Still Here

I have plans to knit myself a robin's egg blue hat.  I'm almost done with a pair of striped socks for Phoebe. 

The superintendent came to the PTO meeting tonight, and I am now fired up about inequitable school funding and considering more ways to get involved. Mr. Thrift is not pleased, as I run intense about stuff like this and he would prefer I calm down. I might.

The oldest has a new pet, a sweet little bunny,  that she worked long and hard to prepare for, but I was still out to the Amish stores yesterday to buy pellets and see about getting hay for her to burrow in. 

I bought the most beautiful, soft fabric at the creative reuse store the other day - I think, I dare to hope, it may be cashmere; the strongest, most declarative green  - not kelly, not dark green, just a strong, rich green green.  

I overheard a standholder at market say she needed to get rubberbands for the egg cartons, and I had a bag of rubber bands down to her the very next market day because I am oversupplied.  We were both tickled.  And this is also the stand that still has local storage veggies, which I am so grateful for because buying and eating local food is my act of defiance and hope in the face of very large world problems.  

Phoebe has had a dreadful cough and of course, it is worst at night and people are sleeping poorly around here. We read the news about the coronavirus with disbelief and worry. 

I do laundry every day.  I keep up!  I keep the family in good food.  I have a sore foot that is healing very very slowly, so I can't jog as much and this is changing my mental and physical health.  I do Pilates.  I try. 

Ben has soccer games and soccer practices just about all the time (it seems).  He just absolutely loves it, so I try to work on my attitude about driving him all over creation.  We carpool, and I take my knitting along, and I enjoy my boy enjoying himself. 

I am studying sourdough bread.  I have borrowed books on the subject, and one or two blogs I read.  I made a few notes.  I make something with sourdough every week, as I have for about 10 years now, but I am tweaking and understanding it differently, and the feel of the silky strong dough is pure delight in my hands. 

I finished Phoebe's quilt.  That does really need its own blog post. I'll be back.

Patchwork

I don't care for perfectly matching fabrics, nor do I like totally random; I like to see the fabric all speaking the same language, I'm looking for the theme.  Look at my patchwork here:  to me, all these fabrics have something to say in dark, bold colors.

Utensil/straw rolls made for J

 I literally lay fabrics next to each other to see if they speak the same language.  Their message surprises me constantly!  Like a chorus, maybe, where the different parts create harmony as well as dissonance in service of the whole song.

Hotpads made for my friends R & P

 I know some patchworkers use viewing tools and computer programs to match the fabric to their liking:  good for them, not for me.  I prefer fast and loose with a whiff of mystery:  how will it turn out?  Not always to my liking, but always interesting.

Spring Things

It's all happening, and I want to pay attention, truly I do.  Something new and pretty happens outside every day!
My oregano plant came back, which astounds me because I thought it was an annual.  I hope that I am gaining gardening skills every year, but man: I don't seem to make much progress overall.  The profusion of spring, green everywhere! all the pink flowers! weeds sneaking everywhere! It's just a little overwhelming. I signed up to get a red oak tree for our backyard, but I don't exactly know where and how I will plant it.
We are finally getting our soil tested after eating food from it for years - city soil can be laced with heavy metals, oh dear. But I have a serious vision of a grape arbor, so I'm checking the mail every day for our test results. My raspberries, both black and red, are growing by leaps and bounds; I pruned off old canes (I think) and got some nasty old thorns stuck in my skin.  I have started wearing my gardening gloves more faithfully.
Some days, I can only manage to grab at a weed as I take a break from writing and editing projects, or hang up and take down the endless laundry that my people require. We bought a badminton set, which the children love, and which caused my neighbor to look wistfully at their leaping and shrieking and tell me about her spring badminton matches with her four older siblings.
All of this eases my heart a little: my dear uncle died on Palm Sunday morning. He was full of juice and fun and nothing about spring or any season, actually, was wasted on him.  He paid attention, and he made everything into an adventure.  I cannot really believe that I will never see that adventurous gleam in his eyes on this earth again.  So my heart is a little broken, but I have vowed to Uncle Ron, wherever he is with God, that I will take inspiration from his approach to life.  See? Spring is so lush and vigorous, and I am looking.

A Coin Purse Because My Coins Count

Annually, our church does the My Coins Count project through MCC.  The kids collect coins from the congregation in old yogurt cups while the ushers pass the offering plates - it's noisy, joyful, and full of purpose. Together, the coins add up to thousands of dollars that MCC sends to peace programs and relief projects around the world. 

That these little coins can add up to make big sums and impact lives is energizing to me and fits with one of my life philosophies:  small things have value and make a difference, too! 

This year, instead of taking my coins to church in an old ziploc baggie (hello, ugly), I got out my scraps and a chunky zipper and made a coin purse.  The red scrap is from Ruth, the lining is left from this dress, and the itsy-bitsy scraps at the ends of the zipper are from this skirt. Very satisfying. 

Anytime I pay with cash, I deliberately squirrel away the change in my coin purse and carry it to church on Sunday.  It strikes me now that this is my Lenten discipline and focus this year!  The beauty and purpose of small things. . .

excerpts from the song My Coins Count by Les Gustafson-Zook

My coins count, my coins count.
Sitting in my pocket when they could be doing good.
My coins count, my coins count.
We can make a difference in the world.

The gifts we are given we are given to be shared
all around the world.
Doesn't matter if they're big or small when used with care
We can make a difference in the world
because

My coins count, my coins count. . .

Tikkun Olam

According to a letter my pastor wrote to our Jewish brothers and sisters this week, "tikkun olam" is translated from Hebrew as "repair of the world."

Soak that in.

I definitely want to repair the world.  Mending is holy work to me.

And Jewish teachings say of tikkun olam, "it is not upon you to finish the work, nor are you free to neglect it."

Soak that in, too.  The balance!

I will be putting those words before my eyes and continuing to pray for us all as we work.   

"Give it to Laura"

Recently, a friend's mom, Ruth, contacted me to see if I would like some boxes of vintage fabric that her mother Laura had saved over the years in a farmhouse in a northern valley. Ruth told me that when people had a scrap they didn't know what to do with, they said, "give it to Laura!"  Some of it was from Laura's mother, even. 

Laura's things were sorted through when her son took over the farmhouse, and some of the relatives wanted to throw the scraps away, but Ruth, Laura's daughter, saved the boxes. Laura considered this fabric like money in the bank, a valuable resource for making things. 

Ruth kept the boxes for years and now gave them to me because she looked at my work and thought I could appreciate the beauty and utility of vintage scraps.  I am so honored.

What's Your Domestic Super-Power?

We've all got a domestic super-power, something that we enjoy doing in our homekeeping or feel really proud of our efforts and results.  Decorating? Open-house hospitality? Beautiful photo-worthy bedrooms? Fantastic flower beds or garden? Shrewd e-Bayer who keeps the household supplied and profits by selling the extras? What? Do tell!

I'm really on top of food at my house - I even usually enjoy it! I cannot stand bad food or boring food, so I'm cooking and stocking to please my palate and my family comes along for the ride.

I'm also pretty good with laundry - at keeping it eco-friendly, getting it done, getting stains out.

However, the areas I am not great at are cleaning and our social calendar. I am usually content to live in tidy filth; inviting people over usually motivates me to clean a bit. Visible dirt can also motivate me to clean, but I'm way more interested in food and sewing projects than cleaning. So boring!

I'm also not great at planning social things or deciding what to do with invitations to social things - I'm a homebody until I get housebound and then it's usually too late for my organized self to just, you know, add something to the calendar. Fortunately I live with social people who propel me out.

So tell us what your domestic super-power is.  Pat yourself on the back and feel the love!

Hearts

I am just back from a funeral.  In fact, I sang a Leonard Cohen song at the funeral.  And I agree with my pastor, who said some time ago that it's important to go to funerals to step back from our busyness and look at the witness of our brother or sister who died and ask ourselves if we are truly focused on what's important.

Here on the blog, I am writing about the mundane, over and over and over again. You'll see that I put hearts on Phoebe's jeans just like I did four years ago for her big sister.

People are not talking about the mundane at a funeral; they are talking about more unique acts in peoples' lives, and yet we must eat, wear clothing, and be sheltered in hopefully clean houses. Somebody is working behind the scenes.

In this season in my life, I am deep in the mundane work behind the scenes.  I'm sure it's holy work, it's mostly loving work (sometimes I hate it), and I know it's only for a season and then my children will be out from under my wing.  Will I be ready to fly up high again and get some glory?  Well, I don't know. 

In the meantime, this discipline of blogging is going to help me step back and reflect, to exchange ideas and encouragement with you, dear readers.  Perhaps you've noticed that my posts the last few months are bare-bones and heavy on the mundane details.  I wondered, in fact, if I should stop blogging.  But I think.  The funeral today broke my heart a little, and I am back with a softer heart and a willingness to keep at it, the mundane, the endless food, laundry, vacuuming, tidying, the chaos.  Onward!

Portraits of a 12-Year-Old

For God created her inmost being;

God knit her together in my womb.

I praise God because she is fearfully and wonderfully made;

God's works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

Her frame was not hidden from God

when God made her in the secret place,

when she was woven together in the depths of the earth.

God's eyes saw her unformed body;

All the days ordained for her were written in God's book

before one of them came to be.

Psalm 139:13-16 but I changed the voice/pronouns

And that's a Bonnie Butter marble cake from Betty Crocker's cookbook that she made entirely herself and tinted the yellow part pink.  It was delicious.

Just a New Handtowel

Because an old one got too stained to look good and because Phoebe can't pull this one off the oven handle.  Hurray for a small, discrete task where I can exercise my creativity!  And it's crossed off the to-do list unlike various projects (we need to replace our boiler this summer, for one) and emotional burdens that we pick up every morning and try to lay down at night.  Or maybe that's just me.

Two Further Thoughts About Barb

At the washline this morning, I realized that I wrote my post yesterday before my thoughts had really crystallized.

Thought one: I don't know if I expected Barb to have some tricky tricks or clever solutions or fancy systems up her sleeve for her beautiful life and pleasant home, but in fact, it seems that Barb's magic is just faithfully keeping house all the time.  "Just do it" as a homemaking method is not very enticing and won't sell magazines, but it's extremely effective.  (But I also wonder if Barb's skills and habits are so deeply ingrained that neither she nor I could tease out and articulate what is really going on day in and day out.  I wonder.)

Thought two: I have a stereotype of women Barb's age who see the homemaking I'm doing and say, "oh, I used to do that. . . "  It's almost as if retirement finally gives them permission to take shortcuts and buy solutions or hire help in every area of homemaking. Was homemaking just a phase, a season of life? Barb isn't doing that.  She's pretty much carrying on the way she always did, which makes sense to me (please know that I take shortcuts sometimes!).  But what I want to know is what makes a homemaker slack off anyway? What kind of homemaker will I be when I'm retired?  I wonder.

Bright Silver

We have an odd collection of little toddler forks and spoons for Phoebe.  I really can't recall where they all came from.  Some of them are stainless steel and some of them, the ones in this photo, are real sterling silver.  And look:  the tarnish wore off from everyday use, and they are bright and shiny!  No silver polish or rubbing needed, just use.

Perhaps if I ever get some ancestral silver, I will use it every day to enjoy its luster without the effort of polishing.  I love the life lesson here:  beauty and usefulness hand-in-hand.

"People, Look East"

 "Make your house fair as you are able, trim the hearth and set the table.  People, look east and sing today: Love, the Guest, is on the way." - traditional French carol