Ordinary Time

We hosted a pre-wedding celebration party dinner tonight for the family that were in town. We had a nice evening despite the rain that was definitely not in the forecast when I woke up this morning. And, once again, I have zero pictures to share with you. Other than visiting with adult children and getting to meet more of MC's family, the best part of the party was taking care of some house things that we've let slide. The back porch for one. It had become a dumping ground over the winter and not really a place you'd like to spend any time. Now it is all cleaned up and we have the tables set up so that it is actually useable. It is wonderful to feel we can use it again, especially with the much better temperatures. I also realized that it has been a very long while since I have hosted any sort of gathering. This seems odd because we hosted things all the time in the Big Ugly House. The space in this house is so much different (and smaller) that I think I just haven't qu...

This past January, after we had finally figured out what on earth was going on with R., I mused about how done in I was from the month of December and how much of my support R. needed just to be marginally functional. I said I knew that taking care of myself was important, but acknowledged that during that particular season, other than just surviving, I wasn't sure there had been room for anything else, especially not for my usual self-care methods. I wondered if I was missing something. I've been thinking about that question for five months now and I've come to a couple of conclusions. The first is that I was working with an incorrect assumption: That would be that we should be able to nurture ourselves through all seasons regardless of what is going on. And when you read about self-care, this is kind of the underlying message, isn't it? That to be really on top of things and to be truly emotionally healthy, that we need to up our self-care game so that even the worst ...

I know how extremely difficult waiting can be, especially when your heart longs to bring your child home and there seems to be no end in sight. I know what's it's like to see milestones and birthdays pass while you miss them; of losing days and years you won't get back. It can be very difficult to have perspective. It can be very difficult to think about anything else.  No one seems to understand exactly how difficult it is to wait for a child you've only seen in photos... your beloved child, but not. I remember those years. I was not at my best. The wait felt so horrendous that I couldn't imagine anything being worse than what I was going through, missing my son I loved but didn't know. This type of waiting is its own special form of insanity.  When you are in this type of limbo it is very easy to lose perspective. Words that are offered with the intent to help are taken poorly. Reactions and emotions are high. You are sure that no one can truly understand your...

First, let me start by showing you the one and only fiber related object I have worked on in the past couple of weeks. This is a fairly large cotton shawl that I'm knitting. I'm kind of loving the way the cables cross over the open work. It's very long. I had to cast on well over 300 stitches and only had time to do one row at the beginning because each row took so long.  The knitting is going faster now that I'm getting further into the shorter part of the triangle. I'd say I'm a bit past halfway done at this point. The yarn and pattern are by Quince and it is absolutely gorgeous yarn that is so nice to work with. You may have noticed that I haven't posted any projects for the past couple of weeks. That's mainly because there has been nothing to post. I tell myself it's because life seemed really hectic and I didn't have the brain space for it. But now that I'm really thinking about it, I do wonder which came first. I'm kind of between b...

I'm quickly heading into being overwhelmed by my to-do list territory. This usually means that any sort of critical or creative thinking and writing take a back seat while my brain short circuits. You might have already guessed that based on the lack of posts with any real content this past week. Once I pay the bills tomorrow it might help. Who knows?  In the meantime, I completely forgot to mention that R.'s 18th birthday was yesterday. She had her chosen breakfast (cereal), but she wanted to wait until D. got home to have her birthday dinner. That (the dinner) will be sometime this week. J. drive to Ohio today to bring D. hone from college for the summer. It's a long day of driving. We're thrilled to have D. home for a few months. It is especially nice when he asks, "Do you have any gardening I can help with?" He knows the way to his mother's heart. I do, I do have gardening he can help with! I, once again, overdid it this afternoon. But, four out of the...

If there is one phrase which neatly sums up my life, I think it must be the one in the title. I always come up with these wonderful plans of what I'm going to accomplish in a day, and everything always takes longer than I anticipated. Always.  Take today for example. My plan was to get all the seedlings and seeds planted in the garden. In order to do this, I would also need to weed the worst overgrown of the garden beds. No problem. I could easily do that before lunch, then have all afternoon to plant.  I was correct that I was able to clean out the garden bed by lunch. K. helped out by bringing over three wheelbarrows full of compost. The trouble was that the day ended up including other activities than just working in the garden. At noon, I needed to drive J.  to a friend's house so that he could pick up a car that we are borrowing. (Thank you! Thank you!) This is fantastic because we can go back to being a two-car family and J. can actually go into work. So we did that...

One of the things that everyone in my family noticed when we moved to the far western Chicago suburbs from Evanston was the lack of diversity. It was more than a little unsettling. This lack of diversity also extended to restaurants. While some of the towns a little east of us did have some variety, our own little town didn't really have any.  Just this morning I read that a new Jamaican restaurant opened in our little town. J. and I agreed that we would need to try it at some point. I gardened much of the day today. I woke up feeling significantly less sore which was lovely especially since it was a beautiful day and there was a lot of gardening to do. We're having guests over a week from Friday so it would be nice to have the yard look... not abandoned. And I leave in two weeks for England and I really want all the vegetable plants and seeds planted.  I'm nothing if not compulsive once I have a plan, so I happily gardened for much of the day. I also probably overdid it be...