More friends to meet

Real quick I wanted to mention Cassia and Brian's blogs to which I've freshly linked. Cassia is wife of our assistant pastor and an all around beaming, quirky, awesome sort of woman. Brian is chief musician at our church, and takes a mean photo. Just found their blogs today and look forward to digging into their lives a little more.

Also, drat that Allen just when I was feeling bad about not getting stuff done he up and introduces me to a game that had me obsessively complusively building plasma sentry units and marching them around their pixelated planet. Lesson learned though. Allen cares more about whether I'm having fun than whether I'm doing dishes.

New internet friend

Elisa, a friend of mine from church, recently found my blog, and I am telling you right now to stop everything go read her. Reading her blog is like is like standing, arms outstretched, in the desert while the rushing wind sends your hair dancing out behind you and bites your eyes to tears.

Allen at work and play

There are times when this is eerily accurate.

And....we bought a car!

I called up the dealership selling the car we didn't get last night, and they offered it at 1k under the buy it now. Yeah. So why did they hoist up the BIN so high? I don't get it either. Anyway, even with dealer fees and delivery we're getting a pretty good deal. Of course now I'm sort of kicking myself for not haggling more with them, but since they price they offered was under our highest bid in the auction I really can't think we did so badly. And it has a sunroof!!! Pretty green paint and a sunroof for fun. Cargo space (for camping) and a 4cyl engine (lower gas mileage) for practicality. We should get it in around 2-3 weeks. Squeeee!

Ebay car buying woes

Ok, we've pretty much narrowed it down to a '99/'00 Honda CR-V -with a sunroof. I really want that sunroof. The issue though is actually finding one in good shape that we can afford. It can be frustrating to be sure. We just came within $600 of the buy it now price on one auction, and the reserve still says "unmet." Jeesh. Don't know why the bother using the auction feature at all. Might as well make it a BIN only auction and be done with it. There's another car coming up we might be interested it, but the upper peninsula of Michigan is a long ways away if we were to go pick it up. And then there's shipping if we didn't go up there and plane tickets if one or both of us did. I admit this is one of the times when a swimming pool full of money would come in handy. Plunk down the cash. Get the car. Go home. Done. Still, even without the swimming pool full of money, at least we aren't diving into car payments. Ick. That wouldn't be a jolly way to do things.

Car buying

I don't much like buying things on a deadline.I like to browese through ebay and wander around the local thrift stores (or the local Laz-y-Boy) until I find exactly what I want. Of course then sometimes there's a sale ending to consider and the opportunity costs, but it's nothing too bad. It's when the transmission goes out on your ONLY vehicle that things really get interesting. Cause then all of a sudden we have to decide what car we want and how much we want to spend on it and how long we expect to keep it. Yeah. And of course what I want is stretching our definition of what we can afford. And what I want is stretching Allen's definition of "want." Isn't marriage fun :D Allen for the Honda and me for the Toyota (and the one I want would be the more expensive of the two =). It will get sorted out eventually. At least we can borrow my in-law's superfluous van for a while until we find something suitable. It's just part of the ever expanding list of firsts for the not so newly wed.

Namaste

If anyone hasn't tried a Namaste mix I really recommend you do so. They're free of gluten, soy, nuts, refined sugars, and most other potential allergens. I like them because particularly because I'm trying to maintain a mostly wheat free diet (my cheats are fried chicken and communion bread), but they're good for anyone who's trying out healthier alternatives to convention cakes. I particularly like their spice cake with carrot cake variation, but their brownies are also good. When my MIL and FIL were out of town over my brother-in-law's birthday I used the brownie mix to make him a mint chocolate chip brownie cake which he really liked. Anyway, thought I would mention it.

Living with limits

I sort of apologize for that last post. For some reason my cycle just completely knocked me off my feet this time around. Well, that on top of a very busy previous week and trying to ward off whatever seems to be going around.

And I'm still not very good at setting limits during these sorts of seasons. I start setting and meeting goals. Something sets my energy level back, and I get all sorts of frustrated that I'm not getting done what I should be getting done. I don't want to be lazy. I want to get stuff done. But there are times when I don't start things because I'm scared of getting tired/busy and having one more unfinished project laying around reminding me of whatever productive thing I could be doing. It's something I'm working on. Being productive and happy during my slow times instead of getting frustrated and overwhelmed by everything else. Speaking of which I have a cake that needs to get in the oven.

A gray day

I seem to go through these. Things are going great them BLAM several days hit me once. That's sort of what it feels like today anyway. I'm tired. I feel like I might be getting a cold. My apartment is going downhill. I don't know what to fix for supper, and on top of all of that it looks like baby fever is setting in again. I was thinking that it'd be good to have a couple of months to cleanse. Now I'm starting to change my mind. Not that changing my mind would change anything. It's not something I can control. So there you have it. Poor pitiful me.

The frustrating thing is that it really isn't just laziness or procrastination. If was those I could just kick myself off the sofa and do something about it. I've just got pretty low vital energy right now. It's never been very high since I graduated, but now it's worse, AND I DON'T KNOW WHY. It's frustrating enough to make me cry. I'm drinking water, eating fresh veggies, and taking nutritional supplements. I just don't know what to do. I get so tired and listless, but I don't like spending so much time goofing off at the computer. I have projects I want/need to work on and duties to attend to, but it's so hard getting up the wherewithall to get them done.

I haven't gotten a comment on this blog for weeks, and I don't wonder at it. I've been so dry lately. My writing hasn't even been that interesting to me. Oh well. I better see what I can fix for supper.

New Furniture!!!

Well, Allen and I have been busy the last few days. I've been really wanting some living room chairs so I can feel like I have an actual living room and not just a sofa and a bookcase. Well, what started out as a hunt for chairs actually became a regular living room make-over. While pricing chairs I found a sofa. I could get it in brown. I had been dreaming of a brown sofa for the longest time. But......doubts about the suitablity of dark brown assail me. Desire for colors. Not worth the extra $150 to get brown. Utter suitability of a pleasant new leaf green for blending into my existing colors. The in-store discount credit will cover the cost of a lovely lamp which I'd need anyway to balance out the lighting on both sides of the room. Presto, sofa! Also, a lamp with a suggested retail price so far out of my budget (and thrifty sensibilities) that I can't quite believe it's sitting in my living room. Like her heroine's dresses in a GLH novel it's one of those ridiculously simple affairs without fuss or ornamentation which yet manages to put itself unequivically above all it's cheap and fussily ornamented relations - a beautiful wood base simply turned and polished surmounted by a creamy shade. The chairs are $99 wonders from IKEA in Atlanta. Barrel chairs uphostered with sturdy unbleached cotton and slender wooden legs. We've put them on either side of the bookcase and have rearranged the bookcase so that I can display my knick-knacks to better advantage -mostly my Madam Alexander dolls along with various photos and trinkets I've picked up over the years. There's a really curious people of driftwood I once found. From one direction it looks like a ship with its sails full. From another it looks like a woman with her hair and draperies blowing in the breeze. I don't even remember where I found it now.

At any rate I have been quite busy. I'd like to sort of take today off and enjoy the mild breezes blowing through my living room, but unfortunately I have to get this place ready for health class tonight. I'm so glad we can host this, but it does sort of put one on a deadline.

Hi again

I realize I haven't been posting as much recently. Part of it is that there's hasn't been a whole lot going on. I'm working on doing some cleansing, and either because of or in spite of it I've been pretty zapped the past couple of weeks. That morning routine of mine has sort of disentagrated simply because I can't get the momentum up. Now I'm sort of doing things in bits and peices throughout the day. And honestly things are sort of looking like it. My morning routine let me pull steady with the apartment and even get ahead. Feeling zapped means I breeze through one room, and just want to sit down. And this is the girl who used to go from 6am to midnight. Hmmmm, that could be why I'm still tired? lol I do think my studies took a toll on my from which perhaps I have not yet entirely recovered.

The other reason I haven't been posting is that I've been running kind of dry lately. Not too much I want to muse over in writing right now. Things will hopefully head uphill again as I continue cleansing and release some of the junk stored up in my body. Until then....things are going to be pretty boring around here.

weeping and laughing

I really can't wait to see where our new pastor takes us in the coming months. Our beloved former pastor left us under very painful circumstances, but I praise God that we have not been left shepherdless. Tom is just what this church needs. The text for his sermon this week can be summed up by the phrase "they mourned not neither did they dance." It's the passage where Jesus expresses His frustration and disgust at the blindness and fastidiousness of a generation that despised John when he came in sackcloth and sobriety and condemned Jesus as a drunk and a glutton when He came eating and drinking. But the point Tom particularly wanted to make concerned the children in the market playing together saying "We played the flute, and you did not dance. We played a dirge, and you did not mourn." He compared this to two of the main camps of Christian thought and the ways we completely miss out on the celebration and the mourning called for in the Bible. On one hand are the people who are so consumed by their own sin that mentally they stay curled up on the floor whimpering. Rejoicing has no place in a life so consumed. On the other end are the people who only read the happy psalms and sing the happy songs. The words of the hymn:

Out of the deep I cry,
The woeful deep of sin,
Of evil done in days gone by,
Of evil now within.

would only affront their bliss blinded minds. Then there are the people who refuse to sing either song because it means taking Christ's tune for their refrain instead of their own.

Tom said, and I'm inclined to agree, that our church has sort of got the dirge down. We understand brokenness and grace. That's not to say that we never celebrate but that our bent in our walks with Christ is towards mourning over our sin. It's mourning accompanied by the preaching of an all-encompassing grace for God's elect, but it's still mourning. Tom said that in the coming months he wants us a church to trying having a go at getting the wedding dance down. In our worship and our times of coming to God he wants us to taste the richness of a joyful, exultant life joined intimately to Christ. This doesn't mean that we won't ever think about our sin. It's not one versus the other but rather us as a congregation learned to laugh louder and mourn deeper. As Tom said, ultimately these two things are two sides of the same coin. A Christian mourning his own sinfulness must acknowledge a grace which he did not earn and cannot repay. The depth of our sin reveals that much for forcibly the gravity of Christ's sacrifice and the enormity of His forgiveness and love towards us. But when we are rejoicing and celebrating in our relationship with God, if we are honest, we admit we did nothing to merit a place at the wedding feast and that were it not for God's grace towards us our sins would otherwise have certainly excluded us.

He had a lot more to say, but that's what mainly caught my attention. I look forward to getting to know our new pastor and his family.

Clean Feet

My mother-in-law just got her ionic cleanse foot bath in late last week, and Allen and I went over there this evening to see what all the fuss is about. Don't ask me about the science because I really don't know. Basically it uses polarization (and electricity and ions) to draw toxins out through your feet. Think of it as a super charged detox mudpack. Except without the mud. It's really neat though. The water you put your feet in turns all sorts of nasty colors, and you get this horrid scummy foam over the top. Glad that's not inside me anymore.

This sort of thing is useful because it provides your body with a way to detox without overloading your colon and/or kidneys -which is awesome because if you're really toxic it's so easy to overload your elimination channels. Looks like I'm going to be adding that into my weekly routine now.

The five minute miracle

Well it's starting. I made me a morning routine that I've been trying on this week with decent success.First thing in the morning after I get dressed I spend five minutes cleaning the bathroom (I'm already standing there anywhere), then immediately move to spend five minutes in the bedroom making up the bed and putting away odds and ends, then five minutes picking up the living room, and I finish with ten minutes in the kitchen putting away dishes and generally tidying things. I said this was the five minute miracle, but since my kitchen and I need a double miracle it gets ten minutes. So in 25 minutes I've cleaned the bathroom, made my bed, tidied my bedroom and living room, and cleaned the kitchen. Well, they aren't completely clean. I'm not superwoman. But they are cleaner than they were the day before. First day, I felt pretty guilty leaving rooms that I'd started to clean but hadn't completely cleaned. Now though, I'm feeling pretty good about it. As the Flylady says, "It didn't get this way in one day, and it won't get clean in one day." Things are getting better, and I'm not overwhelmed or exhausted. It's great.For the first time since I don't know when I'm getting excited about housekeeping. Next week I'm probably going to start adding in something of an evening/afternoon routine just because there are certain tasks I really don't have time to even really start during my morning routine.Overall though I'm extremely satisfied with the start I've made.

And it's gone

Maybe a quarter on an inch on the tops of the cars. And no more falling. That's Alabama for you.

Snowflakes fell on Alabama

IT'S SNOWING


It's actually snowing pretty hard too (especially for Alabama).

Fly away clutter

Well, I'd heard about her for a year or so now and had never been terribly interested in joining, but this evening I just signed up with Flylady. I've really been needing help, and I reckon I'm going to give her a try. But not the shoes. I don't even wear lace-up shoes hiking when I can get away with wearing tevas. So yeah, I understand why she says to wear lace-ups, but I think I'm just going to try getting by without 'em. :D Hey, it's hereditary. I get it from my father's side. Can't go back on my heritage :D

Seriously though, I'm hoping that her routines will help me get on with life. I've already received several of her e-mails just for signing up, and there's one thing she said that encouraged me very much. I hope she won't mind my posting an except:

Our homes are stifling our imagination. Our little creative minds have been stuffed into this cocoon because of the guilt that has been put on our little heads. We are blessed to have an imagination. We fight hard to keep from being stuffed into that cocoon. This is why we rebel against habits and routines. They look too much like the “Born Organized” people in our lives. They are a tool that helps us to emerge from our cocoon of guilt and suffocation to find our true joy in living.

I must say I can identify. I have the dickens of a time getting started on what I should do, but I don't do what I really want to do either because I feel so bad about what I should do.

Soo...............here's hoping that this helps me turn a corner.

sacks of scraps

Anna no longer has the corner on vintage fabrics. I now have a sack of fabrics from Mamaw and Nanny each. There's all sorts of interesting patterns. Not all of them are vintage, but some of them are quite pretty and usual. I can't wait to play with them. Unfortunately I have quite a few projects and chores taking first priority, but I'm looking forward to digging into them one day.

Back from Dallas

Last week we took a long weekend to visit Allen's great-grandmother out in Dallas. We'd been talking about the possibility of visiting her, so when Allen's mom mentioned that she'd been planning to drive out there we jumped at the opportunity to go out there with her. For having broken her hip she's a remarkably spry little lady. She'd got a wheeled walker, and she just cruises around her little house. Doesn't want to sit still. A trait Grandmom shares -like mother like daughter. Those two have a hard time being happy when they can't be buzzing around seeing to things. Apparently Nanny's son does most of the work now though. I think they said he's lived with her for 20 years or close to it. A long time anyway.

It was very good to see them. Nanny told us that she has 44 grand and great children. The way she's going she's going end up with a couple of great, great grandchildren. The day we left she said, "You think maybe I'll make it to 100?" I would not be surprised at all if she did. She looks younger at 94 than my grandmother did at 85.

The drive over an back wasn't too bad. I read Wives and Daughters all the way over, and my mother-in-law and I watched Pride and Prejudice half of the way back. Allen was sweet enough to drive for us so she could watch it. We make it out and back in one day each. Actually got back in time for supper Sunday evening.

Peeling off the shell

You remember learning about all those various bugs and crustaceans who carry their skeletons around on their backs? Spineless little creatures they are. I begin to think that I was brought up to have an exoskeleton. Lest you start commenting on the state of my skin and start offering moisturizers let me explain. You might say I had a pretty successful college career. Scholarship girl, super high GPA, summa cum laude graduate with a paid ride to grad school, and one of the darlings of my academic department. On top of that I was homeschooled, and we all know that homeschoolers are some of the most intensely self motivated people on the planet. I would have told you that myself. Despite what you might have heard to the contrary I was a fairly decent kid as well. In other words, by appearances I wasn't much of a slouch. However, I've come to see that appearances can really, really, sucker-bet you lie. You must understand that I bought into a lot of that description. I tended to credit my professor's creative powers when I read their recommendations (although I might add that my friends didn't), but overall I would have accepted that general picture of myself. Looking back though I see that I really had very little positive momentum. I didn't have to. Everyone else was pushing me along. Grades, chores, and even acceptance where all rigidly enforced. My single B became an echoing example of what might happen if I ever let my guard down again (or took a class somewhat over my head). I worked hard not because A's were a goal so much as an absolute necessity. I did my chores so that I might say (if even to myself) I wasn't a complete dead weight on the family -that I did in a way earn some place there. Acceptance? Toe the line or else kid. Keep your mouth shut, your head down, and get by as best you can. Fear, guilt, and the necessity of success where primary motivators during that time. The thing about them though was that although they provoked action they didn't create momentum. When you're motivated by fear you stop when a. you've met the bare requirements to appease or b. you come to a point where the effort to appease isn't worth it anymore and you resign yourself to living with wrath and failure. Guilt works about the same way. If you can never get enough done to assuage the guilt then you might as well save yourself the effort. The necessity of success is rather more nuanced I believe, but it's still confining and debilitating.
The point I wish to make here is that I had so much pressure holding me up and pushing me forward that my reaction (especially with regard to fear and guilt as motivators) was resist the pressure and hang back against it in effort to make a breathing space. My movement might have been forward, but much of momentum was zero or negative. Here's another image for you. Imagine a a thin paperback or a children's Golden Book held up between two larger books. It's secure, stable, and upright. Now imagine taking those supporting books away. It's probably going to flop over. Now think about me. All my life hedged about by pressures and necessities. All of a sudden (thank God for Allen) they go away. Oh I hear echoes of them, but the pressures aren't physically, daily, in my face running my life. In fact the opposite is occurring. Without the accustomed pressure though I flop over and end up kicking my legs in the air trying to get upright again. However, my hard exoskeleton of relentless achievement and parental demands isn't there to hold me up in my accustomed position. So I fall down again. By this time Allen is really confused, and I'm not exactly understanding this myself. And we do that for a few dozen weeks until the lights blink back on, and we can see the bits of my discarded shell scattered around the living room. All this to say -Mom's please give your children backbones instead of shells. All my life I never really had to develop the basic backbone that lets a girl decide when's a good time to go to bed. All this was decided for me. My grades, my temperament (selfish they said), my profession, my fitness as a wife and mother, my ability to cook, and even how much of my money I could/should spend on my own wedding dress were all largely predetermined and dictated to me in words if not in actions. Having broken out of a lot of that I realize that even if I do have a leg to stand on there's not much in the way of skeleton holding that leg up. It's getting better though. I'm just going to have to be patient while I wait for my new spine to grow in and make sure not to confuse limping on crutches for running on whole legs.

I do wonder though. Where would I be today and what would my past look like if I'd been taught to run like a woman instead of crawl like a spider. Moms out there. Seriously. Teach your children to run.