"What do you blog about?"  someone asked me today.  "Daily goings-on?  Random ponderings?  Life as a Mom?"

How do I answer that? 

Musings from Mommyville?  There is absolutely nothing wrong with Mommyville or musing about it - I simply don't always want to be only a Mom. 

Check out "Live From Mommyville" for an amusing and honest blog about motherhood...http://livefrommommyville.blogspot.ca/search?updated-min=2012-01-01T00:00:00-07:00&updated-max=2013-01-01T00:00:00-07:00&max-results=8

Random ponderings?  After a quote from my mother about her constant topic-skipping  in which she "changes lanes without signalling" much to my father's dismay I realized that I, too, terrorize my husband and friends with the same habit.  So, sure, random ponderings may indeed find their way into my blogs.  But am I simply spewing whatever so happens to enter my skull?  I would hope it would be much, much more than that.

Daily goings-on?  Yes, you did hear about my toilet, didn't you?  Hmmm...can't refute that one.  Again: I would hope it would be much, much more than that.

So how do I describe this blog?

Perhaps I will just leave that up to you.

A Bee C

This morning at the breakfast table our 4 year old started spewing facts about bees.  Only the females sting.  Bees aren't born with legs because they're "like a caterpillar" (larva as later research determined).  The "girls" (worker bees) do all the work.

"That's NOT true!" insisted our son, insensitively (and without any clue).

"Is it true?" asked one of the girls we have taken care of over the summer holidays.

We did some research and sure enough...these facts were all verified.

"How did you know all of that?" I asked her, still in awe.

"Oh," she said casually (which would have been perfected only if there had been a surly tweenie attitude and hair flip involved), "my teacher told us about them.  She read from some book one time."

Oddly enough, around noon while I was preparing lunch and the kids mucked about on the trampoline I heard an urgent calling of my name.

"Bee!"  They shrieked in unison as I came on to the porch.  "Bee sting!"

Frozen in  a rigid pose the 6 year old was on the trampoline, beyond my reach, and sobbing.  Her fist was clenched and she was paralyzed with fear.

"Where did it sting you?" I repeated as I tried to get closer.  "Where?"

"My hand!  My HAND!"  She remained solid in her stance.

"Open it!"  I demanded several times and finally she did.  So terrified and debilitated she had shut her fist and was clenching the bee in her palm.  Immediately it buzzed about angrily pursuing her as I pulled her from the trampoline.

Throughout the afternoon as I thought about that situation I continued to be amazed and surprised about how fear paralysis invades us, and how it can actually occasionally cause more harm in the long run.  Felt deeply philosophical...until yet another "Mommy!" was shouted and thoughtless, mindless World of Mommy went on...

If you ever have the misfortune of a bee sting be sure to try the following: 
We applied the natural remedy shared by our minister: pick some plantain (a common "weed" found in most lawns and ditches), mangle it a bit with your nails (or chew it in your mouth for a moment), spit on it and then apply it to the sting (once the stinger has been removed).  Incredible.  Life carries on....

Some other natural remedies as suggested by learningherbs.com:

Baking soda: mix the baking soda with vinegar and apply the thick paste to the wound.

Onions: Lay a fresh slice of onion on the sting.

Apple Cider Vinegar: The raw kind. If bitten or stung, dab apple cider vinegar as soon as possible on the bite to draw out any poison and to prevent swelling. Thyme and rosemary infused in the vinegar are especially effective.

"The Stupid Thing" Toilet Saga Continued

“Just wondering if you happen to have a
snake?”  Repeat this ten times over the phone
and a few times in person to closest neighbours. 
No one seems to own one of these devices (plumbing devices;
we are not seeking a boa constrictor
though a plumbing snake proves to
be almost as exotic). 

 One person we can think of who has a snake. 
In fact, the one I have been meaning to borrow
for about a year since I have foreseen this impending disaster. 
(The need to daily plunge
the toilet was starting to clue us in…) 
That person being my father who lives a
20 minute round trip away. 

 Friend arrives to drop off some clothing for our
son and smells the mess.  Watching in horror and humour she laughs long and hard (and squishes
her butt out of the way in lightning speed as I
run for towels) when I do The Stupidest Thing. 

 And to truly emphasize the stupid part I will admit to having done this previously and thereby possibly proving that you can’t teach THIS old dog new tricks.  (Which is of course a fallacy, especially after Dr. Norman Doidge’s neuroplasticity findings.  The Brain That Changes Itself is an AMAZING read…but alas I have jumped topics…)

 The Stupid Thing?  Imagine me ever-so-gracefully lifting the back of the toilet bowl, carefully setting aside lid, dumping in an over-sized pail of water, and the opening the flapper (sort of like a heart valve for those of you who, like me, are not plumbing experts – it allows the tank water to spew down into the bowl, except that when the bowl is already at capacity where else is that extra water to go?)…

 Brown water cascading on to floor, hysterical laughter from afore-mentioned friend, Jeff diving into bathtub quicker than he used to slide into a base, and my speedy movements to the linen closet…

Stupid stupid stupid!

 Jeff has returned, yawning, from the drive to my parents to obtain the treasure-like snake.  I am near to vomiting when he attempts to manipulate it into the miry mess in a clockwise direction without gloves...finally he gives in to my persistent nagging and puts on fancy lime green rubber ones but refuses to take off brand new fleece jacket.  Having learned perhaps only one lesson throughout eight years of marriage, I hastily flee scene before further opening yap.

 Midnight:  unlike previous years when I could pull all-nighters even I am, with my continually broken sleep, fighting to keep my eyelids open.  Exhausted, cranky, back aching from turns at plunging, I have finally come to the place I should have been at since the beginning…

 Asking God for some help.  “Why?”  I am not yelling nor do I truly want a reason.  I just want Him to know how we are doing (as if He doesn’t already) and that we are begging for some assistance.  “I can’t handle this now, Lord.  I can barely handle the average day lately let alone one with unfeasibly low amounts of REM sleep.  I can’t handle four kids and two adults with no toilet.  I just don’t have the strength.”

12:30am  A New Day.  Thank God for all-night grocery stores as Jeff has headed to one to see if they have anything of use – a new plunger (ours has gone “wonky” from all the pressure and our red-knobbed palms prove it) or some sort of chemical or anything at this point….”environment schmironment” I whisper to myself though I do feel guilt at the possibility of utilizing something for which muscles and green eco-tricks should have solved…

Well, enough of this saga though it continues...

Cloggery Issues

Clogged toilet...not so romantic.

Especially when it was clogged when I left for work - and still brown-filled when I returned several hours later.

Plunger.  Check.  (In fact: many, many checks.)  Baking soda and vinegar.  Check.  Boiling water.  Check.  More plunging.  Check.  Consideration of which muscles will blossom from plunging attempts.  Check.  Liquid anti-greaser dishwashing soap.  Check.

Stress-eating of four homemade chocolate chip cookies.  Check.  Second hit of boiled kettle cascade.  Check.

Gag reflex kicking in due to horrific odour.  Check.

Here's the good side of our only toilet being obstructed:

1)  It's a Blog Topic  - hey, with a hectic day filled with extra kidlets, a few errands, a van that decided not to change gears, and my other evening job, nothing 'better' entered my overtired cranium.

2)  Praises that I 'dispersed' before exiting employment.  Husband did not but then again he is male and our backyard could be his domain.

3)  My husband's minimal ability to smell (as in, to retrieve a scent, not as in he never has body odour)


  I hear sighing - never a good sign.  Back to "help"...

Icky Sticky Wedding Dresses?

While employed at my previous workplace, a gorgeous young woman brought her exquisite, pouffy, white, expensive wedding dress in to be drycleaned.  The bill came to $260.  Was she intending to put it away for her daughter's future use?  Make it into a baptismal gown, or crib "covers" as I have heard of others doing?  No.   She was going to "trash it".

"Next summer when the weather is better I'm going to trash it," she stated, paying the bill.

"Huh?" I asked my co-worker after the woman had left.

"Oh," she explained in her syrupy voice, " Trash it?  It's the newest craze...women have someone photograph them as they trash their dress.  You know, stand in water, splash mud on it, whatever...."

"Why did she have it cleaned then?  Only the bottom edge was a bit brown-tinged." 

"So it would be clean for the pictures!"  I could almost hear her whistling "uh duh" under her breath but clearly I did not get it.
"?" [I thought this: I didn't acually reply "question mark"]

"Thousands of brides have trashed their wedding dresses - would you? Are great photos and an afternoon of laughs worth ruining the most expensive dress you'll likely ever wear? Check out some of SmartBrideBoutique.com's favorite Trash the Dress sessions. From frolicking in the ocean to getting downright dirty (yes, MUDDY and STEAMY), these brides have tried it all. Treasured wedding gowns get soaked and salty, attacked by paintballs and threatened with flames!"  http://lifestyle.ca.msn.com/weddings/gallery.aspx?cp-documentid=24579546

 

 

Pray for Maria Pantazopoulos's husband, family, and friends as they mourn the loss of this woman who wanted only to "immortalize her wedding dress" and instead died when her dress, heavy from a brief swim, pulled her into the rapids.

Romance Revised

So it's quite obvious to most of us (sorry if I am about to burst a bubble/fantasy) that married life is not like it is in the movies...that the romance portrayed on-screen is unfeasible and practically impossible to have or maintain.

The image in my head just doesn't jive with reality...and so I just assumed that meant I would have to keep these ridiculous expectations in my head and attempt not to dwell on them at any or every chance possible.

A copy of Grown-Up Marriage was ironically (ironically only because my sister is not or never has been married) in a box my sister had destined for her garage sale.  It came to my home.   (I can't refuse too many books...)  Judith Viorst its author also penned Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day - a kids' book that was in my classroom and now makes its home on our bookshelf when not inhabiting end tables or in bedside buckets.

One of the ideas in her book clonked me over the head and forced me to re-think this idea I had embraced about hiding away romantic expectations.

No, no...don't give up.  Don't secretly desire something and then guilt yourself because you expected a completely unrealistic thought or action.

Just re-frame those expectations...redefine and revise what it is that romance is to you.  "Everyday married life is prose, not poetry" (p.95, Grown-Up Marriage).

I am continually, much to the chagrin of our children and my husband, saying, "if you can't change something then change the way you think about it".  And Judith Viorst gave me that "taste of my own medication".

So here is the re-framed version of Romance Revised...this morning while I rested in bed, believing I was hearing almost every chirp of child and dancing of husband to youtube songs (but actually dozing off), my husband shut our bedroom door and made our habitual Sunday morning pancakes, sliced up fruit, spooned caramel yogurt into fancy verrines, fandangled children into getting dressed, and did all of yesterday's dishes.

Is that not romance???

Who needs flowers or trips away or  unbridled passion when you can have a) sleep and b) clean countertops???

I have the most romantic husband in the world.

Saturday Stuff-It Chronicles #1

Okay, STUFF.  So much can and should be said about the way we sadly here in North America use, desire, waste, and obsess about STUFF so where do I start?

 I'll start at the beginning...well, my beginning...Here’s a brief overview of my life with stuff.

Despite the fact that we moved almost every year in our childhood (my mom jokingly states that “I never did spring cleaning, I just moved”), my siblings and I still groan about the accumulations of our parents.  Basement storage areas over-brimming with odds and ends that are never used, let alone looked at, two chest freezers stuffed as full as possible, dozens and dozens of tools lining benches, piled on tables, hung on garage walls, barn and garage filled – simply stated: there is stuff everywhere…

These were the seeds that could have sent me either way: clinging so tightly to objects that I cornered myself in with only a small path out, or the opposite reality of seemingly-excessive purging.  I have chosen, or simply become?, the latter.

“Use it or lose it” is a mindset for my husband and I's home.  Items in our home need to serve a purpose (and be regularly used for that purpose) or have a quality of beauty regularly admired (and shown off in key locations – like the bowl of shells we collected in Florida sitting as a centerpiece in our kitchen that will, when we no longer appreciate it there, move out to the garden, tossed amongst pathway gravel or garden greenery to be enjoyed from its new home). 

There are very few dust-gathering objects in this household (which is a very good thing indeed since I don’t appear to have been born with the dusting gene…the ironing gene skipped over me too).

Once as I haphazardly tossed an empty box on to our bed and began kneading through my already-limited collection of clothing for items of which to donate, I noticed my husband’s frantic grab at a t-shirt.  I must have given him some sort of strange glance for he quickly threw on the shirt and stated, “see, I have worn it…I just tried it on…now I’m wearing it”. 

 “Whaaa?!” I expressed, still curious as to what he was doing. 

 “Well, if I haven’t worn something in 6 months I have to get rid of it, right?  So I’m just wearing it now so that I have indeed worn it in the past six months…that means I get to keep it now, right?”

 There is a freedom in “letting go”…one which can’t be explained and which really makes no sense until it is experienced…a complete freedom…

It seems to me that in North America we do not actually own our stuff but rather it owns us…we spend hoards of money on stuff that we likely don’t need and sometimes won’t even use, and then hoards of money on high-tech door locks and alarm systems to protect it, and hoards of time dusting items on shelves or hoards more money paying someone else to come dust it because we don’t have the time to…we spend hoards of time whipper snipping borders, blowing leaves and cutting lawns we never play on let alone rarely even walk on (in case it gets the shoes we spent so much money on dirty)…we spend hoards of worry and anxiety on the fear of losing something (like jewellery) or denting something (like our cars) or getting something dirty (like furniture).

 I simply do not want to be owned by my stuff…

I love that feeling of freedom when you have little more than the basics (which aren’t even really basics when you look at what most people in the rest of the world have).

 

And I just wish that feeling for everyone!  So there...that is my beginning, my history with stuff, and perhaps some clarity as to why I want to chuck everything but my (limited) sanity (and my family -  that draws a fine line between creating that sanity and destroying it!?)

 Matthew 6:18-20

¹⁹ “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. ²⁰ But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.

 

Stuff Stuff Stuff

Stuff, stuff, stuff...how devastating to me to note how North American society is so sickeningly obsessed with stuff. 

To quote J.D. Roth in his "Get Rich Slowly" site it is "Because we suffer from stuffitis. We already have too much Stuff, but we want more."
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2012/06/18/changing-focus-from-stuff-to-stubstance/

I chuckled when I read the Frugal Vegan's comment "There is also this obsession here with owning lots of junk and stocking a house with so much processed foods and household supplies as if people were expecting a war. Seriously people? Do you really need to stock 24 cans of tomatoes all at once?"  http://thefrugalvegan.net/?p=5363

Unfortunately with a nameless relative very close to me who could almost win a 'well-deserved' place on one of those hoarder TV shows with her pantry stocked to keep a family of 40 for an entire year in the case of a Bruce Nuclear Power Plant meltdown I can only shake my head and rub my belly from the ache of laughing aloud at the truth of Frugal Vegan's commentary.

As those who know me well will inform you: I am a fairly anti-stuff kinda gal.  So I have decided that every Saturday my blog will be dedicated to/as the "Saturday Stuff-It Chronicles" (SSIC for short - hopefully I won't receive flack from the US military with their Sensor Source Intelligence Cell or Florida's Sunshine State Insurance Company or from IBM's System Storage Interoperation Center - because you just KNOW people from those organizations are bound to be curled up with their laptop scanning MY blog...)

I know I know, it is only Friday.  This is the lead-up...(oh, yes, create the excitement, build the hype...less than 24 hours to go, folks...is that you camped out on my badly-in-need-of-mowing backyard with your laptops poised and ready for tomorrow's entry???  Must be...who else would so recklessly pitch a tent amidst childhood game debris of balls and such and guinea pigs doing their best to obsolete a lawnmower and the crazy squash vines, planted in the compost "box", that have taken over what seems to be a quarter of our back area?)  Yes, yes, you are anxious for tomorrow and its Stuff treasures...

Sleep well, my sweets...See you on the 25th, my nephew's first birthday, for the first installment of the Saturday Stuff-It Chronicles...

The Singing Song of Survival

Creeping up to the stop sign in the van, once all kids had exited and were safely at Vacation Bible School and all was insanely quiet, I heard something....not the usual odd noises that prove the van approaches its own vehicular death, not clanking or squealing, but rather a teeny, barely audible chirp.  Yes, a chirp!

Somewhere in the depths of this shoe-gravel-laden, sticky seat belted monstrous mode of transport I hear life.  Scant, but there.  A cricket has found a way into a new home.  Will he or she find their way out?

Crickets.  Omnivores. Not much of a threat.  Sort of like worms these choral insects ingest and then excrete good-for-the-garden goo.

A young woman I know, proud owner of a bearded dragon, shared how the crickets meant for his lunch escaped and hundreds of them inhabited their house for weeks, chirping at all hours.

So at least it is merely one and only in the van.

Besides, I like the chirp...it's the sound of life, of bravado in a foreign place, and...perhaps I over analyze...survival.

"How much does a fart bomb cost, anyway?" [Warning: PG13?]

Does your life feel somewhat boring some of the time?  Do you yearn to learn?  Well, then, I suggest hanging out with my friend Tali and her two adorable but stinky kids.  (Okay, both being tweens they probably wouldn't like being called either of those adjectives but they truly are beautiful, fascinating, and, according to each other, randomly foul-smelling from various parts of their bodies.)

Now I won't lay any claim to what you may be learning...like one of those movies or TV shows that bluntly states "the views expressed in this programme are not necessarily the views of the station"....

"How much does a fart bomb cost, anyway?"  was Tali's quote and the title I promised to be that of my next blog entry.

Fart bombs.  Gubs.  (Which, so named by their father, is excessive abdomen flab - the rolling, fatty version of a six-pack...which both claim to have and neither skinny-minny does.  I, on the other hand, boast multiple gubs and half-jokingly blame them on both of my children.)  Sharts.  Why is toilet humour popular no matter your age, gender, race, education, income?  (Come onnnn...admit it...fart jokes still make you inwardly explode with a few chuckles...)

Wikipedia defines it as "off-colour humour" (or, more technically American: "off-color humor") and further explicates that it is of "poor taste or overly vulgar by the prevailing morality of a culture".  And yet often we still laugh, don't we?  (Am I alone in this????  I thought I was beyond it until our children could speak and, without warning or training, began laughing aloud at toilet-y  jokes or each other's "toots" as we call them in our household.)

Why is it funny?  Because those instances of embarrassment when we've let gas to discover another person (probably the highschooler you were enamored with) standing directly behind you, right int he "line of fire" zone?  Or those horrid moments that have  happened to some when nature takes an appalling turn and tricks us into believing the gaseous emission will be only that when it is far, far more, far, far stinkier, and far, far greater of a mess?

Maybe it truly isn't funny at all?  Are the laughs legitimately ones of embarrassment?

Any funnies happening in your life?  Vulgar or otherwise???

Cracked?

Cracked?  Well, I could be referring to myself, oh so close to the edge on oh so many occasions...but in this instance it is the tomatoes in my garden to which I allude.

Have any like this on your vines???  Quite a number of mine have this circular scarring, although the incredibly sweet cherry tomatoes tend to have more of a vertical crack from stem to base.




It was my brother-in-law who, last Friday evening after he introduced our kids to "rotten tomato fights", tried to explain the connection of cracked tomatoes to excessive rain.  Fortunately I didn't try to make a grab for what I thought were red balls zooming across the lawn and towards our heads. 

So why the cracked tomatoes?  Because of my Lilliputian comprehension of agriculture (and my lack of memory as to how he described it) I will quote http://www.agrisupportonline.com/Articles/cracking_in_tomatoes.htm

"Rain and irrigation. Rain and excess irrigation will often cause cracking and if the fruit lacks leaf cover then the effect is even more dramatic. Tomato crops that do not receive water at regular intervals but rather receive it periodically at large intervals are likely to have cracking. This problem is related to the Conductivity Factor (CF) of the soil solution".

Speaking of cracked....or crackled... the sure-to-win-most-annoying-buzzer-ever has just horn/honked to let me know it is time to exit chocolate chip banana bread, with its perfectly crackled crests, from the oven.  Mmmm, with that aroma of my husband's great aunt's recipe, will any be left for tomorrow's snack?

The Street

Of course I realize that everything seen on the exterior is not necessarily what is truly going on...that we never really know what someone is thinking or experiencing... the "secrets" carefully hidden (or not so carefully when, upon pulling into someone's driveway, you hear their neighbour shrieking war-cry expletives at their spouse, which in turn causes me to wonder what others may have heard when we have left windows ajar?).

But watching BBC's "The Street" ["an outstanding drama series about life behind the front doors of everyday working-class families on a street in Manchester, northern England" as the borrowed-from-the-library DVD cover proudly states] certainly fosters in my cranium what really is happening behind the doors on our street.

[Warning: Spoiler Alert]
 Hopefully we are a rather boring row of homes in which there are no murderous rampages (then covered-up) or married neighbours "shagging" one another before accidentally hurling their car into the other's child or twins who, upon one's death the other exchanges his identity and completely destroys his own family whom he thought despised him....


  It's not so much that I am nosey about what is happening in the inner sanctums along our road, but rather curious about what truths go unacknowledged, what help is needed and neglected, what measly words we might gently exclaim to share our concern?

It was when I publicly admitted to postpartum depression that others privately opened up and shared their own experiences - the loneliness that creeps in when your own head plays such horrid games with you....it was when I told others about our miscarriage that so many who had experienced the same thing released their emotions and allowed a freedom and vulnerability between us.  An understanding...and a new-found belief that the way I had been feeling did not make me crazy or an oddity.  Others had and were undergoing that same emotional roller coaster.  And on the practical side so many blessed us with meals, groceries, offers of childcare, prayers...

What really is going on behind closed doors? 

Who was it that said "no man is an island"?  [Quick internet search reveals it was supposedly John Donne.]

So what can we do?  Today's Challenge: get to know neighbours???

Japanese Green Dale

I found it I found it I found  it!!!  [This is the sound of me shouting with joy, almost from the rooftop and almost with a megaphone!]

This is the blog entry I imagined lost to the abyss of whatever and wherever it is that lost computer items flee...

Yesterday.
It's been 41 years today since my parents entered into wedlock.  Happy Anniversary to 2 people who have worked hard at being an effective couple...adapting to life and one another and staying together for over four decades.

Which means it has been 41 years since they received as a wedding gift a Japanese Green Dale china set.  All sorts of lovely green and silver-rimmed pieces.  Pieces that rarely left the china cabinet and then only to grace the table for a few short hours, breathy sighs of relief when they returned to their hermitage whole and unblemished.



But something just short of a miracle occurred today.  That quantity of twelve-place-setting china (gravy boat, salt and pepper shaker, etc etc etc) appeared on my doorstep...shocked me, and made me feel very proud of my mother that despite her obsession with accumulation she blessed me with a new set of dishes.  (Even when she knows we plan to use them everyday and even, heaven help us, in the dishwasher...)

Having begged for my grandmother's dishes that remained in my mother's living room in boxes for too many months to mention mom finally decided she would keep those ones (with their expensive gold trim) and give hers to me.

A set of matching dishes...let me say that again with great excitement: A SET OF MATCHING DISHES.  Yes, yes, yes...all of us have the same design on a plate.  Not that the world revolves around such frivolity but I do appreciate it.

Simple and yet not-so-simple.  Oh how stuff rules us...and how proud and blessed I am that Mom decided to allow us the privilege of using a gift that she really did value...

And every time we set the table and eat off of those dishes that probably are too fragile for our young family I think of my parents...and I enjoy the meal even more.

Frenemies

Learned a new word today.  From the just-turned 9 year old who arrives bright and bushy-tailed every morning at 7:30 with her younger sister.

Frenemies.

When commenting on her cute shirt with its picture of three dark-haired girls clustering at armpit level she explained, "this one is me...this is so-and-so, my BFF, and this one in the middle, well, when we're friends it's so-and-so, but when we're enemies then it's another so-and-so pal.  Frenemies.  That's what we are.  Sometimes we love one another and other times, well, others we're just plain enemies..."

Frenemies.

Which is what I am with this blogger site (or rather, my own computer illiteracy) at the moment....had a half-started blog entry from yesterday that has vanished (well, probably not, but since I can't even get to the unfinished saved entries I will just say vanished for now) that I cannot access.

Half an entry is an extraordinary time commitment for me, as silly as that may sound.  So needless to say frustration has more than creeped in.  Hubby wants to know when I am going to take some Gravol so that perhaps I can have one of the handful of full nights of sleep that I have had in the last 7 years.

But I am not here to whine.  Wine, perhaps, but not whine....(My entries make me sound like a true lush but with two visits a year to the liquor store, spending an average of $20, I don't think I have too much to worry about in that department.  Drinking wine just sounds so sophisticated...)

Back to Frenemies.

Allegedly "Frenemies" is a TV show...google it and voila: "Geek vs Chic. Beauty vs Beast. Downtown vs Uptown"???  Neither of the co-stars on their site depiction look geeky or beasty or anything other than perfect...though I, fashion diva that I be hardy har, am not sure when it became acceptable to sport knee-highs with stilettos?


http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3418009856/tt1865368

On a deeper note: Sometimes, I have to admit in my ever-transparent mode, I am Frenemies with the Lord.  It has nothing to do with His unchanging grace...it is only because of me and my ways.  My rebellious ways that cause me to go astray and then wonder, "where has He gone?"

⁹ Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! ¹⁰ For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! ¹¹ Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.  Romans 5:9-11

Frenemies schmenemies...

 ' "What do you think about frenemies?""I say, keep your friends close, and your frenemies closer"' . Urban dictionary   http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=frenemy

On Saturday I was blessed with a good chunk of an hour in my front lawn. Now of course I use the term "lawn" loosely because it lacks much of what a traditional lawn would be. You know: all green and "lush" and, well, just so plain ...

No, the terms "my front lawn" and "traditional" can't exactly be paired...I can guess that my neighbours' descriptions include "ugly" and "unkept" but I continue to rehearse in my head "wait for about 5 years until you see on my front lawn what I now see in my headspace".

It's called naturalization. Yes, my "lawn", or shall we refer to it more lovingly as "frontal space" or "frontal expanse"? The place where my grass used to be. (The grass that took loads of muscle and even more loads of ben gay to remove.) So, naturalization. Basic summary: Naturalization is NOT just ignoring your yard and watching whatever happens happen. Mirriam Webster defines Naturalization as 1: to confer the rights of a national on; especially: to admit to citizenship 2: to introduce into common use or into the vernacular 3: to bring into conformity with nature 4: to cause (as a plant) to become established as if native.

You may notice that nature does not allow one single type of plant (i.e. grass) to exist in solidarity. And while the status symbol of a monoculture lawn has become the accepted way of doing things it is actually a dangerously demanding case of chemical overuse, gasoline-in-lawnmower, time absorbing ecology in which only one single perennial exhausts the soil of its nutrients. Okay, I am now off the soapbox...

I love how Dan Eskelson explains it on his site "Less Lawn" : "Unless you need your lawn for tuning up your golf game, replace at least part of it with native plants." http://www.lesslawn.com/articles/article1017.html

Trendle Ellwood asks "Why must a yard be monochromatic? Why should everything that naturally comes up be wiped out and replaced with just one kind of grass? Who made up these rules?" http://www.homestead.org/TrendleEllwood/Naturalized/NaturalizedLawn.htm

So, moi, with my nonconventional thoughts and odd ways that likely drive others (mainly my husband I'm sure) to drink, or atleast shake their head and momentarily ask "why, why, WHY?". Moi and my time alone with my frontal space. Skulking amongst the periwinkle and flowering dogwood tree and sumac, yanking weeds and generally content.

It doesn't take much to make me happy. Follow the dirt-encrusted frolic with a solid glass of gamay noir zweigelt and life is just peachy. Thank you, Lord, for today's blessings.

Yes, yes, it has been a while. And yes, yes, no one out there is likely reading this so this is merely a post to lil ole moi. And so it shall be.

My day started with a stench that no human should have to have invade their nostrils before 7 am. It involved our jolly ole feline, who has been feeling much better since an over-the-top immunization and flea meds visit to the vet that must be putting her kids through university. And a jolly ole black and white creature of whom Pepe Lepieu (is that even how his name is spelled???) is deeply enamored.

Oh sure they say skunks rarely entangle themselves with cats but alas our oddity of a loveable furball-hacking skinnyminny had to to meet up with one somewhere right near our home. And then....Jeff, my wonderful husband who really does need to look into why his smell glands are dysfunctional (which is a good thing after cabbage has been ingested in our home but a bad, bad thing after this morning's incident) let dear ole Addy into the house.

Tomato juice slightly worked. But after dropping a few kids at VBS and taking another to swimming lessons before dropping him at the "pirate school" as they call this week's Treasure Seekers and going into work...my boss could smell me. Occasionally wandering past she would rub my back and simply whistle "ohhhh Jennnn...." as she sniffed and carried on.

A hissing mixture of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and dish soap worked a few more wonders but even now at 9:13pm - more than 12 hours since "The Incident" I can still smell the rancid skunk stink on my fingers, palms, knuckles. Yuck.

A lot has happened since last I wrote. Too much to go into here. But here are a few "highlights"...working minimum wage at a job I adore with a boss who would surely win "Boss of the Year" for her compassion amongst all other things. Both children are in public school (despite ongoing debate regarding homeschooling they have joined, for now at least, the ranks of the undereducated public school slaves (and I say that with fierce admiration for school staff since I was once teaching in that very system). Two months ago we were expecting twins but lost them at the 3 month mark. Our rental property has sold (almossstttt finished with the hellish details that have definitely been a blessing in that we have learned and grown in so many ways...not to mention having much repentance on my behalf about public behaviour that wasn't very Christian) and we are remaining in our current home.

Counting our blessings. And there are so very many...