Here Come the Backhoes....

Excavation machines draw closer...bringing with them a sense of excitement as well as dread. Our entire street is being ripped to shreds, sewers and old still-wood pipes being replaced, and the whole road widened to palatial dimensions. We'll have a sidewalk on our side!

This morning, we were almost astounded to discover that as we showered they had torn up the intersection just down from us (about 2 lawn lengths away). The kids are in ecstasy - a whole summer of "mighty machines" - pull up the lawn chairs, deposit kiddie pool in front yard, and our entertainment for the next 2 months is covered!

An alarming apprehension settled in my gut for a few moments: how will we get in and out of our driveway? Where will we park our cars? What if they are broken into? How will I cart my work apparatus from house to trunk without losing breath and cookware? And almost as suddenly the sentiment disappeared.

But in that brief period of time I began to understand the inklings of anxiety a lot of people generate on a regular basis when faced with change of any kind. I embrace change (my husband might even claim I jump on it and wrestle it down just to be sure it sticks around) - having grown up in a family that moved homes and towns annually we had a choice to squeeze revision close and count our blessings for the upsides, or to smother ourselves in the depressing lack of stability. Of course there were moments when, jealous of those who had the same students in their kindergarten photo as in their grade 8 graduation, I wanted merely to be in one place for long enough to cultivate a garden let alone a friendship.

I would entreaty that this constant motion made me a better person - but in reality I have allowed it to mean only that I can't comprehend others' anxiety over any sort of change. Why do people freak out when we sing a new song on Sunday mornings at church? What's wrong with experimenting with a new recipe? Why shouldn't I try to grow watermelons in my garden? Why can't someone who never has had to grocery shop simply get used to it?

I hope the excavators dig up my seemingly lost sense of lightheartedness since my latest blogs seem imploringly depressing. And because my family is likely exasperated with hearing me mutter in a somewhat whiny whisper: "If you can't change something, change the way you think about it" (you know you say it often when your 2 year old rushes to finish it before you).

Dartboards, Dirty Undies & Charred Lunches

Our living room has become a "piano bar" - or perhaps a better description would be "the legion"...

Thinking I was safe to begin the above blog - one child snuggling up to the upright organ (a garage sale gift to us) and pressing the auto song buttons while the other fervently, with great concentration, chucked magnetic darts at a bulls-eye (borrowed from the "Funtime Bus" - a toy library on wheels), I began to compose...

Snapped a photo to add and then proceeded to insert the card into the wrong computer slot - while hopelessly searching, began to smell charred odour of forgotten grilled cheese still on element. And then: "Mommy...MOMMY! I have to stinky..." which always implies a puddle and other such mess have already formed around teeny toes.

I expect change in others - my endless lack of acceptance that someone (my husband, our church, etc.) can't seem to flawlessly hurdle themselves into new-ness - and yet here I am 4 1/2 years into motherhood and still unable to grasp the basic concept that life is just not the same...I cannot begin, complete, or even attempt to accomplish all that I previously could. Why, oh why, can I not deposit that trivial reality into my skull?

Ah, we were blessed by friends and family with the gift of a child-free weekend of sun, canoeing, and reading (adult) books while lounging beside the lake, which appears to have sown philosophical musings...Shake head, gaze about, and pounce back into reality - which isn't such a bad place to be, after all! Now, excuse me while I mop the legion's floor...

Ah the dilemma...and the dusty floorboards

Be satisfied with what you have. Long for more (the good ole mantra of consumerism). I realize that the Lord instilled in us a longing and that we are forever mistakenly struggling to fill our need for Him through the filling of our lives with stuff...it seems such a fine line, though.

While reading "Who Stole My Church?" by Gordon MacDonald suddenly a disheartening revelation that my words don't match my belief..."'Jesus didn't ask people just to swallow his words, but he asked them to spend time with him and see what he was about....Did his life match his words?" (p.73)

I strain for a life of simplicity with only a few possessions and yet in our garage sits a riding lawn mower AND a push one...a china cabinet perches against a cobweb-filled corner half-filled with wedding gift china and crystal that, in all honesty, is rarely pulled out and utilized...I am in the process of ripping out living room carpet to reveal a gorgeous hardwood floor beneath...why do I crave change? Why am I unable to remain static? This may not be erroneous on my behalf - but why the need for upgraded surroundings? Why can I not simply exude gratitude for what is here, for what I have? Why do I have to "pretty up" our living environment, dreaming of larger gardens and different hues of walls and heated bathroom floors?

Conundrum. Remember the "spatula" girl? I'm surmising that "conundrum" is now one of my very favourite words (and ways of being, perhaps?). Conundrum conundrum conundrum (and I can even repeat it without blushing)!

Candy Surprises

"Mommy, quick! Come here!" shrieked my two year old from the bathroom. I sprinted (not that our house is that big - more like a couple of hurdle lengths)... "Look at the candy in the toilet!" She was intently staring into the somewhat slimy depths of the toilet, her little cherub-like face flushed with anticipation, beginning to reach into the bowl.
"WAIT! STOP! Don't grab that, honey!" What the...??? The "candy"? A translucent floating o.b. tampon wrapper...

Can we plant yet??? Please, please, pretty please???

As Jeff glanced at my stack of books, fresh from the library, littering the kitchen table surface, he began heartily laughing. What is so amusing, I wondered? In my foray into companion gardening I had selfishly plucked almost every gardening book from the newly renovated library's shelves; they lay haphazardly strewn amongst Gavin's school papers, a half-burnt rainbow beeswax candle, a half-eaten bowl of bran flakes, and Rebekah's clean underwear and pants.

"Ecological gardening???" He read one of the book titles, still amused and chuckling. "Isn't ALL gardening ecological gardening????"

I am a Gardener. Stated with some hesitation as I have only a couple of summers working for a landscaper (in which I murdered a fifty-foot poplar due to misreading of pesticide:water equation; drove a tractor backwards into a milk shed;and chopped off the first-in-five-years blooms of the owners' favourite smokebush - all stories for another subject and another time) and a few months as a subservient greenhouse go-girl so truly I have very little horticultural knowledge. What I have been blessed with, however, is this uncanny ability to grow anything anywhere. Green, bushy things happen to like me.

For weeks now I have been working the soil - turning it occasionally, yanking nasty weeds, eyeing patterns and contriving what plants are going to shortly have new homes, and desperately feeling as though I should have already carved out nests for seeds and tucked them into their earthy home. Not until May 24 - wait until Victoria's birthday has passed and safety assurance kicks in. No that I get any much thing done at any one time with little ones "helping" (although they are more that content to throw dandelion weeds down the groundhog hole - nope, hair clippings don't appear to have assisted in eviction).

And this year I am ditching the formerly ingrained idea that garden = linear. Peas and carrots and onions and beans don't have to be planted in rows??? Revolutionary! Anarchy in my gardening boxes! How defiantly delicious!

Can I plant yet? Please, please, pretty please can't I just plant yet????

Wakey wakey

I'm tired. Anyone else out there tired? Not just a I-didn't-quite-get-a-super-snooze-last-night tired but a completely fatigued-through-the-entire-skeletal-system tired?

"We do not quit playing because we grow old, we grow old because we quit playing." Oliver Wendell Holmes

What if we have quit playing because we're just too plain tired to play?

Rebekah's obsession with swinging ("higher, mom, HIGHER"...until a look of momentary dread fills her sparkly baby blues and she calmly spouts, "I'm okay for now..." translation: push me higher and I may either shriek or puke) goes over well with my tired-ness. Standing in one place, pumping my arm in a never-ending sideways motion as though I was one of those entrance gate bars at the subway working overtime, means I really don't have to do much...a blessing, really...

Magic In The Air

I admit to being a CBC Girl…when clear reception was no longer a reality on my drive, I was “forced” to listen to something different. Wow. I was shocked at how so many of the lyrics are so empty…

Taylor Swift crooning “Today was a fairytale” had my neck shackles bursting to mountainous proportions. She was only born in 1989, I kept reminding myself: what can a 19 year old possibly know about the actuality of love? “Can you feel the magic in the air,” kept ringing through the speakers, “Must’ve been the way you kissed me”.

But before the volcano of simmering annoyed-ness erupted I reminded myself it was time to think positively. Perhaps when she’s 30 and dragging around dirty-faced toddlers on her now-oversized hips she may, too, fathom that true love is more than just tingling lips and being passionately entwined? Or perhaps I am simply bitter?

Here is what “the magic in the air” looks like to me: a wink across the table that stops that overwhelming urge to strangle a newly independent preschooler; washed, dried, and put away mugs, plates, cutlery and even the disgustingly-coated half-burnt mashed potato pot; compliments when you KNOW you feel and look as though a wild wrestlemania-fan fox just had his hungry way with you; an early morning coffee left in the console as I head to work at mom’s store.

Why does society indoctrinate us with visions of flowers (that will only wilt), romantic dinners (that cost a fortune), and images of men who want to spend all day massaging your feet? Why can’t we be happy with the reality that even when we are complete critical, grumbling fusspots our husband chooses still to come home to us? (Okay, maybe it’s only me that can be a critical, grumbling fusspot?)

Sorry, Taylor. Maybe I AM just bitter….

Give it Away? Keep it?

Driving into gorgeous downtown Fergus, Ontario - a town speckled with prestigious-looking turn-of-the-century (if not older) stone homes, a massive multi-coloured sign states "One thing you can give away and still keep...your word".

I can't help it - I can't seem to stop myself from thinking the very same thing I first thought when I observed it months ago for the brand-spanking-new first time: "One thing you can give away and still keep...herpes".

Eyes Opened...Burning Heart [Part of Today's Presentation to the Holstein Coffee Hour]

[read Luke 24:32] 32They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"

Their hearts were burning…How is MY heart burning???

I’m going to hold up a picture and I’d like you to shout out words that come to mind…
[hold up picture of gravestone]
[repeat back words e.g. “mourning”, “sad”]

Now I want to tell you my reaction: joy, excitement, exuberance, elation!

Some of you look a little confused….no, I am not feeling joy, excitement, exuberance, elation because it’s a grave for someone I barely know who left me $12 million. Why joy, excitement, elation???

Let me add in a bit of the explanation I had previously left out – THIS IS JESUS’ TOMB! He’s alive….have you not heard? Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened here in the last few days???

What words come to mind for you? How has this changed your attitude towards the gravestone?

Joy! Excitement! Exuberance! Elation!

Is there anyone here who is part of a church that is growing, overflowing its pews, unable to house all of the new members? [look around, acknowledge no hands up] It is no surprise then to you that all modern day mainline churches are in decline. What do I mean by mainline churches? Any guesses? [ask and then share: I mean Lutheran, Anglican, Presbyterian, United, Catholic] We are dealing with the death of the mainline church. Death: which sounds final to anyone who is not a Christian – but we as Christians realize that death is not the end. Death is a beginning.

Churches are dying. They can die and stay dead…or they can be resurrected…

My heart is burning…burning to be a part of this resurrection…burning to be part of Jesus’ church…
Mother Teresa is quotes as having said, “ Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier”
My heart is burning to leave people better and happier….my heart is burning to reach out to the lost and lonely…

Care to join me?

Sunday began the "hair journey" - thanks to my amazingly adept almost-personal hair stylist sis-in-law I had my hair chopped tres short - the last cut for a very long time. I've decided that cancer patients need my hair more than me or the groundhog in our backyard (in attempts to evict the garden-munching woodchucky pal who lives under the building bordering our property and who suns him/herself on the back lawn I have been sprinkling human hair around his/her hole).

The "Emmaus Project" conference provided a good "butt kicking". I have always known the universe doesn't centre itself around me but denial and ignorance have led to a pretty apathetic existence on my behalf. Time for action.

Care to join me? Care to grow out your locks?

Winter Once Again

Snow. Moving in...settling on the play set, back porch railing. Continually Jeff meanders to the patio door, stares out, and exclaims, "holy wow!" as though we had never had such invasion of white fluffy-ness in this region. Ironically our son, who has been praying for more snow since last it left, sleeps. Snow, sun, rain - it matters little to me which presents itself as there's beauty in it all. Although I secretly (or not so secretly now that I have written it here) wonder if the skiff of it would allow for absenteeism at work (I do have to drive about 10 minutes into rural abyss to get there after all)?

offeecay anyoneway???

Into the wee hours of last night I did something extremely asinine - perhaps not so silly back in the days when I didn't have toddlers hugging me awake early morning and an unusually chipper spouse practically singing "up and at 'em". But silly now, with those previously-mentioned life factors and for so many other reasons... Until 3:30 in the morning I satiated my literary yearnings with some cheesy Cecilia Ahern novel. (Did you see "P.S. I Love You" - the flick that played bully with my tear ducts? She wrote the book in her barely-escaping-teenage-hood-years - last night I inhaled "Thanks for the Memories".)



offeecay anyoneway??? [Did you perhaps already know the fantabulous fact that at http://users.snowcrest.net/donnelly/piglatin.html you can translate anything you so desire into pig latin??? Whatever would we do without such illiancebray?]

Massive cuppa caffeine adoringly rests within reach...

Here's where gratitude surfaces. Did you realize that 26% of the world's adult population is illiterate? And I can read. According to answers.com "in 2005 an approximated 1 billion did not have suitable housing and 100 million were totally homeless". And I have a home in which to read. WFP (World Food Programme) shares that "today, one in six people do not get enough food to be healthy and lead an active life, making hunger and malnutrition the number one risk to health worldwide -- greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined". And I have food AND a coffee....

What can we do to make a difference? How can I stop thinking me, me, ME?

Warm Chicken Butts

My husband said a declarative “no” to chickens. Despite his generous willingness to go with most of my scatterbrained schemes, this time his resounding no has echoed for days, weeks…no feathery friends roaming about the yard, cutely pecking their way about the green grass, joyfully lifting their warm bottoms for retrieval of eggs, only minimal squawks (probably more likely to occur when having their necks scruffily rubbed, like our feline friends adore). Is it plainly clear to see that no romanticism exists in my head?

“What about the noise? What about our cats? What about the neighbours?” he asks, gently but firmly at the same time. “But the eggs…the eggs…those golden nuggets of nutritional, organic goodness straight from the chicken’s butt…” My argument did not sway him in the least. “Support local, then” he responded, dashing my dream. “Buy them from the lady down the street.”

Ah, the lady down the street – a jolly senior who recovered in what seemed like a week from a broken hip, who once lived on a farm but is now in town, she still has eggs brought to a fridge in her garage. Anyone who knows about the luxury of her farm-fresh eggs can show up at any time, unannounced, and after throwing a meagre amount of money into a tin can above the ancient fridge, grab these afore-mentioned fresh eggs. Sometimes, and sometimes not, she will pop her grin-filled face around the door, to examine who is invading her golden stash, and politely inquire as to how your family is.

The very first time my husband sent me on an adventure to her home to get eggs it was about 10:30 at night. He clearly instructed me as to how to get there, and I clearly did not follow directions. The first problem was figuring out what door to use – the only true door appeared to go into the house whereas he had plainly explained it was a door-door, not a garage door…I used all my might to yank open the garage (thinking ‘how could an 80 yr old use this regularly?’) to have an inside light automatically turn on, blaring directly into my eyeballs. Half-blinded I wandered about the garage looking for the famous egg-filled fridge. I saw bicycles, tripped over a stack of newspapers, found a pile of snaky electrical cords. Back in the far, far corner there appeared to be a freezer, but no fridge. After what felt like hours I gave up. Admitted defeat and went home. Turns out I was at the wrong house – I had been unknowingly infiltrating the neighbour’s fortress.

But turns out that my romantic vision of golden nuggets of nutritional, organic goodness almost straight from the chicken’s butt is reality…without the fantastical piles of manure, scratchy, pecking beasts clambering to escape my cats, and noisy serenades (from both poultry and neighbours in response to poultry)…all I have to do is go down the street and fetch them! Yum yum...

Brain Under Construction...Watch for Falling 'Rocks'

My brain is full, full, full...(I'm beginning to sound a little like Jacob Two Two in triplicate - Jen Three Three)

In fact the very first line I initially wrote was "my brian is full, full, full..." Whomever this mysterious Brian is has a full belly or full cranium or full something...

One child sleeping, one holed up behind sofa (his own choosing) humming, my freshly soiled runners beside the back door after some re-configuration of daffodils, and brain ready to flip the off switch. Or has it already been flipped?