blogs: food for the brain, and the heart

Wow. This week as I was in front of the computer while nursing, I decided to branch out from my usual blogs and follow links to see where they would take me. The result surprised me: I don't think I have learned this much in one week EVER in my life. My brain--my poor, muddled, sleep-deprived brain feels like it has swelled with nourishing new information. I feel more lucid, more aware, more awake than before. I love the feeling--I have been so foggy brained for so long (this blog being my only creative brain-workout) and learning new things, and such a variety of things, has brought me clarity.

Here are just a FEW of the things I have been learning about (the ones I can remember right now--ha!):

--Britian shipped thousands of poor children to its colonies, esp. Australia--up until 1967!
--recent statistics of orphans worldwide
--Racism in connection with multi-race adoptions
--David Duke and his attempts to "modernize" the KKK
--modern medical uses for leaches
--Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, a genetic disorder that leads its suffers, mostly male, to severe self-mutilation
--reactive detatchment disorder (RAD)
--facial characteristics of Fetal Alchohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD)
--Screwworms (which can be found in California year round), bot flies and Furuncular myiasis

(wow, this is a pretty depressing/gross list so far . . . let me get on to some more positive)

--churches who are taking stances and putting their beliefs into practive, such as "The Radical Experiment" at Brook Hills Church and a church in Florida who made a public announcement that they would find adoptive homes for any child who was brought to them.
--people who are purposefully adopting HIV/AIDS kids--did you know HIV is considered a "managable" disease in the US now, and kids who get treatment can expect to live long, full lives?
--children rescued from sex-trafficing
--beautiful true story of God providing a way for a family who wanted to adopt
--Rebecca Walker--daughter of Alice Walker (The Color Purple)--whom I had not previously heard of, but who Time Magazine called "one of the fifty most influential leaders of her generation." That's my generation. And she has a blog.
--there are people in our world today who are chosing to live moneyless. Yes, live completely without using money.

My mind feels crazy-wide open!

But the best part of my virtual meanderings has been discovering several blogs that have challenged my ways of thinking about my role in this world, God's call for us to care for widows and orphans, and the beauties of homeschool. I have been challenged and encouraged and inspired in turn as I read what these amazing, joyful, self-sacrificing women are doing to better the world in purposeful, concrete, definitely hard but fruitful ways. I am making a new blogroll over on the sidebar, dedicated to these blogs. If you are ever feeling discouraged as a mom--esp. as a homeschool mom--I recommend checking out one of these blogs. The moms are doing amazing things, but make no pretenses of being "Supermoms" and their down-to-earth, honest writing has given me so much this week to nourish my spirit.

Time on the computer can be a phenomenal waste of time. I am working hard to fend off a rising addiction, which started when I was sick those three weeks and had no energy and just sat in front of the computer much of the time. Once I got well, I found it was hard to re-train myself to get up and moving, so I have been making conscious time-decisions about my computer use. But I feel no guilt whatsoever for all the blog reading I do while I am breast-feeding E--good for him, good for me.

And especially this week, REALLY good for me.

ridiculously proud of myself

This one is dedicated to Dawn.

Last night I went to the fridge when it was time to make dinner, and looked to see what needed to be used up. I have a fair amount of fresh veggies, but none that needed to be used immediately, and none that inspired me.

What was crying out to be used:
--half of a big can of pureed pumpkin (E eats as baby food)
--half a tub of ricotta cheese
--two servings of leftover oatmeal

First response--apprehension. Second response--inspiration.

I sauteed some onion, then added the pumpkin and oatmeal and mashed it all together. Added one can of diced tomatoes and some water and cinnamon, cumin, oregano and pepper. Let simmer for 15 min., then turn off heat and mix in ricotta. Voila!

I called it "Pumpkin Surprise Soup" and the girls really liked it.

I myself thought it was just "Meh," until I added a dash of leftover chili sauce from Charlie Hong Kong's. Perfect! It had a creamy, spicy Caribbean thing going on. D and I ate it after the kids were in bed with a side of tortilla chips and fresh avocado. Mmmmmmmmm.

But I must say, I can't believe I pulled that one off. ; )

You see, while I really can't stand waste, I confess I waste food all the time. I am much better than I used to be, now that we have a new fridge. In the old one, stuff would get lost on the bottom shelves all the time; in our new fridge, which has the freezer on the bottom and "armoire" style doors, I can see EVERYTHING really well. I am no longer losing food, and since it is all right in front of my face, I no longer forget what we have and what needs to be used up.

So now I tend to only waste the last, lingering bits of food--that last helping of baby spinach that gets slimy before I have used up the bag; that last piece of bread that I forgot to put in the fridge and so it molded, etc. But I am trying to be really proactive about those too, and not let little bits linger. This means I am getting creative with how to combine those little bits into something palatable.

Usually the results are quite good, if unusual, like last night's "surprise" soup.

I think I need to come up with a term for this kind of "rescue" cooking. Something like "scavenging". . . but that sounds more appetizing. Or like "refrigerator gleaning". . . something like the concept of "up-cycling" except for food. . . .

Anyone?

Christmas shopping--done by October

I stopped by the Trade as One fair trade "boutique" after the church service Sunday, and as I walked around looking at things, I found myself moaning with pleasure (aloud!) over some of the beautiful things. A gorgeous black bowl from Guatemala, what felt like really smooth stone-like pottery. A ring made out of tiny multi-hued brown beads, with a tassle of beads on top--baby E really liked it too. A hand-tooled red leather journal. An embroidered grey wool satchel. A red beaded bracelet that reminded me of a bejeweled sea cucumber. A beautiful velvety matte black mug from Vietnam with a sea blue crackle glaze inside. Lovely stuff.


I did not buy a thing. And that's because 1) we have no money for extra stuff this year, and 2) I did not NEED any of it, and 3) I had almost all of my Christmas shopping done before the end of October!


Years ago I started looking for and gathering gifts year-round, one way I can try to keep Christmas gift-giving both more affordable and more meaningful. I have succeeded in the more affordable--but have only been succeeding in the more meaningful category for the past two years, I would say. Clearly, if you shop year-round you can get things when they are on sale. But the easy trap I used to fall into was buying gifts that were really nice things at awesome prices--and then later trying to figure out who it would be for. Or thinking, "this would fit so and so" and so buying it for that person with the assumption that she would like it because it was a nice thing, even if it was not necessarily her kind of thing. It is a lot harder, and requires more relationship, to figure out what a person really likes and wants. But shouldn't relationship be the point?


So as I grow in gift-giving experience, I am getting better at choosing gifts--I think. ; ) The recipients are much too well-mannered to tell me otherwise! But, somewhat ironically, I think I have been giving better gifts in the past few years of frugal shopping then I had before, when we had more $ to spend on gifts. Having less money to spend makes me shop more carefully, and I am more apt to be creative and make gifts, or to give simple but more meaning-invested gifts. Or even be completely glad to give gift cards, for those who really do prefer those. I find having to rethink old patterns of spending and giving around Christmas has opened up my heart to new ways of loving people--such as focusing my gift more on them (what they really want) and not myself (what I really want to give them). And giving more gifts of self, and less stuff.


At first I struggled with giving just one simple gift to someone for Christmas. It seemed miserly, cheap, unloving, esp. if I knew the person would be giving me a bigger, "better" present--or multiple presents. It is a tricky thing--wanting to show love to someone with a gift, but not wanting to perpetuate the cycles of guilt-giving and too much stuff. I know there are certain family members who may well feel unloved if they only get one present, even if I make it a really good one--or at least they may feel unappreciated, since they most likely will have given us a pile of presents. So for those people, I try to make the gifts themselves less inexpensive, but more numerous and fraught with meaning. ; ) But for most of our family members, I have just given the simple gift as it is, figuring they will either accept it with graciousness or won't. I am not responsible for how someone receives a gift, just for how I give it.


And I have taken the same lesson to heart myself! I have been learning how to be content with giving simple gifts from a wide-open heart, not feeling embarassed by our sometimes meagre resources--because, actually, even if we had more money, I would still choose to give gifts the way we have been these past couple of years. It is a little about being wise with money, and a little about purposefully choosing to be part of a cultural shift away from over-consumerisn at Christmastime, and a little about wanting to return to more simmple, old-fashioned ways of celebrating that have nothing to do with "stuff." But mostly it is about wanting to give from a focus on love, and receive with a focus on thanksgiving.


Getting to sometimes give and receive such beautiful things--that's called icing on the cake! Now that I know about Trade for One, I may work some of their offerings into my gift plan for next year. I would love to think that the $ we do spend is helping make the world a better place. But even then, I will buy with the same values--gifts that are practical and not just beautiful, gifts that are inexpensive but not cheaply made, gifts that fit the recipient and not just my own shopping tastes. : )

Anyone who is interested, check out the Trade for One website, where you can find out if there will be a Trade for One event in your area, or even browse the goods they offer online.

Approaching the holidays with peace and perspective

I am working, slowly, on the second posting about scheduling life. One friend has enouraged me to keep writing about it, so I will--thanks, friend!--but as I sit here ready to type while E is sleeping and the girls are momentarily happily coloring at the kitchen table, I find there is something else on my mind that I want to write about first.

The topic is reclaiming Christmas. There are SO many ways I have been re-thinking this holiday, changing my attitudes and expectations, and making new, more healthy traditions. I hope to share some of the best parts of this with you readers between now and Christmas. For today, I want to focus on wise consumership during the holidays--not just reining in over-spending, but actually challenging and maybe changing our perspectives on gift-giving and how we show (or don't show!) love to one another through gift-giving. And putting the focus of Christmas back on the Christ child and love and family and joy and peace.

I don't really have much to SAY about this--there are too many other people who have already said it better than I could. For example, the "Reverend" Billy from the brilliant documentary What Would Jesus Buy?:



"Reverend" Billy is not a pastor--I don't even think he is Christian. He is an actor with passion about the glut and greed of our overly consumeristic society in America, and has a "schtick" that not only grabs people's attention but also hits at a true spirtual void in our culture.

Or the grass-roots movement dear to my heart, the Advent Conspiracy, which helps put spending in a real-world perspective and suggests a framework for remodeling our celebrations around what really matters:



Or Trade as One, which will be hosting a fair-trade bazaar at Vintage Faith this upcoming Sunday, who encourages you to use your spending to help make the world a better place:



In Christmases past, I have been discouraged and frustrated by many aspects of gift-giving, and have felt disconnected from the real meaning of the season. I have felt like a real grinch, being ungrateful for the gifts I was receiving, and having no joy as I shopped for others out of guilt but not a desire to love them through giving. Or having too much fun selecting the "perfect" gift for someone (i.e. what I like, or what I think they "need") but refusing to give them what I knew they would really want. These attitudes reflect many things: how I have sinned against the Christmas Spirit, if you will, by making the focus on me and my wants. How I have been wounded by some people using Christmas "giving" to send a negative message to me. How deep in me is a legitimate spiritual ache for a better way to "celebrate" Christmas--one that cherishes what is worth cherishing, and nourishes the human spirit instead of draining and deflating it (or overpadding it!). But with all these different things I was feeling for year after year, I seriously thought it was just me, and there was nothing to do about it.

Each of the three video clips I shared above represent FREEDOM for me. First came the documentary, which I am not sure many people saw but which I want all of my loved ones to see. I realized that I was not alone in my despair about Christmas gift-giving, and had newfound courage to take a stand against some things we had been doing for years that we did not want to do but felt like we had to do--like get a small stack of presents for certain family members, instead of just one nice, meaningful gift. Because a small stack of gifts represents how much we love them, right?

The Advent Conspiracy took these basic realizations and made them more personal, more spiritual, and gave a postive goal to take the place of the old gift giving.

Then this year Trade as One takes the ideas one step further--now that we have addressed reigning in rampant spending, and better, more meaningful alternatives, we can consider how to be purposeful in buying the things we are going to buy. Actually using spending money (which we are going to be doing, just hopefully with wisdom and love and restraint) to help others around the globe.

Christmas just keeps getting better and better.

*The Trade as One boutique will be this Sunday, November 15 from 10:00 a.m. until 9:30 p.m. in the room directly opposite the sanctuary. Local friends, consider stopping by!

a brief history of baring it all

Finally, a posting worthy of dedicating to my big sister Rebecca! ; )

Ain't she cute? Ok, no that's not my sister, but this photo does bring back memories of the voluptuous teenager she was, very cute and curvy--I was more long and, um, sleek (the opposite of curvy, if you will).

This image comes from a fascinating photo-essay on Slate.com, about the history of the bikini. Two pieces (ha!) of information I learned from the article: First, when the bikini first came on the scene in Paris, the models there were so scandalized they refused to model it. So who did the designer find to model? A stripper named Micheline Bernardini, pictured above.

Second, before the bikini, women's swimwear took its modesty cues from the movies. Fascinating!

Notable quotation from the photo essay: A few years ago, Sports Illustrated dug up a 1957 issue of Modern Girl that declared: "It is hardly necessary to waste words over the so-called bikini since it is inconceivable that any girl with tact and decency would ever wear such a thing."

http://www.slate.com/id/2221241/?obref=obinsite

This is all the more interesting when contrasted with an article I read when visiting Susan in Colorado Springs (it was from a magazine in your living room, Susan--maybe a Newsweek?) that discussed the recent "alarming" trend among young French women to be more modest in their swimwear, esp. eschewing the topless beaches.

My own opinions about bikinis developed mainly from two realization: one, that most women look worse and not better when they bare it all; second, that I believe modesty is valuable, and want to instill an appreciation of it in my chidren.

We are not at all prudes around the house, partly out of practicality:

And partly because we are trying to teach the children to think their bodies and what their bodies do are good, beautiful, natural things. That their bodies are designed brilliantly, and should be admired for their miraculous qualities and their intrinsic aesthetics. That nothing about our bodies is bad except how we sometimes choose to use them to hurt or offend others. How our bodies and spirits are part of a whole person, and we cannot separate one from the other, and so what we do with out bodies affects our spirits, and vice versa.

Clearly there are so many ways we could talk about this subject and get really deep and profound, but let's just get back to the bikinis. ; )

Most of you probably have figured out that our girls will not be wearing skin-baring clothing until they are out on their own--what they do as adults will be completely up to them. But as kids, I have the perfect beachwear for them:

Not a great pic--taken when visiting a friend with a pool!--but you can see their swimwear, which is most decidedly modest. But that is not why I love these suits, which we get from a company out here in CA called Tuga Swimwear. I love them because:

--no more slathering on sunscreen! with these SPF rated suits and their sunhats they are protected fully unless we are out for a long time or in very intense sun, when we still need to lather arms and legs and faces. Esp. no more burned areas on shoulders and backs where regular suits rub off the sunscreen or where parent fingers sometimes don't get the lotion all the way to the edges of the suit!

--no more sand rubbing painfully in tender areas! No more sand in diapers! Even when the kids bury themselves in the sand!

--no sand in the crotch means no sand sneaking home in the suimsuit crotch to spill all over the bathroom floor when girls clean off in the shower! (ok, some still sticks to the fabric, so we still strip out on the back deck when we come from the beach--but nothing like my memories of the handful of beach we would be sitting on all the way back to Aunt Rosalie's house in, when we would strip in the shower and watch it go down the shower drain. Bring back memories, Rebecca?)

--we can go from playground to beach, etc. and the kids are more comfortable and ready for anything!

When the girls are older, they may not go for the full coverage swim combos anymore (the one-piece only go up to age 6 anyway, but I love the bike short/rashguard oldest sister G is wearing in the pic), but luckily it shouldn't be because they are not "cool"--because while California is the home of the bikini here in the USA, it is also the home of surfing USA, so a lot of the coolest girls wear rashguards and board shorts! Great white shark fears aside, I'll take a surfer girl over a stripper girl anytime!

So, there you have it, a bare bones (ha! i am really on a roll. a pathetic roll, but a roll.) perspective on swimwear past, present and future.

Photograph of Micheline Bernardini in 1946 courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Dedicated to my big sister, of the bikini worthy curves, who now has two beautiful and modest teenage daughters. ; )

we interrupt the scheduled posting for a resounding THANK YOU LORD!

D just came home from church, where he took G and M this morning. I stayed home with B, who might have pinkeye, and E, who has a cold.

I went out to the driveway to greet him and ask them all to be quiet coming into the house because E was asleep. We chatted about their morning for a few minutes, enjoying the sunshine, and then D told me a story about what happened to them a few minutes ago:

They were in the minivan coming home from church, sitting at at red light at the intersection of Cabrillo/Highway 1 and Highway 9. They were in the left-hand lane, with the lane to turn onto Highway 9 on their left, another car in front of them, and another mini-van in the lane to their right, and the right-turn lane onto Hgwy 9/River St. to the right of that. He heard a horrible screetch of tires, like you hear right before a huge CRASH, and saw to his right an 80's muscle car barreling past him, trailing a huge cloud of black smoke. The car passed BETWEEN our minivan and the van in the right hand lane, running the red light and charging through that very busy intersection without accident.

D thinks the car was going about 45-50 mph when it entered the intersection. He figures the driver was speeding up while approaching the intersection, then had to slam on the brakes (enough to make them smoke so badly!) to try to stop, realized he could not, and chose to hit the gas to get through the intersection as fast as possible.

We drive on that road multiple times a week. I have never seen enough room for a whole car to fit between the cars parked in their lanes. A motocycle, yes. A mini-cooper, maybe. A full sized car? No. I cannot comprehend how that muscle car flew between two rows of vehicles--WIDE vehicles, mind you!--without even touching them. There should have been major wreckage to all the cars he passed, crumpled doors, shattered side windows--at the very least there should have been knocked off side-view mirrors, or even just one car's side scraped!

For that car to get through that very busy intersection unscathed while running the red light is something we would say was "a miracle," but mean it in the sense of an amazing, but conceviable possibility. But how the car made it past the cars waiting at the light seems to me inconceviable; truly impossible.

I firmly believe God just performed a quick, quiet miracle to save my family and the others there at the intersection.

Our mini-van has three rows of seats, and we have the last row pushed back as far as it goes to accommodate all the car seats. Both older girls were sitting in their seats in the last row, maybe 16 inches from the rear hatch. If that car had hit our vehicle, D would have been injured, but the girls would most likely have been killed.

But God is so good, he not only protected them from harm, but Beulah (our mini-van) too. In what should have been a horrible, tragic accident, NO ONE even got a scratch.

Amen, amen, amen!

the rhythm of life Pt. 1

I have been working on this for some time, and have been meaning to blog about it--and since Desiree over at the Happy (Atheist) Homemaker also wrote about this topic this week, I thought it was time to get my own butt in gear.

Rhythm of life Pt 1: FLYing by the days of the week
The topic is how we schedule life. There are several ways I do this, so I thought I would make a different posting for each application. This first post is on the way I structure the week for taking care of the home. I don't know when I first realized I needed to do this, but it was a few years ago, probably around the same time I discovered FlyLady*, who completely revitalized my ways of thinking about my home and how to maintain it with peace and joy. Ok, still working on the maintaining, the peace, and the joy, but she really has a great method to get you going on these things as a lifestyle, and her ideas--the ones that really worked for me--are the foundation for what I am doing now in my home. I am finding more and more that if I do not PLAN on something to happen, set aside time for it and make it an expectation, then it does not happen. This is true for everything from cleaning the bathroom to reading to my kids to date night with my husband.

Maybe the rest of you reading this never have problems remembering to get things done in a timely manner, or have more self-discipline than I do, or something. You can stop reading now and go spend the time you would have spent reading this post sitting comfortably, surveying your perfectly clean and well-ordered house and patting yourself on the back. You deserve it.

Any of you who are not yet perfectly in control of your homelife, I am writing this partly to help myself focus, since I am revamping the life schedule a bit and writing it out helps me work it through thoroughly, and partly in case some of you might find it interesting or even helpful.

Here are some of the FlyLady ideas for scheduling that I find have become part of the fabric of my daily/weekly existence, in a very good way:

The weekly home "blessing."
FlyLady has her own way of doing it, but here is how I make it work for me: schedule into the week two days when I plan to "bless" my house with quick-n-dirty cleaning. I do this on Mondays and Fridays, and these are the days I vacuum (i.e. get the helper monkeys to vacuum! ; ), swish the toilet, wipe down the bathroom, and imperfectly dust the house. By now this routine is so ingrained that I always remember it, even if I have a reason for not getting it done. But that is seriously half of the battle. And since this is very specifically NOT deep-cleaning time, it should only take about 30 minutes.

Breaking up the house into "zones."
I mentioned previously how the zones have worked really well for the girls: each girl has a zone in the bedroom she neatens as part of her morning routine, and then each girl has a zone in the living room she neatens as part of the evening routine. But it really comes in handy when working out my own deep cleaning chores. Flylady suggests breaking up your house into zones and then spending one week in each zone in rotation, spending 15 minutes a day doing a deep cleaning task. I have tried that, but was dissatisfied with how dirty the rest of the house seemed to get inbetween (between the wood-burning fireplace that puts out a lot of ash dust when D cleans it every morning and the dirt driveway that sneaks in on everyone's shoes, our house gets really dirty really fast). So I am trying a variant of this now: giving each section of the house a zone, and then spending 15 minutes in that zone on a different day of the week (this is time specifically for deep-cleaning, so is in addition to the bi-weekly home blessing and regular daily maintenance like doing dishes and picking up). So it is a daily rotation, not a weekly one.

So right now that looks like:

MONDAY: living room
TUESDAY: entry/back door areas
WEDNESDAY: kitchen
THURSDAY: bedroom (we only have one, which the kids use)
FRIDAY: bathroom
SATURDAY: shower room (they are separate in our little cabin built before indoor showers were the norm)

Sunday is the day of rest, of course. ; ) But I do usually try to clean the sink and counter in the kitchen on Sunday evening--nice to start out the week Monday morning with this welcome.

Saturday is also the day I take our bedding out to the back deck and shake/beat the dust out.

So when I am in the kitchen zone, I might clean out a cupboard or wipe down the cupboard fronts or wash the kitchen windows--the idea is to do one task that takes only about 15 minutes that you don't normally do when you are in the kitchen. It is basically maintaining the home in little increments, and it really works well, although only when you let go of the perfectionist need to have the entire house clean all at the same time! (Although thanks to mothers-in-law, there will still be times for that too! it is just not required on a daily/weekly basis.) The Flylady idea is that you end up having done an entire Spring cleaning in your house every 5 weeks--just a little bit at a time! She is more systematic about it, but I think my way works well too, it just may take longer than 5 weeks.

The beauty of scheduling is that there is a regular flow to the week, so housework has a logical time to be done, and once I get into the rhythm, I find yourself doing it without even thinking about it! And it all gets done, but not in the crash and burn kind of housecleaning I used to do, that leaves me irritable and exhausted--and so discouraged when it all looks dirty again the next day.

Other ways I use the weekly schedule:
Wednesday is both outdoor day (for garden work, girls getting to get really dirty outside) and anti-procrastination day (for doing anything I have been putting off!). Recently this is also my big cooking day, when I can motivate myself to be creative in using up foods in the fridge and cooking more elaborate meals. It just so happens Thursday is the day I get my weekly box of CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) veggies, so it makes sense to make room in the fridge and use up whatever veggies are still hanging around from the last week.

This may sound like a lot to tackle on poor old Weds, but somehow it works for me! Esp. since we are usually home all day Weds. and if the girls have had a good start to their homeschool week they can have an easy school day and their chores that day are also outside or things we have been putting off. It also works because cooking and working outside are two things I tend to procrastinate on!

But I think I also like Weds. (and Mondays and Fridays) as key scheduling days because they are so logically placed in the way I perceive the week. It is just the way my brain works.

Friday is also correspondence day. This means I consciously think of who I might need to call or email--consider this loving people long distance day. So I try to reach out to one person that day.

Scheduling special family time:
And each night of the week has a special focus, too, for building special family time. Each child gets one night a week to stay up and get quality one-on-one time with mom and dad, doing what she/he wants. G has Monday, M has Tuesday, B has Wednesday, E will have Thursday once he is old enough to notice his sisters are doing it. Friday night is date night (usually means I make pizza and D and I watch a movie on the computer. ; )

And my ideal has long been that one night a week is family night--either Sat or Sun night, when we would watch a family movie, play games, etc. But since we have never planned it officially into the week, we have only been doing these kinds of family things sporadically! So I need to get that into gear.

So that is the overall look of the week.

If anyone would like to share what YOU do in your weekly schedule, please do so in the comments! I find this kind of thinking about the week SO helpful, and would enjoy reading how you do it in your home.


Next topic: the rhythm of the day




* http://www.flylady.net/ I will write more about other helpful Flylady ideas in another post--some of them I cannot believe I ever did without.