Ordinary Time

I honestly have no idea what to write this evening. Life just isn't that eventful at the moment. Note that I am not complaining about this, but a calm and peaceful existence doesn't make for varied blog fodder. And I don't really have any books I want to write about because I'm on a light and fluffy kick at the moment (no doubt in direct correlation to disturbing current events) and pretty much have only read Mrs. Polifax.  At dinner this evening, L. mentioned as an aside (I think it was L.) that authors should put more twins in their books. J. then commented that Shakespeare had quite a few sets of twins in his plays. And therein lies the very tenuous connection to the what I'm going to share. This is an old post, but I think it should be resurrected and be appreciated again.  Before I give you the link, you need to know the back story. There was a basement bathroom in the Big Ugly House. Due to the large number of very mature trees in the backyard, we would routin...

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 think this will be the photo version this week because I have quite a few pictures. Remember H.'s drawing of the birch trees I showed you a few weeks ago? Well the paintings that H. and K. made in their art class which were the impetus for that drawing came home yesterday. I love them so much I think I'm going to get some frames for them.  K. H.  The mushrooms we are going are pretty amazing. I am pretty sure you could actually watch them grow if you spent time staring at them long enough. Here's the log when we got it all set up on Tuesday. Yesterday this is what we had. By this afternoon they were even bigger and there were even more starting to grow. It's really fun to watch. Last weekend I finally finished a project that I began at least a year ago. My plan was to frame the back covers of my Cook's Illustrated magazines and use them to decorate the kitchen. Then I had trouble finding the frames I wanted. Three weeks ago I decided to go a different route and ea...

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...

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...

"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...

I'm not sure I would recommend spending one's 26th anniversary doing a final packing of one's home. It was definitely the most stressful part of the week, and even with some amazing packing on J. and TM's part (and an extremely full trailer, van, and two cars), we still had to leave some for the P. Family to bring to us on Saturday. But we did it, and are now settled in our hotel with five children and four animals. Last night, our older children started out having some fun wrapping siblings up in the leftover packing plastic wrap, which then devolved into a whole family dodge ball game in the empty dining room. I just want to go on record as saying that it is hard to compete against children who have years of dodge ball practice at church and Boy Scouts. (Besides the fact that my husband and children paly a far different version of dodge ball than I grew up playing. I think it is the difference between having gyms verses having PE class on a field all year long.) It ...

No chicks yet... In the meantime, I'm going to kvetch about taxes and Cook County instead. It's no secret that our property taxes are egregiously high. So high, that we have had to go into debt just to stay in this house, and are the single biggest reason J. even started to look for jobs elsewhere in the first place. If I were to tell you exactly how high they are, you would spit out your coffee and ruin you computer or phone, so I won't do that. (But if you wanted to look up approximately how many quills are on a porcupine, the number would be in the ballpark, if a bit low.) We had given up appealing our taxes because it never did any good. The appeal was either denied or was so little as to not be worth the effort. Enter realtors and lawyers when we started the whole house selling business. When these professionals saw the tax bill they were shocked. Obscene was one word to describe them. It felt justifying at least. It was also somewhat infuriating to realize that ...

First, the as promised pictures of the newly painted Folly. Not a bad change, huh? Our lesson here is that even if it is not perfect and exactly how I would fix a room, a coat of paint is always better than just living with ugliness. Look! No horrible painted stripes on the ceiling! Here's what you don't see in the above photos. It's not what you would call clean, I know. This is because our wonderful realtor called us a week ago Sunday and said the possible offer was so strong, and they were planning on stating those glorious words, 'as is' in the contract, that we were told to put all work involving time and money on hold. So that's what we did... for an entire week.  It was a long week.  In the meantime, I decided that maybe actually looking at other potential homes would be a wise idea. This explains why posting was done at odd times and with only vaguely engaging content. Well, we found a house that we loved and would work p...

I don't think I've ever shown you one of the really, truly, ugly parts of the house. It's that room I've been talking about, which we've called 'The Folly' ever since we moved in. It earned its nickname because it is the room above the little garage which was (mistakenly, in my opinion) added on to the side of the house sometime in the 1920's. Wanna see? The entrance to The Folly is through the living room. Here's the doorway. We're pretty sure this doorway used to go out to a lovely wrap-around porch which was taken off to make room for the ugly garage. You go in and have to go up a short flight of stairs. Here's the view of the room from the bottom of the stairs. Oh, don't forget to look up to see the snazzy ceiling. This particular covering was also on the roof of my former kitchen when we first moved in. I don't miss it. The room itself, before we pulled up the carpet. Yes, the fireplace works, but there ...

I posted this on my Facebook page, but thought you'd all like to play along, too. TM and I have been working all day up in the folly to make it look just a little more attractive. (It was... and is... the worst room in the entire house.) We have it all empty now, which was no small feat, and are moving on to slapping artfully applying paint to the walls. Like everything else in the house, we have chosen a lovely beige, the color which delights realtors and house buyers everywhere. That leaves us with the floor. The room has vaguely shag-like carpet laid down (not actually installed) on brown industrial-like tile. You know, the kind that was found in your school cafeteria. The whole packages is... not so attractive. Here's my question, which is worse? Leaving the carpet, which makes the room feel a little warmer and cozier, or taking up the carpet and showing the tile, and maybe finding a throw rug to put on it. Ready? Head to the comments to vote. I honestly don't know wh...

I have spent the past two days working on boxing up the folly. It had become THAT room. You know, the room where you stash things you're not sure you're ready to get rid of, but don't know what to do with. Yes, THAT room. I have sent out far more garbage, recycling, and give-away stuff than I have put into the boxes. That's good, right? And like everyone else, I routinely kick myself for not having dealt with it all sooner. I think we just need some time away from certain things to learn we can live without them. The trick is to not let 16 years go by without revisiting those things a few times. It does accumulate. I also now have to run. We have some people coming by to look at the house this afternoon and I need to spur the troops into action. This could be good. It could be very, very good. Or it could be a mighty big disappointment... I'm trying really hard to not get my hopes up, though I don't think I'm being terribly successful. We'd really appr...

[Cue music] Duh, Duh, Duh-duh, Duh, Duh, Duh-duh... Your mission, should you choose to accept it includes, 1. Declutter, clean, and stage a very large house with 12 occupants and 3 pets in approximately two months. 2. Teach five young children to read while doing #1. 3. Begin to develop new household habits in those 12 occupants so that the old habits of leaving personal items strewn about the house are changed to more organized behaviors. 4. Once pristine, keep the very large house with 12 occupants and 3 pets pristine. 5. Do this without sending the 10 year old human tornado to another residence. 6. Also do this while continuing to teach young children to read. 7. Do not lose your mind or your patience along the way. This message will self-destruct in 10 seconds.... leaving behind a pile of ash which will then need to be cleaned up. [Cue music] Duh, Duh, Duh-duh, Duh, Duh, Duh-duh.... (Yes, I know we can only do what can do. But we would really like the house, once o...

We've had emotions all over the board around here today. (Wrote this on Saturday, but had to wait to tell family before posting it, hence the delay.) It's been like living on a roller coaster, and I think we're all feeling a bit woozy from the effects. Do you remember earlier in the week when I alluded to some things that were going on around here? Well, now I feel as though we are at a place where I can tell all of you. Last week, J. was offered a job at a different university, one that is about 1 1/2 hours west of where we currently are. It is a very good job offer and a terrific job opportunity. I am so happy for him and can't think of anyone who deserves something like this more than he does. It does make life a little more complicated around here for a while, though. He will be starting in mid-March. Because of various commitments of family members through the school year, he will be making a fairly horrendous commute for several months. Knowing that this isn...

I thought I would show you a little bit of the Big Ugly House that I think you've never seen, and it will give me a chance to talk about game and puzzle storage. Is this a never ending battle at your house as much as it is in mine? Homes for the games and keeping the games in their homes and returning the instructions to the proper games. Ugh, the instructions! It's as if my children purposefully go about removing game instructions and putting them as far away from the game as possible. Many of our nicer, older people games live on the top of the armoire in the front living room. It stays looking like this for a while, but then the games never quite go back as nicely as they were before and I will have to come along, empty it, and stack them all up nicely again. If the games could live in shorter piles, it would make the whole thing easier, but they can't, so we deal with it. Small games or games that live in plastic bags because their boxes were lost or games...