Aiming to please

 Are you a people pleaser?

I think I am, most of the time, striving to please until I am finally, really, truly not. (That would be the moment when my inner toddler throws her tantrum that sounds something like "you can't maaaaaa-aaake me.")

Do you want to make the people you love comfortable and the people you know happy and to be perfectly honest, do you want to make the people you've never met like you? And then is there a line that can be crossed when you realize it's all impossible, anyway, and so goodnessgraciousme what to do?

 It's okay if it's only me.

 Just wondering.

When I am my most vulnerable I am also my most teachable, so there's the silver lining.

Whether or not folks like me, whether or not I can please all the people any of the time, I am learning to like myself a little better when I find myself worthy of consideration in the equation of happiness.

We could be talking about what to make for dinner or where to live or how to invest your time/money/knowledge: to be pleasing is not nearly as important as to be after the right priorities. Saying "yes" to every request will lead me to certain failure on multiple fronts. It's harder at the beginning but ever so much easier as you go.

I have been saying my "yeses" at home to: gardening, pony pursuits, school and dance schedules, meeting our neighbors. I have been answering "no" to joining new (church, non-profit, writing critique) groups, and "no" to writing for new (but worthy!) causes.

I'm pretty pleased with myself.

What do you say "no" to? Or do you?

Any October candy left over?

all together now, the costume edition

Well, the house didn't get painted before the rain started. But. The candy is all sorted, traded, sacked up and labeled by owners and squirreled away for rainier days. Don't worry, we had plenty of sugar high and sugar sickness to last until at least, oh, November 10. (And I only broke into the chocolate during tense moments on Election Day, so no need for the kids to recount, 'K?)

birdhouse, bokeh, what's not to like?

We are still canning applesauce. And my garage boasts six boxes of beautiful apples too pretty to process. Any word from my farm girl friends on how long we can store these for snacking?

locally (in)famous rope swing near me

The trees are slowly dropping leaves into the water, onto the road and lawns. The ponies think they are potato chips dropping from the sky, perhaps, and snack while waiting for the autumn rain to green the pasture. Silly ponies. Don't they know we'll bring them apple cores galore?

swimming, not so much

I haven't been running, as the heat made my music device stick to the inside of my, er, undergarment. Obviously I am super committed. 

I did join a gym as a birthday gift to myself, though, and am excited to try a new yoga and pilates instructor as soon as Willy Wonka rehearsals (and thus my extra four trips per day) are over in two weeks. The end of rehearsals means... of course... the beginning of performance! Three shows per weekend from November 30 through December 23. Madeleine had to leave rehearsal early last night because she was sick, and now she is sick with worry. I do wish she didn't get that from me, you know?

We think a lot, it seems to me, about the traits our children inherit: blue eyes or green, tall or short, perfect pitch, athleticism. But I worry about the worry. The things we can't change, the seasons and the illnesses and the shapes of our bodies: these should be granted a pass on the anxiety scale. 

The things we may affect, neighborliness and good works and commitment, these I am sure are worth the extra thought and attention of turning the subject over in our minds until a solution is wrought, forged of ideas and actions.

I wish she wouldn't worry.

it's 36 degrees outside as i caption this

One of the things I love about running is the extra thinking time. It turns that potential for worry, for me, into a more productive meditation. It curbs the chocolate cravings too.

that's the road frontage of the south end of our property... tree tunnel!

There's running, and then there's running.

pumpkin and calendula, by me, for me, happy me

Out in the garden we have picked the last of the winter squash. Remaining in the ground are gorgeous and delicious purple cauliflower, which unlike the purple carrots or purple "green" beans, does not lose its color when cooked. This makes for an interesting cream of cauliflower soup. I'm not sure I'm ready for lavender soup. BUT I love cauliflower soup, creamy and hot, so I close my eyes.

Also still in the garden are leeks, chard, kale, spinach, turnips. I do love turnips. No one else loves them, alas, and my father-in-law (who lives on the farm with us) cannot stand them. I sneak them in with roasts and stir fry and they are pushed aside on the plate. Sigh. More turnips pour moi.

snow white and pilot, ham and turkey

We trick-or-treated between dance classes this year, because the downtown in Small Town Near Us is too too adorable and closes Main Street to traffic for all the sweet diminutive princesses and tiny Napoleon Dynamites. (And because we had to be there for Madeleine and Sarah's class.) We visited the three independent bookstores (go books!) and the baby resale shop and local artisans' and bookkeepers' storefronts and collected the aforementioned candy while visiting with neighbors and friends. Whether you love Halloween or hate Halloween, you must love preschoolers in costumes.

Heck, my kids wear costumes most every day, so I've resolved not to worry about the potential creepiness factor of some traditions and just go with the good. And the Good.

I hope your season is full of grace. I hope your heart is light and your worries are few. Please write and tell me how your garden is and how you're doing.

If you're busy and you know it

It's been a little while since we looked in the attic.

It will be a library. Soon. And that is a (not-plugged-in?) power tool next to the baby. Just sayin'.

Because September and October are the real months of summer in Western Oregon, we are still harvesting. Just last night I brought in the last of the tomatoes under threat of frost. We haven't finished picking blackberries yet, but I do believe that'll be this week. And just one more apple tree still holds fruit, which we hope to core and peel with my super-duper thirteen-dollar gadget as we did the apples from the first two trees. Applesauce is our friend, my friends.

Late in the summer we took a little trip with Grandma and Papa to the butterfly garden and the adjacent Fort Umpqua, the southernmost Hudson Bay trading post to view the in-progress buildings and gardens. Summer school. Who knew?

And Mr. Suite and I went to a Jimmy Buffet tribute band concert in some friends' back yard. I never laughed so hard. Ever. Highly recommended.

Madeleine and Sarah are back in the dance of things, with ballet, jazz, modern and tap filling six afternoons a week. Oh, and hip hop on Fridays. I don't want to talk about it.Grace dances too: ballet and tap and jazz. Laura just moves creatively in a preschool dance class one day a week and Sal waits (more or less) patiently for everyone elses' classes from 2:30 until 5:30 most afternoons. Thank goodness for the Legos in the waiting room.

We are busy and it's still somehow peaceful. How did this happen? I think it's all about perspective and intention, which I fully intend to write about here once I stop writing about it for a national magazine. YIKES. (Mommy's busy too.)

Oh! I almost forgot: Madeleine auditioned for the community theatre's holiday season production of Willy Wonka, where she won two roles: Oompa Loompa and a candy shop child whose name I can't recall. She is super disappointed that the OLs will not be face-painted orange. Rehearsals 6:30 until 9 most nights.

Meanwhile we continue to learn and grow at the school table most mornings from 8 until noon. I thank God for homeschool, among many reasons but front of mind today is because one afternoon a week we pick friends up at the middle school for tap dancing class and that carpool line is brutal.

Sarah is working for Grandpa at his office, performing hard labor at her own initiative in pursuit of an electronic gadget that starts with an "I," one morning a week. She still plays flute and her private lessons directly follow working for Grandpa. Well, they directly follow the Dutch Brothers coffee stop that directly follows me picking her up from Grandpa's office.

Circling back to dance (as every day does around here): Sarah and Madeleine will both perform in the Nutcracker Suite this year. Sarah is a Chinese tea dancer and Madeleine a Spanish flamenco dancer. Rehearsals ramping up soon.

To fill the waiting time I have my laptop and my embroidery. A little knitting. And I'm tired, but it's a good tired, you know?

New lens and more perspective

 We have insulation in the new library/attic just in time for the weather to warm up.

... 'course it did snow twice last week.

 Sal on the temporary floor before insulation.

I have no photos post-insulation because I am deathly afraid of fiberglass.

No joke.

Is it blogger, or me?

Seems random but often my pictures show up sideways and then I just want to scream

Because (big surprise from Ms. Technology 1998) 

I don't know how to fix

anything.

The house project will take approximately until all five children are through graduate school.

(Latest: We may move the dining room wall eight feet.

The library remains in boxes.

The kitchen ceiling is still that nastysquare(asbestos?)tile stuff.

My bedroom has "art quilts" on the wall because they double as (sshhh!) insulation.)

I don't eat wheat. As of Monday.

Seems to be okay so far.

Until I see some really good artisan bread; you know, it's impossible to resist.

I don't think I'm gluten intolerant.

I just am messing around with my new psoriatic arthritis diagnosis.

Blah blah blah diet changes blah blah blah stress reduction blah blah blah avoid steroids.

(And can I sew 45 leotards before June 3rd? Of course! 

It might take my mind off the joint pain. Right?)

The peas and spinach are up!

My new garden is huge but never been tilled, apparently,
so we will be starting from scratch with raised beds.

On the plus side there exists an established strawberry bed, 

a good row of raspberries and four blueberry bushes.

And a quince!

Also we planted new dwarf pears, cherries and plums..

I will miss our old grapevine so much but there are baby vines here.

A garden is a challenge and adventure of its own.

Two Spot watches me from his stall as I walk under my new old apple trees.

They are huge and out of control.

We don't have visible neighbors here at the new farmsuite.

But we have met a few folks from our road in these cold months.

They seem nice.

In that cup-of-coffee-on-a-walk way.

It is still sometimes lonely, with limited internet and phone reception.

But loneliness and peace are two different sides of the same coin.

And then there's always the near-daily drive to dance lessons if I'm in my head too long.

I don't know how to fix anything.

But I sure like trying.

Seriously. Some insulation would be nice.

Oh. Did you come here for some December prettiness or a farmlike update of how I tackled the trio of ancient apple trees just before it was too late to prune or did you perhaps want to hear all about how 17-month-old Salvador will enunciate "up," "truck," "ball" perfectly clearly for his dad but never pour moi?

Check back later maybe.

Today my inspiration is this: I'm getting real.

Does anyone see the toilet up there? It's supposed to be out of the frame, to the right, where the new Suite upstairs bath will live. And straight ahead? That's the library.

Imagination helps. So would a little insulation.

We are still having fun even if we have to wear outerwear, well, indoors. It's been Western Oregon cold here, in the low 20s at night and high 30s all day. Crispy clear with a side of Jack Frost on the shady side of the house and barn. I have been ever so grateful that our new barn has automatic waterers and heat tape on the supply lines. This morning the big girls ventured to the end of the horse pasture, where we have a boggy little pond that Mr. Suite is excited to return to wetlands. Lo and behold the pond was frozen!

This never happens here. So the girls decided to ice skate in their boots and of course you know what happened next. Luckily it's all of a few inches deep at the edges.

So, in slightly warmer news, the new library will be about 12x12. One wonderful feature of this new old house is its decent room size, by "old house" standards. The master bedroom is 14x13 and boasts a 9x9 (!) walk-in closet. Of course to continue with the "getting real" theme of the day I have to tell you it is currently doubling as Salvador's bedroom. Each of the other two bedrooms houses two girls currently and while a new dormer bedroom is planned for Salvador, it's out there in construction phase eighteen or so. After a lot of discussion we decided turning the current attic space into a library is priority number two, right after finishing safety issues including the open staircase.

My "dining room" is a pass-through that houses what used to be my kitchen table... because my dining table doesn't fit. My "office" is an unheated back porch that used to be a laundry room. My laundry room is also a bathroom in the shop. My "family room" and "formal living" are one and the same.

The creek runs crystal clear under deep cover of fir, cedar and maple trees. A spring high on the hill feeds it. The apple trees and cherry trees are neglected but charmingly gnarled. The girls' rooms are paneled in 1970s paneling that they lovingly and happily painted Martha blue and sea glass green. Because new drywall in the bedrooms? That would be phase twenty-nine of the remodel.

And it's my dream. That's getting real.

Stretching, stretching

So as soon as I'm all bloomwhereI'mplanted, I kid you not, as soon as I had the conscious thought that everything is okay, right now, right here, in this place I didn't want to move five years ago but which I have grown to love love love, just then, just now, actually, I am getting to fulfill some new dreams.













I am choosing flooring and considering dormers and skylights in my new pre-1930s cabin on a creek. I am dreaming of vintage feed store signs for my century barn. I am doing a happy dance (in between seemingly endless bouts of the dread packing) over my father-in-law's gift to us of a hay elevator.

I am making furniture charts, people, in earnest attempt to simplify and still have a place for everyone to sleep, study and eat while renovations, in their many stages, will take place around us. (They oughta give me my own Discovery show. It's gonna get wild.)

And I'm purging schtuff. Of course you know there's schtuff. And I can blame it on the five kids all I want but you and I know different. (None of them has a debit card or a driver's license, now do they?)

So I'm stretching. And it's good. How about you?

At the intersection of Quilt and Barn. With some out-of-character End Times discussion.

There's that patchwork barn from my road trip of a week or so ago. Really the dreamy light does not do it justice. Can you imagine how many pizzas that rancher had to buy for the teenagers who painstakingly used all the oops paint in a creative manner? (Imagine with me, if you will. 'Cause I don't know anything about this barn or its owner other than it made my girls and me smile and wonder and make up fun stories about its quirky paint job.)

Outside my window the forget-me-nots and lilacs have upstaged the fading show of daffodils and tulips. Daisies and columbines wait in the wings for the next act. This springtime is gorgeous in our area, and I'm almost feeling guilty because I know so many are suffering through floods and severe weather patterns. Friends of ours who are serving in the earthquake recovery of Port-Au-Prince, Haiti are already experiencing punishing heat. Other friends are just now driving home to Oregon from storm ravaged Kentucky. The news from around the world is bleak. The radio and television stations are talking about the end of the world and they're not singing lyrics from a pop song when they do so.

The African violets on my windowsill have nothing to do with the parade of blooms outside, with my continuing barn obsession nor with the darting hummingbirds nor mounting projects stacked on my sewing table.

And, honestly. My faith has nothing to do with predicting whether tomorrow is the beginning of the end of the world. I hesitate to say any of this for the record, on the world wide web. But my faith is in the thin vein of beauty and truth, an ore much more precious than a prediction of dire circumstances on a certain date.

My God is a God of mercy and, yes, I hope you know Him too. I hope that judgment day is not a reason for fear for you because none of us can achieve the standard but through grace. Amazing grace.

My pantry is full and, yes, I hope yours is too. But I hope you aren't just hoarding water and canned goods for a catastrophe but rather thoughtfully planning how to take care of yourself and your family and your neighbors if need be.

Oh I so rarely get on a soapbox here but I can feel myself stepping up there now.

I read on a web site today about how much food to store per person for certain periods of time, making my notes and commenting to myself how similar the lists were to the provisions the pioneers must have packed for their westward journeys. And right after I found myself nodding with the web site's writer, I read that I should instruct my family to never, under any circumstances, disclose that we have stored food for emergencies.

Really?

Because I want you to know, my real and virtual neighbors alike, that what I have I will share. That whatever we can do for one another in the event of an earthquake or storm or financial hardship is what we should do.

It's obviously easy to say this from my comfortable chair in front of my computer screen, electricity humming and refrigerator full, children tucked in and husband reading by the sound of the Giants game on the radio.

I have a comfortable chair, a comfortable life. I'm guessing you do too.

But I never want to be so comfortable that I forget that some others are decidedly not. I want to share my comfort, my knowledge of God's mercy and grace, before others are frightened into a judgment day panic mode just as I want to share my pantry's contents with a hungry neighbor.

Take care, dear readers and neighbors. And as you're driving through the countryside of life, imagining the motivations and small joys of your fellow man, remember too their likely pains and trials as they too try to gather beauty in a sometimes ugly world.

I don't think tomorrow is the beginning of the end. But I do think we should live like it is. Not with fear nor with secrecy but with confidence and compassion. I think we should, I should, be willing to be a little less comfortable while it's still an easy choice. I think I should (because I know you don't come here for the preaching) place more emphasis on the bits of beauty, the patchwork-painted barns and the blooming violets and the play dough parties, because they are my icons for the joy of the world, for the hope of grace and glory amidst difficulty and strife. A true icon is very different from an idol; an icon points us to a larger truth while an idol, of course, is a substitute for the Truth.

May you find Truth and beauty and rest this weekend.

(And may I return with a lighter post next week.)

I had something meaningful posted

But it's gone.

And now we can forget about me ever remembering it again. Follow? Me neither. Clearly.

But we're having a fine weekend. We're playing with the new chicks. (I know! More chicks!) I went thrifting and bought some very exciting vintage fabric. Some of it is for my canned ham renovation and some of it is for summer wardrobe sewing.

It's looking like summer will finally find us here in Western Oregon.

Look at Salvador! (And the church steeple across the road. That's a little artsy, isn't it?) I took that picture from my very ambitious spot on a quilt on the lawn, where I laid around and read Stephen King's "On Writing" for an entire afternoon. Manoman that's a good book. I didn't expect I'd think that, frankly, because most of his fiction is not my preferred genre at all. But his memoir/writing guide is brilliant, insightful, crazy good.

Sarah's loving "Goose Girl" and those yellow shortalls. I'm not sure she's taken them off except for at bedtime.

I'm loving my special Wild Salad with dandelion greens, violas, chives and mixed lettuces. A little balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil with crushed garlic -- yummy springtime dinner.


What are you loving? What are you reading?

And did anyone see my missing post or did I dream that?

I can see for miles

Oh my word. It's sunny and 70 degrees outside.

The camas are blooming.

The lambs are frolicing.

I can almost hear Maria singing.

(the hills are alive)

It's all too picturesque for blogland.

I hope your day is lovely as well. I'm going to plant something now.

Cats and Dolls, only decidedly not on Broadway

Sometimes I want to feel anonymous. I live in the country;

I enjoy my serving of solitude with a side of going to town or at least going on the internet.

But sometimes I want to know someone's reading. Anyone?

In some of my pictures you can tell where we live

but most often I crop them just so to obscure our location.

Cropping is the only photo editing I know how to do.

Beyond my picket in the top photo you can glimpse ... the (in)famous underground house and the dear little red school. There's Chester Cheese, whom I have been trying without success to rename "Charles Dickens," on his way to visit the forest behind the school. I hear there're mice in them there woods.

And if you'll go with me for a moment of melancholy?

There's my baby's last year of little girlhood, right there,

with a view of the church that's also across the road.

We live in the middle of nowhere and the middle of everything.

We play tea parties with our dolls.

We obsess about that twisted post on the garden fence more than is healthy.

Chester still won't answer to "Charles."

Nor "Dickens." He thinks, in fact, he's camo cat among the fallen cherry branches.

Some daffodils still remain and the weeds flourish.

And Salvador's learning to drive. As all ten-month babies do.

Was your weekend wonderful? Do you have any tips on renaming a cat?

Or possibly on the subject of rural socialization problems among homeschooling mothers?

Hmm, now there's a subject for further consideration....

True or False?

Girl Scout cookies are the root of all evil.

Or at least the square root of the circumference of my waist. Or some such math-like formula.

Discuss among yourselves.