Things I Never Did Until I Had A Child

1) washed a sinkful of Legos
2) cried at commercials for childrens' relief agencies
3) said, "we don't eat penguins"
4) grieved for inmates on death row because they are somebody's child
5) said, "we don't put English muffins in our hair"
6) washed mashed graham crackers from a window
7) figured out how to stroke a sleeping baby's hair without allowing the hair to fall back into the baby's face, thus waking them up
8) cared whether stores had elevators/public restrooms/changing tables/wide aisles/automatic doors
9) got angry at teenaged (or older) drivers trying to be cool
10) made up and sang a song about "diaper changing time" - in public
11) left a trail of Cheerios and socks in the mall
12) said "no" when asked to take on more than I could reasonably handle

Mudslingers

Last night I voted. I had hoped to read or sew or both, but alas, I put off voting until the last minute, so my evening was spent reading about propositions and initiatives and candidates. All of the local issues were fine. They took the longest to read about and they were the most difficult to decide on, as there are pros and cons to both sides of the arguments. But they were fine. It was the Senate race that bugged me. There are two really big oppositions in this year's election in Washington - the Senate race and the House Representative race for Congressional District 8. I am not in this district, so it didn't really affect the way I voted at all, but theirs was certainly the most publicized of the Congressional races, so all of northwestern Washington was subjected to their advertisements. These two pairs of candidates engaged in a tremendous amount of mudslinging. It was appalling. I know of no other profession in which people can get hired by telling their prospective employer just how horrible the other candidates are. Stop it, people! I don't want to hear about how bad your opponent is. Tell me how good you are. What are you going to do for the people you serve? Dave Reichert, one of the Congressional candidates, was probably the cleanest. He talked more of his own record, his own qualifications, and less of his opponent's - well, her lack of record and qualifications. He did not abstain completely from throwing some mud in her direction, but he threw a lot less than she did. The Senate candidates sucked. Not just in the mudslinging arena, but overall. I felt as though I had to choose the lesser of two evils. Their campaigns were run almost exclusively on the premise that their opponent is bad, not on the premise that they are good. Come ON!

A while back I saw a bumper sticker that read, "When Clinton lied, nobody died." Disregarding the absolute irrelevancy of this statement, I started thinking about how sad it was. Is that what politics in our country have become? "Our candidate isn't as corrupt as your candidate"? Is that the best we can do?

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed and deeply saddened by the corrupt state of our country, by the extreme pain and apparent hopelessness in the world. Then I feel overwhelmed and deeply saddened by how little I can do about it. I try to "make it [my] ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind [my] own business, and to work with [my] hands" (1 Thes. 4:11), but that does not negate the corruption and suffering that is all around me. I guess this is just a reminder that our hope is not to be found in this world.

Weekend

We've had another lovely weekend. It started on Friday evening when some friends called us to say that they would provide dessert if we would provide the house in which to eat it. We agreed. Soon we were enjoying the company of friends, a crackling fire, hot coffee and perfect pumpkin bread. It was such a great evening. Sometimes with these particular friends, the conversation content goes far beyond my understanding. They are both engineers, one Master's trained and the other working on his Ph.D. Get them together with my M.S.E.E. husband and suddenly you feel as though you are watching a foreign film with no subtitles. Fortunately, our friend Judy can only talk about transistors and circuit boards for so long, so she quickly removed herself from the technobabble and joined the English-speaking world, wherein Denny and I were getting by with our humble B.A.s.

On Saturday Andy had a meeting for the better part of the day, Denny was moving into her new apartment, and Elise treated me by taking a 2 1/2 hour nap. I used the time to put together a quilt top, cut out a pattern for another project, and work on the hat that I was crocheting for Elise. It was an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon alone. Later in the day, Denny treated us doubly by first staying with Elise while Andy and I went browsing at Cost Plus World Market and then by buying dinner from Pagliacci's. Mmm...Pagliacci's. Anyhow, if you have not visited Cost Plus, it really is a great place to find some unique items. Perfect for Christmas gifts, particularly stocking stuffers. It is, however, a difficult store in which to attend to small children - thus Denny's generous gift of babysitting.

Sunday was a full but pleasant day. We allowed ourselves a luxuriously slow morning and attended the late service at church. The pastor tackled that oh-so-sensitive passage of Scripture, Colossians 3:18, 19 - wives, submit to your husbands, husbands, love your wives. The "husbands, love your wives" part is easy for most people to swallow. It is in keeping with the social standards of our day, even if many people only pay it lip service. The first part, though, the directive to wives, is much more difficult for modern folk to wrap their minds and, more importantly, their hearts around. The pastor did a fine job of teaching that particular passage, I thought, although he really didn't spend all that much time specifically on it. He talked at some length about the importance of obedience, on how we must stop trying to accept the salvation that Christ offers without also accepting His lordship - a concept foreign to most people today, especially those of us in the U.S. of A. He asked a good question. Do I believe that God's Word is fundamentally beautiful, logical, and good? Or do I believe that when it comes to me, the directives found in Scripture are optional? To believe that some things are optional, or are to be executed only at my discretion, is to believe that I know better than God what is best - for me, for the Church, for the world. Yikes. I'd like to stay as far away from that heresy as possible, please. The pastor also talked about the tragedy that hit the Church last week - the moral failure of one of the most prominent pastors in our country. I personally had not heard of him until the news story broke, and I have to admit that when I heard the news, I assumed the man to be an obvious phony, a rich conartist who scammed widows out of their Social Security funds, a man whose moral downfall could have been easily predicted. As it turns out, this is not the case. Ted Haggard was widely respected in the evangelical Christian community. He pastored a megachurch in Colorado Springs, and, while I am not a big fan of megachurches myself, his congregation took major strides in world missions under his leadership, so much so that apparently many other churches in the country looked to his church as an example after which to model their own missions programs. The man's behavior is inexcusable, there is no question of that. But my heart breaks for him, for his wife and five children, for his congregation, for his colleagues. Please pray for all those affected by this, and please remember to support your own pastors as best you know how. Ministry is hard. Ministers are under constant pressure to be perfect, to set a moral example, and I believe we can be certain that they are under constant attack by the Enemy. Pray for your leaders, and help them however you can. They put a lot on the line in their desire to see you in heaven.

Well, that was a big detour from my "pleasant day". So after church we helped Denny move the last of her things into her new place, dropped in to say hi to some friends who have a new baby (Andy really had to twist my arm on that one, let me tell you), and came home for our last evening with Denny. Sad. She has been here for four weeks, and we have truly loved having her in our home. Last night we all watched Pride and Prejudice together, Denny and I laughing at the same parts, Andy looking at us as though we could hear something that he could not, and then Denny left. I am really happy for her that she found such a great place to live - a nice apartment in a house in Seattle, close to everything. But I'll miss having her around here.

And now it's Monday, and I have spent a good deal of time blogging, and I really should do something about the dishes in the sink and the Kix on the floor.

Embracing the elements

Here it is, Monday morning, the first Monday of November (yikes! that means I'd better finish voting today). November is usually a dreary month in my mind. Here in the Northwest, it is typically soggy and raining and dismal, punctuated by periods of nose-biting cold. Even now, as I look out my kitchen window, I see that this is true. The sky is monochromatically gray. It is drizzling (oh, how I miss the sudden, severe downpours of the Midwest - none of this constant drizzle that is heavy enough to chill you to the bone, but so light that you feel utterly ridiculous in carrying an umbrella or in running to your car). Most of the beautiful fall foliage is gone, at least from the trees that I can see from where I sit. My outside table is covered in a shallow pool of water and in soggy pine needles. My tomato plant is black and drooping and looks like something that would wash in with the tide, and yet - and here is the real paradox of the Northwest - it is covered in tomatoes, some red and some so green that there is no hope of their ripening before Jack Frost comes to claim them. No, it is not pretty outside right now. And yet, somehow, this November doesn't seem dismal and dreary to me. I was dreading it - I always dread winter here - but there seems to have been no reason to do so. Perhaps I have finally been acclimated to the weather of the Pacific Northwest. Perhaps being home during the day, and not in a windowless office as in years past, has reduced any seasonal blues. Perhaps my husband and I have become more accustomed with age and with a child to the quieter pleasures that staying home affords us, thus eliminating "cabin fever". Whatever the reason, I am thankful. And really, isn't that what November is about?

Pretty Things

I'm always reading blogs wherein people write about and post pictures of objects that they have found at thrift stores or yard sales. I'm not really a big thrift or yard sale shopper - that is, I don't spend every weekend browsing for a good deal - but I did make it to a few yard sales over the summer, and have visited several thrift stores over the last couple of months. I decided to post my own favorite finds. These are all handmade tablecloths. (Not handmade by me. I was just lucky enough to find them.) I told Andy last night that I am on a bit of a textile craze right now, and I might add that the craze revolves around flowers. I'm really liking floral fabrics right now, especially rather delicate looking ones. Anyway, the two tablecloths on the left are about as girly as it gets. They are made from a rather heavy fabric - I'm not sure what it is - and are lined with a nice, soft cotton. They fit my little kitchen table perfectly. The other two are, unfortunately, just a tad too small for my table. That disappointed me, because I think they are so pretty. But that's okay - I'll just turn them into something else. I'm not sure what yet. It will be hard for me to cut them, but I'll manage.
This beautiful set of books was found at a yard sale close to our house. They are wonderful. They're too advanced for our 14-month old, of course, but they are on her shelf, waiting for her little mind to be ready for their seemingly myriad contents. I truly have a weakness for childrens' books. The lustrous art (some of the best art I have seen, in my opinion, has been in childrens' books), the imaginative adventures, the beautiful innocence. I love them.
The joy of buying used things is that they are inexpensive, and that you can find things that are no longer available to buy new. The danger is that it is easy to feel that you are not spending much money, so you keep picking up more items. Even at a dollar or so a piece, items add up quickly. I try to be discriminating in my choices.

Threadbare

Something wonderful happened today. I ran out of thread. I actually used up an entire spool of thread. This has never happened to me before. I have run out of fabric, yarn, and embroidery floss, but never have I used up an entire spool of thread. My sewing projects are small and typically require only simple stitches, and a spool of thread has a lot of thread on it. It was a great moment. It was much like when you write on the last page of a journal. It's very satisfying. Hours and hours, perhaps months or (in the case of a journal, not so much thread) years, of your life are represented in that journal, and you have used it to its fullest potential. I believe that I used my thread well. It was stitched into quilts and curtains and blankets and burp cloths and table linens, and those things are scattered around the homes of people I love, including the people who live in my own house. Thinking about that has made me want to use all of the things God has given me to their fullest potential. Gifts - objects, talents, nature - should be used well.

I'm going to buy a new spool of the thread (as I ran out in the middle of a project). I'm very excited to see what comes of it.

Patience is a virtue

My daughter is sick. She has never before been quite as sick as she is now. She's had her share of colds and sniffles and mild stomach problems, but this one takes the cake. It's so sad. She has been sick since Sunday afternoon and really doesn't show much sign of improvement at this point. And she's 14 months old, so I can't exactly reason with her and explain why I can't give her very much food at a time. I do explain why, but I don't think she understands. Every time I give her any food - little strips of toast, chicken soup, crackers - she devours it. I know she is hungry, and that breaks my heart. Large quantities of food - well, really, any amount of food - results in very obvious sickness, so we've got to keep it small at this point. Poor thing. She has watched more television this week than in her entire 14 previous months. We don't let her watch TV except when she is sick. I have refamiliarized myself with the PBS kids' programming and the cast of Veggie Tales. This week has made me very pleased that we haven't relied on TV for Elise's entertainment. It really is passive entertainment (quite appropriate for illness, I think), and it is so annoying. I'm not used to having the television on during the day. I suppose I am used to a pretty quiet house. The constant noise and the catchy theme songs give me a headache.

It is not particularly easy to care for a sick toddler. It is not particularly difficult, either. It just requires patience, something that has always been in short supply for me. There have been a couple of days this week when Elise could only sleep when she was being held. Since rest is important for healing, Elise and I spent those days primarily in the rocking chair. There has been much laundering of blankets and stuffed animals and pajamas, and little laundering of anything else. The highlight of my days has been when my husband gets home in the afternoon. He takes Elise and she usually naps in his arms for a while, and I get to clean! Normally this would not excite me, but I cannot tell you how wonderful it has been this week to clean the kitchen and make the bed. That's pretty much all I've done, aside from the sickness related cleaning, but somehow doing those two things in the afternoon makes me feel productive and normal.

There have been a couple of other wonderful graces this week. My husband has been the primary one. He gets up with Elise in the early morning, allowing me to get a little extra rest. I have two part-time jobs, one at my church and one with a store owned by Chris and Janene. Both jobs can be done mostly from home, but require going to the actual physical locations every now and again. On Wednesday evening, I needed to go to both places. Andy went for me. Isn't he wonderful? The other sanity savers this week have been our friend Denny, who is staying with us until her new apartment is ready for her, my library books, and Elise's early bedtime. Elise loves Denny, and Denny, being the oldest of five, is superb with children. When Denny gets home from work, Elise will curl up in her lap just as readily as she will curl up in mine, a fact which has provided me several moments of respite. On Tuesday, after Elise was in bed, Denny asked if I wanted to go to the library with her. Did I ever! (On the day after Denny arrived in Washington, she did two things: she got a Washington drivers license and a King County library card. The next day, she asked us to show her where the nearest Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores were. That girl has good priorities.) I spent a beautiful hour browsing through the books, and then another 15 minutes browsing through the ice cream at Safeway. I came home with a stack of books that are easy to thumb through while holding a sleeping child, one book that would work wonderfully as a doorstop, and a pint of Sticky Toffee Pudding ice cream. And finally, the last thing that has made this week better is Elise's bedtime. Amazingly, she has not awakened during the night while she has been sick. In fact, we had to wake her up once at 2:30 because she had been sick and had gone back to sleep without making a peep. So every night at 6:30, I change her diaper and her clothes, we say goodnight to Daddy and Denny, get a drink of water, pray, I put her to bed, and then I sigh in sweet relief. The next few hours are spent in adult conversation, sewing, cleaning, reading, watching movies...anything but changing diapers, wiping little noses, and documenting Elise's bodily fluid activity.

The doorstop book, in case you are wondering, is Paul Johnson's Art: A New History. Wow. I picked it up at the library because Bob has reviewed and recommended Johnson's books. Bob is a rather prolific reader, and I enjoy reading his book reviews. His comments on Johnson's books have made me want to read them. I was surprised to find 28 matches to my search for this particular Paul Johnson (there are several authors by that name). Apparently this guy has been writing for quite some time. Anyway, the art history book was the only one of the books that Bob has reviewed that my library had available on Tuesday evening, so I got it. Good golly. When I took the book off the shelf, all of the other books fell to the right. It is huge. This will probably end up being one that I check out many times before I finish it.

This post has taken several hours to write, punctuated by changing a diaper, rocking a baby to sleep (twice), and having a phone conversation with my dad. Elise is awake now, so I'd best be finding something for her to eat.

Crochet

Hurray! At long last, I have finished my first crochet project. I had hoped to complete the entire thing during the month of September, but in actuality it was finished on October 22nd. Ah, well. Three weeks late isn't too bad, I guess. It is very simple, and it was so much fun to do. I like having something to work on in the evenings while I'm talking with my husband or watching TV.

Now it's on to Christmas projects!

Tablerunner

Isn't this cool? I found this 1/2 yd. of fabric in one of my fabric boxes this weekend while I was looking for something else. I bought it several years ago and just never did anything with it. It just happened to be the perfect length and width for a tablerunner. All it took was a quick hem, and I had a nice autumn tablerunner. It made me happy. It's the little things.

It's a Wonderful Life

Yesterday was such a great day. Church in the morning was incredibly uplifting. Now, I don't go to church just because it's "uplifting", and I'm not one to think that every insight I hear is going to change my life forever. But when I do hear a profound truth that I know will impact my life, and when I am uplifted after a church service - well, that just makes for a really good day. I don't mean for that to sound as trivial as it does.

After church we stopped at Country Village for a while, ate some kettle corn (addictive stuff), watched the ducks, and bought a beautiful bouquet of flowers. Later that evening we went grocery shopping, and Elise was so well-behaved in the grocery store. It made for a most pleasant trip. We took one of those shopping carts with the child's car attached to it, and she got to ride around Safeway in her own little car. The horn, fortunately, was broken, but that didn't stop her from "beeping" it throughout the store. When we got home from the grocery store, we put Elise to bed and sat down to eat our own dinner. It was just potato soup and Italian bread, courtesy of Safeway (it is typical of us to go grocery shopping on Sunday evening before we eat dinner, and to pick up something ready-made or easy to make for dinner that evening), and we had some Arbor Mist Blackberry Merlot with it, and it was so good. Ahh. Lovely day.

Recently I have started to feel rather tired of simply maintaining a minimum level of functionality in our home. With a toddler living under our roof, it oftentimes takes nearly all of my time and energy just to keep a basic level of sustenance around here. I keep just enough dishes clean. I keep just enough laundry clean. I keep the house just clean enough to be sanitary. And on most days I feel that that is all I can do. Well, I'm tired of it. I don't think it is impossible to do more. I think it's all about how I choose to spend my time. I think that is true of nearly every endeavor in life. I, along with pretty much everyone else, oftentimes say, "I don't have time for that". And while that is true to an extent, I really believe that we all have been given 24 hours in a day, and we all have been given 7 days in a week, and what we choose to do with that time is more or less up to us. I guess it's a matter of priority. My life is full. So is yours. Everyone's life is full. From daybreak to daybreak, we are busy doing something. Sleeping, eating, working, breathing, resting, playing. We are always doing something. Some priorities are relative, I think. For example, staying in bed for 18 hours a day may be a waste of time for most people, but for a person recovering from surgery, it may be the most important and essential thing they can do with their time. Well, anyway, that was a bit of a tangent. I guess I just mean to say that I am ready to make caring for my home a higher priority than it has been in the recent past. It may not always be of such high priority. There may be times when a member of my family is sick, or when outside commitments require a bit more time and effort than usual, or, frankly, when something more important comes along. One of the joys - and, ironically, struggles - of being a stay-at-home-mom is that I have flexible time. I do not have free time, as so many people insist on believing, but I do have flexible time. This is a joy because it means that I can organize my activities in a way that is best for me and my family. It is a struggle because it means that I have to exercise time management in a way that I did not when I worked under the supervision of someone else. It's something I'm still trying to figure out. But today, right now, I want to pay attention to my home and to make it not just livable, but comfortable, cozy, warm. Why am I bothering to blog about this decision that is important to no one besides myself? I don't know. Maybe I think that the act of writing it down will make it that much more important to me, and it will actually happen. Maybe blogging is my way of putting off actually starting to act on my resolve. Just in case that is true, I will sign on for now. Adieu.

Fresh Eyes

Last week I found that I had made a mistake in the blanket that I am crocheting. I knew I had made a mistake because my stitches were not lining up as they should. I looked and looked and looked and could not find the mistake anywhere. Finally I put the project down and did not pick it up again until last night. Within two minutes of picking it up, I had found - and corrected - the mistake. I mentioned this to my husband, telling him how frustrated I had been last week to not be able to continue because of the missing error, and he commented that sometimes it just takes a fresh pair of eyes to see something like that. He is right, of course. That principle is the reason why we have proofreaders and electrical inspectors and doctors who give second opinions. It is why people will say, when presented with an option or a problem, "Let me sleep on it".

Finding and correcting the mistake so quickly last night made me want to go back and try again some projects and tasks that I have counted as failures. Rust stains. Dull books. Growing plants. And those sad, sad blueberry muffins.

The Fall Line-Up

I am awfully excited.

I wanted to post a picture of the piles of fabric and stacks of patterns that will hopefully take up a fair amount of my free time this fall as well, but then I realized that the final destination for many of those items is under some Christmas tree or another, so I'd better not post them for all to see.

The books, if you can't see them clearly in the photo, are: That Distant Land by Wendell Berry; John Adams by David McCullough; Remembering by Wendell Berry; The Brothers K by David James Duncan; Emma by Jane Austen; The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King; and The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. I am reading The Beekeeper's Apprentice right now and am really enjoying it. I don't often - ok, ever - read mysteries. This is the first time in a long time that I have felt my heart rate quicken and my shoulders tense from reading a book. Of course most good books have surprises and unexpected twists and turns, but not page after page after page. I rather like it. It is a pleasant detour from my usual choice of rather mellow literature. I do understand, however, why sleep experts make mysteries an exception in their advice to read for a while before going to bed. The imagery did not keep me awake, as it does after watching a suspenseful movie (depending on the imagery, a tense movie can terrorize me for months), but I was far too invigorated to fall asleep quickly. I felt as though I had just returned from a long run - tired, but alert. The first Berry book mentioned above is a book of short stories, so I think I'll start reading one of those before bed and will leave the suspenseful reading for earlier hours.

Why I Hate Having To Choose A Party

Washington's primary elections were yesterday. I have a confession to make. I don't like voting. I always vote because I believe it is my responsibility to do so. Voting is a privilege that I do not take lightly. But I don't enjoy it. I mean, I wouldn't call voting a rip-roaring good time. It can be tedious, it can be frustrating, and it can take a fair amount of work if you are going to take it seriously and actually learn about the candidates and the issues that are on the ballot. But that wasn't really the intended point of this post.

What I meant to say is that Washington now requires voters to choose a political party (in the primaries) and to vote only for candidates who represent that party. If you deviate from this rule and vote for, say, a Republican Senate candidate and a Democratic House candidate, your entire partisan ballot will be disregarded. I think this is stupid. I usually vote for Republicans on moral grounds, but I want to have the option of voting for whomever I please. And the thing that really bugged me this time around was that there were several positions on the ballot for which no Republicans were running. If I wanted to vote for a Republican senator, which I did, then I had to forfeit the right to vote for several smaller offices. What kind of a democracy is that?

Well, anyway, I'm no political genius, but I think that mandatory partisan voting is stupid.

My New Best Friend

Last year I borrowed some Christmas clothes for my daughter from a friend whose daughter is one year older than mine. They were really nice little outfits, lots of red velvet and lace and such. Well, this friend just had another baby girl a couple of days ago, so I thought it was about time I returned her clothes to her. The clothes had been sitting in the laundry room for months, so I washed them. I followed all of the instructions. Most of the fabrics are red, but there is one particular dress, the fanciest of them all, that has a red velvet bodice, and then a white satin skirt with an embroidered chiffon overlay. It is really beautiful. Elise wore it to her Aunt Bethany's wedding last fall. I followed all of the instructions when washing this dress. I washed it separately - an entire wash load dedicated to this one little dress! - in cold water. Yeah. It still ran. I pulled it out of the washer and saw, to my great dismay, a light red streak right down the middle of the white skirt. Now, I am not a big laundry person. I launder "dry clean only" garments at home. I put sweaters and unmentionables in the dryer. So my first instinct was to run out and buy my friend a gift certificate to the store where she originally bought the dress. But then I decided to see if I could possibly fix my mistake. I looked up solutions in all of my housekeeping books. Nothing. Or at least, nothing I could use. One book listed three chemicals that I could buy from janitorial supply stores, but they all came with rather dire warnings. I tried to find helpful hints online. I found out how to prevent fabric from bleeding, and that was it. The Clorox website had nothing. It was depressing.

And then, all of a sudden, my eyes rested upon my new best friend. The Tide On the Go Stain Removal pen. I keep it on my kitchen counter and have used it on fresh food stains (which abound when you a) have a kid and b) are somewhat clumsy with food, as I am), but I certainly didn't think it was up to the task of reversing a fabric color bleed. Nevertheless, I had nothing to lose, so I gave it a shot. Worked like a charm. It was remarkable. A little bit of dabbing, a little bit of rubbing, and the skirt was as good as new. Had the people who developed the pen been standing in my kitchen, I would have kissed them.

It was a great moment.

What I've Been Doing

I have had a lovely few weeks here. We had the great pleasure of visiting with our dear friend and my former roommate over the past week. She was not so much a houseguest as a temporary family member. Houseguests don't wash your dishes or care for your child while you take a shower. Nor, I might add, do they comfortably cream you in card games.

While she was here, we took the opportunity to play tourist in our own area. We went island hopping in the San Juans, spending several hours each on Orcas and San Juan Island. It was so beautiful. We really do live in one of the most beautiful places on earth, I'm sure of it. One of the best parts of our day in the islands was that my parents-in-law (who happen to live in the town that houses the ferries that service the islands) babysat all day. No strollers!

So we had a grand time. To our great delight, our friend will likely be moving back to this area in the very near future. (So for those of you who know her and didn't get to see her, she'll be back shortly.) In the meantime, I have been assigned a few books to read and a few videos to watch, and I am looking forward to them all.

In other news, I am becoming rather frustrated by a lack of volunteers. I coordinate the volunteer nursery workers at my church. This is a job that I typically enjoy as it affords me the opportunity to get to know many wonderful people, including kind volunteers, parents of young children, and of course, my personal favorite, young children themselves. Lately, though, it has been like pulling teeth to get anyone to commit to working with the kids. I'm quite concerned about the upcoming Wednesday night program. It begins next Wednesday and there are no nursery workers! And I can't do it because I work with the older kids on Wednesday nights; otherwise I would just do it myself. Sigh. I have heard that George Muller, the great founder of many of world's Christian orphanages in the 19th century, never once asked anyone for money to fund his charities. In fact, I believe he never even made anyone aware of his monetary needs. He simply prayed, and the needs were met every single time. What faith! Sometimes I think I should do that. Not ask for volunteers, not make an announcement at church that we are short-staffed; just pray.

A few weeks ago, I received a message from my friend Janene that stated she had taught herself to knit. This was very inspiring to me. We have another friend who is quite an expert knitter (in my opinion), and she makes the loveliest scarves and socks and sweaters and hats, as you can see if you go to her site. Well, Janene and I have long admired her work, and Janene has crocheted for many years, so she took the plunge and picked up some knitting needles and just taught herself to knit. I admire people who are not afraid to learn. So I took my cue from Janene and went to the library in search of some good "how-to" crochet books. (I said I was inspired by the knitting; that doesn't mean I'm ready for it. I am inspired by people who climb Mt. Everest, therefore I might walk around Greenlake.) I found the most wonderful book that explains each crochet stitch step-by-step. Most of them show you two stitches and then say, "Now you can crochet anything with simple variations of these two stitches." That is technically true, but if you don't know how to make those variations, it doesn't do you a bit of good. So this book that I found explains all of the variations in great detail. And I am crocheting a small afghan! I am quite excited about it. The pattern calls for smaller stitches, softer yarn, and softer hues than I am using. It is supposed to be a baby blanket. I decided to use slightly larger stitches, not-so-soft yarn (it's less expensive, and I did not think it prudent to invest in high quality, expensive yarn for my first project), and a deep red yarn that matches the stripes in my sofa. It will just be a throw or lap blanket, not a baby blanket. I am really enjoying the project.

Now I want to read the biography of George Muller. I have it, and it is a small book, but I have never read it. So many books, so little time!

Secrets of a Dust-Free Home

Not mine, mind you. Mine is not a dust-free home. It probably should be, what with an asthmatic and a toddler living here. But it is not.

I was just dusting my living room and was thinking of ways to lessen the overall dustiness as well as the need for frequent dusting - which I guess are really the same thing. Anyway, two ideas came to mind. The first idea to reduce dust and, thus, dusting is to not have stuff. If you don't have stuff, you don't have to dust it. The second idea is to use the stuff you have. Books that are read, dishes that are used, CDs that are listened to, photo albums that are looked through, and toys that are played with do not need to be dusted very often, if ever. Of course that principle doesn't apply to everything. Picture frames that are looked at still need to be dusted. (Look at all these phrases that I'm ending with prepositions. Shame on me.)

Well, those were just the thoughts I had while dusting my living room. And this post is the excuse I gave myself for taking a break from dusting the living room. Back to dusting.

Snowballs and Sequences

It all started with making the bed.

I came home from a perfectly lovely day of sewing and visiting with dear friends. Elise went down immediately for a nap, leaving me free to tackle some domestic chores that were left undone this morning. I decided to make the bed. I try to make the bed every day. I just really enjoy getting into a clean, fresh, neat bed after a long day, so even when tonight is closer than last night, I still make an effort to make the bed. And that's what started it all.

While making the bed, I thought it would be nice to put a different blanket at the end of the bed than the one that is usually there. I chose a pretty patchwork quilt. When I went to put it on the bed, though, I noticed that it smelled a bit musty, so I decided to wash it. Down to the laundry room we went. Drat, there were already clothes in the washing machine that needed to be washed. I started the machine. Then I noticed that there was a pile of items waiting to be washed. These were things like blankets, a coat that Elise has outgrown, a couple of bright red articles that demand their own special washing machine time. In other words, things that didn't make it into the normal line-up of things that must be cleaned in order to carry on with civilized life. So I decided to just clean them and be done with it. As I was separating them into their respective loads, I saw that the floor of the laundry room was quite dusty. The ventilation in the room isn't great, and the lint from the dryer causes a light, dusty film to develop on most surfaces. So I decided to sweep the floor. Then I realized that it wouldn't do a lot of good to sweep the floor so long as the other surfaces were still dusty, so I decided to clean them. During this thought process, the washing machine finished its cycle and I transferred the clothes into the dryer - finally getting my blanket into the washer. I cleaned the lint filter on the dryer, and when I went to throw the lint into the garbage can, I noticed that the garbage can was getting quite full. So I decided to empty it. Up the stairs I went, meaning to empty the garbage can and get the broom and dustpan. Unfortunately, the kitchen garbage can (into which I meant to dump the laundry room garbage) was full. So I emptied it. Then I emptied the laundry room garbage can, and then I noticed that it was quite dirty. So I decided to clean it out. I took it to the kitchen sink and found the sink to be full of dishes. Now, I didn't see any point in moving the dishes to the counter just to be moved into the dishwasher later, so I decided to put them straight into the dishwasher. Only the dishwasher was full of clean dishes. Oh, well. I emptied the dishwasher and reloaded it with the dirty dishes. Well, once the dishes are cleared away, I might as well clean the rest of the kitchen - so I did. Once that was done, I finally began to work my way back down my chain of events. I cleaned out the garbage can (sidetracking momentarily to clean out the kitchen garbage can as well). I brought the broom and dustpan downstairs, washed the washer and dryer surfaces, washed the other surfaces in the room, and swept the floor. The quilt was transferred to the dryer.

So now I have a clean kitchen, two clean and disinfected garbage cans, a clean laundry room, a bunch of clean assorted articles of clothing and linens...and a clean patchwork quilt at the end of my bed. There are some benefits to being easily distracted.

Garbage

I really appreciate our garbage service men. There is something so satisfying about having garbage taken away. To know that every Friday morning, two big bins of stuff that I don't need are going to be emptied into the giant, smelly trucks, and then returned, empty, to me...it's wonderful. It somehow gives me a great sense of order and tidiness. I actually enjoy opening the cabinet under our kitchen sink and finding an empty trash can. I like knowing that that clean white plastic bag will, over the next couple of days, contain for us all of the unpleasant, unwanted, and unnecessary leftovers of our daily life, and that at the end of the week, the dutiful employees of Allied Waste will come to take our collection of filled plastic bags away from us forever. Thank you, Allied Waste.

Yeah, I know, I'm weird.

Flower's Garden

A few weeks ago, my parents-in-law were here for an afternoon. We were in our back yard playing with the baby, and I was embarrassed about the state of our yard. The grass was tidy and short, but the many areas in our yard that have been purposefully set aside as garden space or flower beds were full of weeds. We did not plant a garden this year, and only managed to plant a few flowers in the front yard. My parents-in-law, on the other hand, have a back yard that could be featured in Better Homes & Gardens, and a vegetable garden that could feed a small nation. So I was embarrassed.

Then my mother-in-law, in her humble, hospitable way, said the most wonderful thing. And she didn't even take credit for it. She said, "Well, my mom always said, you can't have flowers outside your home when you're raising flowers inside your home." Grandma Carpenter, a wise woman whom I did not have the honor of meeting, was referring of course to parenting. It seems she has passed her wisdom along to her daughter.

Milestones

It is so much fun watching Elise grow up. There are new delights every day. The other day she picked up a stuffed toy dog (Chiwak, for those of you who know us well) and said, "oof! oof!" She breaks out into this huge grin every time I start to sing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider", and now she tries to do the hand motions. This morning at the breakfast table, she was drinking out of her sippy cup and, miracle of miracles, she gently placed the cup back on the table when she was finished! Now, I realize that this seems insignificant. To me it is huge. When finished with her cup, Elise usually just lets go of it, allowing it to fall to the ground or, even better, upside-down on her lap in the highchair or carseat. We have been working on this for a while now. She'll drop her cup on the floor - usually carelessly, more from the will of gravity than the will of Elise, although sometimes most deliberately, and these times result in a more stern reprimand - and I will pick it up, place it properly on the table, and explain for the umpteenth time that we do not drop our cups on the floor. This morning, when she carefully placed the cup on the table, right side up, and then looked at me for approval, I melted. All of the sticky messes in her seats, her soggy clothes, the frequent surprise of stepping into a small puddle of milk on the floor - they were all worth the effort, because today she got it. Sigh. I love her.