Draft 2021

Fannie in front of the fireplace No one can accuse us of making a killing on real estate. Actually, real estate has nearly killed us, financially anyway. We decided to move to our economically depressed neighborhood near downtown Des Moines 5 1/2 years ago. Yep. Right at the peak of home prices and just before the fall. Typical luck for us. We are fortunate that our 108-year-old house was mostly benignly neglected. A $55,000 renovation made the house liveable (new bathrooms, remodeled kitchen, new radiator, wiring, and more). It really is a beautiful house and there are still many, many projects that need to be done including floor refinishing, basement waterproofing, front porch repair, window replacement... Basically, we live in a money pit. We just did a crazy-fantastic refinance - we're saving $600 a month and the house will be paid off in less than 15 years. With a few more years and perhaps another major project or two, I could be content to live in this house forever. The ho

 What else are laundry baskets for?

I am not a fan of water. Not drinking water, but large bodies of water. Especially large bodies of water with waves or creepy invasive species growing on their surfaces, or ponds smothered in yellowy-green algae. Just gave myself the shivers, there. Maye it's because I don't know how to swim, though I'm a pretty good dog-paddler and can float with the best of them. We lived on Long Island in New York when I was a kid and I particularly remember a trip made to Montauk Point at the farthest tip of the island.  Standing on the rocks as the waves crashed to shore, sea gulls swooping, cold mist spraying, gave me that same queasy feeling as climbing a ladder or riding a roller coaster.  You know that panicky feeling when your stomach has just dropped a foot lower than the rest of your body and you suddenly can't breathe? Yep. That's it. Funny, I've actually spent a fair amount of time in large to largish bodies of water for someone with such a strong phobic response. 

I was a kitchen wizard today. I guess I should call myself a witch, as I'm sure many people have thought over the years. Ahem. However, no magic was involved. With just a smidgen of organization and a little advanced planning you too can do zero to pie in under 60 minutes! The first element is to decide you're going to do the dinner dash. For greatest impact, I recommend waiting until barely two hours before dinner is to be served. Procrastination can be your best friend if you work well under pressure. And zero to pie takes more focus than leisurely dessert baking. First, zip to the basement to retrieve a bag of frozen peaches. Ah, but not merely plain frozen peaches. No sir, these peaches were purchased last summer at the height of the season at a fabulously low price, peeled, sliced and - now here's the advanced planning part - *mixed with flour, sugar and cinnamon before freezing in single pie amounts. And there you have frozen pie filling in a bag. This process can

So, I've worn glasses since I was two years old. I don't remember life without glasses. As you may have surmised, my eyesight is poor. Yeah, really poor. When I was little I had to wear a patch over my right eye, my good eye, to try to improve the vision in my left. Basically, I only use my right eye except for a sort of passive vision in my left. I hated that patch. I couldn't read, couldn't enjoy watching TV. It was awful. My oldest sister had to watch me for a week once before I turned two. Apparently I wouldn't leave the patch on and kept burying it in the sandbox. While I don't remember that, I do remember my relief when I no longer had to wear that patch. Though of course this meant that the vision in my left eye wouldn't improve. Ever. To this day my glasses correct the vision in my right eye to nearly 20/20, but the left lens can only be brought to a level of correction that gives me a measure of balance. (Ha!) This creates a depth perception issue t

a striped cat in a basket

I hate doing laundry. Actually, I don't mind the sorting and the actual machine loading. It's the aftermath that does me in. I hate folding. Now, when the kids were little, I did fairly well.  At one point I even had four separate laundry baskets each with one child's name. I tended to keep up fairly well, low those many years ago. Of course, I suppose that would depend on whom you ask. There was the great Thanksgiving sock-folding standoff of 2002. My parents were visiting and my mom, also known as the laundry fairy, suggested rather strongly that we match and fold the laundry basket full of socks. She had already folded all the other laundry, swept my driveway, and done up the dishes - and she wanted to tackle those socks. Back then, a visit from my mom meant lots of straightening, sorting, folding, and cleaning. Never mind that I had done all that before she arrived - there was always more. I know she did it to be helpful, and it was. Especially when a load of laundry pu

Every time I swallow it feels as if I have one of these stuck in my throat. I had the delightful experience this morning of hearing a doctor use the words "pus" and "goiter" in the same sentence. And yes, she was referring to me. While I definitely had one, the other is, thankfully, unlikely. Last night I noticed my right knuckle was sore. It was hard to see for sure, but it looked as if I had a splinter. In my knuckle. Now, you'd think someone would notice a splinter going into a knuckle, but I had no recollection of a sudden pain. The only contact with wood I remember having was putting logs in the fireplace and for that I always wear fireplace gloves. Nonetheless, in the dim light of our CFL bulbs, it looked like a splinter. I jokingly said to my girls, "Watch. In the morning I'll wake up and it will be swollen and full of pus!" Ha ha. I should know better. This morning it was indeed swollen, red, tender, and undoubtedly infected. I decided to h

With my renewed focus on mindfulness, I recognized that I am not the only one in my household who has let personal interests and endeavors slide.   My husband used to brew beer.  It was a hobby he enjoyed but which fell by the wayside as our lives became "busier." There just never seemed to be time. But making time for personal interests is vital to contentment.  Once I'd rediscovered this for myself it was time to grant the gift of time to my husband. He works crazy long hours with loads of travel.  His weekends have always been filled with "chores" - stacking wood, making repairs, working in the yard, etc.  Those little tasks that seemed so important would suck up whatever non-work time he had. Well no more. As they say, all work and no play makes Mike a worn-out, unfulfilled, guy. Or something like that. So for Christmas this year I got him a gift certificate to a local brewing supply store. In the past he always made-do with barely adequate equipment. This g

Isn't this gorgeous? My youngest daughter, Melissa, 14, learned how to spin nearly two summers ago. She is quite the fiber artist. For her birthday last year, in addition to several sheep's worth of roving, she received a small drum carder.  Actually, she paid for about a third of the carder - as with most things, spinning supplies and tools are quite expensive. A drum carder allows her to custom blend fibers in spinning-ready batts. Here is a fiber "sandwich" - various types of wools and colors are layered before carding. These sandwiches are then fed into the hand-cranked drum carder. It takes a fair amount of muscle to turn the crank. As the fibers are run through the combs they are mixed and smoothed. Henry is always willing to supervise; unfortunately he has a penchant for stealing whole hunks of roving. Here you see a completed "sandwich' ready for the carder. And here.. Here is the finished batt. And another one. Melissa then takes these batts and spin

It rained last week and it smelled like spring

Floyd knows exactly who he is: Gorgeous, that's who. When my third child started college last fall I realized something. I have devoted so much of myself to being a mom, a wife, an animal caretaker, and in dealing with chronic illness that I let myself stagnate. I suppose I never really answered that iconic question of youth "Who am I?" I just kind of avoided it as my life took off. Who am I? At 21, a wife. At 22, a grad student. At 24, a stay-at-home mom At 26, stay-at-home mom of two. At 29, stay-at-home mom of three. At 33, stay-at-home mom of four. Then I became a homeschooler, a sometime unschooler, a mom of high school kids, college kids, graduate student kids. And while I hope to add grandmother and mother-in-law to that list someday (not necessarily in that order!), the pattern I've established is quite clear. I tend to define who I am through my relationships to others.  There's nothing wrong with that, but I need to know who I am individually as well. No

My cactus is confused. I bought it several years ago as a Christmas cactus but this year it just can't make up it's mind. So far it has bloomed at Thanksgiving and Christmas, in mid-January and for Valentine's day. Now, it's heralding spring. It seems to be mimicking Mother Nature's confusion.  Little snow, record warmth, crocus blooming in February. This week alone we've had rain, temps in the 50s, and right now big, beautiful snowflakes are drifting past my window. Yesterday it got uncomfortably warm in the house just from the fireplace.  Today, I've already run the heat, the fire is blazing, and I'm cold even with a heavy afghan and two cats on my lap. I'm not complaining, mind you. I hate snow and ice and cold. And as far as I'm concerned, my cactus can keep right on blooming.

Early in my treatment for depression, before my therapist knew me well, he tried lots of what I like to call "the little tricks" he learned in "therapy school." The one that came to mind last week was when he told me to buy myself a flower. Yeah. Here I am, sitting in your office, paying you crazy sums, suffering from severe depression, and you want me to buy myself a flower? Which is pretty much what I told him.  But I didn't stop there.  I let him know in uncertain terms that if I had to buy my own flower, for goodness' sake, I would only feel worse. I believe this suggestion came shortly after his "go home and take a nice relaxing bath" idea.  At the time I was a mother to four children under 11, one of whom was a toddler.  My husband traveled, my bathtub was dirty, and taking a bath in the afternoon was about the last thing I could do. I suggested he find out if these trite ideas actually made anyone happier or only increased the anger the pa