the edge and apron with more carving than I've ever seen in my life--to the point of gaudy, but that's just a matter of personal taste. The traditional ball-and-claw legs look like they once graced the body of a dragon--complete with feathers, scales and not just claws--more like talons. The table top itself is stunning in its figure and grain patterns. When it is completely finished, I will photograph it extensively, but for now you will just have to imagine.

The table was to be completed before Christmas, but the combination of change orders and further desired embellishments and carvings forced it to be delayed until this week. The clients were scheduled to stop by to check on the effect of the fuming, a faux-aging technique achieved with a plastic tent and ammonia, on Wednesday at 5:30 PM. The race to finish the carving and sanding was on so that the table could be assembled and fumed prior to their arrival.

Andy took all of Christmas Day off--perhaps foolish of him, but who could blame the poor guy? He's been working from morning until late at night, often ten o'clock or later, to get this table completed and he was exhausted. Unless you work at a gas station convenience store or Denny's, you should get Christmas off, right? Blowing caution to the wind, he took it.

Monday morning, however, he received some bad news: Erik, his shop assistant, was sick in bed and wouldn't be coming in. This was a major set-back. I offered my assistance and he took it, what little it amounted to be. Tuesday, Erik was still sick, but came in anyway at Andy's desperate plea. He made it through the day, but wasn't terribly efficient or effective. Tuesday evening, I reported for duty again and sanded until quite late. Wednesday morning dawned bright and clear, but with a distinctly ominous sense of doom. The table was not done and the clients would be arriving at 5:30 expecting to see it assembled and fumed and when they are not happy, they have quite a knack for making certain no one else is happy either. By ten o'clock in the morning, when Erik had not yet arrived, Andy called his house. His wife had to deliver the bad news that Erik was in bed with a fever and would not be able to come in.

Andy's eyes flashed with panic.

I changed back into the dusty clothes I'd worn out in the shop the previous two days and offered what I could. Since my sis-in-law and her husband are still here for the holidays, I enlisted Ruth to take charge of meals for the day. I would focus my attention on the table legs, all of which needed to be sanded. Remember all that ornate carving? Sanding those legs would be a tedious process--but one that would have to be completed at a frenzied pace.

At two-thirty, with only two of the legs sanded and Andy still finishing some carving details, the clients called. They had changed their plans and would be dropping by immediately. This is the way they roll. Andy cringed, then informed them that his entire day had been structured to do the fuming at five o'clock. It is a short process, so it was to be completed right before their scheduled arrival at five-thirty. He didn't tell them that the table wasn't even finished yet, and prayed that they wouldn't come yet. They were disappointed at not being able to come right that minute, but said they would put off their arrival until just after five o'clock.

Andy and I switched into an impossibly high gear, for we'd already been in 'high gear' all day, our hands, arms, shoulders and backs aching from the exertion, our half-eaten lunches (which had been delivered to us in the shop) sitting on the workbenches collecting sawdust.

At four forty-five, with almost all of the carving completed and three and a half of the four legs sanded, Andy began assembling the table--a temporary assembly just for fuming and display which the clients would forgive because the finish wasn't yet being applied. He placed the table on a diagonal so that the unfinished leg wouldn't be noticeable. With the help of Tano and Benny, the table top was put atop the legs and apron and the plastic tent sealed into place over the whole thing. Andy had made it clear that I should vacate the premises, as the clients would not be too keen on discovering that a non-woodworker with no training had been put to work sanding their precious table. I understood completely and was not offended, so I gathered up our pitcher of water and glasses and headed for the door.

I hadn't made it out of the shop yet, however, when the clients began to pull up the driveway. It was five o'clock. Andy was completely occupied with putting the final touches on the tent and starting the fuming process, so I didn't bother him with my dilemma, but I was really trapped. To walk out of the shop right now and head to the house, I would likely meet the clients in the driveway. I was in grubby clothes and covered with sawdust, carrying a pitcher of water and two glasses--all obvious signs that I'd been working with Andy in the shop all day, putting my untrained hands on their furniture. What could I do?

I had to make my decision quickly. I spun around quickly and went around the corner toward the stairs. I sat down in the stairwell, just out of sight, with my pitcher of water and glasses and waited for the clients to come in. I would get to listen to their conversation. This would be fun!

I had visions of storming down the stairs and into the middle of their discussion if the clients got out of hand and began belittling my husband again, as they've done in the past. I would show them! I giggled silently at the thought of it, for not even Andy knew that I was still in the building. He had been so busy he hadn't seen me sneak up the stairs, I was certain.

The minutes began to tick by. I could still hear Andy shuffling around making adjustments to the fuming tent and the clients had not yet come in. Perhaps they would just wait in their vehicle while the fuming process was completed. I thought of calling out to Andy, to alert him of my presence, but changed my mind. I didn't want to distract him. How surprised he would be to learn of my presence once the clients had gone!

In the darkness of the stairwell, I realized I was thirsty from the hours of sanding, so I poured myself a glass of water from my handy-dandy pitcher. I gulped at the water greedily, realizing too late that I had poured it into a cup that had been sitting in the shop for quite a while and was filled with a fine layer of powdered quartersawn white oak. The fact that it had been salvaged from the grounds of an ancient castle did nothing to help me swallow the grit. I couldn't spit or cough, as the clients could be at that very moment entering the building. I tried another cup and was able to chase down the sawdust with fairly clean water. Mmmm...tasty.

It was at this moment, however, that I began to see my predicament as the basis for an I Love Lucy episode. I was actually quite trapped. And I couldn't make a peep--not a cough or a sneeze or a clearing of the throat. And certainly not a giggle. The problem was that this was not a comedy show; this was a very important business meeting between artisan and client.

I heard Andy stop shuffling plastic and tape and mutter to himself that 'that should do it' with an air of finality. I figured he would invite the clients to come in and chat in the shop while they waited for the fuming process to take place. However, that is not what happened. Instead, Andy left the building, closing the door behind him, and didn't return.

The truth dawned on me. He had evacuated! Not understanding the process apparently, I had figured that the fumes would be contained in the tent. Oh, boy. I was really in trouble now. Slowly, the ammonia fumes began to waft toward me.

Lucy!

I began mentally reciting old phone numbers and poems, anything to prove that I was still conscious. I positioned myself in such a way that if I did pass out, I would simply slump where I sat, rather than tumbling down into view. A body on the floor wouldn't be a great addition to their conversation. I moved the pitcher and cups so I wouldn't inadvertently knock them over. I began to plan out the text of this blog post (even this very paragraph, down to this parenthetical note), allowing for alternate endings based on whether or not I managed to remain conscious. I could feel my brain getting fuzzy and wondered how much time had passed, as I had no way to measure it from my perch on the steps. After a bit, I couldn't concentrate on long strings of words or numbers that had significant meaning anymore, so I just began to count.

Fortunately, I was still counting when the door opened again and Andy came in alone. I learned later that he was wearing a respirator to protect himself from the fumes. Smart of him. I only had to wait a little longer for fresh air as Andy made short work of dissembling the tent, opening up all the doors and windows of the shop, and turning on several fans. My brain cleared immediately. Whoosh. That was really close.

After opening the shop up and turning on the fans, Andy left the building again. Have I mentioned that it is the end of December in Montana? My t-shirt and ankle socks had been fine when I was furiously sanding dragon legs with the doors closed and the heat on, but the longer the shop aired out, the more insufficient my attire proved. It was getting downright chilly in there.

Andy returned a bit later, this time with the clients. He apologized for the lingering odor and they all began to examine the table and discuss it. Overall, they were pleased, very pleased, so that was good. I smiled to myself in the darkness; I likely wouldn't have to bust in there and straighten them out. Remember when I said they can obsess about tiny details, however? Yes, they did that. For a long time. Again, I have no idea of how long, but it felt like forever. I thought about reaching for the pitcher of water again, but was afraid I'd get another mouthful of sawdust and choke or cough. I just waited. And I shivered. I could see in the faint reflection of a window that the clients were wearing their coats. Andy was just in a t-shirt, but he was running on adrenaline and had been busy the whole time. I was the only one thoroughly chilled.

As they gradually began to wind down their very lengthy conversation, I had one final Lucy moment. Andy would likely walk them out to their car and then just keep going toward the house. My growling stomach told me it was past our standard dinner time and Andy wouldn't have any reason to return to the shop right away. No, he would go in to eat and notice my spot at the table was empty. I, however, wouldn't be able to follow him until the clients had left the driveway and driven on down our road, as it crosses back in front of the shop and the path between the shop and house are lit up by a motion-sensor light. I was stuck until they were out of sight.

Sure enough. Andy went directly to the house without me. I'm sure everyone was a little confused when he asked where I was and no one knew, all of them assuming I was with him. By the time the clients were out of sight and I could gather up my pitcher and cups and head toward the house, he was coming back outside. He called to me from the deck.

"Have you been in the shop the whole time?"

"Yes," I replied sheepishly.

"Were you hiding?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"In the stairwell."

"Why?" We were both on the porch smiling by now.

"So I could jump out and give them a piece of my mind if they had anything negative to say about you!" I assumed a fighter's stance. "I was watching your back."

He shook his head in disbelief and we laughed together, entering the house arm in arm.

Oh, Lucy.

From the Archives: The Singing Man

2011-12-24T11:34:00.007-07:00

The following post was written in 2007, when we were living temporarily in an upstairs apartment at the corner of the main intersection of the little Currier and Ives town of Corvallis, Montana, kitty-corner from the town's high school. Although I was raised a city girl, I had lived in the empty quiet of the country for several years prior, and it was a big change to live above a street corner--particularly one with the high school on one side and a bar a few doors down, inviting loitering teenagers and semi-sober townsfolk to come and go at all hours--most of them, it seemed, in old pick-up trucks in need of mufflers. It took awhile to become accustomed to the normal noises of the little town, but eventually we were able to sleep through most of it quite well. One night at Christmas-time, however, a different sound floated up to my corner window--a sound I'd never heard before:

I had trouble falling asleep last night. A lovely afternoon nap is partly to blame. I don't do well with long naps. But just as I was about to finally drift off, the singing came.

I couldn't make sense of what I was hearing at first. I thought maybe someone was sitting in a car with the music turned up, but I hadn't heard a car approach and couldn't detect the hum of an idling engine. Plus, the song was inconsistent, sometimes softer, sometimes louder, sometimes stopping altogether--and it didn't sound very radio-ish. Curiosity got the best of me and I got up to look out the window.

An old man on a bicycle was stopped on the sidewalk in front of the high school, staring at the huge lighted Christmas tree on the lawn. He was bundled against the cold in a heavy wool coat and red and black plaid cap with ear flaps. His head was tipped back and he was singing Christmas carols. The First Noel. Joy to the World. His deep voice wandered off key occasionally and sometimes stopped in the middle of a line only to pick up again a few words later.

I assumed he was drunk at first, and chuckled at the funny sight. But then he climbed back up on the seat of his bicycle and rode away...in a perfectly straight line. I watched the blinking tail light disappear as he rode slowly down the street.

I climbed back under the covers, but was suddenly wide awake, my mind fully engaged as I pondered what I had seen. Who was this singing man? Why had he ridden his bicycle at midnight in the cold to come and sing, alone, at the foot of the school Christmas tree? Why?

Ten minutes later, he was back. I could hear the singing again from the same place, the same voice. I didn't get up this time, but I wondered at it all. And I prayed for the singing man.

Today is Christmas Eve, 2011. I am back at my own house in the country now, enjoying the stillness and the silence. The ice lanterns I so love to make every winter flicker their light into the darkness from their post on front steps. A doe occasionally strolls through the yard and I wonder if she gazes into the glowing windows at the family gathered there, laughing and enjoying one another (made even better this week with Andy's sister, Ruth, and her husband, Benny, here for Christmas--yay!) The dogs frolic in the snow and I see them pause to lift their noses toward the wonderful smells coming from my tiny kitchen. It seems something has been simmering on the stove or baking in the oven around the clock for the last week. I do love our simple Christmases in the country.

But I still think of the Singing Man and I wonder about him. I hope he is warm and fed tonight. I hope he has someone with whom to share Christmas--and beyond. Thinking of him reminds me to pray for those who do not have the same joys I do in life.

God bless us, every one.

Ellie's Choir Performance

2011-12-16T23:26:00.005-07:00

Several weeks ago, Ellie was invited by the next door neighbor lady to join her choir as a special guest for the Christmas season. This is a Sweet Adelines barbershop group of adults. Ellie is eleven. They had already begun learning their Christmas songs when Ellie joined the rehearsals, so she was basically placed in the right group for her range (not with the neighbor lady who'd invited her), handed a song book, and encouraged to keep up. It was a huge learning curve. This is a group that competes around the country, occasionally even internationally. They know what they are doing. Their four part harmony is AWESOME. Ellie had a LOT to learn.

She kept up well enough. At every rehearsal, some of the women would sneak away to compliment me on my daughter--on her poise and on her singing ability. She was having so much fun.

Although the group performs regularly all over town at this time of year, tonight was the big performance at the mall, the one Ellie had been invited to join them for. It was great fun.

Here are some photos. If you are having trouble finding her, it may be because you are looking for a little girl. She brought 'young woman' to the event tonight instead. She is usually in the back row (except for the trio of her and the other guest girls), in a red sweater with a black drape over it.

Here you go:

O Christmas Tree

2011-12-16T15:12:00.014-07:00

Now let's get one thing straight at the outset: Christmas trees are, by nature, a little bit silly. Can we all just agree on that? Seriously, we have a few choices here.

1. We buy something at a store that looks very similar to a tree, but isn't, and we stand it up in our living rooms--where a tree is highly unlikely to ever be seen in regular life, and then we decorate the heck out of it until it is nearly unrecognizable as the tree that it isn't.

2. We buy something that doesn't really look like a real tree at all, but it is an artistic interpretation of a tree (enter Grandma's ubercool aluminum tree from the early 70's--the kind we are supposed to hate in the Charlie Brown Christmas special, but I secretly LOVED as a kid). Then we take said artistic interpretation of a tree, place it in our living rooms and decorate the heck out of it...etc.

3. We go to a parking lot on a street corner (an unlikely location for a such a dense forest) and buy an exceptionally expensive dead tree--one that has been cut for the express purpose of completing its process of drying out entirely and becoming a fire hazard in our living rooms. And we call it a 'live tree' and decorate...etc.

4. We go to an artificial forest, a Christmas tree 'farm' right outside town, so that we can do the honors of taking the tree's life ourselves...etc.

5. We spend an afternoon hiking around a real forest so we can be somehow more authentic when we chop down a perfectly good tree and place it in a ridiculous location like a living room, then decorate the heck out of it...etc.

Have I missed anything? I won't even bother addressing the flocking issue, as doing so just gets my blood pressure up. It's unlikely enough, folks, that you would have a pine tree growing in your house. Let's not pretend that it still has all the snow on the branches, particularly if you bought it in Los Angeles. But I said I wouldn't go there, so I'll stop. Let's see...oh, I suppose there are those in-a-pinch solutions, like the year that my poor-as-a-churchouse-husband and I taped green party streamers to the wall in the shape of a tree. I even came across a photo of a huge stack of books arranged in the shape of a tree, and I must say, that one was pretty cool.

Why do we have this odd obsession with bringing a tree (or at least the appearance of a tree) into our homes for the month of December? I could go into the traditions and pagan rituals, but I won't. I would have to Google them to get the details straight, and if I, useless fact hound and compulsive researcher that I am, don't know off the top of my head why we must have a Christmas tree for our celebration of the Incarnation to be complete, then I really don't think anyone is doing this for some significant reason, other than tradition.

And with that said, I will say this: I love getting a Christmas tree.

True.

Growing up, the hunt for the perfect Christmas tree from the street corner lot could take hours. Every tree had to be examined for precisely the right size and shape. My family had it down to a science. But then there were the years at Grandma D's house with that sleek silver tree. Oh, how I loved that sparkly thing!

And yes, that's me rocking the sweet printed pants in my sweet red rocking chair. Off topic, but I think I've always had a thing for red rocking chairs, come to think of it. I took this photo in North Carolina this year:

My love of printed pants, on the other hand, has faded significantly over the years, except for a few rare exceptions.

The trees of Christmases past have varied widely since my husband and I married. They rarely achieve the perfection of my childhood, and none have ever been quite as striking as Grandma's silver tree, but I've liked them, all of them, even the ones borne from less than ideal circumstances.

I mentioned the crepe paper streamer tree. Before that, there was the year of the stolen Christmas decor. We were living in a small apartment and the storage space in our car port was broken into during the summer. The most heartbreaking part of the break-in was the loss of all of Andy's tools--the ones he used to make a living. He actually saw the thieves making off with his tools and hopped on his motorcycle to chase them down, but lost them in the maze of city streets. They got away. We mourned the loss of the tools, never considering what else might have been taken until it came time to decorate for Christmas, months later. We couldn't find the decor anywhere, and it was important stuff, as we had made a decision as newlyweds to never go out and just purchase Christmas decor and ornaments. Everything we had, therefore, was either an antique, a keepsake hand-me-down of some sort, or something we had made ourselves. Everything. I was almost as upset about losing those boxes as I'd been about the tools. Almost. Worse yet, I knew the thieves had likely dumped those boxes into a trash bin, once they realized they didn't contain anything of significant resale value. I tried to boycott Christmas decorating that year. I held out stubbornly until a friend dragged me to Target and began putting items in my cart against my will, then dragged me back home and decorated our little apartment while I sat and pouted.

It did look cheerful. I guess.

Since moving to Montana, most of our Christmas trees have come from up in the Sapphire Mountains, the eastern border of our valley. We turn left on Ambrose Creek Rd., just past the turn for the elementary school, and go up until we get to the 'saddle,' a flattened out area between peaks where several logging roads converge. From there, we just wander around the woods and pelt each other with snow balls until we find a tree the right size. It's really fun.

This past Sunday afternoon, we thought we'd come home from church, change into our boots and go up Ambrose again for our traditional tree hunt. But as we drove home, Andy suggested--mostly joking--that we should just pick one of the trees on our own property. To his surprise, we all loved the idea. Our six acre parcel is wooded, but with only one type of tree, ponderosa pines. These are not what you'd think of for Christmas trees. They are scraggly and sparse when young, with thick clusters of impossibly long needles growing not only from the spindly branches, but even from the trunk itself--like that guy everyone knows who grows a full beard but fails to shave his neck below the beard and it just grows in thinly all the way down until it meets up with his ample chest hair.

Noble firs, they are not.

They're awesome to behold when they reach maturity, towering high and strong with thick reddish bark that lights up in the late day sun and gives off an unmistakable aroma of cherry-vanilla cola. Seriously. But they are not much to look at until they reach a good 20-30 feet minimum. Our humble ceiling can accommodate a tree of not much more than seven feet.

We giggled at the prospects as we tromped through a meager inch or two of snow, up and down the hills of our yard. This tree would not be winning any beauty pageants.

But a funny thing happened when we brought that tree in the house (or at least the top seven feet of it--the rest has been cut up and stacked to add to next year's firewood supply); we fell in love with it. It's a great tree. We love that it is our tree from our property. It is a fairly ugly, misshapen thing, but it is OUR ugly, misshapen thing. It's a great tree.

I started to tell a friend that it was my favorite tree of all time, but then I remembered one more Christmas season that will forever hold the award for the best tree ever.

Christmas of 1996 in Vancouver, Washington, I was nine months pregnant with my firstborn, which we had learned was a son. We were living in a ramshackle house which we affectionately referred to as the Love Shack to try to make it more charming. In reality, it was a condemned property that was about to be torn down to make way for a dentist office parking lot. It was drafty and poorly heated with one small wood stove. The plumbing in the bathroom didn't work and there was a giant sinkhole rotted out under the linoleum on the bathroom floor. We took a Sharpie and marked it with a gigantic 'X' and the words, "Do Not Step Here!" for the sake of our visitors. I drew murals on the kitchen cupboard doors and we drew a dartboard on the ugly dark wood panelling in the living room. There was a terrible rodent problem, to the point that Andy was actually bitten on the ear while we slept in bed one night, prompting a bit of bleeding followed by a tetanus shot. It was not a pleasant living situation, but hey, we were young and poor and to that point childless and we were, as you can imagine, getting a screaming good deal on the rent.

Anyway, as the time drew near for the baby to be born, the young carpenter and his pregnant wife sought out a new place to live. The love shack was a bit like living in a barn and not exactly hospitable for bringing a child into the world. We found a new situation, but it needed a significant amount of construction done to it. Fortunately, that was Andy's specialty. We were able to exchange his labor for future rent, eventually living there rent-free for over a year. But that Christmas, we were in between homes. The Love Shack was packed with our moving boxes--down to the pots and pans. We had hoped maybe our extended family might invite us for Christmas, knowing our situation, but they didn't. Family is just like that sometimes. So we were packed up and ready to move the day after Christmas, into a home that wasn't at all ready for us, but was still a step up from where we were living, but ended up with nowhere to go for Christmas Day itself. I think we pulled out one pan and made some Top Ramen on the stove. Fortunately, the power hadn't yet been turned off.

With nothing to do and a baby coming soon, we decided to go for a walk to pass the time. We found ourselves at the grocery store nearby, admiring the leftovers of their parking lot Christmas tree display. A hand-scrawled sign declared that they were closed for Christmas and that the trees were free for the taking.

We smiled. We hadn't bothered to get a tree, of course, as we were all in boxes ready to move. And we didn't want to spend the money on one. But here they were, for free, and us with nothing to do. We began to shop, all alone, standing each leftover tree up and walking around it to view it from every side, just like I'd shopped for trees as a kid. We spent a good long time there, examining every tree on the lot, until we decided on the one that was just right. We stood it up again and took turns backing up to admire it.

Then we said a few kind words to the little neglected, overlooked tree.

"You are a good little tree."

"Of all the trees on the lot, we like you the best."

"We choose you."

Then we laid the tree back down on the cold pavement, smiled at each other, grasped hands, and walked back home to the Love Shack.

And THAT little tree still brings a smile to the faces of my husband and me. In our nineteen years of marriage, it was our favorite Christmas tree by far.

Merry Christmas, friends.

Happy Holidays from the Fat Pastor

2011-12-15T20:56:00.007-07:00

I ran across a blog last week with a name catchy enough to make me curious. A blog entitled The Fat Pastor deserves at least a cursory glance. Turns out Robb McCoy, aka the Fat Pastor (who is currently attempting to slim down, striving to decrease that He may increase, most likely) is a heck of a writer. What follows is a somewhat non-characteristic rant he wrote back in 2008, but it is the first post of his that I read, and since I enjoyed it from start to finish, I wanted to share it here with you:

A few weeks ago I read a letter to the editor which basically said that anyone who says, “Happy Holidays,” is a P.C., Christmas-hating, God-ridiculing, Communist. Okay, so those weren’t his exact words, but he was clear that he was not a fan of the alliterative greeting.
I really do not understand why people do not like the greeting “Happy Holidays.” I too celebrate Christmas, but if I want to say, “Happy Holidays,” does that make me less Christian? Is saying “Merry Christmas,” really the badge of true Christianity? When someone says “Merry Christmas,” are they then keeping the day holy?
The only reason most people care about whether or not you say “HH” or “MC” is because Bill O’Reilly made it a big deal. Before he claimed that there is a “war on Christmas,” no one noticed said war. “Seasons Greetings,” and “Happy Holidays” have been accepted greetings for years. There is an old Christmas song, “Happy Holidays,” that no one seemed to mind. The word holiday is a contraction of the words holy day, so in effect, we are saying “Happy Holy Days,” thus keeping Christmas holy.
Plus, this is simply the time of year when there are a lot of holy days. Beginning with Thanksgiving, then Christmas, and New Years, this is considered the holiday season. I’m not sure why acknowledging a coincidence of our calendar is somehow seen as “attacking Christmas.” Another holy day in this season is Hannukah. Hannukah is actually a minor feast day in the Jewish tradition, but has been co-opted for commercial reasons. Much like Christmas was.
For many centuries Christmas was not a holiday. Two of the four Biblical Gospels give no account of Jesus’ birth, and Matthew and Luke have almost no references back to the birth stories once they are over. The birth stories were not a big deal to early Christians. Christmas only became a holiday as a way to appease pagans in the Roman empire. It is little more than a co-opted winter festival.
But today it has become an important holiday. Not only in our religion, but more so in our culture and economy. Many retailers depend on the holiday season to survive. And mind you, not everyone buying a bunch of crap at Christmas time is Christian. For the most part, Christmas has become a cultural holiday – driven by economic need much more than religious fervor.
So when people get angry when someone says “Happy Holidays,” I get angry that they are angry. If you want to keep Christ in Christmas, worry about things more important than the signs and decorations at JC Penney. You think Christmas should be about Christ? Then take up your cross and follow Jesus – not into department stores, but into the prisons, the hospitals, among the poor and the outcast. You get angry when someone doesn’t say “Christmas?” Try getting angry over Christ’s children dying of malnutrition or AIDS. Try getting angry over the fact that the Christmas chocolate you love so much was kept cheap on the back of the working poor. Try getting angry over the fact that Christians are keeping people out of churches with their closed minds and closed doors.
You want to keep Christ in Christmas? Try putting Christ in your life first. Then we’ll talk about how to greet each other. And if you want a truly Christian greeting, one that makes no mistake whether or not you follow the Christ child, try, “the peace of Christ be with you.”
You brood of vipers. You hypocrites. Try getting upset over something that matters. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

So there you go. I wish I'd had the guts to write it myself. When I tell you Merry Christmas, you know what I mean. When I hear Happy Holidays, I know what is intended. Let's stay focused on what is important here.

Wordless Wednesday: December 2010 vs. 2011

2011-12-14T00:17:00.003-07:00

2010

2011

A Difficult Year and a Different Take on the Use of the Word 'Christmas'

2011-12-13T11:54:00.004-07:00

In sticking with my archives theme for this December here on the blog, I glanced through December 2007, having already posted things from 2004-2006. That was a difficult year for us, however, and the posts are not particularly cheery or festive. Andy's dear mom died fairly suddenly of a fierce cancer at Thanksgiving time; Andy lost his job working for a well-known Christian ministry after a very ugly turn of events in which our own committee chair turned on us and falsely accused us of embezzlement; our truck was stolen and vandalized, then recovered and towed to impound--which we had to pay for in addition to the needed repairs. We moved our own household twice that year and moved Andy's folks once--then his Dad again, alone after Mom died; Andy had to scramble to work on construction projects around our home to make it livable for his dad to move in with us and still find a way to make a living to pay our bills. It was a really, really difficult year.

The only post I found in December 2007's archives that was close to something I would want to repost now was this one. It is sweet, in a sad way, and it rambles and ambles in several different directions, but it sums up well what our life was like at that time in our lives. I just didn't feel like posting it, however, so if you want a picture of that time in our lives, you can click that link above and read it yourself. If you are really interested and weren't a reader of mine back then, you could click into the whole month of archives for December 2007. You will find all the posts surrounding Mom C.'s memorial service, which were my attempt to honor her by accurately portraying the family's farewell. I still can't read them without tears leaking out.

Instead, I would like to reprint here an article that I wrote in the 2007 Christmas season as a letter to the editors of the local newspapers. They all ran it. The letter was in response to publicity for an event that Chidwick School of Fine Woodworking held at the beginning of December, featuring an introduction to our school for the community and lots of different ways to spend money on things like classes, lumber and woodworking items, all at drastically reduced prices. In addition, we offered live music and yummy food. It was a really nice event, but the trouble, in the form of one scathing email sent from someone we don't know, came as a result of us deciding to call it a "Holiday Open House." We were chastised strongly for being among the pagans who refuse to acknowledge and celebrate "CHRISTMAS."

The following was my response, printed in all three of the local newspapers:

In response to all the hubbub regarding the use of the word “holiday” versus “Christmas” by retailers, I would like to offer a different perspective.

We celebrate Christmas in our home - and not the Santa, Jingle Bells and Frosty the Snowman variety, either - the real Christmas, the glorious King of the Universe disguised as a tiny babe of humble means, 2,000 years ago. That is what Christmas is and should always be about.

However, I am not offended when retailers choose not to use the word "Christmas” when advertising for their big sales. What does glitz and glitter and shopping have to do with Christmas, anyway? To insist that commercial businesses refer to plain and simple American consumerism as “Christmas” is ridiculous. Is God feeling put out that American retailers have begun to leave Him out of their annual greed festival?

Perhaps I am coming on a little too strong here. We do exchange gifts in our family, after all, although we spend only a fraction of what the typical family spends, focusing rather on creative gifts which require time and effort. We are not completely opposed to gift giving, but for us, it is a symbol, an expression of the incredible gift that was given us. It is not the main attraction of Christmas for us.

There are many holidays celebrated at this time of year, and most of them have become centered around the giving of gifts. So, if retailers want to slash their prices and run all sorts of gimmicks for “the holidays” rather than for “Christmas,” that is fine with me. I do my best to steer clear of the stores and television at this time of year anyway. Honestly, I would rather keep Christmas sacred.

I do hope everyone had a joyous Christmas season, celebrating the greatest gift the world has ever known. May we never forget or allow its significance to fade in comparison to the glitz and glamor of the commercial world's "most wonderful time of the year." Merry Christmas, and may God touch your life in an unmistakable way in the coming year.

Merry Christmas 2011

2011-12-11T21:55:00.002-07:00

Honestly, I didn't know my life was incomplete without Christmas tree hunting in our own yard and my kids singing together in Latin. But it was--until today.

Merry Christmas, everyone. May you smile and laugh at the joy of it all this season, as I was able to do today.

Wordless Wednesday: From the Archives

2011-12-06T22:18:00.007-07:00

Christmas in the Year of our Lord, 2000

A boyish Mary worships the babe in the blue Rubbermaid tub--

my favorite modern Nativity scene ever.

Yes, that's Tano, one month shy of three years old.

And yes, that was entirely his doing, down to the hooded bath towel.

He insisted that I call him Mary for the entire day.

Please don't tease him about it. He's a good sport to let me post this.

The Christmas Pageant, From the Archives

2011-12-05T16:50:00.002-07:00

Another ghost of Christmas past, pulled from the the archives when practical and serious Tano was eight years old and spirited and imaginative Ellie was five (please note that at the time it was written, I was ignorant about the difference between hay and straw--actually thought they were nearly synonymous; I was wrong; it was straw; this bugs me now that I've become more of a country girl) :

There are bits of hay in the entryway, across the dining room and through the kitchen to the basement stairs. More hay is strewn all down the steps to the baby doll cradle, at the bottom of the stairs.

The cradle has been transformed into a manger.

On top of a generous bed of hay lies a brown skinned baby doll, wrapped in a red fleece blanket which is embroidered with a snowman design. The kids are enthralled with how perfect it looks. It is just exactly what they need for their Christmas pageant. They’ve been scurrying around, making preparations all afternoon, gathering costumes and necessary props, casting all their friends, writing and memorizing a script and trying to figure out how they can acquire more animals than just Drake, the family dog.

I’ve been catching tidbits of their conversations and typing them up every chance I can sneak away, so I don't ever forget.

------------

Elli: The first wise man is bringing a gift of jewels because the baby is a king. See this pretty jar, Mom? It has all of my pretend jewelry in it. And we sprayed your perfume in it to make it just like incense. The other wise man is bringing clothes for the baby Jesus. See? A scarf and a sweater and a tank top. The scarf and the sweater are for winter, and the tank top is for summer. Actually, he could wear the tank top under the sweater, and then it could be for winter, too.

Tano: Yeah, Mom, we decided not to put those doll camouflage pants in the gift, because they didn’t really wear camo pants back then--mostly tunics and robes and stuff like that.

Elli: And I’m going to be one of the wise men. Actually, I would like to be a wise girl. Tano, can there be wise girls?

Tano: Uh, I don't know. Maybe you could be a shepherd.

Elli: I could? There were girl shepherds?

Tano: Sure. You could be a shepherdest (sic).

Elli: What's a shepherdest?

Tano: A girl shepherd.

Elli: Oh, great! Do I get to wear sandals?

Tano: Yes, you'll need sandals.

Elli: Great! I'll go get my pink flip-flops. Or should I get the ones with the cherries on them?

Tano: It doesn’t matter.

------------

Elli: I think I want to be the angel instead.

Tano: Elli, the angel was a boy.

Elli: No it wasn‘t! Angels are girls!

Tano: Well, ok, I guess you can be the angel.

Elli: I’ll need to find something to wear that is made of pure gold, so it is shiny and beautiful.

Tano: Well, I don’t think it will need to be made of real gold. It can just be something really pretty.

Elli: Yeah, that’s why I want to be the angel, because then I get to be the one that is beautiful.

------------

Elli: Mom! Tano says I’m fired!

Mom: Fired?

Elli: Yes. He says I’m fired from the play because I can’t say my lines without the scripp (sic).

Mom: Maybe you just need to practice your lines some more so you can learn to say them without the script.

Elli: But I can’t!

------------

Mom: Tano, did you fire your sister?

Tano: Yeah. I had to. She couldn’t learn her lines.

Mom: Maybe you could work with her a little more to help her learn them.

Tano: I’ve been trying that forever, but she says she can’t do it.

Mom: Well, if you fire your sister, you’re going to be short an angel for the play.

Tano: I could find another one. There are plenty of other girls out there.

Mom: Do you really have to fire your own sister?

Tano: (shrug)

------------

Tano: Ok, Elli, do it one more time. You have to practice it over and over again to get it just right.

Elli: Tano! I’m tired of doing this! I just can’t do it without the scripp!

Mom: Tano, I have an idea. How about if you let her say it the way she wants? That way, she won’t be scared about messing up the words. She knows what the angel said to the shepherds. Elli, stand up tall and tell me, with your own words, what you would say to those shepherds in the field, if you were the angel.

Elli: Ok.
Do not be afraid! Behold, I bring you good news! A savior has been born in Bethlehem...um...who is Christ the Lord!

Mom: That sounded fine to me. Tano?

Tano: Yeah. That was pretty good, I guess.

------------

Tano and Elli: (unintelligible arguing)

Dad: What are you guys arguing about?

Tano: I keep telling Elli what to do and she won't do it!

Elli: I'm trying! It's too hard!

Tano: You're not even trying!

Elli: Yes, I...

Dad: Whoa! Time out! Tano, maybe part of the problem is that you are telling her what to do too much.

Tano: But it's my...

Dad: You both decided to do it together. Maybe you guys need to take a break from working on this play, huh?

Elli: Yeah! I need to take a break.

They did eventually perform their play, complete with a handful of other children and their parents, gathered to watch in our living room. It was a simple affair, as I recall, and was over fairly quickly. I remember that the angel did fine and that the family dog did have to play quite a few different roles. Good times, good times.

"It Takes a Village" Adoption Fundraiser - SILENT AUCTION ITEMS

2011-12-03T20:22:00.015-07:00

Our big adoption fundraiser event, entitled "It Takes a Village," is less than a week away! I have so much to do yet, but wanted to make sure to publish the auction catalogue with enough advance time for people to plan their bidding strategies and give those who can't attend the event a chance to activate the Buy It Now option.

I suppose you should see the invitation first. I'll just post it small here, but you can click the front/back to enlarge.

So here they are, the items for the silent auction. You'll want to click on each image to enlarge it. The photos are a little better if you check them out on this event's Facebook photo gallery, here.

Plus, one more item that didn't make the catalogue, but is definitely worth mentioning--it's incredibly beautiful.

Delicate and graceful silk Shoulder Caplet by Lisa Archer Silks (http://www.LisaArcherSilks.com/) in muted and versatile tones of greys and browns. This is a beautiful item and would be a wonderful addition to a discerning wardrobe. Successful bid includes a private tour of her Stevensville studio. Minimum Bid: $35 Buy It Now: $95

If you are interested in any of these items, as a way to support our upcoming adoption, please contact me. Thanks.

Oh, and if you are the praying type, we could sure use some of that. Actually, a lot of that.

First Friday in December

2011-12-02T16:55:00.005-07:00

I'm pulling things out of the archives this December, as I have found so many great Christmas-y posts from years back that deserve dusting off and repackaging.

Today is the first Friday of December which, in our little town, is a big, big thing.

Before we'd ever attended, I was hearing about it from others. The first year we happened to be in town on December's First Friday, we bundled up and headed to Main Street to see what all the talk was about. I was stunned by what we found and I wrote about it when I got back home:

Last year at this time, we were in Portland to do an art show. Several people told us we were really missing out by being gone on First Friday in December because, "Stevensville really does a nice little Christmas event."

We skipped the Portland show this year, which meant we would be available for First Friday. Plus, Tano's Cub Scout pack was going to be in the parade, so we were pretty much required to be there, although we didn't really know what to expect.

I will make a concerted effort to never miss it again.

I can't think of a more wonderful way to kick off the Christmas season. Really. I wish you could have all been there, but my words and perhaps a few second-rate photos will have to do. Where shall I even begin?

We bundled up for an evening in the cold and snow, and met at 6 PM in the parking lot of that new antique store--you know, the old Feed & Farm building. The two dozen or so scouts, along with a handful of younger siblings piled onto hay bales on a wagon decorated with colored lights, a Christmas tree and a kind citizen dressed as Santa. Another kind citizen showed up with a replacement tractor to pull the wagon, as the intended tractor and the trailer hauling it had slid off an icy road into a ditch a half hour before (no damage or injuries, but rather inconvenient).

Andy was recruited to be the song leader and he climbed aboard the float and handed out song sheets to all the kids. They practiced each song once and then it was time for the parade to begin. Elli rode proudly on the float with Daddy and all the big boys. I walked alongside with the other parents.

Downtown Stevi was crowded with people, waving and cheering. Children were climbing up and sliding down the big piles of snow left behind by the snow plows. Shops were decked out in tiny white lights and evergreen boughs. People circled around bonfires on street corners to warm their hands and laugh together.

Bonfires.

On street corners.

The high school's choral group was gathered casually on the steps of the bank, using them as bleachers to give an informal concert of carols. Bundled up tots were pulled along the sidewalk on sleds or in wagons by one parent, while the other parent held the leash of the family dog. People were calling out to friends and hugs were being exchanged all around. It was all so cheerful and festive that I thought I must be trapped in a Norman Rockwell reality show.

When we got to the main corner in the middle of the tiny downtown, the little procession stopped and the crowd pressed in. The Master of Ceremonies handed the microphone to Father So-And-So from one of the area churches for the reading of the Christmas story. He read straight from the Gospel of Luke while the whole town stood quietly and listened. While he read, I pushed further into the crowd, trying to get a glimpse of who was reading. It was an older man sitting in a chair on the street corner, with someone else pointing a flashlight at his Bible. As I pressed in, I also found a live nativity scene in the street, made up of children in homemade costumes and real animals, miniature donkeys, sheep and such. The two (two?) angels stood in the open bed of a nearby pick-up truck, so as to "hover" above the manger scene. As I gaped at the sight before me--sponsored by the Stevensville Main Street Association, not a local church, I realized that Father So-And-So had finished reading from Luke and had begun to pray, a real prayer, to a real God. He said Amen and the crowd echoed it respectfully.

The M.C. then asked everyone to join in the countdown to light the strings of colored lights that stretched back and forth across Main St. 3-2-1...the lights flickered on, and all of Stevensville cheered.

At that point, the M.C. led the whole town in several sacred carols--no Jingle Bells here. Everyone knew the words and sang along enthusiastically.

It was almost too much for me, and I was really feeling the need to pinch myself--this can't be for real, I thought--until I realized the smiling face coming toward me was my friend, Nancy. She didn't stop singing to say hello. I didn't either. We just smiled our warm greetings and then stood side by side, with her singing melody and me dropping easily into a familiar harmony part. It had to be real, because I could hear my own voice blending so naturally with my friend's. I must belong here, I thought with a smile, and I felt warm despite the bank sign that flashed 25 degrees.

The rest of the evening was nice, although not as magical as that beginning. The Cub Scouts' float went down to the end of Main, circled around, and went back to the Feed & Farm, oh, I mean the antique store. We then wandered in and out of all the local businesses, most of whom stay open late for First Friday, munching on endless free Christmas cookies and candy, sipping cocoa and spiced cider, and admiring art, crafts and trinkets. We ran into dozens of people that we knew. Two teams of draft horses, their harnesses covered with jingling sleigh bells, pulled wagons filled with revellers up and down Main St. We did all there was to do, and sampled the complimentary baked goods set out on platters in every business. In one store, we listened to a ten year old boy in a tuxedo play his violin beautifully. In the Episcopal church, we sat and listened to a bunch of grizzled old cowboys play bluegrass. In the Catholic church, the kids got their faces painted and sat on Santa's lap.

After a final snowball fight and fun slipping and sliding on icy streets, we walked back to the truck and drove four weary bodies home.

I can't believe I get to live here. I can't believe my kids are growing up to think this is normal.

Magical. Absolutely magical, I tell you.

And now, to get bundled up with my family and head downtown to kick off the Christmas season. I love this event.

The Twelve Days of a Ridiculous Christmas--For Christians!

2011-12-01T00:01:00.009-07:00

With my apologies to those hardcore faithful readers of mine who remember these items from a series of posts in the archives from 2006, I would like to present, as we begin the month of December--that traditional time when far too many Americans lose all sense of logic, reason and good taste--a sampling of ridiculosity. (My spell checker says ridiculosity isn't a word, but I want it to be a word, so I'm leaving it as is.)

These are all real products. Seriously. They are marketed to Christians who want to make sure they are remembering the real reason for the season. Items like these aren't hard to find, either. You know that catalog of generally dumb and cheap imported-from-the-Orient items? Yes, that one. You know what I'm talking about. All of these items came from there--from their "inspirational" line.

Do you feel inspired?

Somehow, I'm thinking they're trying so hard to figure out what Christians want, but they've still missed the mark. Have a look. And a laugh. And then a good cry, perhaps, because these things wouldn't be filling up the pages of their catalog unless there was a market for them.

Note: If these items are your idea of cute and you were considering buying them by the dozen for your Sunday School class of kids at church, I don't mean to totally offend. A little bit, perhaps, but not totally. We will just have to disagree on this one.

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, a Santa hugging Baby Jesus.

On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, two Vinyl Bendable "Jesus is Deer to Me" Reindeer, and a Santa hugging Baby Jesus.

On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, three Religious Candy Cane Pacifiers (fat free!), two Vinyl Bendable "Jesus is Deer to Me" Reindeer, and a Santa hugging Baby Jesus.

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, four Vinyl Nativity Rubber Duckies, three Religious Candy Cane Pacifiers (fat free!), two Vinyl Bendable "Jesus is Deer to Me" Reindeer, and a Santa hugging Baby Jesus.

On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, five "Jesus Loves You Snow Much" Soccer Balls! Four Vinyl Nativity Rubber Duckies, three Religious Candy Cane Pacifiers (fat free!), two Vinyl Bendable "Jesus is Deer to Me" Reindeer, and a Santa hugging Baby Jesus.

On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, six Resin Snowman Nativities, five "Jesus Loves You Snow Much" Soccer Balls! Four Vinyl Nativity Rubber Duckies, three Religious Candy Cane Pacifiers (fat free!), two Vinyl Bendable "Jesus is Deer to Me" Reindeer, and a Santa hugging Baby Jesus.

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, seven Plastic "Clap for the Lord!" Clappers, six Resin Snowman Nativities, five "Jesus Loves You Snow Much" Soccer Balls! Four Vinyl Nativity Rubber Duckies, three Religious Candy Cane Pacifiers (fat free!), two Vinyl Bendable "Jesus is Deer to Me" Reindeer, and a Santa hugging Baby Jesus.

On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, eight Transparent Vinyl Religious Mini Water Tubes with Glitter, seven Plastic "Clap for the Lord!" Clappers, six Resin Snowman Nativities, five "Jesus Loves You Snow Much" Soccer Balls! Four Vinyl Nativity Rubber Duckies, three Religious Candy Cane Pacifiers (fat free!), two Vinyl Bendable "Jesus is Deer to Me" Reindeer, and a Santa hugging Baby Jesus.

On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, nine Cotton "Jingle for Jesus" Baseball Caps, eight Transparent Vinyl Religious Mini Water Tubes with Glitter, seven Plastic "Clap for the Lord!" Clappers, six Resin Snowman Nativities, five "Jesus Loves You Snow Much" Soccer Balls! Four Vinyl Nativity Rubber Duckies, three Religious Candy Cane Pacifiers (fat free!), two Vinyl Bendable "Jesus is Deer to Me" Reindeer, and a Santa hugging Baby Jesus.

On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, ten Plush Long Arm Religious Gorillas, nine Cotton "Jingle for Jesus" Baseball Caps, eight Transparent Vinyl Religious Mini Water Tubes with Glitter, seven Plastic "Clap for the Lord!" Clappers, six Resin Snowman Nativities, five "Jesus Loves You Snow Much" Soccer Balls! Four Vinyl Nativity Rubber Duckies, three Religious Candy Cane Pacifiers (fat free!), two Vinyl Bendable "Jesus is Deer to Me" Reindeer, and a Santa hugging Baby Jesus.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, eleven Foam Marshmallow Nativity Craft Kits, ten Plush Long Arm Religious Gorillas, nine Cotton "Jingle for Jesus" Baseball Caps, eight Transparent Vinyl Religious Mini Water Tubes with Glitter, seven Plastic "Clap for the Lord!" Clappers, six Resin Snowman Nativities, five "Jesus Loves You Snow Much" Soccer Balls! Four Vinyl Nativity Rubber Duckies, three Religious Candy Cane Pacifiers (fat free!), two Vinyl Bendable "Jesus is Deer to Me" Reindeer, and a Santa hugging Baby Jesus.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, twelve Resin Holy Hoppers Ornaments, eleven Foam Marshmallow Nativity Craft Kits, ten Plush Long Arm Religious Gorillas, nine Cotton "Jingle for Jesus" Baseball Caps, eight Transparent Vinyl Religious Mini Water Tubes with Glitter, seven Plastic "Clap for the Lord!" Clappers, six Resin Snowman Nativities, five "Jesus Loves You Snow Much" Soccer Balls! Four Vinyl Nativity Rubber Duckies, three Religious Candy Cane Pacifiers (fat free!), two Vinyl Bendable "Jesus is Deer to Me" Reindeer, and a Santa hugging Baby Jesus.

Honestly, can you read that final list without gagging, just a little bit, at what we as a culture are willing to substitute for a genuine faith in Jesus?

There must be something more.

What do you do to make Christmas significant for your family, helping them to stay in touch with the amazing gift of God-in-a-Bod, the mighty creator and king of the universe humbled to the form of a helpless babe, entering our world through the birth canal to be subjected to all the humiliation of humanity at its best...and worst?

Not Dead Yet

2011-11-28T19:30:00.004-07:00

The dream, that is. The dream of adopting. It's not dead yet.

I have my up and down days, mostly up, trusting God to carry this dream through to fruition, for His glory.

Today my friends and their daughters came over and we had a work day, making decor for our adoption fundraising event on December 9. Thanks to Pinterest, we were feeling very inspired. We made a bunch of centerpieces, some hanging globes, some window decor, and paper bag luminaries to light the pathways outside. We got so much done. It was incredible. Plus, they happen to be wonderful people, all of them, and we had so much fun, working side-by-side.

This evening, however, a hint of doubt was working its way into my mind. What was I thinking? That I could actually pull this event off? That people are going to come? That they are going to help us fund this adoption thing in a significant way? That God is really going to come through and cause these meager efforts to succeed?

I don't know if this will be a successful event or not. I don't even know how successful should be defined in this instance.

I went downstairs and picked up a book I've been reading, Sacred Parenting, by Gary Thomas. I was hoping to clear my mind a bit, shake off some of the fatigue of a crazy busy day, and regain my focus for the evening. I would just read one chapter.

That's all I needed. On the next to the last page of the chapter, Mr. Thomas was talking about cowardice in the face of parenting. He was pointing out all the many times that God had to start conversations with "Fear not," before moving forward. He quoted scripture after scripture, but this is the one that jumped out at me:

Do not be afraid, for I am with you;
I will bring your children from the east
And gather you from the west.
I will say to the north, 'Give them up!'
And to the south, 'Do not hold them back.'
Bring my sons from afar
And my daughters from the ends of the earth--
Everyone who is called by my name,
Whom I created for my glory,
Whom I formed and made.

Isaiah 43:5-7

Now, I know that this passage wasn't intended to be a personal note to me about my dreams of adoption. But still, that was pretty cool. It stopped me in my tracks, for sure.

I trust You.

I trust You.

I trust You.

Coming Soon To YouTube

2011-11-26T22:17:00.013-07:00

I'm sure there were hidden cameras recording it. I kept laughing aloud (for real, not the lolz kind) at the ridiculousness of it all and yet he still insisted that he was completely serious. I actually asked him where the cameras were at one point and he managed to keep his face blank and his voice completely neutral as if he had no idea what I was talking about.

But the cameras were there; I'm sure of it. He's probably editing the footage right now, quietly busting a gut as he prepares to publish the video to YouTube.

My dear, patient fourteen year old son tried to teach me to play Portal 2 tonight on his xBOX 360.

Mind you, I haven't played video games since the trusty Atari 2600 of my childhood and teen years. At one time, I could find my way around a PacMan board, I'm telling you. I also rocked Asteroids, Space Invaders, Centipede, Berserk, Galaxian, Zaxxon, Dig Dug, Q*Bert, Donkey Kong, Frogger and that Star Wars game where you had to shoot the AT-ATs (although that one was boring as all get out). I was downright handy with the joystick.

But this xBOX controller is hilarious. There are TWO joysticks, seven buttons plus one multi-directional button, and four triggers! How in the world is a person supposed to keep this all straight? Turn and shoot, or run and jump--that's all I had to do with my trusty 2600 controller. That's it. The controller I was using tonight has more things to push and manipulate than I have fingers on both hands combined. And it vibrates with the action, just in case you need one more distraction.

Granted, the game I was playing, at least according to my son, is fairly simplistic (!) so it only requires the two joysticks and a button to pick things up and two of the triggers.

Are you seeing the scene in his bedroom? I'll relay a little part of it to you here, just in case the cameras malfunctioned.

What do I do?

You have to go over to that box and pick it up.

Why?

Because you need it to open the door.

I need a box to open a door?

Yes. Just pick it up and go put it on the big red button.

How do I pick it up?

Just push X.

Which one is X?

This one.

Ok, now what?

Take it to the red button and put it down.

Why do I need to do that?

The door won't unlock unless you do.

How was I supposed to know that?

Because I already told you.

But what if you weren't here with me; then how would I know I have to pick up a box and set it on a red button to open the door?

Ok, Mom, it's not really a hard game. It's just basic puzzles to figure out and it hasn't even started to get hard yet. This is the easy stuff.

Ok. I opened the door and I'm going through it. Then what?

Go down those stairs and into the elevator.

Why?

To get to the next room.

With another closed door, I suppose. What is the actual point here? What am I trying to accomplish?

You're just trying to survive. You can die in this game, you know.

I can? How? How many lives do I get?

What do you mean?

I mean how many times can I die before the game is over?

Um, I guess unlimited. The game isn't over until you turn it off. You just have to start that level over again.

So there's not really any penalty for getting killed?

Ok, that's not the point here, Mom. You need to go down the hall into the big room--now push that button next to the door. Not THAT one, the other one.

How was I supposed to know which button to push?

Because you already pushed the other one.

I did?

Yes, don't you remember you went through the orange portal? So now you are over here, by the blue portal. See? The other button was back before you passed through the portal.

But they look exactly the same.

I know they do, but can't you see how you went through the orange portal and now you are on the other side?

Not really. I just see the blue portal.

That's because you already went through it. You can't have a blue portal without an orange portal. Push the button.

Ok, I pushed it, but the door didn't open.

That's because you didn't push all the buttons yet. You have to go back through the blue portal again.

But I didn't go through a blue portal before; I went through an orange one.

Right. That means you came through the blue one and you have to go back to get to the other buttons. Doesn't that make sense to you?

[silence]

Seriously, Mom? This isn't the hard stuff yet. Ok, just go through there. Push the button. Turn around. Go toward the other button--not THAT one; you already pushed that one, remember? Ok. Good. Now, see how the arrows lit up so the door could open?

I have to light up the arrows to get the door to open? I thought I had to pick up a box and put it on the big red button for the door to open.

Not this time. This room didn't have a box.

So now I go through these doors and get in the elevator, right?

Yes! Good! Do you feel like it's making more sense now?

[more silence]

...

Hey, maybe the video will go viral like David After Dentist and we'll sell advertising and t-shirts and make its own website and it will pay for college! Pardon me, I have to go check on the boy editing the footage.

Come to think of it, that AT-AT game wasn't so bad after all.

'Tis the Season

2011-11-26T10:12:00.003-07:00

Ah, yes, I remember this time of year--the time of year that the big boxes of lovely seedless mandarin oranges hit the grocery stores for cheap, the time of year that I buy them regularly and my children consume them in large amounts, the time of year that I find little piles of dried mandarin orange peels all over the house.

Ugh.

At least I'm not quite to this point yet. Found that one as I was surfing through some archives this morning. Must have been a fairly low day. Almost kind of funny now.

But about those orange peels.

KIDS!!

Thanksgiving 2011

2011-11-24T16:47:00.017-07:00

This is a post I didn't think I'd be writing--at least not like this. This is the Thanksgiving holiday I thought would be our worst in family history. This is the Thanksgiving week that we passed the stomach flu around the family from Sunday to Wednesday morning...afternoon.

But last night I decided to go gather up my courage and what little strength I had and head to the grocery store. I had already informed my family that we might not have a Thanksgiving Dinner at all this year, but if we did, it wouldn't be until Friday or Saturday, maybe even Sunday. I was only going to the store to pick up a few basic essentials that the healthier members of the family were needing.

When I got there, I was overwhelmed. Oh, the hordes of people, all holding lengthy shopping lists in one hand while they discussed with fellow shoppers the differences between sweet potatoes and yams! Oh, the special displays set up everywhere so loudly proclaiming the sales on crackers and cheese balls and table wines! Oh, the sample stations offering little bits of onion dip and shrimp cocktail and the deli's own mashed potatoes! It was enough to make a girl with a still slightly-not-right stomach want to turn around and flee.

I had come for a few groceries, however, and I set my jaw. The grocery store, after all, is too far from home to waste the trip, and really, we were out of most everything. Two of the five in my home were healthy and needed to eat. I began to force myself, mind over matter, to place items into my cart, even though NONE of it looked appealing to me.

And then a funny thing began to happen. I watched the people with their lists and I began to notice what they were picking up. Fresh cranberries. I do love to make my own cranberry sauce. Sweet potatoes. Like the shopper in the gray coat, I too prefer them to yams--and with a little brown sugar, some crushed pineapple and chopped pecans, they can be almost heavenly. Bags of dried bread cubes from the bakery--the bags with every variety of bread in them. I love to make my own stuffing this way, with lots of sauteed veggies, chopped Granny Smith Apples, lots of butter and chicken broth, parsley, sage and thyme--the works.

A desire to make a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner swelled within me, even though I still couldn't bear the thought of eating any of the food. I realized that I even love preparing it. I love seeing my table covered with my favorite steaming dishes, no room to move because it is so crowded, in constant danger of a wine glass being bumped and spilled. I love the wonder on my family's faces when they look at the spread before them and the tiny cockpit of a kitchen from whence it came. I wanted to make this meal. I stopped in the middle of the produce section and pulled out the little note pad that I carry in my purse for such occasions--the sage green faux leather one with the elastic strap that keeps it from opening as it gets jostled around. I scrounged for a pen and sketched out a menu:

Turkey
Cranberry Sauce
Stuffing
Sweet Potatoes
Green Bean Casserole
Mashed Potatoes
Rolls
White Wine/Sparkling Cider
Pumpkin Pie
Chocolate Pie
Fresh Cream

From memory, I listed the things I would need for each dish, making allowances for the fact that I was not yet very strong, physically, and just couldn't spend long standing in the kitchen at any one time.

A whole turkey was out of the question, but I did want turkey. I remembered the Thanksgiving of 2001 (I think that was the year)--the year that I had emergency oral surgery, the removal of all four wisdom teeth, the day before I was scheduled to have 30 people come for Thanksgiving Dinner. That year I saw a recipe for turkey roll-ups--deli sliced turkey about a quarter to a half inch thick, spread with stuffing, rolled up, skewered, covered with gravy and heated in the oven for half an hour or so. SO EASY. So delicious. So perfect for the Thanksgivings that just aren't going as desired. I would do those again. I knew my kids would love them. I estimated that I could fit twelve of them into a 9x13 baking dish, so I got 12 thick slices made at the deli counter. It was a lot of meat and it came to $20, but that's cheaper than a whole bird, with none of the carcass to deal with, no carving, no thawing--just instant, boneless pre-cooked, pre-sliced goodness. And with only a family of five to feed, that's more than a whole solid meal of leftovers. Perfect.

Homemade pies were also out of the question. I didn't have the strength or the time. My good friend, Marie Callendar, came to my rescue.

I would have to forgo the traditional holiday carrot bread; just not enough time or energy, no matter how much it would break my heart.

Cranberry sauce was easy. I could make that in the evening fairly quickly so it would have time to chill and mix flavors overnight.

The green bean casserole--my own take on the traditional mushroom soup one--wouldn't be difficult. And those fried onions almost sounded good to me.

Stuffing was easy and didn't take much planning or precision.

The only things that would take a bit of time and effort were the sweet potato casserole and mashed potatoes. I would do them when I felt strong enough and Ellie would help. No problem.

I would do this thing.

When I got home with my bags of treasures, I had my brawny teenage son and my less brawny but healthy daughter carry them in for me while I rested. Once I'd gathered my courage, I went into the kitchen and made the cranberry sauce while Ellie made dip for the veggies and crackers on the appetizers platter. That wasn't so bad. I rested a bit and then went back to make the green bean casserole. It could sit overnight, too.

I got it into the fridge, slumped on the couch to rest some more...and the lights began to hum and buzz and flicker, resting at half-strength for a brief time, and then went out altogether. We glanced out the window just in time to see a spectacular light show. Down at the highway, a third of a mile away, an electrical storm was raging. Blue light arced across the sky, power lines were visibly dangling, sending out showers of sparks that looked more like fireworks, touching other lines and arcing all over again.

Whoa.

Fearing that the neighbor's house might be ablaze from their proximity to the action, Andy and Ellie grabbed a flashlight and headed out into the blackness--heavy cloud cover had blocked even the moon and stars from shining through. Tano and I waited, but the sky down by the road had an eerie color to it. It didn't look good. We waited a little longer. There was no word from Andy. Realizing that a car has likely crashed into a utility pole and perhaps more cars have piled up in the darkness, we decided we'd better go down there, too. I grabbed some blankets and a water bottle, in case there were accident victims that needed attending to while we waited for ambulances to arrive. Part way down to the highway, we saw a flashlight coming toward us. It was Ellie and she was crying.

"The fires are everywhere. Everything is on fire!"

"What?"

"The gullies and the hillside are on fire! I'm going back to the house."

Ellie can tend toward the dramatic at times (ok, often), but still, that sounded alarming. Fire is fire, dramatics or not.

She gave us her flashlight and we made good time covering the quarter mile remaining. My weakness from being so sick slowed me a bit when Tano wanted to run, but the adrenaline helped. The scene at the bottom of our hill looked like a scene from a movie. There were spot fires here and there on both sides of the highway, power lines dangling from several poles and more emergency vehicles than I could count. Firefighters combed the gullies slowly and gingerly with huge spotlights, looking for downed power lines. The fires were quickly controlled and we found ourselves glad that the earth was muddy and damp with two inches of recent snow melted off just that day. Had this happened in summer, the results could have been catastrophic.

*Note: There had not been a car accident; the whole thing was caused by a tree branch that fell in the wind, knocked some main lines down, which fell into some other lines and started a terrible chain reaction.

Eventually, we all went back home, having been informed that this was a very serious power outage involving main lines and the electricity might not be restored for a day or two. We sat around the candlelit house, too keyed up to go to bed until after midnight. Tano took his phone to bed with him in case he needed a light. We tucked Ellie in with a flashlight and instructions not to leave it on. Andy and I blew out the candle next to our bed and talked for a while longer in the blackness of the basement. I had a hard time falling asleep, for some reason, so I spent my time planning out how I might cook our Thanksgiving Dinner on the flat top of the wood stove. I was fairly certain I could still make the whole meal work as planned, and I was actually glad for the opportunity to do it. What an amazing memory that would be for us to look back on--the Thanksgiving when dinner was prepared on the wood stove in the basement and then eaten by candlelight.

I was almost disappointed when the lights came back on at five o'clock in the morning.

Having slept only fitfully all night, I stayed in bed quite late and didn't get started on the meal until nearly eleven. I really was hoping to still pull the meal off, despite my fatigue and the history of the week, but I decided early on in the process to cut myself some slack. If I ran out of steam and just couldn't do it, I would refrigerate what I'd done so far and we would try again for tomorrow. As the day went on, however, I found myself full of energy and excitement. This was going to be a great meal and I was thoroughly enjoying the preparation process in my tiny little kitchen.

Andy and the kids, by the way, were cleaning house for the first couple of hours of prep time, and with great motivation: I had told them that I wouldn't be setting out the appetizers until the house looked pretty. They worked quickly. I set out the appetizers and also set out a basket with a sign that said "What are you thankful for?" along with some strips of paper and a few pens. I put the first few entries in between stirring pots in the kitchen and encouraged others to do the same. I told them I was anxious for this first stack of papers to run out so I'd have to cut some more. The kids looked at me like I was crazy--but then they did it. They got in the spirit of it and kept writing more and more things and folding them up to toss into the basket.

Ellie also began having fun with the walnut shells, making them into a flotilla of pirate ships and a turtle.

Between writing our thankfulness notes and marauding pirates and passing the phone around to talk to loved ones far away and even a Skype session with the Vancouver Chidwick clan, the time passed quickly. The dishes came together without a hitch. I forgot the brown sugar in the sweet potatoes, but it didn't matter. The crushed pineapple was plenty sweet and the dish received rave reviews. Note to self: don't ever bother adding the brown sugar again.

Ok, maybe just a little.

As Andy poured the wine and Ellie poured the sparkling cider for the underage set and I finished the mashed potatoes, I smiled, all alone in my kitchen. I couldn't believe I had pulled it off! Yesterday, it was a challenge even to drag myself out of the house, climb into the van and trek the miles to the grocery store. Once inside, I'd wanted to turn and go right back home without buying anything. Then there was the crazy power outage, a poor night's sleep, and sleeping in too long. And now, at only 3:15 (I'd predicted dinner at 3:00, once I decided I was actually going to do it), I was ready to sit down to a wonderful meal with my family. And everything was hot at the same time (except for the cranberry sauce and the beverages, which were appropriately chilled). A.Mazing.

Andy prayed a heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving over our meal and we dug in. Everything was delicious. The soundtrack that had been playing on Tano's Pandora station all day, stirring and dramatic movie scores from epic adventures like The Lord of the Rings and even the Halo video game, suddenly seemed perfect. The passion in the music built, the strings tugging on our hearts until we were actually giggling at how majestic it all felt. As it began to crescendo and the cymbals began to crash, we all raised our glasses and began to nearly shout our praises to God (all in time with the music, of course). He had brought us to this victory, this celebration of the bounty He provides. We were on top of the world. We clinked glasses all around and giggled a little more at the dramatic nature of it all, but as the song finished, we all agreed that it really was perfect. It really was a worthy moment and the soundtrack enhanced it perfectly. Epic movie scores as background music for holiday meals will become standard around here, I think.

As we ate, we passed around pages of Bible verses that Andy had printed out and took turns reading them aloud. Then Andy, the first one to finish as he was still guarding his stomach against large portion sizes, took the basket and, one by one, read all of the many folded up papers within. It was a wonderful time. Really wonderful. Hard to believe it almost didn't happen.

We finished the meal, pleasantly full, scraped a generous amount of scraps into the dogs' bowls to mix in with their kibbles and let them dig into their own special meal. They'd been sitting on the front porch all day, noses in the air, catching wind of all the good smells coming from the cracked open kitchen window, so they were truly grateful for their turn to dig in.

As I began to collect tupperware to use for leftovers (and the leftovers are PLENTIFUL), Andy came to me, forced me to put the mashed potatoes back down, and ceremoniously removed my apron. He then guided me to the living room and commanded that I stay there. I was grateful and perfectly willing to comply. His dad laughed to his son that he really had me obeying pretty well. I smiled and said nothing. Andy and the kids took care of everything. I have a refrigerator full of leftovers that will last us for most of the weekend and a perfectly clean kitchen. Me? I sat here and typed the first half of this post.

Once they were finished cleaning up, we went over to a friend's house for pie and games--a most enjoyable way to round out the day. It was a day of Thanksgiving all around, one that I'll always smile to look back upon.

Wordless Wednesday: Trying to Change the Subject

2011-11-22T21:54:00.005-07:00

My husband and I both have a stomach flu today (as of Tuesday evening--posting a few hours early here). It's not pretty. Our son, Tano, just finished his bout with it and Ellie and Grandpa have not yet succumbed. I'm afraid there isn't really going to be a Thanksgiving dinner this year, since I was supposed to shop for groceries last night but was feeling just a little crummy and committed to going to the store first thing this morning. Well, the stomach flu erupted for both of us fairly simultaneously at about 5 AM, so going to the store was out for today. Now there isn't much time left to prepare food, even if I am feeling better tomorrow, and who knows if the other two are going to start their own fun times at any minute, putting us into Thanksgiving Day itself.

Bleh.

I don't think anyone would want to see any Wordless Wednesday images from what my life actually looks like today. Like I said, it's not pretty, friends. So, in a vain attempt to change the subject and quiet the awful gurgling and rumbling inside, I will post a pair of images from last week, a little something my daughter cooked up. Enjoy.

She would like to point out that she would have added yarn manes and tails but could only find green yarn and that just didn't work for her.

A Tale of Two Anniversaries

2011-11-21T09:52:00.011-07:00

So yesterday was our 19th wedding anniversary, which I've already written about here, but as Andy and I were drifting off to sleep last night, we had to chuckle about another very similar wedding anniversary, our tenth.

The week of our tenth anniversary, Andy had the opportunity to travel to Virginia to study under another highly skilled woodworker for a week. Because the trip would fall over our big day, he offered to take me with him and my folks graciously took the kids. It was incredible. I wandered historic sites with my camera while Andy sat around in the sawdust--making both of us very happy. We would meet up again at the close of every work day and go out for a nice dinner, then repeat the cycle. The weather in Virginia was gorgeous that week--perfect for exploring the area on foot--and the peak fall color added an extra special backdrop to my photos.

Leading up to that week we'd been discussing, of all things, body art. Andy wanted to tattoo his wedding band onto his finger and then not wear the ring, which could get caught in heavy machinery with devastating consequences. I appreciated his desire to not go without the visual of the marriage commitment and was honored at the idea of the tattoo--a band that can't be conveniently slipped off and deposited in a pocket if his heart were to wander.

In return, I'd been thinking about piercing my navel. At that point, I still had a fairly flat and tight belly and I thought the whole belly button ring-thing was terribly cute. He liked the idea of it, too. We had decided to go together to get both things done.

Before our trip, we had actually worked up the courage to do it on a date night and went so far as to choose a shop and drive there, only to find that their finger specialist was off for the day. I didn't want to only do half of our agreement, so we put it off. During our week alone in Virginia, however, I began to cook up another plan. Part of my exploration was photography-oriented and part of it became a quest to find a good shop that would do both his finger tattoo and my navel ring. I found the perfect place, conveniently located, clean, and with an excellent reputation.

I think our anniversary fell on a Friday night and he was finished with his woodworking as of then, so I decided to surprise him; we would go out to eat and celebrate that evening and then go get some body art on Saturday as our anniversary present since we both had the day free before we were scheduled to fly home.

But Friday didn't go as planned. Thursday night's dinner did not set well with me. Not at all. I spent Friday--our tenth anniversary--at the hotel, hunched over the toilet. It was one of those violently ill situations, friends, and I wish I could remember the name of the restaurant to have you steer clear for your own protection. It was NOT the way one might wish to spend a tenth wedding anniversary. By the time Andy got done with his woodworking class and made it back to the hotel, it was very obvious that I wouldn't be going anywhere. You know the scene.

He was hungry, though, having not had the same bad food as I had, and as we were living in a hotel, he kind of had to go out to eat. He felt terrible about leaving me, but I sent him away. He found an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet close by and spent our tenth wedding anniversary there, by himself--not exactly the most romantic dinner.

By the next morning, the food poisoning had worked its way through my system and I felt much better, but I was still weak. I really didn't feel like letting anyone do anything to my stomach. Not at all. We laid low and did a little touring by car instead of on foot.

Now, nine years later, having spent another anniversary with a stomach bug, we never have gotten around to that body art. We just kind of lost interest, I guess. Andy has learned that finger tattoos just don't last very well because of the amount of sloughing off of skin cells on the hands. I really don't have the same tight and flat abs that I used to and don't feel a need to decorate my navel with something sparkly.

Oh, well.

No clever closing line here today. That's all, folks. I'm off to try to gather up some energy for putting together a Thanksgiving meal. This is difficult when wondering if the tiny little rumblings in my tummy mean that my turn with the stomach flu is next. Blah.

Pretty or Not Pretty

2011-11-21T08:51:00.001-07:00

I made this little video last night. The dialogue is taken directly from an actual conversation with my Ellie-Girl, when she was five years old.

Nineteen Years

2011-11-20T18:31:00.015-07:00

Nineteen years.

Nineteen years ago, a gallon of gas cost a whopping dollar and five cents.

Nineteen years ago, the first George Bush was president and Disney's Aladdin was the top-grossing movie of the year.

Nineteen years is longer than Johnny Carson has been out of the late night TV lineup.

Nineteen years is longer than I'd been alive when I finished my freshman year at college.

But somehow my calendar is claiming that, as of today, I've been married nineteen years. That's ninety-six times as long as Kim Kardashian's marriage lasted, in case you're counting.

I thought a person who'd been married nineteen years would be old. Boy, was I wrong.

It has been a wild ride at times, yes.

We have seen some difficult years, yes.

It has been wonderful, something I wouldn't trade for anything, yes.

We went out for an incredible dinner last night at The Silk Road in Missoula. The food was spectacular--really some of the best I've ever had--and the wine was top notch. The ambience in the restaurant is warm, rich and inviting, but was completely upstaged by the view, as we were sitting upstairs by the big picture windows, looking out at the heavy falling snow lit by the streetlights--I don't know what could have beat that.

We talked about anything and everything: the food, the beautiful snow, the years that have gone by, the food, the last two anniversaries spent in Denver as we traveled with the Woodworking Shows, the early years of marriage, the food, the snow, and sometimes we just talked about the food. And the snow.

After dinner and the most amazing dessert EVER (plum wine sorbet--who woulda thunk?), we went for a walk over the bridge right next to the restaurant. It didn't take very many minutes of watching ice floes in the river to realize we were cold and quickly becoming covered with the fat flakes of snow, so we called it a night and headed home. It was a really nice evening.

Then today after church, Andy and I meandered the Missoula Art Museum and took our time wandering through the Ansel Adams exhibit, all 132 pieces of it. It was great.

While there, however, we received a frantic call from Ellie informing us that Tano was sick. He was apparently tossing his proverbial cookies, worshipping at the porcelain throne, yawning in technicolor, experiencing a reversal of fortune or whatever else you might wish to call it. We sighed and made our way home. Nineteen years ago, we would never have had our date cut short by the needs of a sick child, but nineteen years ago, we didn't have the wonderful children that we have now. Only a few years ago, we would not have gone out on a Saturday night and then gone out again on Sunday afternoon with no thought of expensive babysitters. We smiled. We have it pretty good.

Tano has been a very sick boy all afternoon and into the evening. He is finally sleeping now-- a relief to us all--but we can't help but wonder who might be next.

But hey, we had an awesome dinner with a beautiful view, a walk in the snow to look down over an icy river, and a relaxing visit to a photography exhibit at an art museum. I'd say we had a great anniversary. Next up, the big 2-0.

If we didn't have to be old to have been married nineteen years, then I suppose twenty isn't any big deal either. Bring it on.

Favorite Things: First Good Snow

2011-11-18T11:51:00.008-07:00

Everything is prettier, it seems, when dusted with the first good snow of the season--

even the trampoline, a dead tree branch, and the BMX bike that didn't get put away.

Wordless Wednesday: Mom, Can You Help Me?

2011-11-16T20:58:00.003-07:00

And then she said, "Well, if you can't get it open, maybe I can just go look for the key."

Two minutes and fourteen seconds later, key in hand, the treasured case was open again.

There's twenty minutes of my life I'll never get back. Why didn't I know about this key before?

The Big Ol' Fundraiser Shindig Thing

2011-11-16T16:42:00.006-07:00

I've been putting every spare kilowatt of brain power lately into our first adoption fundraiser. Even just writing those words, our first adoption fundraiser, floods me with a crazy mix of emotions.

Are we really going to do this thing after all these years? Are we really going to finally get to adopt? Will I have a larger family next year at this time? Will it look like what I am imagining at this point? Are there really more kids out there that God has chosen us to raise? What are we thinking? Can we really do this? What if we're totally fooling ourselves and this is going to be just one more huge disappointment--this time for the world to see because we've made it public? God? Are you in this?

It's so exciting, and a little scary, and completely overwhelming, and totally exciting...plus, a little scary.

I told you the story of securing the venue for this event, right? Yes, if you missed it, it's right here. Since that time, I've designed, printed and mailed out invitations. I've designed what the event will look like. I've secured the band. I have a handful of volunteers (not nearly enough) signed on to help; decor is in the works; beverages have been priced and partially purchased; the dessert chef (one of my public speaking students who is well on his way to becoming a professional pastry chef) is choosing his recipe; about half of the silent auction donors have been confirmed.

Next is the food, finalizing the rest of the silent auction items, making a PDF of the auction catalogue to distribute to guests as they RSVP, lining up the rest of the volunteers, finishing the decor, renting or borrowing tables and chairs, creating a database of the guest list, and making the name tags that will serve several purposes. Yes, ALL of those things are next. The event is December 9. It's coming fast.

I have to tell you, though, I am oddly at peace with the whole thing. I really, truly feel that God is going to pull this thing off. I am only responsible to be faithful to accomplish all the little details and He--not me--will be responsible for bringing it all together and raising the funds needed. I'm not afraid.

I have had moments of panic, yes, but they have passed so quickly--not my normal operating mode. Once God gave us the room, I figured this was His thing.

I contacted a friend who is an amazing decorator with tons of connections in the industry and asked if she would be in charge of the decor. I know when a room looks good, and I have fairly good taste, in my opinion, but she is one of those women who can take a blank slate and transform it into pure awesomeness. I knew I needed her on my team (learning to delegate and all), so I was thrilled when she said yes. Decorator. Check.

Then she called back a few days later and apologized for the fact that she had double-booked herself for the day of the event and was busier than she realized and wouldn't be available to help at all after all.

Oh.

I went through about two and a half minutes of "No! I can't do this without her! Shoot! What am I going to do?"

And then a small but clear voice said, "Oh. So this was her event? I thought it was Mine. Do you really think I can't do this without her?"

Oh. Right.

And the panic passed. I am now really excited about the design for the space. I think it will be really beautiful, and full of meaningful symbolism, too.

Then there was the sponsorship issue. We had hoped that two local adoption support organizations, both of whom I am involved with, would be willing to sponsor our event, at least in word, to give us a little credibility in the community. The first organization decided they didn't want any official connection with the event because we would be serving wine. Ok. The second organization declined because their leaders were going to be out of town at that time. Ok.

No sponsors. We were on our own. God, You want to take this one? He did. The peace came down.

Most recently, there was the mailing list thing. Because we are focusing on fine art as auction items, we thought our artist group--the group we helped found--would be willing to let us use the group's mailing list to find the addresses we needed to get our invitations out. At first, there was no problem. But then the mailing list didn't come. And didn't come. When I called the person responsible for compiling it and asked when I could expect to get it, she hesitated. It probably wouldn't be ready until sometime after our next artist guild meeting--where we would be discussing it. I sensed something was wrong.

What would I do without that mailing list? Those were prime invitees--art-loving, socially active area residents who love to go to fundraiser events and throw their money around. We needed that list!

And then the voice again. "Am I really unable to do this thing without that list? Don't you trust Me?"

Oh.

That's right. This event is only happening because God put it into motion against all rules of human logic (go back and click on the story linked above, if you haven't read it yet). If God has put this adoption thing in our hearts, and God has made arrangements for us to even have a fundraiser in the first place, and God gave me all sorts of cool ideas for decor, and God made our first choice band available, and God placed a seventeen year old pastry chef who happens to be adopted in my speech class, could God not also bring in the guests without that list? Was my faith in God, or in a mailing list with magical powers?

And again, the panic passed quickly.

Sure enough, there was a fairly awkward scene at the meeting last night wherein it was decided that we are not to have any access to the list for invitation purposes for this event. I let it go. That list was not the most important thing in the world. I felt no fear--a tiny bit of resentment--but no fear.

I have way too much to do in the next few weeks. Really. WAY TOO MUCH. But I'm not afraid. He's got this one. I'm going to just trust and keep plugging away at the details.

Note: If you are more than an occasional reader of this blog, you're probably beginning to see a theme developing for this year, with posts like this one, and also this one. I'm beginning to see it, too.

Verbal Landfill: Enter At Your Own Risk

2011-11-13T22:50:00.010-07:00

Journalling is a good thing, whether it is done on paper or in the form of a blog. It is good to see where we were, compared to where we are. I have kept this blog for seven and a half years now. It has seen some ugliness when I was not in a good state, but most of it can't compare to...

The Note in the Yellow Backpack

It was several years ago when I wrote this five page rant of pure ugliness. I didn't date it, so I can't be sure of exactly when, but it was obviously at one of the darker times of my life. I knew it was ugly when I was scratching it out as fast as my pen could fly across the sheets of notebook paper, but I wanted to get it out, as if transferring the words from my brain to the written page could somehow get rid of them.

It sort of worked. I never finished the rant. It stops short in the middle of a thought. I had worn myself out, emotionally and physically, and God met me there and began the healing process in my soul. I did feel better, and I can honestly say I've not returned to that low of a place since then.

But for some reason, I kept the note. I wanted to rip it to shreds when I saw how ugly my heart had become, but instead I folded it up and tucked it safely away in a little-used pocket of my yellow backpack, the one that only I use.

Incidentally, there are really only a very few things in life that I consider mine and only mine, that everyone in my family KNOWS they are forbidden from borrowing, lest they get lost or damaged by someone other than me. One is my travel mug. Mine. Another is my camera. Back off. A third (and I really can't think of any others) is my yellow backpack. Go find your own. Oh, you left it at a friend's house? Then put your stuff in a grocery bag. The yellow backpack is mine. I suppose I sound like a toddler here, but really, it's only three little things in my whole life. I'm ok with it.

So the note has been stashed in the bottom of my backpack for years now. One other time, I pulled it out and started to read it, but it was too ugly, too honest, too much of a reminder of the ugliness that can exist in my heart--the heart of the one everyone thinks is such a faithful follower of God. Rather than throwing it away, however, I folded it up again and put it back into my backpack.

A few months ago, I went to load my things for a trip to the lake and couldn't find my yellow backpack. I searched high and low, tearing the house apart looking for it. I'm not sure what worried me more, the missing backpack, or the fact that my ugly note was out there somewhere for someone else to find and read. This week, finally, I found a tub of our winter gear (mittens and hats and such) that hadn't been used since we returned from four months of travel this past April. Under all the fleece and woolen gear was the yellow backpack. The note was still inside.

So here it is. What do I do with it? It is a part of my life, a part of my story. I think it is worth remembering, long-term, so I suppose I should transcribe it for posterity's sake. I will post it here, and then I can discard it. The wood stove downstairs has a nice fire going in it. That will do nicely.

It doesn't include much in the way of paragraphing at first, and I'm not going to bother to edit. Here goes:

This is the cry of the selfish, of the short-sighted, of all who have fixed their eyes on the temporal. "Seek first the kingdom of Heaven," the verse says, but I have sought the kingdom of me, the kingdom which has me at its center in royal attire, a host of servants bowing at my feet. Instead of "thy kingdom come," I have cried, "When will my kingdom finally come? When will trying to live a Godly, upright life finally pay off? When will I get my reward for being a good and faithful servant? When will things turn around and go in my favor? When will I not have to deprive myself and my family of the little comforts that others enjoy all around me? When will I get to say "we really need a weekend away, a little vacation--or better yet, a great family trip? When will I drive a car that isn't on its last leg, a car that could be trusted on a vacation, if we could ever take one? When will I have the opportunity to say, "I really miss her and will go for a visit?" When will my weekends be weekends, for relaxing and enjoying my family, rather than for working--or feeling guilty for not working? When will I live in a house not in construction? When will I have a house I'm not ashamed of? When will a conversation with my husband not center on business, or potential business, or the lack thereof? When will my husband not be discouraged or stressed or depressed? When will he be able to hold his head high, knowing that he is providing for his family on a regular basis? Why does it all have to be about money, money, MONEY, MONEY MONEY??? Why can't we have just enough to get by simply--even without the shiny nice new things or the travel to wonderful places? When can I do something with all the ideas that float around hopelessly in my head? Why can't I make a living, if he can't seem to? Why can't I stop doing the dishes long enough to write some books or make something wonderful out of my photography? When will my family learn not to be content living in such utter chaos? When will they put in the smallest amount of effort at keeping our living space clean? When will they do any household chores without my instruction or guilt-trips? When will I even be able to enjoy going on walks again with my husband? Will he ever be able to enjoy any physical activity of any kind ever again, or is that it--an injured knee, a weak back, a broken ankle, some extra pounds, a damaged hip, and 'boom'--at 40 years old (37 or 38, but who's counting?) he is beyond any sort of physical activity for the next however many decades and the rest of our free time together (if any ever exists outside of work) will be spent sitting on our butts in a dark house watching TV or taking turns getting lost in a computer screen? Is that it? Too tired, too sore, too fragile, too defeated to enjoy fresh air ever again? And what about my hopes and dreams? My ideas and ambitions? Pointless? Then why did I ever have to have them in the first place? To frustrate me? Wouldn't it have been more merciful to make me a simple creature who just wanted a quiet life at home of dishes and laundry and soothing children's tears and arguments and never desired more?

This is the cry of the selfish, of the short-sighted, of all who have fixed their eyes on the temporal.

I want what I want, when I want it. I don't want to give of myself. I don't want to put others' needs ahead of my own. I don't want to be the loving, supporting encourager of the downtrodden, even the ones in my own family. I don't want to put effort into setting a positive tone in my home. I don't want to be left with the broken pieces of my husband and painstakingly and patiently glue them back together like I've done with so many plates and dishes and pieces of my daughter's tea set. I don't want to encourage him when he's down. He's always down. I don't want to play referee between my children. I don't want to try to clean a house no one else cares about. I don't want to do anything that takes me away from me and my kingdom.

"Seek first the kingdom of Heaven." But what about the second part of the verse? The part about "and all these things shall be added"? What about King Solomon, asking only for wisdom and being rewarded with wealth as well?

I know.

I'm looking for the second half without really concentrating on the first half. I've not sought the kingdom of Heaven. I've not sought to live like Jesus did--giving, giving, giving, GIVING, GIVING, GIVING.

Am I to consider myself a Christian if I am not willing to act like Christ?

I know I need to look up--get my eyes off the temporal and see the eternal, seek His kingdom, be Christ-like in all I do. I really do. But what do I do with the temporal? I live here now. How are we supposed to go on without income? How do we know what to do next? Trust. Have faith. Yes. But what do we do? Let our house lapse into foreclosure? Stop buying groceries? Do we, by faith, step out and try to grow our business, trusting You to provide? Or do we, by faith, choose not to grow our business, trusting You to provide?

And that's where it ends.

I find it interesting that here we are, several years later with a home that didn't lapse into foreclosure, bodies that haven't suffered from malnutrition, and a business that--although it is still touch and go quite often--basically provides our needs and seems to be on an upward trend. My husband is very good at and very well-respected for what he does. Our home is getting to be an almost pleasant place to be, even though it is still in construction. My husband and I have a generally close relationship that seems to get better all the time, aside from the regular ups and downs of any marriage. We have even had the chance to travel, all of us, all over the whole country, for months at a time--while I worked on writing one of those books. And although I will always struggle with being egocentric, I like to think I'm not nearly as selfish now as I come across in this old note.

What happened?

I don't really know. I just know that God cares for us. I know that He was not frightened off by the ugly words I've recorded here. He did not get angry at my impudent attitude and turn His back on me. No, I do believe he pulled me into his lap like a toddler storming out of control and held me there until I'd settled down again.

He whispered into my ear, "Trust me."

I still forget sometimes, but I'm learning. Rather than fearing the ugliness of this rant, I hope to use it as a beautiful reminder: He has brought me so far. I must continue to trust Him.

Must continue to trust.

I trust you.

A Mom and a Mosh Pit

2011-11-12T20:33:00.006-07:00

So my son likes screamo music. Honestly, the first time I heard the term, I thought he'd made it up. Turns out, it is a current genre--a combination of emo pathos and a whole lot of unintelligible screaming. Some of his buddies have formed a screamo band called Amidst the Chaos and are quickly making a name for themselves in the youth culture of Missoula and our valley. Just a couple of weeks ago, they were the opening band of three at a concert. Last night, they were the headline act of a different three band night.

I took the boy and his buddy to the concert last night, and because Missoula is too far away to come back home, I decided to stay and check out the scene. I'd been to one of their very early gigs--back when they were just getting started--and Andy took Tano to one of their concerts a few weeks ago, but this was the first time I'd been to one of their real shows.

It's not exactly my style.

I liked me some crazy music back in the day, for sure, but the message in the songs was encouraging me to be counter-cultural in a good way. It was encouraging me to be a radically transformed follower of Jesus. True story.

NOTE: In my son's defense, this is only one of many musical styles that he likes. Most of the things he likes are things I can tolerate quite easily. Some of the music I actually like.

But this screamo stuff...I have a hard time with it, honestly. Tonight's concert was at a church youth center and the musicians that played claim Christianity, even making a brief statement endorsing a Christian belief system at one point in the concert, but when I ask Tano about the lyrics, he can't tell me much about them because he doesn't know any of them. He can't understand the screaming.

So...

Is it just good, clean fun? I don't know. We're watching. We're attending the concerts and observing. We're asking the boy questions. We are cautious, but there are worse things he could be doing with his time.

What he loves most about these concerts is the mosh pit. Not familiar with mosh pits? They are the modern teen equivalent of the dance floor. But there is no dancing. The mosh pit is more like a pushing and shoving festival, full of teens amped up on adrenaline and caffeine who are looking to blow off a little steam.

It's a really difficult thing for a mom to watch, honestly, as it looks fairly violent. He assured me that most of the kids out there are really nice and will even help people up if they've been knocked to the ground, so they don't get trampled. I think his words were meant to put my mind at ease. But honestly, the kids are having a ton of fun and are all smiles for hours afterward. Plus, they're worn out after an hour of moshing and if you've ever raised a dog, you know: a tired puppy is a good puppy. Same goes for teenagers.

Observing the teenagers at the concert last night, I couldn't help but wonder what is really going on in their minds. The musicians were screaming and jumping and pounding on their instruments with such ferocity. Is their world really so frustrating that they need this outlet for their rage? Do they think they have no other way to make themselves heard? The kids in the mosh pit had so much energy, so much stamina, so much determination--impressive, really when you consider that teens of today are stereotyped as video game and cell phone addicts who don't actually accomplish anything. Do they feel so powerless and disconected that they have to use the intense physical contact of a mosh pit to feel like they've really impacted something, that they've really made a difference, a dent in this world? Are they really just desperate to have their actions count for something?

I wonder.

I am not fond of the music at these events, but instead of feeling repulsed by the scene last night, I found myself wanting to get to know the kids better. Are they really hurting so much as the music and moshing makes it seem? Probably not all of them, but some, yes. I wanted to make them cookies and pizza and gather them around my dining room table to just hang out and talk. I like teenagers--even moshing screamo teenagers. They don't scare me.

Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Matthew 9:36

But I was grateful that I'd remembered to bring the little orange foam earplugs.

A Text Conversation

2011-11-12T00:39:00.004-07:00

Earlier today, I received a text message from a name and number I didn't recognize. It was a benign text--just asking how the intended recipient was doing, so I ignored and deleted it.

This evening another text came in from the same person. This time I responded. Here is how the conversation went down:

Hey hun we can go to lunch tomorrow if you want...

Hun, you have the wrong #

U sure hun its amanda from the bar

I'm pretty sure hun--it's Sherry from the church

O sorry

No problem

True story.

My Deal with Coffee, By Reader Request

2011-11-10T23:33:00.008-07:00

Many of you have heard this story a million times, or at least once, so feel free to skip this post. A reader asked in a comment about my experience moving from coffee to tea, and I started to write my reply likewise in a comment, but I've never been known for my brevity. It's going to take a little more space than a comment can afford.

My deal with coffee is this: I started drinking it at age 14 and gradually increased the amount until I was drinking quite a bit by the time I was an adult.

By the time I was in my mid-30's, I began to notice that my heartbeat had become quite irregular when I was drinking a lot of coffee and that I was very easily jittery when I had too much. I knew my mom had always struggled with terrible withdrawl symptoms, just like coming off a narcotic, every time she had attempted to reduce her intake of caffeine, so I knew I might be experiencing some serious addiction. I didn't like the idea of being physically addicted to a foreign substance, and I didn't like how I was becoming increasingly jittery and how my heart was racing, so in 2005 I just decided to see if I could give it up.

I cut it out of my system cold turkey. The headaches were intense at first, and still lingered on and off for weeks, maybe more. I can be a little strong-willed, however, and I was determined to outlast them. I did. Once the caffeine was completely out of my system, it was like my body rewired itself completely.

I no longer felt the uneven jags of fatigue and energy all day as I always had. Although I am still not a "morning person," I don't drag like I used to. I don't feel grouchy in the mornings AT ALL anymore. I watch my husband's energy level go up and down all day long with his caffeine intake and I just smile--that just doesn't happen to me anymore. I am now a fairly even-keeled person, with the same mental and physical state generally carrying through the entire day.

I drink decaf tea now, as I still love the 'good company' of a steaming hot mug, and if I am someplace where there is no decent decaf tea available, I actually just drink hot water. I still love the smell of coffee, and a coffee-flavored ice cream can make me swoon. When my husband pours a cup of joe, I will often take one small sip of it, but that's really all I want. I don't need it and I don't even crave it anymore. Coffee and I have parted ways amicably.

My mom used to try to wean herself off of it gradually. She would make a custom mix each week, starting with 7/8 regular and 1/8 decaf, until she was drinking only decaf within two months. But decaf coffee still contains a decent amount of caffeine. It is not UNcaffeinated. Decaf still contains more caffeine than a cup of regular green tea, in fact. So she never really got over the caffeine addiction this way. Her body still needed it and she always went right back to full strength after all that work--and all the headaches and irritability. We kids knew to run for cover when Mom was trying to go off the caffeine again. No offense, Mom. I'm sure you know it was not pleasant for any of us--especially you.

I know it is a very painful process to go 'cold turkey,' but it did work for me--with time.

I do have to struggle not to laugh or lecture people when they complain about feeling so run down that they really just NEED another cup of coffee--and the expensive hobbies (hello, Starbucks or Dunkin' or Dutch Bros. or whatever!) that follow their beloved coffee addictions. It's like they hold their addiction sacred; they are completely controlled by a foreign substance in their bodies and they're somehow proud of it. Since ditching the caffeine and getting it completely out of my system, I feel SO MUCH BETTER. But people don't want to hear that, for some reason. They like their addictions just fine. I guess it at least gives them something to complain about and something to blame their mood and energy swings on.

Ok, now I'm getting snarky. I'd better stop.

Seriously, though, every once in a while (like once every six months or so), when I've made a fresh pot of coffee for my husband and father-in-law, and it smells sooo good and the house is a little chilly and I went to bed at two o'clock in the morning, I will pour myself a half of a very small mug. If I manage to drink it all (half of a junior-sized mug!), I become a jittery, hyper mess within minutes. Completely unaccustomed to caffeine now, my body is very sensitive to it and reacts very strongly to it--way more than it did when I was drinking 4-6 cups per day.

Hmmm...it's as if I'd built up some kind of resistance and it was taking more and more of it to have any effect on me...like a drug...

Ok, I'll stop now. I think you get the picture.

Day 41: Maintenance

2011-11-10T16:38:00.007-07:00

Forty-one days ago, I threw my hat into the 31 Days project ring and committed to writing about emerging from my chaos for the month. I did it. I wrote about it for thirty-one days and I emerged from my chaos (or at least I got a really good jump on it). So I thought it only appropriate, with me being 41 and this marking a nice even ten days out from the end of the project, that I give you all a little update today.

Closing out the project, my biggest concern was maintenance. I just don't have a good track record with anything, really, related to self-discipline.

I take that back. There are a couple of things I have been successful with.

- I gave up coffee and most forms of caffeine (save an occasional bit of chocolate) in 2005 and, after a few months of cravings and headaches, have never looked back. I won't get on my high horse here about how much better I feel now that my body is not dependant on caffeine, but trust me--I HAVE such a horse, and he stands a good 17 hands tall. I live in the country now, and I have a daughter who just finished an intensive semester of equine science; 17 hands is impressive.

- Last December, I gave up all varieties of soda, pop, sugary carbonated beverages--whatever you call it where you live. This one was just entirely on a whim, but I am sticking with it just because it is fun. I don't plan to drink a soda again for the rest of my life. Isn't that just so cool? I think it is. My kids think I'm looney.

So, I can exercise self-discipline, I suppose, but I'm not very good at it for sure, especially when it comes to my favorite bad habits--the kind that gradually drag me down into living in chaos.

When I shared my fears here with you, dear readers, several of you were quick to suggest ideas for how I might strategize a maintenance plan, particularly for keeping the house tidy. I listened.

I've been keeping on top of the daily things pretty well. We get up at the right time. We have a good breakfast all together at the table, followed by family Bible time. I keep the floors swept and the kitchen clean. We straighten up any clutter left behind by a busy day before heading to bed each night. I pray. I have kept up with laundry and my bed is usually made. This past Saturday, I came up with eight cleaning chores that needed to be done and the four of us each drew two of them out of a hat and finished them within an hour (that was awesome). I have been diligent about working on our upcoming adoption fundraiser event. I have even baked ahead for Christmas just a bit.

I'm doing it. Can you believe it?

If anyone wants to just pop by unannounced, you are welcome to do so. My house is fairly tidy--lived in, but not a mess. Our lives are almost orderly--in a busy sort of a way. My home is a peaceful place--down to the lit candles, tea pot on the stove, and good smells coming from the kitchen.

I think I could get used to this.

I think I have. And the more I get used to it, the more I like it, and the more I want to never return to the old ways.

Side note: Andy is gone this week, teaching a woodworking class in Oregon. The kids actually requested that we still find ways to have our morning Bible time because...they like it. This morning we met via speaker phone. Tomorrow morning we are hoping to Skype. That's so awesome I can hardly stand it.

Journey on, friends.

Tut, Tut...Tutu Time?

2011-11-08T00:00:00.005-07:00

Let's get one thing straight, right off. I never was the tutu-wearing sort of girl. From my earliest rememberances, I've always been more of the football-throwing, tree climbing sort of girl. The tutu was never on my radar--not even as a funny costume. But this post is not about frilly pink dance clothes.

This post is about my new attempt at making the blogging and social media world more approachable, more practical, more useful. In fact, I think each of us only write/visit blogs and participate in social media sites because we want the contact to be useful. We want it to apply to our lives and enrich them. We are fairly self-centered critters, when it all comes down.

Truth be told, perhaps we just want to have some excuse for spending way too much time here, so that when our husbands ask what we are up to, we can respond with something very important, like, "I just discovered placing a ball of tin foil in the dryer eliminates static cling, which means we never have to buy fabric softener again--and that saves us money!"*

Social media and blogging should be useful and helpful and enriching--or else we are just wasting our time here. All of us. I've been blogging for many years now and have a handful of blogging friends who are also my IRL friends, but am fairly new in the world of Twitter--a huge connecting point for hip moms such as myself...or rather, a huge connecting point for hip moms AND myself. It's a big world, though, and it's hard to narrow down whose content is really useful and practical for me.

And THAT is what this post is about. Scanning endless pins on Pinterest for the handful of treasures is one thing, but I'd like to have a handy clearing house for things that matter to me, things that apply to my life.

How are Tuesdays for you? Could we do a totally useful swap of information on Tuesdays? I like words, so humor me for a moment:

Totally Useful Tuesday

T.U. Tuesday.

T.U.Tu...

Tutu?

Tut, tut?

I know it's kind of silly, but play along with me here. It's way more fun to be silly together than alone. Every Tuesday, I will post a topic that is totally useful to me (how's that for self-absorbed?) If it is also a topic that would be totally useful to you, then post your own link here and we'll have a little linky party (my husband laughs every time I say linky--he has a hard time believing it is a real term), share useful information and enjoy getting to know one another a bit better.

Are you in? Cool.

This week's topic is parenting teens. I have one who is fully there and one who is teetering on the edge, like an X-Games athlete on the edge of a half-pipe, about to drop in. (See? I'm trying to enter into teen culture.) What is working for you? Or, if you have already graduated out of those years, what has worked for you? In this crazy world of information overload and media saturation, it is hard to raise kids well. Am I right?

So link up a post from your own blog here and we'll all chime in about the crazy cool successes (even if they are rare) regarding raising teens--totally useful information to those of us with big kids.

Here's the linky. Tut, tut, Happy Tutu Time! It's Totally Useful Tuesday. Spread the word on Twitter and Facebook, if you hang out there. Thanks.

*BTW, that ball of tin foil trick is completely true. I found it on Pinterest and tried it and it totally works. Score. Yes, Honey, my time spent online is totally useful. This tin foil ball thing just saved us...um...about $25 per year. Ok, maybe that's not very much, but I'll keep surfing and maybe I'll find something REALLY good!

More True Confessions

2011-11-06T23:52:00.012-07:00

Ugh.

Here we go again with that whole honesty/transparency thing. Why must I do this to myself?

In a moment of weakness and scrambling for attention for myself, trying to play with the big girl bloggers as I mentioned yesterday, I nominated my own blog for one of the categories in the Homeschool Post's Homeschool Blog Awards.

I'm fairly embarrassed here. They did say it was ok to nominate yourself, but still...ugh.

Here's proof.

Please don't feel compelled to vote for me for any reasons that might pop in your mind. This is not an award-winning blog.

And I'm okay with that.

True Confessions and A Little Math Anxiety of My Own

2011-11-05T10:18:00.010-06:00

Ugh.

I have a confession to make.

Actually, I have a couple of confessions to make.

I am having a real problem with numbers lately--for about the last 40 days, in fact. Back at the end of September, you see, I began browsing the world of the 'mom blogs.' I discovered that it was a HUGE world. I had been blogging longer than some of these moms had been alive (or that's how it felt, at least), but I had clearly been left in the dust. This humble little blog of mine, the one I formed in Spring of 2004 simply as a way to stay in touch with people when we moved from the PacNW to the wilds of Montana, had never really grown at all. It went through a couple of facelifts over the years, sure, but really nothing more than switching from one basic Blogger template to another, plus a little bit of basic HTML tweaking.

I wrote because I loved to write. I recorded my experiences and the life of my family. I loved the idea that someday my children and their children would have this blog to look back on. They would understand life from my perspective and smile at memories that would have otherwise been forgotten.

I had a faithful group of a dozen or so readers, all of us bloggers for the same reason, all of us commenting on each others' blogs. Very occasionally, a new commenter would materialize, but eighty percent of those were just spammers. But I didn't mind. This blog was just for me, for my real-life family and friends. I plugged away, whistling while I wrote.

Then Facebook appeared on the scene. I ignored it. It was a time-waster for college students trying to avoid studying and networking after graduation, as far as I knew. I remember my sister-in-law, Ruth, telling me that I would love Facebook. I told her that I didn't need another online outlet for blowing large chunks of time.

But I was curious.

A year or two later, I poked around on that shiny blue and white site. I tentatively opened an account.

I fell hard.

After a couple of years, though, it began to cause problems in my life. You see, I am a person with opinions. Surprised? Facebook is full of people with opinions. Big opinions. Strong opinions. Unfortunately, it is also full of people who have no clue how to have reasonable, civil, respectful discussions when those opinions differ. Unfortunately, many of those people live near me. The interactions between the online world of opinions and the in-real-life world of casual acquaintances became very uncomfortable for me. I wasn't having fun anymore (and we all know that is my prime directive), and worse yet, I was dealing with an incredible amount of stress because of it. Things were getting ugly, all because of the shiny and useful blue and white site.

So I dropped it like a rock. I did. I can be a very impulsive person at times, which sometimes is a good thing and sometimes isn't, but in this situation my impulsivity led me to, with no warning whatsoever, simply posting a farewell in a status post and deleting my account. Just like that.

It felt great, like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I felt liberated and almost giddy...for about two weeks.

Then I began to feel the loss of it. I have lived a lot of places in my life, and the collection of great friends I have made is staggering. I never considered myself one of the 'popular' kids, and I spent my childhood enduring much teasing (not the light-hearted, good-natured, all-in-good-fun-because-we-like-you variety), so I am truly humbled and grateful to realize that now, at 40-something years old, I have an incredible group of friends--good people, bright people, encouraging and uplifting people, people who are humbly making a difference in the world, people with whom I am honored to associate. I'd always thought that if I could have just a single good, faithful friend, I'd be happy. If I could have a handful of close friends, I'd be blessed beyond measure. But look at me now. I have dozens of people in my life who I can talk to about most any subject, people who I could call if I were in their area and stop in for an excellent visit, then leave wishing it were longer.

I am rich, dear friends, and many of you are the shiny gold coins in my pocket.

The local friends were easy to stay connected with, but I missed the connections I'd re-established with so many of my faraway friends. Facebook had become a lifeline for those relationships. So simple. So efficient.

I caved.

And here's Major Huge Confession #1: I created a new identity on the shiny blue and white site using a pseudonym, just so I could stay in touch with my faraway friends. I contacted a select few people, the ones I had interacted with the most before the switch, and let them know my new name so they could add me as an official 'friend.' It felt a little awkward at first, responding to a different name, but I've been doing it for awhile now, and I feel like it is now just an extension of myself. When I look at the pseudonym, it registers in my brain as me. My friends list is very small and I like it that way. It is only those I consider intimate friends, and NO ONE from anywhere in Montana--not even my own husband and son.

It has worked well, to an extent, but I am feeling convicted more and more about living a double life. My local friends know that "I deleted my identity on Facebook" (true) and that "Sherry Chidwick isn't on Facebook anymore" (true). Kind of true. Well, technically speaking, but well, not entirely true.

It's time to come clean before this whole double life thing turns and bites me in the butt. I can already hear it growling.

Today--right now, in fact--I am going to switch my identity back to my real name.

..........

There. Done. I'm back under my real identity.

Wow. That's crazy. I even added my husband and son as friends, finally.

So that takes care of confession number one. I will likely have some damage control to take care of as a result of this , but I am willing to take the risk. It's better to take charge of it myself, I suppose.

On to the second one.

Remember how I said that I started poking around in the mom blog scene? I learned a few things very quickly.

1. My blog was very ugly and outdated looking.

2. My blog had pitifully few readers.

3. It was time to join the real social media scene and make something of this humble little blog.

4. I wanted to play with the big girls.

I gave my blog a serious makeover--albeit still within the Blogger template system. I went back through old posts and began to update tags, adding them to posts that were written before Blogger gave the option of tags, so that the entire blog would be searchable by topic. I added the content of my underutilized homeschool blog to this blog and added sidebar links to show that this is a homeschool blog as well as a personal/family one. I got myself signed up on Twitter and started to interact with other mom bloggers there.

And then, I did the unthinkable. I jumped on board with the 31 Days project created by a handful of the big girl bloggers, chose a topic, created a little 125x125 pixel button, and linked it up with with the project, committing myself to writing about emerging from the chaos for 31 days straight. I did it, too. I kept up with the entire 31 days.

With all of these efforts, my readership spiked. Really spiked. Check out this graph, documenting my blog's readership by month for the past year:

Now do you believe me when I say 'spiked'? That's October, my 31 Days project. Crazy, huh?

How did I get this nifty little graph? I have SiteMeter installed. I don't even remember when I put it on my site or why. Blogger has their own stats system built in now, so I could have gotten this same information without an external application. This little graph, and other ones like it have become my obsession for the last 35 days or so. I've been tracking readers by the hour, checking to see where they come from on the map, which websites they were referred from, what pages they read, and how their numbers compare to the hour before, the day before, the week before, etc. I've become a numbers girl and the math of it all has caused a fair amount of anxiety for me.

It has become a fairly ugly compulsion. I'm not proud of the amount of space in my brain I've allowed it to take over. I've lost the reasons that I started blogging in the first place. I've compared myself to others relentlessly. I've all but screamed for attention, trying to drive traffic to my blog. It's not been pretty. That's Confession Number Two, if you're keeping score.

So, I'm going to remove SiteMeter from my blog. Right now.

..........

There. Done.

If I really need to track statistics for some reason in the future, I know how to find them within the Blogger system, but it's more time consuming, so I doubt I will do it much. I don't have any reason to do so right now anyway.

I'm going back to writing what I want to write on this blog, simply because I love to write, love to record my family's history and my experiences as a mom and a home educator.

So there you go. I'm attempting to be a little more transparent, a little more genuine. I'm back to just being me.

Ellie Makes Math Easy

2011-11-04T21:18:00.003-06:00

Actually, Ellie struggles with math. She has for awhile now. It just doesn't come that easily to her and she gets frustrated when she doesn't pass her unit tests again and again. The problem is, though, that she DOES understand when I go through it with her. But between careless mistakes, not bothering to check over her work carefully, insisting on doing much of the work (inaccurately) in her head, and a poor grasp of basic facts, plus a newly developing anxiety every time a unit test comes along, she is not doing well and getting increasingly stressed out.

Two nights ago, I reached out to a bunch of math whiz types on Twitter, asking for some advice. Before I heard back from any of them, however, I had an idea.

She should stop taking tests over her current work for awhile and instead teach other kids the things she already knows. I approached her with the idea of making a series of funny math videos for kids. She was ALL OVER IT.

This is what resulted today:

Wordless Wednesday: Fudge, Feeling a Little Threatened

2011-11-02T00:01:00.002-06:00

Click image to fully enjoy.

Freedom!

2011-11-01T20:35:00.004-06:00

Wow. Tonight has been different. I finished the last of the quarter's public speaking classes, didn't have to take a carload of kids to Missoula for youth group, and now don't have to come up with a 31 Days post.

Whatever will I do with all this freedom?

So far, I have put it to great use, sitting with my son and strategizing on how to better use his school time to make sure he is getting all of his work done and still getting to enjoy some time with friends. It was so great to actually watch him getting excited about writing out a workable schedule in his planner. He says he was partly inspired by watching my 31 Days improvements, and partly by his health class, wherein the students were encouraged to get into a somewhat regular routine of how they spend their time, in order to cut down on stress.

Hmmm...interesting.

Off to enjoy my freedom now. Funny that I still feel the need to check in with you all in the evening, even when I don't have to. I could have taken a whole day off!

If you could spend an evening at home any way you wish, what would you do?

Day 31: Where to Go From Here, and a Whole Lotta Chocolate

2011-10-31T21:39:00.006-06:00

I may as well let you know right now, we are not the good little Christian family who dutifully disapproves of all things Halloween. We are not even the quasi-good Christian family who chooses a healthy and safe alternative church carnival event with a title like Hallo-lujah. We've tried those. We pretty much hate them. I''m sorry.

My husband and I both grew up in solid Christian homes and still went trick-or-treating every year. It was the 70's. Christians where we lived apparently didn't know that we were supposed to ban such activities. We just knew that it is really fun to wear silly costumes and collect obscene quantities of candy for free. The Halloweens of my childhood are among my favorite memories.

Living in the country, there are not options for trick-or-treating near our house, but we do live near a very quaint and sleepy little small town, where it is quite safe to go from door to door. So we took the kids out tonight for the annual candy haul, wherein they put on costumes and we march them from house to house until we feel like they have a sufficient amount of good candy (read: chocolate-based) for us to collect a hefty stash of our own in the form of parental taxes and fees.

Actually, we won't be raking in as much for ourselves this year, as Tano didn't walk around with us. Having hit the ninth grade this year and everything that comes with being a wanna-be cool high school guy, he surprised us tonight as we got ready to go out (in his terrible Joker costume with very disturbing makeup that I was NOT pleased with, but a little proud of the techniques he is learning) by asking if he could just get dropped off at the gas station so he could go hang out with his friends. We both remember walking around with our friends for Halloween at that age, too, so it wasn't too terrible of a shock, just a little jolting, but the bigger concern was how it would effect our tax collection. We headed to the car, feeling a bit worried, and noticed that he wasn't carrying a bucket--our better yet, a pillow case.

"Did you forget something to collect candy in, son?"

"Nah. I have big pockets in my trench coat, so I'll just put candy in those."

"Those pockets won't hold much!" I tried to keep the panic from rising in my voice.

"That's ok. My friends and I aren't really into trick-or-treating that much. I don't really need a big ol' stash of candy. We're just going to hang out."

Hang out? What good does that do me? Have we taught this child nothing?

I was disappointed, to say the least, but I let it go. Somebody had to be the grown-up after all.

At least we still had Ellie. She was dressed in a costume she had designed herself a couple of weeks ago at Goodwill--the thrift store where most of our favorite items have come from. She was a white woman from Africa, complete with a very African-looking dress, colorful costume jewelry and a contrasting colored turban wrapped high upon her head. But the best part was the basket perched atop the turban, held in place with a little hidden engineering magic so that it looked as if she was balancing it precariously for the whole evening. When someone came to the door with candy (and invariably laughed and oohed and aahed over her very unique costume), she would bend at the knees, back still straight and head erect, and ask them to place the candy in her basket. After thanking them politely, she would rise carefully, make a bit of small talk and then walk off into the night with perfect posture. Everyone stayed at the door and stared as she walked away. Many called for other family members to come to the door to look at the girl with the basket on her head.

"Harold, come here and see this girl with the basket on her head! Hurry--she's leaving! She had me put the candy right into the basket and look how she balances..." Their voices would fade into the night as we would walk on to the next house, all of us smiling in the darkness between porch lights.

The girl raked in some serious candy. I think people just wanted to see if the basket would tip, because rather than a single Snickers bar, they would dig into their candy bowls and come out with huge fistfuls of candy, dump it into the basket, gasp and giggle, then double dip and dump a second handful in, muttering about how clever she was and how she deserved more.

Andy and I, standing back at the curb generally, would exchange a tiny high-five and begin tallying the fees that would be assessed. The basket occasionally got too heavy and we would each have to fill our coat pockets until they were overflowing, then make a trip back to the car just to unload before heading back to find more streets dotted with porch lights. "Chocolate sure can get heavy," she groaned at one point and I was struck by the fact that I'd rarely ever heard such a lovely sentence spoken. I am a genuine word nerd and THAT, friends, was a marvelous use of language. It was a beautiful evening.

By the time we got home and Ellie sat down to sort through her stash (just the way I used to do as a kid--warms my heart), she had seventeen Snickers bars. And the Snickers were not disproportionate to the rest of the stash. The only candy items, in fact, that didn't seem to occur in the same numbers as previous years were the junk candies--there were very few suckers, only three rolls of Smarties, two packets of SweetTarts and NO LaffyTaffies! Score! Nobody in our home really cares about anything other than the chocolates anyway. It was a banner year.

The kids are now jittering happily in their beds and I am trying to make my way slowly through a bag of M&Ms. It's not really working, but I am trying. Or rather...I tried. Oh, well.

So that brings me back to the present, Day 31 of this project. I had big plans to wax eloquently tonight about the lessons learned by pursuing something whole-heartedly for an entire month and writing about it daily. I was even going to bring in verses from the Bible about pressing on toward the goal and all that, but I'm giving all that up. Blame it on the M&Ms.

I'm ready to move on. Quite honestly, as much as I am pleased with the progress I've made emerging from my chaos, I am really tired of writing about the same subject every single cotton-pickin' day. I like to write. I really like to write. I like to write almost as much as I like Snickers bars (whoa), but I don't prefer to just be informative. I like to tell stories. They can be true stories, fictional stories, stories that make you snort with laughter and spit out your tea, stories that make you weep on and off for the rest of the day, stories that inspire you, stories that fill you with courage, stories that fill you with compassion. Writing about house-cleaning and pages of goals on the refrigerator and making sure dinner is in the crock-pot on busy volleyball or filmmaking class nights just doesn't do much for me. I doubt it does much for you either, but that's where we were this month and I decided to play by the rules I had placed upon myself.

Now, it's done. Over. History.

My life is changed for the better, yes, and I hope yours is, too. I have established some better habits and transformed my home into someplace pleasant. I have decluttered my mind and started behaving less like an overgrown, undisciplined teenager. That's all good.

But now it's time to move on to the really good stuff.

I have stories to write. I have a life to live, which is a story in itself that I try to write, one post at a time.

I have books in my head that need to come out. Some of them are desperately clawing at me from the inside, in fact, and it's getting uncomfortable.

You know what I figured out this month? I did a little computation work and found what my average word-count-per-column-inch is in this blog format. Then I tallied up my column inches, subtracted for photos and dead spaces, and calculated what I've written here this month.

Approximately 26,000 words.

I wrote 26,000 words by blogging for an average of an hour per day for 31 days, complete with background distractions like a World Series baseball game on the TV in the same room and kids that are up out of bed because they are still hungry and laundry loads that need to be moved to the dryer. 26,000 words is a quarter of the way to a standard novel, a third of the way to a standard non-fiction book, and half of the way to a standard e-book--in an hour a day for a month without really trying that hard!

I can do this. I have stuff to write. I have books that are already partly written--one that is more than half-written.

I am moving on. I have stories to tell. I have an adoption to pursue. I have events to plan. I have a recently decluttered life to maintain. I will post here frequently, but just because I like to do it, not because I am being held to a schedule, so if you are a new reader, be sure to still check in once in a while. I guarantee it will be more interesting than updates on whether or not my floor got swept.

Emerging from the chaos is a beautiful thing, friends. It has left me inspired and full of energy to get out there and tackle the rest of life with the same type of dedication.

Or maybe it's just the M&M's.

Love to you all.

Pumpkin Carving 2011, Part Two

2011-10-30T22:20:00.004-06:00

The finished products. Left to right: Tano's freaky skeleton pumpkin, Andy's "Chewbacca's Cousin" pumpkin, Ellie's "Pumpkin Pi" and my...uh...standard, run o' the mill jack-o-lantern.

To see the artists in progress, click here for Part One.

Pumpkin Carving 2011, Part One

2011-10-30T21:14:00.006-06:00

We get pretty serious about our pumpkin carving around here. Here are some images from the carving table.

To see their masterpieces completed, click here for Part Two.

Day 30: Goals for Week Five and Beyond

2011-10-30T18:19:00.004-06:00

Every weekend this month, I've evaluated the previous week's progress and posted new goals for the week to come, knowing that you would be there the following weekend to keep me accountable.

This weekend is different. My 31 Days project will be over tomorrow and I won't be required to evaluate my life next weekend. I'm kind of sad about it, actually. I've really made a huge amount of progress, with your encouragement, dear readers. I've almost become a real grown-up. Crazy.

Well, how have I done this week? I've done pretty well, I think. I'm still making progress, but also slowing down to enjoy the fruits of my labors. Fortunately, most of the clutter in the house is under control. That amazes me. That has taken much of my time this month, so the end of that task signals the beginning of the next task--maintenance.

I'm not creating a list to post on my refrigerator tonight, but I guess I could say my goals for this week include the following:

- keeping up with the new good habits I've formed

- keeping the de-cluttered places in my home de-cluttered

- working out a feasible cleaning schedule for myself and the rest of my family members

- continuing to remove chaos from my life wherever it pops up

- working on our big adoption fundrasiser event

- taking steps toward arranging for our home study

I think of all of those things, the one that worries me most is the cleaning schedule. Honestly, I've never been good at this. I've so often made lists and charts, outlining who does what and on what day, but they've never really lasted beyond a week. On the other hand, I've pleaded and begged my family (and myself) to just "take our home seriously" and just accomplish things--undefined responsibilities, just try to be helpful and do things that need doing. This is equally ineffective. I've tried the Fly Lady thing, and while I am happy to acknowledge it is a great thing and very effective for a lot of people, it's not for me. I just don't do well with being told what to do and having extra emails come into my inbox. I'm not sure how to establish cleaning routines that will stick for us. Any ideas?

The main problem with cleaning before, of course, was the clutter factor. I would be determined to actually clean things like floors and surfaces, but one of two things would happen.

1. We would spend so much time picking up clutter so that we could dust or clean floors or whatever, that we would use up all of our energy and never actually get to the cleaning part.

or

2. I would lose heart before we even began, knowing that a clean floor or dusted furniture wouldn't actually make the room look clean or organized or peaceful because of the abundance of clutter all around. Actual cleaning really felt futile.

So maybe, just maybe, things will be different now that the clutter is mostly gone. Maybe when we set out to clean, we will do just that and it won't be time consuming, draining or hopeless-feeling. We'll see. I would be happy to entertain your suggestions, readers.

So that's where I'm headed, friends. Tomorrow, we recap the experience and put it all in perspective--oh, and eat some Halloween candy.

Day 29: Blessings of Emerging From the Chaos

2011-10-29T12:53:00.007-06:00

After I posted last night, I did go back and do a bit more work in my bedroom. I shook out the single rug that keeps me from having to step on the unfinished cement floor. I swept the place where it had been (oh. my.), as well as the rest of the bedroom that was not still cluttered by my husband's stuff (most of mine is put away now). It made a huge difference, just to have a clean floor. I still need to clean off my dresser and end table and dust them thoroughly (they're bad), but my side of the room is looking pretty good.

My daughter was still up, for some crazy reason, even though it was eleven o'clock at night. I hadn't made her go to bed as we were still waiting for the guys to get home from the concert. We were anxious to hear how it had gone, as this was their first time being asked to film something important with the new video camera and Tano's new videography skills. They had spent the afternoon in the shop manufacturing a custom jib arm to mount the camera on and be able to swing it smoothly out over the crowd. The concert featuring three local screamo metal bands, one of which features two of my very talented public speaking students, was kind of a big deal. Although neither of us (the girl and I) had any interest in attending it--having learned from experience that it's really not our style--we were excited to hear how it had gone.

Ellie came into my room while I finished sweeping and plopped down on my mostly made bed. This very rarely happens, as my "bedroom" (never intended to be a bedroom and really not set up like one at all) has not ever been a pleasant place. We threw a bed and a couple of dressers in there four years ago because our new bedroom, the one in the addition to the house, wasn't finished yet, so this was to be our very temporary home. Did you catch the part about four years ago? The temporary room has never been improved in any way and really has only served as a place for us to lay our heads at night. We try not to enter it for any other reason, so my daughter coming in and plopping down on my bed, although for some of you might seem like a normal part of life, for me was nearly unprecedented--at least in the last four years. It was enough for me to pay attention.

This is what life should be like.

"I like your bed," she said, and stretched out luxuriously.

"I'm glad," I replied, and I truly was. I kept sweeping.

She hopped off of the bed and headed up the steps (told you it wasn't meant to be a bedroom) to the long rod mounted against the wall that serves as our closet. She was taking full advantage of this new access to my bedroom and began to browse through the clothes hanging on the rod. Already 5'4" (maybe 5'5" by today, at the rate she is going) and just over 100 lbs., she is the size of a woman, but definitely an 11 year old girl in her heart.

"Oooh!" she squealed, "I've never seen you wear this dress before! It's so pretty!"

I turned to see her holding a dress Andy had bought me when we were dating, twenty years ago. Although it hasn't fit me for many years, and is definitely a style from another era, I've never had the heart to part with it. How many guys have the guts to buy their girlfriend a dress? And when he bought it, it fit perfectly and was a style I absolutely loved. I treasured that pretty flowered sundress with the drop-waist that tied in the back. Ellie held it up against herself with dreamy eyes. Her daddy, her hero, had bought this dress. The romance of it all was making her swoon.

"Go ahead and try it on, Babe," I suggested. "It will probably almost fit you."

Her eyes sparkled. "Really?" And in a bid for modesty, she ran out the door and to her own bedroom, just across the basement.

While she changed into the dress, I pondered the day I'd had with my baby girl, quickly becoming a young woman. Earlier, she was working on a school project ("Einstein's Suitcase", purchased from Enrichment4You at CurrClick.com--$4.95 PDF download, totally worth it, really cool as a wrap-up of a study of Einstein biography), and she needed an old wristwatch. I told her that I had several old and old-looking watches and she could borrow one for her project. Thanks to my efforts to emerge from the chaos, I even knew where it was and sent her to the barn for my old jewelry case.

Opening the case, it wasn't the watch that first caught her attention--it was the earrings. Yes, I was a teenager in the 80's, and we knew how to rock the earrings. She oohed and aahed as she held up each sparkly, dangly pair. I had to chuckle at the collection, as I know now (as I knew then) that I am allergic to cheap metals and every pair of those earrings would make me break out into an itchy, scabby rash. It was worth it to me then, not so much now. Not at all, now, in fact. I own three pair of good-quality earrings now for my two sets of holes and I rarely take them out. I realized that there was no reason at all why Ellie couldn't have any of that costume jewelry that her little heart desired. She was beyond thrilled and immediately put in a pair of silver danglies covered with light aqua beads in assorted shapes, including tiny hearts and stars.

I smiled as my past collided with my present in a most sparkly way. "You know," I reminisced, "I think I remember a photo of me in one of my yearbooks where I'm wearing those earrings."

"Really? Where are your yearbooks?" Again, I was pleased that I know the answer to a question like that now. She headed back to the barn and came in with a stack of yearbooks, both mine and Andy's. Time went backwards as we sat on the floor together and leafed through the pages. She was a little surprised to learn that--no--people in the 80's (at least 85-88, when I was in high school) were not all about wearing bizarre combinations of neon colors. In fact, they looked fairly normal, aside from the big hair on the girls and short shorts and mullets on the guys. We laughed a lot, the girl and I, sitting together on that (clean!) living room floor, and we did find the photo I was thinking of with the earrings. Of course, I hadn't thought about the fact that the photo was taken at a school dance or banquet, with some guy other than her daddy's arm around me. I wonder what goes through her brain when she sees things like that.

We went out for the evening, just the two of us, after all that strolling down memory lane, and had an excellent time together, just talking and dreaming, and now here she was, waltzing back into my partially finished partially finished bedroom wearing a dress I'd been given by her daddy before she was even a twinkle in his eye. And she wore it pretty well, too. I tied it up in the back for her, cinching it around her tiny waist and she twirled and floated around my humble (but almost clean!) bedroom before collapsing back on my bed in giggles.

It was wonderful. I told her to go change into her PJs and hang the dress back up in my room.

"But, Mom, can't I keep it and wear it if you're not going to?"

"Maybe next summer, Babe. It's still a little big for you and it's not exactly sundress weather yet anyway. But while you're getting ready for bed, why don't you go get The Yearling (the book she and I are currently reading together) and bring it in here when you're all set."

She scampered off to change and find the book. Upon returning, she put my dress back on the hanger, hung it up, and crawled under the covers on Daddy's side of the bed. She snuggled in next to me and I read several chapters by the light of my little lamp. Eventually, she began to sink lower and yawn more often and we called it a night. I told her Daddy would probably have to wake her up to get her back into her own bed (she's a little big to carry these days), but she was welcome to stay and sleep next to me until he returned. What a treat. For both of us. She began to twitch almost immediately and fell sound asleep. It was wonderful.

There are benefits of emerging from the chaos. Little things like cleaning a bedroom to make it into a pleasant place can enhance a relationship! Who knew?

Oh, and there are other benefits, too:

In wanting my house to feel more like a home, and wanting to free my brain up to actually enjoy my home life instead of just trudging through and surviving it, looking for something more exciting outside of the home, I actually got on a baking kick this week. I baked four times in one week! Two kinds of cookies, muffins (some for now and some for the freezer), and brownies (half for a funeral service and half for sharing with friends tonight). Having a house that smells like baked goods definitely makes the place more appealing, that's for sure. Plus, today I even made a huge pot of baked beans and put a ham in the oven, with half of the pot of beans for the funeral and everything else for us to eat the rest of the weekend. Wow. Cooking ahead? Who does that?

Me.

I had the kids straighten up their rooms and I did a little straightening up, too, with the intention of inviting some friends to come home with us from the funeral to spend the evening. But guess what? Having just returned from the funeral (a beautiful, heart-wrenching service in which I cried and laughed and cried some more), we are off to someone else's house instead! So that means I now have a clean house and plenty of food to eat, going into Sunday. Score.

It's good, friends. It's worth the effort. The blessings of emerging from the chaos are just beginning, I can tell.

How is your own journey coming? I'd love to hear about it.

Love to you all.