Silence

...Speaks better than a thousand well planned words.

Your love is like...

...the ocean.

I'm drowning in your presence.

Getting lost in the gaze of your eyes.

Getting lost in the warmth of your smile.

It Is Well With My Soul

When peace like a river attendeth my way
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say
It is well, it is well with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials come
Let this blessed assurance control
That Christ hast regarded my helpless estate
And has shed His own blood for my soul

My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but in whole
Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more
Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, O my soul!

For me be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live:
If Jordan above me shall roll
No pang shall be mine, for in death as in life
Thou wilt whisper thy peace to my soul

But Lord is for Thee, for Thy coming we wait
The sky, not the grave, is our goal;
Oh trump of the angel! Oh voice of the Lord!
Blessed hope, blessed rest of my soul!

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend
Even so, it is well with my soul.

It is well,with my soul
It is well, with my soul
It is well, it is well with my soul

-Horatio D Spafford, 1873

You may be surprised to learn...

...that I am at a heart rather 'hippy-ish.' Not in the free love, pass the drugs sort of way. More in the make it yourself, back to nature, anti-mainstream sort of way. I've always had a love for tie-dye and long (well groomed and maintained) hair. Blame it on a song. I love the yogurt making, goat milking, backyard farming ideals of my youth. My parents had quite a few friends that were like that. It rubbed off on me I guess.

I've become more sustainable minded in the past few years. It's a drive that grows stronger by the day. It may be partially because it's the hot button issue of today but I don't think so. I've been buying organic ever since I've had the buying power to do it. (We're talking over 11 years.) I've always been on the crunchy side of life. If I can make it myself, I do. If I can grow it myself I do, and if I can't I buy it from a source (preferably locally) that would do it like I would if I could. I only see a doctor when I have a problem I'm sure I can't fix myself. I have always been pro-earth (in the be a good steward way, not in the Mother Earth goddess kind of way.) I have always been one that turns the water off when I brush my teeth, between rinsing and washing the dishes, and 'save a flush' at night. Yup. I'm a little green. I could, of course, go greener. I still buy shampoo and soap and wear some synthetic clothing. I use paper plates. That's the one I feel guilty about. It's my secret vice. I hate to wash dishes. Hate it. But I buy non-petroleum based dish soap, so I guess I see it as give a little, take a little. Call me kooky, but it's me.

Research

My brain is getting hungry for knowledge. I need to learn something new. I've been thinking more and more about natural living and with that in mind I turned to the internet. There is just too much out there. It's hard to know where to start. A quick search of natural living produced 506 million results. Straw bale buildings produced a "mere" 538,000. Maybe I'll start there.

I find blogs are interesting way to gain new ideas and everyday first hand accounts of how people walk out their beliefs or lifestyles. It was by pure accident I ran across my first blog. I was searching for modest swimsuits and ran across a blog of a woman with pictures of her in her modest dresses. It was a blogpost. I read it, liked it, and kept reading. Slowly a few more blogs made it onto the scene and opened up a world of new ideas for me. How else would I have learned about Nourishing Traditions and purposful frugal living? It's after I've read about an idea that I am able to turn to the web and search it our a little more for myself.

Have any good blog recomendations? I'm always up for a new idea.

Musings from the freezer

Today I finished packing the last of our meat that we purchased from the local farmer. I wrapped 22 packages of bacon. Yeah, 22. Isn't that ridiculous? We don't usually eat much bacon. Now I'll have enough to eat it as often as we want. To be fair, the serving sizes I wrapped it in weren't quite a pound. I don't have a scale, but there were 8-10 large (wide slices) per package. They aren't those perfect rectangular pieces you're used to seeing from the grocery store. My mom and dad had picked up the hams and bacon so they went ahead and wrapped the hams for me. I got 2 hams, and 12 thick ham slices. I feel so satisfied knowing it's all tucked safely away in our freezer. It's a veritable cornucopia in there right now.

Now that the meat is all sliced, delivered, packaged and frozen I wanted to take inventory of exactly what we have in there. I emptied everything out (took advantage of the cold weather). When I finally got to the bottom of my freezer I was amazed at just how much fit inside. I bent and stretched to reach the things on the very bottom. Then that familiar problem came back. How was I ever going wipe out the bottom? (it's not worth mentioning why it needed wiped.) I made a tally of every cut of meat or package of food. I have this insane need to be organized-right down to what I have in the freezer. Both sides of my notebook paper is filled and I even left the large cuts of meat at my mom and dad's. We usually get together for the big meals there. There is no way we three girls are going to eat a 6-8 pound roast. It's just not going to happen. Also, we packed most of the steaks into their freezer. It's much more fun to eat this kind of treat with others. We took my grill down there last summer too and I don't really like steak unless it's grilled. They don't have one because they're scared of the gas (to be fair we had a tank that nearly exploded one time. That was the end of gas grills for them.) They only use it when I'm there to fire it up. Looks like this summer we'll have lots of steaks after our long days of swimming.

So what's the grand total for freezer storage right now?

36 assorted cuts of pork chops
12 delmonico steaks (with all the sirloin, and t-bones and more delmonicos at my parents)
27 (1lb)packages of ground beef
16 (1lb) packages of ground pork
3 rashers of sweet italian sausage
4 small pork loin roasts
2 small beef roasts
1 (gallon sized) bag of Philly steaks
14 portions of stirfry/thin sliced meat
1 gallon sized bag of meat to make beef jerky
22 (1lb-is) rashers of bacon
2 hams
12 ham slices
1 whole chicken
6 chicken breasts
3 portions of beef stew meat
3 lbs pork 'necks' (great for soup)
6 beef rib portions
4 large pork rib portions

Plus frozen veggies, frozen fruit, coolwhip, fish filets, frozen chinese specialty foods, peking ducks, 8 boxes of girlscout cookies (i had to help her out), cheese, and butter. I won't be able to fit much more. I want to make up some bread dough that we can bake on demand. It can be turned into rolls, bread, or pizza crust. I'm so pleased.

Of sleeping children, squeaky hair, and a day's resolution.

It's morning again here at the factory. We have co-op today. I should be getting the children dressed and fed and ready to go out the door. I should be but I'm not. I'm just not ready for that yet. Instead, I'm enjoying the feel of the air swirling around my freshly scrubbed skin and the pull of the towel wrapped tightly around my dripping hair. I'm taking a minute to enjoy these small things life hands me. Oh what contentment such small luxuries can bring. All too soon I'll have to put the rest of my clothes on, take down my hair from its neat little bundle and wrestle with the abundant locks. First I'm going to enjoy this moment of solitude. The ticking of the clock, the whir the fan from the cpu, a faint dripping of water, and the clicking of the keys across the keyboard. I'm going to enjoy today. I'm going to live as if things were right. I'm going to paint on a smile, brighten my voice, and shower my friends with some love. I'm going to take in each moment and view them as a gift from God. Today, I will not allow those thoughts to hurt me. Today I will live as one who loves and is loved. Perhaps I can hold back the night time with my smiles. Perhaps tonight she won't feel so lonely and dark. Today is going to be a good day.

Let the Sun Shine

Thankfully today is a sunny day. I don't think I could make it if it were gloomy. I'm IHOPing this morning for a bit. I really should be dressed and ready to go out the door. I'll have to boogey. 10yo has a dental appointment this morning. The last one in a series of four. It's nothing serious. Just a few pre-cavity type pits they wanna fill before they get bad. Anything in the name of dental health.

Kids are fighting...ugh. Already. "Mommy!!!! 10yo is cranky!!!" Who's the cranky one? Maybe they haven't noticed the sunshine yet. Here's hoping it warms them a bit too.

Unplugged.

I unplugged for a few days. No IM, no email, no blogposts, and no cellphone. I planned to just take the weekend and unwind a little. Instead it lasted a little longer. Today I charged the cellphone, checked my emails, and now am sitting down for a blogpost that I chewed on for a while today. What a busy day it was. I'll spare you the details but...

I woke up today from a few days of wondrous numbness. I was walking around asleep, unfeeling, and blissfully ignorant. What a welcome break.

It used to be the way I lived. Numb. Neither awake, nor asleep. Neither dead nor alive. Something stirred me to life. I'm not sure exactly when. I think it's happened several times over the past year or so. I would come to life for a while, and then slip back into unconsciousness. I welcome those states of limbo, although I didn't fully become aware of it until today. Today when I woke up from a much shorter one of those periods, I realized why I allow myself to slip away. To waken is to feel. To feel is to feel pain, to hurt, to feel disconnected, to realize I'm not alright.

I'm not alright. I wish I could go back to my state of blissful ignorance and stay there forever. When I awaken to life, my thoughts return. The words return. Words which I thought I loved so much, are now my enemy. They bubble and boil in my veins like a witches brew. Words trapped. No one to speak them to. Where is the one in whom I can confide such intimate thoughts? To whom can I pour it all out and unlock them from my mind? Thoughts too intimate to write. Words too sacred to spill out into nothingness.

I pray them. I pray them over and over. I wonder if He ever gets tired of my thoughts. The same thoughts swirling and swirling like dust caught in a wind storm. I think it is He, in His mercy who allows me to go so numb. To live neither happy or sad. Neither content nor discontent. He lifts it off my shoulders so I can breath another day. He helps me go through the motions of mother, daughter and friend. He helps me as I wash another dish, fold another load of laundry, or wash another body. It is He who allows me to see I'm not alright. He shows me my human condition and then mercifully puts me back into the trance so I can walk on another day while He works silently on it all. I put my hope in Him. He carries me.

I worry in sharing even this much of my thoughts someone may think I've gone mental. I've not. I'm just truthful. I see who I am. At times it has been such an ugly revelation and yet in that revelation comes growth and change. It's hard after such a revelation to go back to writing about smaller things. Once Pandora's box is opened, it's very difficult to close it again.

Warmed Over

Oh my word, do I feel weird this morning. Well, I can hardly call it morning, it's nearly noon and my brain is still in a fog. I feel a little like death warmed over. My eyes are blurry, my head is spinning, and when I breath it feels like it requires more effort than it's worth. I slept hard last night. And the strange wacky dreams. I don't remember waking up once. Even this morning when 4 yo old woke up and laid beside me giggling and trying to tickle me. I barely was awake enough to say to her, quit it I'm asleep. I guess it's the touch of cold mixed with the medicine? Whatever it is, I don't like it. I need to get my body and brain in gear and get out of this house. My one goal for the day is to get out of this house and enjoy myself somewhere.