Ordinary Time

Yesterday L. needed to be at Northwestern by 9:00 am for a class so we were out the door early. I had plans as to how I was going to spend my three hours in Evanston. The first was, of course, to head to Vogue Fabrics for a bit. Boy, I miss living close to it, though my checkbook is healthier as a result. My next stop was to stop and see a friend who lives next door to the Big Ugly House, so that was where I headed next. Having lived in Evanston for so many years, there seems to be a part of my brain that has those mental maps stored because I still don't need to really think about where I'm going. The old habits just take over. This is where it gets a little weird. I'm at a stop light sitting under the El tracks when my brain says, "I'm heading home now" as if the past eight and a half years never happened. There is a moment of agreement with my brain that that's the case, and then there comes the realization that I don't actually live in Evanston. At...

For the past couple of months, a couple of friends and I have been meeting on Zoom to share our current weaving projects. These are friends I met taking weaving classes and we all decided that we wanted something more consistent than the random weaving class a few times a year. We specifically were interested in focusing on weaving fabric and then sewing clothing with that fabric. It's not something all weavers are interested in. I've been enjoying it. We each take some time to share what we've each been working on, give each other suggestions and encouragement, and also chat a bit.  I wanted to do this because I wanted consistent interactions with other weavers. Self-motivation is not always a problem for me, but on the other hand, knowing we have a time set to meet, does give me some benchmarks to work toward. It's interesting because we each lean towards different types of weaving and styles of clothing.  This feels like another small step towards creating the commun...

Last week I had dinner with a couple of very good friends at one of their homes. It was a lovely evening of good food and good conversation. Today, another friend offered her house for me to dry the fabric I wove (fabric that comes off a loom all needs to be wet finished before it is completed) because we have cats here who are a bit too entranced by yarn and textiles. Plus, she has air conditioning which means it stood a chance of actually drying. I got home from dropping that off, and then got everyone in the car to enjoy a friend's house pool.  After teatime, I received a text saying the fabric was mostly dry and did I want to come iron it at her house. I thought for a moment... Iron at my house where it's a bit warm and I would need to vacuum the floor before I ironed yards of fabric or iron at her air-conditioned house with a pet free sewing are. Guess which I chose. No vacuuming was needed.  Driving home from my friend's house where I had ironed fabric, I was struck w...

I made the realization today that it was seven years ago today that we signed the contract on this house. (You can read about that day on God's Provision .) It made me sit back a bit and appreciate how much has changed in the past seven years. It is also a little painful to read all my emotional roilings from that time. We were in the throws of possibly the biggest change in our married life and I was a mess. I knew I was a mess, but couldn't be anything else. There were too many unknowns and too much imminent loss which could not be counterbalanced by the vague hopes and dreams I had for what was to come.  Yet here we are, settled in a good place with friends and connections of many varieties in the community. There are even horses, five of them!, in the barn. In those first years I didn't think we would ever really feel comfortable here, then just as we thought we were finding our feet, Covid hit and we very much went nearly back to square one. It feels good to be on this...

I had an odd dream last night that J. and I decided to sell the house we're currently in and we're going to buy a very large house in the city. There was a lot more to it than that, because dreams are odd, but that was the main outline. In my dream I remember spending a lot of time wondering if that is what I really wanted to do.  We've been here over six years now, which seems crazy because it couldn't be that long. But I also have reached a point where it just feels like home and I need to stop a minute and remember before. I think the dream was a little bit of emotional house keeping. On Monday, earlier this week, I hadn't posted because I was out somewhat late with two good friends. We'd had dinner together without children. It was lovely. But I think it also dredged up a bit of stuff because having a group of mom friends to go out to dinner with (and not something that I felt the need to organize) was one of those last things that I had been missing. It fel...

Yesterday was D.'s 19th birthday, today is J.'s birthday, and tomorrow is our 31st anniversary. It's a busy three days. There is also another layer on these three days which hadn't been there originally. Five years ago on D.'s birthday the movers came and took away all the furniture and boxes from the Big Ugly House. Fiver years ago today, we did the final cleaning and crammed as much as we could possibly cram into our two vehicles, and locked the door to the Big Ugly House for the final time. Five years ago tomorrow we sat in our hotel room waiting for the phone call that would tell us that we officially closed on the sale of the Big Ugly House and the afternoon would involve closing on our new house.  I've been thinking about that transition a lot over the past couple of days. I've also been thinking about the ensuing five years. There was so much of it that was hard while there were also parts of it that were good. Having a pandemic in the middle didn...

I'm resorting to one of the questions people gave me for when I was feeling fresh out of ideas about what to write about. Actually it's going to be answering two questions, but they are related. But first we have to go back in time for a bit. It's all related, I promise. A couple of days ago I was scrolling through old posts because one of the best parts about keeping a blog about our life long term is that I can easily go back and see what we were doing at any given time. I remember this about March last year as well, but I am finding myself having to do quite a bit of mindfulness work (along the lines of what I do with R. to help keep her regulated) because I am finding vague anxiety randomly creeping up on me. When this happens, it can be helpful to see if it correlates to something stressful that happened in the past. Knowing you are in a traumaversary can help you ride it out without worrying about it too much. It's just a thing to get through and nothing more. Cer...

Some of you might have heard that the Chicago area had a rash of tornado outbreaks last night. We are fine, though one of them did touch down a few miles north of us. I'm pretty sure we experienced a few minutes of derecho winds, though. It was incredibly loud in the middle of it all. Poor Kenzie was a wreck and ended up peeing in the house because he just couldn't bring himself to go outside. (This is the dog who will never have an accident inside. Ever.) But our biggest clue that we had some unusually strong winds was seeing this in the morning when we had daylight to see. This is was the gutted trailer that has been sitting around ever since W. decided he couldn't fix the leak and then turn it into a tiny house. We hadn't been quite sure what to do with it. Now, it looks as though we'll be calling someone our neighbor knows who can cram it into a dumpster. This was the only damage from the storm; nothing else was touched. Well, some tree branches, but when you ha...

There are a lot of things I'm good at and enjoy doing. (This isn't meant to brag; it's just a statement of fact. There are also a lot of things I'm not good at... accounting in any form, car mechanics, tennis to name a few.) The trouble with being good at many things that you enjoy is that it is hard to settle. I flit instead... doing one thing for a while, then another. As much as this is true for my avocations, it was also true when I envisioned what I wanted to do with my life. There are so many avenues that I find interesting that for a long time, I couldn't figure out what to focus on because I knew that by focusing on one, it meant setting aside the others. Since I'm a bit commitment phobic in certain areas of my life (it's why I chose long wires to hang a rotating array of pictures in the old house on the lovely giant wall in my kitchen instead of committing to one set of permanent pictures), it became a fairly constant prayer that God show me what I ...

Finally, after months of living with barely functioning phones, J. and I ordered new ones which will arrive tomorrow. I hate the fact that cell phones are not designed to last more than a few years. We've only had these for just three a half years. It really seems that having something last for at least five years is not too much to ask. My children inform me otherwise. This unwillingness to accept the current disposable phone culture is what caused us to wait so long to replace them. But yesterday, while I was talking with another parent about ways to help connect to her son who was struggling, my phone dies not once but twice. It is infuriating when the battery goes from 40% to 15% to 0% within the span of one minute. I didn't even have time to get it plugged into the charger before it died. (And plugging it in is no guarantee it will actually charge. If the plug isn't positioned in exactly the correct manner, it won't charge.) Did I mention how infuriating this is? I...

One of the real benefits of keeping a daily blog over a vast quantity of years is that it is very easy to see what you were doing on any given date. This can be helpful in a myriad of ways. I cannot tell you the number of family dinner arguments discussions that were solved by a quick look at the blog. It's helpful for remember how long ago we did something or where we went. It is also invaluable for figuring out why your skin is vaguely crawling and you just cannot settle with anything.  My dry lots are looking fantastic today because I spent about three hours this morning finishing the mucking out. It was all I could manage... physical labor and hanging with the horses. We did not do school. I'm not even sure what the people even did inside because I was in the barn. I've now experienced this unsettled, uncomfortable feeling enough to know (eventually) that this could be traumaversary related. When I sat down at the computer this evening, I decided to take a look and see ...

We woke up on a hotel room, complete with children, one dog, two cats, and one quail, and waited around for the phone call telling us the closing on the Big Ugly House had been completed. With that happy news, we loaded the dependents back up into the various cars and drove to what would be our new home. With permission, we left all the dependents at the house, but hanging around on the back porch, while J. and I went to the closing for our new house. We had whatever things that did not go on the moving trucks, which turned out to be quite a bit. The furniture would not arrive for a week and we slept in sleeping bags on the floor. I go back and forth as to whether I think it feels longer or shorter than three years... maybe a little bit of both. When I would talk to people about moving, asking for advice, most would say that it takes 2-3 years to really feel as though you are settled. I didn't want to hear this. I wanted to be settled right away, and I worked HARD to try to get...

J. and I had to drive into Evanston this afternoon to attend the memorial service for the daughter of friends of ours. No one should have to bury a child. It is just wrong. But that isn't what I want to write about. The service was held at our Evanston church, the one J. grew up in and the one I attended for thirty years. We have a lot of history there, just as we do with the City of Evanston itself. We have now lived away from Evanston for nearly three years. We are finding our place in our new home... making new friends, creating history and connections, becoming part of the community. It is slow work, but we continually feel as though we are putting roots down. Yet, both J. and I found that being in Evanston, being in our church, it felt as though we had been gone on a vacation and now we were back. It would have taken very little to convince either of us that we still lived there, it felt so normal. Of course, if this were the case, we would not have had the many conversati...

You want to know the next best thing to libraries? Library book sales. I realized today that I hadn't been to a library book sale since we moved. In Evanston, I was at the book sale nearly every time the library held it. I might only get a couple of things, but it was fun to look and see if I could find any good additions to our library at prices that fit my budget. It was just by chance that I happened upon a really good library sale in the town next to ours. I was a little pressed for time or I would have probably come home with more, but I did pretty well as it was. A couple of Christmas gifts, some craft books that I wouldn't normally buy but at $1.00 or $0.50 per book, I will get them for patterns or reference, a cook book, and some books on CD. The books on CD were the true bargain find. They were middle grade chapter books and I found quite a few titles that I know the youngest enjoy. Both G. and L. love to listen to books as they do other things, when they are not a...

"Hospitality is not for the called or gifted. It's not for the gregarious extroverts with huge houses and overflowing bank accounts. And it's not for the people with angelic children, respectable roommates, or perfect marriages. Contrary to those spiritual gift tests that catalog hospitality as a special talent, nowhere in the Bible is it named as such. Instead, hospitality is a command (see Romans 12:13; 1 Peter 4:9). Hospitality is for everyone." (p. 114 from Invited: The Power of Hospitality in an Age of Loneliness by Leslie Verner) I used to be all about hospitality. When we lived in the Big Ugly House it was easy. I had a dining room which could seat my entire family plus the same number of guests. I had a kitchen which made it easy to prepare large amounts of food. I had a guest room and a guest bathroom separated from the other bedrooms which we used many, many times for both short and long stays of a wide variety of guests. We hosted international students...

We may not have started school yet, but school has certainly begun for some around here. Yesterday, M. began classes in the Vet Tech program. I have no idea how things are going since I have not seen, much less spoken with, M. since Sunday night. While it's great that M. can still work at the shelter clinic while in school, going from work to night classes is tough. I'll probably hear on Thursday how things are going. Today, D. started classes at J.'s school. He leaves with J. in the morning, takes his classes and entertains himself for the rest of the day, and comes home with J. at the end of the work day. It sounds as though things went well today, and D. is feeling confident. The other new thing that happened today was that I took the younger half of my children and we did our first activity with the co-op we are joining this fall. If you know me in real life, this might be more than a little surprising to you; I'm really not much of an organized (rather than ...

Our van's air conditioning is out. Again. It's become an annual event to turn on the air on the first hot day after winter only to discover that the small leak in the coolant system that cannot be located has done it's work again over the summer and emptied the system. Because some of us will be driving up to Michigan next week, it seemed kind of important to recharge the system so the poor children stuck in the back of the van didn't expire before we arrived. This required the logistics of figuring out when we could be without the van, when the shop had an opening, and how it all would work. Our local dealer is incredibly nice and found a way to squeeze up in. M. is home so we have access to a second car. The van is now in the shop to have its ability to cool restored. (I truly cannot tell you how happy this makes me.) As J. and I were driving home after I picked him up from having dropped off the van, he mentioned that he feels as though we will use this place forev...

Today is the two year anniversary of us being in this house. When we first moved and I talked to people about surviving major moves, they all said that it took about two years to really feel as though they were settling in. This was hard to hear. When we first moved, I was desperate to create the kind of support system and comfort level that we had left. Why I thought that I could create in one year what took over thirty to build is beyond me, but that didn't stop me from trying. I didn't want to wait two years until I began to feel comfortable. Yet that is what I had to do. I can tell you it is with some great relief that I say we have reached the two year mark. The second year in a new place had it's challenges, but it increasingly felt better. I know people now... and I often even remember their names! We have met more neighbors, we have met more people at church, I am starting to sort out the social aspect of our homeschooling, and everything just feels less new. I ...

We've lived here for lived here now for not quite a year and a half. As we approach our second set of holidays, I've been thinking a lot about where we are. Knowing a move is going to cause upheaval, and living through that upheaval are two very different things. And like living through the adjustment of a new, older, adopted child entering the family, you can think you are functioning quite well thank you very much, until you are a ways away from it, and realize just how not well you were functioning. This is mainly what I've been realizing these past few weeks. Yes, we (well, I specifically) were doing pretty well, but it was through sheer effort. If I'm honest, much of that effort was not actually needed, but I thought it was at the time. I needed to feel settled, I needed to feel settled now, and I was going to work tirelessly to build my social systems so I could feel settled. Even while I was doing this, I had in the back of my head the knowledge that much of wh...

We just finished our big June Birthday Bash Blow Out, and I'll tell you about it and show pictures on Monday. In the meantime, I realize that today is the one year anniversary of us owning this house. It's been quite a year. One year ago today, we closed on two houses; the Big Ugly House in the morning and this one in the afternoon. We had slept in a hotel overnight, complete with one dog, two cats, and one quail. The five younger people left for church camp from one house, and returned to another. We had no furniture, as the floors were all going to be redone. The next day would be spent cleaning out every shed and out building because they were packed full with stuff the previous owners had left behind. We were relieved to have the stress of selling the house and packing done, but it all felt vaguely disorienting. What a difference a year makes. I am so very glad to be on this side of all of that. While parts of the year have been very hard, I can say we are all feelin...