The Winter Kitchen

   It's nice to have a fresh idea once in a while!

At Christmastime, my daughter-in-law told me that in 2012 she intends to try one new recipe each week. Amy's only been married six months ... and when I'd been married six months I was probably also trying new recipes all the time (heck, I was still learning how to cook at that point ... Amy at least already knows how).

After 40 years of domesticity, though, I typically stick with the tried-and-true, and only try new recipes occasionally.

But Amy got me thinking, and looking through cookbooks (we own MANY cookbooks, actually - they are one of the several things my husband "collects.")

So, last night I needed to use up the last of the Christmas ham - and I found a recipe on Campbells.com which was quite tasty.

Today I shopped for groceries based on two recipes I read the other day. Later this week I am going to make Artichoke Chicken from Allrecipes.com. Tonight I made Moussaka from my "Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbook."

I think I'm going to follow Amy's lead, and try a bunch of brand-new-to-me recipes for a while!

I sure did make a mess in the kitchen tonight! And then, of course, I had to clean it up. But it was fun! And the Moussaka tastes quite different and good.

On a similar note, last week I started baking my own bread again. I used to bake bread when Josh was a tot and I was a stay-at-home mom. (Josh is Amy's husband ... so now you know how long ago THAT was.)

When my kids were home, I baked 2 to 3 loaves at a time a couple times each week; and I only made basic white bread.

Now I need to bake only one loaf at a time, because it's just me & Mike home to eat it. And although kids turn up their noses at other-than-white-bread, Mike & I like lots of different breads. We've been eating bakery bread almost exclusively since Josh moved out 2 years ago.

So: Last Friday I made 10-Grain bread. Monday I made Rye. Both of those were from packages intended for bread machines. Because I didn't have any recipes at hand for ONE loaf, and didn't know how to divide the yeast; and because I wanted to make sure I really want to do this before investing in all sorts of different flours.

But after two loaves of freshly-baked bread, I am SOLD! Kneading bread dough is always therapeutic, and also good exercise. So, I got a single-loaf recipe from my BFF Kathy, and tonight I bought a JAR of yeast, some BREAD flour, and some WHOLE WHEAT flour. It will be time to bake again by Friday, I think.

Probably when summer comes we will go back to bakery bread (or else buy a bread machine) so as not to heat up the kitchen.

By the way, WINTER finally arrived here in Western Michigan on New Year's Day. That is most unusual. I, for one, did not mind a bit having a "green Christmas," but alas, the cold and snow was bound to come sooner or later. So if Life gives you cold weather, you may as well bake bread.

Fall Cleaning

   I am so weary - but it's a good weary.

I took a week's vacation from my job, specifically to do my fall housecleaning.

I don't do spring and fall cleaning the way my mother and grandmother and their mothers before them did. I do zone cleaning. I do not tear the whole house apart and live with disarray for a week or so whilst the cobwebs get swept out.

I learned zone cleaning from either Good Housekeeping or Women's Day magazine, back in the 1970s - when my stupid generation was all-about "Women's Lib."

I have always hated Women's Lib. It surely did not liberate me!  I, au contraire, was obviously born in the wrong generation. I love to keep house, raise children, cook scrumptious meals. I love this sort of vacation that I have taken this week: I get to pretend I am a full-time homemaker.

Most years, though, I do my spring and fall cleaning in the evenings, when my husband is at work, (since I work first shift and he works second).

I had an extra week of vacation to use up yet this year, and he cannot get the time off right now; so I set this week aside to bless myself by doing my fall cleaning in the daytime. I am loving every daylight moment of it!

I am so weary! But it is a good weary!

... And having the man home with me these mornings to see what his trophy wife does to keep his home so charming?: Priceless!

I have one more day off. Then the weekend. Then back to the trenches on Monday. Three more birthdays, and I will, Lord willing, be old enough to "retire." Then I can, at last, and forever, be what I have always wanted to be: a full-time "homemaker".  (Sorry, Libbers, but I have always hated you. You didn't liberate me. You made me conform to your definition of meaningful contribution. You are welcome to take my vacant position in the Rat Race when I retire. By the way - the Rats win. Just sayin'.)

This is for you, JD

   When young, impressionable, hopelessly floundering but so danged intelligent

Misfit, yet outstanding among my peers in the eyes of my elders

Wanting to fit, wanting to feel ...

Feeling guilty for my fortune

Unwilling to admit my misfortune

Searching (no: WAITING) for purpose for ME

I wasn't KNOCKED off-course

I didn't WANDER off-course

I jumped

Headlong into anything, anything, that was OTHER

...

Hardly a soul that could look at me knew

So intelligent, articulate, seemed so mature

(God knew)

JD - you will know you are mature and on-track

When you look in the mirror, and see the grown-up version

Of the person that you were when you were wee

And you do not hate that tyke

Or the people who loved him

The Problem Is: She Doesn't Look Her Age

The problem Is: She doesn't look her age ... or act it.

Aileen is 95 years old.  Her hair's not much more gray than mine is.  She is only about as wrinkly as some 65-year-olds I know.

And she is STUBBORN! OMG! Stubborn as a two-year-old.

BUT: Her body knows that it is 95, even though her mind and appearance do not.

This woman REALLY needs to walk with a cane -- or she is going to knock me over when I escort her into Plainfield Church (where I work), and we are both going to be in sorry shape!

I wish I would have taken her photo today so that I could show you.  She comes to Plainfield Church almost every Friday for Jolly 60s.  LOL!  They started that group when they all WERE in their 60s.  They're way past that decade now!

They meet at Plainfield Church (where I am the Church Secretary) every Friday from 9:30 until 2:30.  They eat sweets.  A lot of sweets.  They used to offer them to me.  I mostly decline, but sometimes I succumb.  (Old ladies LOVE sweets!)

They play some sort of dice game, and they still think they ought to hide it from the Pastor, when the Pastor is in the building ... because Methodists used to be SO against "games of chance," whether one was betting cold hard cash or not ... back in the day.

They eat their sack lunches.  They always offer me coffee - which I more often than not, accept.

And they chat about their aches and pains and what their children, grand-children, and great-grandchildren are doing.

Aileen does not look like she is 95 years old.  And that is the problem.  Because her body - at least her Joints and Balance - knows that it is 95 years old.

Gosh, I hope I am as stubborn as she is, if by God's grace I should attain to such an age!

Left Behind

This has been a stressful week.  I can't even remember the days before Saturday.  We didn't get raptured that day ... not that any of us REALLY thought that was going to happen that day ... but every one of us gave it a thought or two.  You see, the guy who came up with the Judgment Day predictions was originally from Grand Rapids.

So Saturday, six o'clock came and went.  The Christians are still here, to struggle right along with the rest of humanity.

Sunday morning Mike and I went to church.  We have a new church since last August, and we like it very much, and never want to miss the chance to "hang with the saints."

We drove out I196 to Lake Michigan Drive and I took a glance to my left as we passed the downtown area, because I knew the Rob Bliss Grand Rapids LipDub was going on that morning.  You needed to gather by 9 AM to be part of the crowd.  We were at church already by 9 AM.  It was "Dispensationalism 101" Sunday.  We had a grill-out/potluck afterwards.  I brought my bff Kathy's recipe "Barbecue Beans" ... they were a big hit.  I wished the LipDub would have been not on a Sunday morning because I'd have loved to be downtown.  I really love Grand Rapids; I really love Rob Bliss's energetic community events; I really love how my little town has gotten so cultural in my adult lifetime.

Sunday afternoon there was a bad tornado in Minnesota; and we were under "watches" for tornadoes here.  There was a deadly tornado in G.R. when I was a little girl.  I've had bad dreams about tornadoes.  Before I went to bed Sunday night, I took a bunch of stuff down to the basement.  I always do that during tornado season.  I took my scrapbooks, my strong box, my jewelry box, my purse, my laptop ... this time I even took some canned goods down there, and a box of raisins, box of crackers, some silverware. There's bottled water down there left-over from my original fear-stash in the days after 9/11.

Woke up Monday morning to the images of the Missouri E-5 tornado.  And by tonight I have realized that tornadoes chew up everything and spit it on top of your head ... if you even survive ... so I brought the crackers and the raisins back upstairs.  The treasures are still in a plastic tub in the basement.  Tornado season doesn't really start in Michigan until June -- when the air here gets hotter.

Well, Tuesday night, I got a text from my almost-daughter-in-law, Amy.  (Josh and Amy are getting married on 6/25. That's my son Scott, who died 2 years ago on 6/18/09's birthday. Josh & Amy chose that date on purpose.  Amy's shower is 6/18/11.  Why? Just sayin' ... but not to them, of course.)

Anyway, the text from Amy was asking me to pray for her friend, David, whom I've never met. Amy's parents are church-building missionaries, so Amy grew up living all sorts of places, and she has friends all over the U.S.  David had been "swept away" in a river in Arkansas.  So I prayed.  And prayed.  And this 21-year-old has been in my heart and on my mind all week.

Over on Facebook, David's brother's future-mother-in-law had, by Wednesday night, created a special "page" for prayers for David and updates on the search effort.  So I've been praying, and visiting that page, multiple times each day.

Hundreds of people are praying for David.  Many of us, like myself, have never met him, but are friends or relatives of David's friends.

From Tuesday night until tonight ... constantly in our unanswered prayers, is a young man swept away in a river.  Sonar has determined, the Arkansas authorities claim, that there is no body in the river, so the family should not give up hope.  Cadaver dogs have also determined that there is no body in the river.  So last night they started searching the forest with volunteers and bloodhounds.  Everybody has been praying.  I am not used to prayers this heart-felt, humble, and fervent going unanswered!  How in the world can a person simply vanish when his whole community is searching for him day and night?

The bright spot in the week, for me, has been the YouTube release yesterday of our Grand Rapids LipDub video.  I really want to share that with everybody!

On YouTube the response has been very favorable. It was featured on several network newscasts tonight, to my surprise.  A very few YouTube comments were criticizing the "under-representation of minorities."  Well, in Grand Rapids, a LOT of people go to church on Sunday morning.  I had personally wished that the Bethel Pentecostal Choir would have been in the LipDub -- they are really cool, and mostly African-American.  Would have liked to see the Three Fires tribes in it, too. PaWaTing MeGedWin senior citizens meet twice a week at the church where I work (not the same church that I attend on Sundays).  The Three Fires Annual Pow Wow will be at Riverside Park in June ... The church I work at is quite multi-cultural; and the church I go to is, too. The happy, clean-cut faces of several races that you'll see in this video are mostly people who either don't go to church at all, or who played hooky for the Rob Bliss event.  Grand Rapids is a cool city.  I love living here.  I love going downtown. I hope you will enjoy the video I post in the comments (because I can't post it in the body of this blog).

Hey! I actually wrote a BLOG!

Random Thoughts

Well, it is Purim.  This is a fact I discovered on my Yahoo home page.  Purim is number 8 at the moment in Yahoo's category called "Trending Now."  Number 1 is Chile Earthquake.  Number 2 is Tsunami.  Purim is a Jewish festival, having to do with the Biblical book of Esther.  That is my first random thought.

The second random thought is that nowadays I have to watch my typing more than what I used to.  In days gone by, my fingers knew if they had made a typographical error.  Nowadays I have to use my eyes.  Why this is, I do not know.  I began to notice this new deficiency after Scooter died.  What the one has to do with the other, I cannot guess.

The third is that I have "1 Friend Online" ... and by that I mean on Multiply.  If I were to flip over to my MySpace page I would likely find a friend or two online there also.  And on Facebook it would not surprise me to find quite a few still online at this late hour (the time being 1:05 a.m. Eastern Standard).

Hmmm, I need a 4th Random Thought.  This is not randomly thought about - I am constantly aware of this fact - I do not communicate so very well verbally anymore.  I can often not think of a thing to say to anybody.  My random thoughts are so empty (if empty is, indeed, the proper word) that I am at a loss for much beyond hello.  This phenomena is also since my Scooter died.

Nevertheless: most people do not notice, because I have always been relatively quiet, socially.  And furthermore, I am a relatively high-functioning airhead.  At the moment my verbosity is being enhanced by 2 or 3 ounces of Mogen David Concord Wine (Kosher, alcohol 11% by volume ... oh my, I am such a lush!)  Said wine is intended to put me to sleep, and make me quit thinking about Scott's funeral bill. And yet the thing that I had to write myself a note about, so that I will not FORGET is to tell the funeral home (either voluntarily, or only if they call again ... depending on which thing I later decide would be most appropriate) that SOMEBODY killed Scott with a motor vehicle and that when the police figure out WHO, their auto insurance should pay Scott's final expenses.  (Did you know it costs over $4,000 to drive a hearse 50 miles to pick up a body and then deliver it to a donated grave?)  The funeral was supposed to be billed to Scott's estate.  I am not the executor of Scott's estate.  I was Scott's estranged adoptive mother at the time of his death.  And I am a compliant person.  The medical examiner told me I had to tell them what to do with Scott's body.  My pastor worked something out with a local funeral home.  Scott's ex-girlfriend was going to handle his estate.  She absconded or something.  Sigh.  If you want to know the truth, I was expecting a living prodigal son to come home and say, "Mom! I've missed you!"  Death was never my honest expectation.  Sigh.

Random thought 5: youngest son told me tonight to give $33 from him to church for his tithe this week.  So I went to mybank.com to transfer $33 from his account to mine, and dang if mybank didn't insist this time that I fill out their "enhanced security questions."

And that is something I have ALWAYS been incompetent at doing.  Online security questions always want to know your favorite this or that.  I have never, to my knowledge, had favorite this or thats!  So first I have to try to figure out what a reasonable answer would be, and then I have to worry forever that I will not remember what my answer was.  So of course I have to write down my answers.  And then, of course, I will need to remember where I put the list of answers.  For which if I were truly to act in character I would make a file entitled "Answers to Security Questions," which, of course, defeats the purpose of security questions.

And I feel inept, when really I am not inept in the slightest; yet I wonder if anybody else on earth finds answering simple security questions challenging.

I recall at a job once-upon-a-time, my boss wanted to hand out plastic bracelets to put your office key on.  She came to me, not telling me her true purpose, but only said, "Rani, what is your favorite color?"  (Holy crap!!!! I DON'T KNOW!)  "Favorite color for WHAT?" I said.

Back when security questions amounted to "What is your mother's maiden name," I was challenged even by that question.  My mother's father died when she was 3.  So she has gone by 2 last names, both of which I know about.  And I have answered that question 2 different ways over the years.

And as to what color was my first car (this year's security question number 2 of 3) well, it had an exotic name (which I can remember, even 30 years after the fact) and of course it has a generic color name.  I gave the generic color name as my reply to the bank's security question.  Will I be sure to remember that someday (say in 2525) when my bank doubts my true identity?  Probably not.  I will have to answer, "Uh, it is either 'exotic-name' or 'plain vanilla name.' "

The only security question I knew the definitive answer to was "In what year did you meet your significant other?"  At last! A question that requires knowledge of a FACT, not an opinion!  I KNEW the answer to that one!  (But then, so does everybody else who actually knows me, I think.  Well, hopefully, those who would wish to steal my airheaded identity are people who do NOT know me.)

I should probably rephrase the airheaded descriptor.  People do not generally consider me airheaded.  On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being airhead and 10 being geek, I am probably scored by those who know me as 11.

What I am, according to my husband, is, well, literal.  (Is that a fault?  I try to say what I mean, and I anticipate others doing so as well.  Except for when I am trying to tease somewhat, because people like to tease somewhat, and even I can do so once a month or so.  Well maybe it is only 4 times a year.  But hey! I can make people laugh with my wee jokes.  4 times a year, anyway.)

Random thought #6:  The Mogen David is working!  I think that I shall go to sleep if I try again now.

Random thought #7:  With only 2 friends online, it is not likely I will get much feedback from my random thoughts tonight.  Oh well.  It is Purim.  There's an awful lot of grace in Purim, even though Esther never mentions God.  Funny how that works, eh?  Oh, BTW, the photo attached to this blog is Scooter, in his teens.  When he was still my son.  He left home to go to his homecoming dance when he was a junior in high school, and never did come home until he died, at the age of 31.  Prodigals, beware.

Death Sucks

   Seriously! Sin & Death sucks.  Every facet thereof sucketh.

I could talk like that to Josh & Amy.

Probably even to Pastor Fleming.

But some people think I oughta be more genteel.

Death is not genteel.

It sucks.

Just so you know.

Neurons, Synapses, Economics, and Life

Kira is out of her blue funk, and is aptly leading a Library group here on Multiply.  She receives no pay for this.  It is excellent work.

Here on Multiply, and lots of other places on the Web, people are blogging away about all sorts of things.  Mostly we don't get paid.  We share ideas.  We expand each other's horizons.  The world has never been like this.  Or has it?

I read Ben Franklin's autobiography a few years ago.  He told me what it was like at the dawn of American history.  A few weeks ago I also read A History of the American People, by British author Paul Johnson.  He told me some very insightful things about the philosophical background of America, from a European perspective.

Barack Obama is our new president.  This man's greatest gift to us, from my perspective, is his motivational speaking.  He pulls together all our collective angst and rekindles our faintly remembered hopes, and helps us to believe we just might, collectively, be able to make sense of life on earth, and order it in such a way that everyone gets what they need.

Because of the Book Reviews posted on Kira's Library group, I made a trip to one of our local libraries today.  (Thank you, Ben Franklin, that we have public libraries in America.)  Besides the books I went there to fetch, I discovered, by browsing, another book that I just started to read tonight: Mirroring People, by Marco Iacoboni.  It's a neuroscience book, published in 2008.  It's subtitle is, "The New Science of How We Connect With Others."  To me, it is fascinating and exciting to read.  My own neurons are firing so rapidly as I read it ... I am having so many "Eureka" moments as I process and connect all that has entered my stream of consciousness these past couple of months. 

I am not sure that I am able, tonight, to write for you a full description of the path my thoughts have journeyed; but write I must nonetheless, because I've perceived some things that I just must share.

In our brains, our neurons fire, and we have billions of them.  Synapses are the connections between the neurons.  The more synapses, the more creative we are able to be.  Currently the phrase often used for creativity is "thinking outside the box."  That phrase simply means being able to have a fresh perspective on an old problem, such that you might actually increase the likelihood of solving the problem.  In other words, not being so wary of "reinventing the wheel" that you fail to consider that there may be an alternative to the wheel when it comes to efficient travel and/or portage.

I am coming back to the internet, and then moving on to the economy, so bear with me please.

This socio-political experiment called America was precipitated by intense exchange of ideas after the invention of the printing press.  America has just this year shaken off some things that bogged us down, caused a civil war, in fact.  We thought we were doomed to division because ideology was our only unity, and that ideology turned out to be diverse, and comprised of many cultures.  What's the same about Americans?  Is anything the same on a genetic level (as it probably is for, say, Italians)?

I think something IS the same about us genetically.  Be we Native Americans or any other cultural race by DNA, all of us here sprang from people who MIGRATED to a different place, BELIEVING LIFE COULD BE BETTER.

I postulate that some genetic marker remains in all Americans which gives us a propensity to believe that life can be better.  We've got a gene, I think, that makes us people who will TRY, people who will SEARCH, people who will -- dare I say it -- HOPE.

In fact, history, I think, has shown, that the darker the days, the more likely Americans are to rise to the occasion.  They used to call it "Yankee Ingenuity."  Whatever you call it, throw us into adversity and our genetic code kicks in, despite our present paradigms, and we work together and figure things out and end up better as a whole than even we think is possible.

So what have we here?  A massive exchange of ideas on the world-wide-web!  It was not thought spawned on American soil that spawned America, you know.  We stood on the shoulders of giants (to loosely quote from a movie, and I don't remember which one ... maybe it was Jurassic Park).  I think that what's happening here does not affect just us, but our little experiment affects all of humanity.

For the most part, there is no money changing hands as we all blog our little hearts out, and read each other's thoughts, and make our sundry neuro-connections, then go about our business.  But we sure do spark each other, don't we?

I just want to share with you my excitement about that fact.  I think good stuff is gonna come of all this sparking, kids.

As an aside (but a brief one) a commentator on election night observed that we'd had two baby boom presidents -- Bill Clinton and George W (now I thought George W was born during WWII, which makes him not technically a boomer, but I could be wrong about that).  The commentator went on to remark how the boomers were supposed to "change the world," and then he implied that they didn't, and then he said that Barack is a subsequent generation.

I just want to say that the boomers did change the world.  The paradigm shift that brought the seeds of an internet that is (at least presently) FREE, is Woodstock Generation through and through.

Okay, enough about that.  Now the ECONOMY.

What has value?  Well, what do we NEED?  What is ESSENTIAL?

We must all eat and drink.  We must all have coverings and shelters against the elements.

Because of those needs, certain things have REAL value.  Food has real value.  Food springs from the earth, because of the sun, and water.  Land is called "real estate" because it has real value.  The dollar equivalent of its value may change with so-called economic fluctuations, but even so, the land itself is what is truly of value -- particularly if the land is fertile and well-watered and in a favorable climate for production of food.  Or if the land contains other "natural resources" useful for the maintenance of life and health (timber, for instance, to name but one).

Another aside here -- haven't you noticed, kids, that the water we need FALLS FROM THE SKY, the food we need SPRINGS FROM THE GROUND ... I could go on an on, but ISN'T THAT COOL?  Was that by design?  DESIGN?  If you think not, I betcha you think a bunch of other goofy things too.  But enough preaching.  Back to the economy.

We are in a TERRIBLE recession.  World-wide, no less.  Why?  Has the earth decreased it's production of food? (No.)  Has the land disappeared? (No.)  Has the sun exploded? (No.)  Has the rain stopped falling? (No.)  Are there still sufficient resources to maintain life on this planet?  Um, Yes.

Do we all still want to work to harvest the things that need harvesting and convert the things that need converting to make them more useful or pleasing?  (Um, yes -- we need MORE JOBS as a matter of fact.)

Do we all still want to BUY food and other stuff?  ABSOLUTELY!

Are we willing to trade with each other?  We sure are.  Heck, we'll even do the types of things that most interest us free-for-nothing, so long as our basic needs are met.  (Like blog, for instance.)  We'll even share our food and other resources, expecting nothing in return but hoping only for respect or affection, on our more magnanimous days.

So what's the matter with our economy?  Oh, some of us (maybe a bunch of us) thought it might be fun to trade things that are not real.  Let's bet money on the future value of, oh, say "real estate."  Let's buy land and sell it, just to make money on the increase in it's perceived value (rather than to use it for the sustenance of life).

We built a house of cards, and eventually it collapsed.  If we took high school economics, we should have seen this coming.

Okay, the inflated speculative value has collapsed, and it's not going back up, either.  Some gamblers lost a mess of money.  Losses hurt.  Okay.  Get up and build something that's real.

I think that's what Barack Obama and our "leaders" are about to do with us.  We're going to provide "jobs" building some real and decent things that will benefit our children and grandchildren down the road, and pay the family grocery bills in the meantime.  Every little household gets the chance (I hope) to say about unnecessary debt, "Whew!  I won't do THAT again.  Too scary how it can bite you in the butt."  We might not get to do the jobs we thought were our birthright, but we will be productive again, and pretty soon our economy will have a positive "gross national PRODUCT," and everyone who wants a job will be able to have a job, and since we're basically a decent bunch of people, we'll provide for the people who cannot work, and probably even for the people who simply will not work.

I wish I was more eloquent, but this may be the best I can do.  I'm writing my ideas anyway, hoping I might "spark" a few of you who turn a phrase better than I do, or who are able to neuro-connect on a higher level than what I do.  I'm adding my little spark to humanity, I hope; and I'm giving it free-for-nothing, and I do not care if anybody ever remembers my name.  Since we are five degrees connected to each other (or whatever that idea was a few years ago ... maybe it was eight ... it doesn't matter) I'm hoping that somewhere down the line enough common sense and realistic optimism shines from my little synapses that a bunch of families benefit for generations to come.

Particularly Prolific

Poems I wrote on June 17, 1989, in order:

Five or six people in each age of men 
Express something true with the brush or the pen
And others repeat it, again and again.

And falsehood, if clothed in a nice-enough rhyme
Is also inscribed in the marble of time.

On Generations:

At seven, we wonder, and move things about.
At seventeen, we just try to get out.
At twenty-one, we begin to pursue.
At twenty-five through fifty, we do.
At fifty-one we begin to rule.

And after we've built and we've ruled, we rest
And decide that the days long gone by were the best
When our parents were building, and their parents ruled.
This we determine at seventy-two.

Now which perspective is actually true?
I think it's the one that we own while we do.
While we grapple with present necessities,
And our children store up memories.

Random musings:

#1
A flower from the nursery,
Meant to thrive in fertile soil,
Will sometimes bloom in rambling wood
If someone puts forth toil.

#2
Is the essence of a thought
With no meter and no rhyme
A poem in its infancy,
Or just a piece of time?

#3
At seventy-four, my mother-in-law
Remembers fondly and says it,
That people in old times would walk where they went,
Thinking nothing of it.

"The world's gotten wider ... and smaller," I told her,
And she agreed, then she said,
"The stores would close early at night and on Sunday."

"The world's gotten different," I said.

 

When we wait safely in the grave,
And our own sons are old and gray,
What will they think of longingly
About this unremarkable day?

---- Poems by Rani Kaye ---- All rights reserved.

All Over the Place

The people I admire the most on Multiply are so "out there."  Each of you is different from me, and yet each of you hold an attraction to my soul.

It's a blog I read tonight that made me sad.  This one: http://lindao6.multiply.com/journal/item/523/We_Need_Each_Other._._._

Because we ought to be connected, I want to be connected, I imagine myself connected, maybe I am connected, but I don't FEEL connected.

And some of you feel smothered by your connectedness.

And I'm a great listener, advice-giver, someone who knows how to find "the quiet center."  And yet, there is not a soul that I would trust with mine.  Not really.  ...

That was a great blog on Linda's page, and I really like what I know of Linda, and I wanted to leave a comment.  But I was too dang sad.  Because my roots don't seem to intertwine, although I try to tangle them.  They've just been chopped too many times!

My parents moved us around every time I got my bearings when I was growing up.

The first man I married was never contented with a blasted thing in life, and he kept changing everything constantly.  On top of which, he rather wanted to be a hermit.

Church connections are supposed to be good ones, but to really be connected at a particular congregation (any of them) you're supposed to bad-mouth the ones that aren't your kind.  I worship, and have raised my youngest son, where the liturgy and the sermons do me the most good.  And he's connected there, having gone to parochial school there "all his life," but I don't really fit.

I'm a church secretary at a different kind of church.  I don't want to worship there.  They don't meet my deepest needs as "my own" church does.  But they are "inclusive" almost to a fault, and I need that.

The friends I've chosen on Multiply (and those who've chosen me) are extremely diverse, from down-home Baptist to Catholic to Pagan or Agnostic ... and I guess that if truth be told, I am a little bit of all those things myself.  (I'm a Lutheran, if you want to know -- Missouri Synod -- with a few unfortunate Baptist and Jewish tendencies, and the occasional respectful irreverence and willingness to dance at the winter solstice.)

Some of my friends are way more sensual than I'd ever care to be.  Some are searching for meaning in life, some are just trying to hold their grip, and some think they've got it all figured out.  Some could care less.

The friends here that I admire most are those who have an opinion -- their own point of view.  Whether they bitch about their mother-in-law, or gripe about bad weather, or try to make everything funny, or just tool around posting glitter graphics, or try to capture the most exquisite moment in words or photography.  Whether they flaunt their intelligence, or only their silliness.

I am a little bit like all of you ... and nothing like any of you.  And I do not share myself completely with anyone but God.  So if He does not exist, then apparently I do not share myself completely with anyone but myself.

"My own counsel will I keep." -- Yoda, from one of the Star Wars movies.

But damn, I sure do wish I really felt as connected, rooted, and intertwined, as my head believes we all are.  Because in my thought life, with my reason, from my world-view, I am convinced of the truth of the blog that set me tip-toeing through melancholy tonight.  I honestly think that, believe it or not, even when we don't speak the same language, we are ALL connected, in the eternal sense of things.

There.  That's as close to revealing as I am able to be.  For what it's worth.

The sky is NOT falling

Listen up, kids.  I have suffered under self-proclaimed prophets.  I have lived through a number of losses of various sorts.  I fed a family of five, plus 2 dogs, on $30 a week in the late 1980s.  I have been promoted beyond my wildest dreams, then had the whole office closed in a corporate restructuring.  I have gone from well-paid management to learning how to make donuts at minimum wage, and then back up again to corporate accountant, and then laid off by a whole new company.  I have built my own house with my family, and then lost both the house and the family in a divorce.  There's more, and I ain't gonna tell you.  But the sky is NOT falling.

I am not a pollyanna.  I am realistic.  People can survive without a lot of things.  A LOT of things.  Some things matter a lot.  And some things just don't really matter much at all, even though they take up a lot of time and energy.

If you have a particular gripe with religion, or even with God himself -- get over it.  You've probably bought a line of bull.  Prayer is a GOOD thing.  You should try it.  You don't like the way it's gone for you before, or you don't like the way some people who have preached to you in the past have done their preaching or their teaching or whatever -- get over it.  You WOULD be better at coping with all this latest nonsense on earth if you knew it was okay for you to talk to God as if you mattered to him.

Give it a try.

I've got other practical advice I'd be willing to hand out free for nothing.  But the thing you need to know most is what I just told you.  God made you.  God does care how it goes for you.  Have a word with him, even if you start out by yelling.

How to Get Your Life to be the Way You Want it to Be

Okay, first you have to realize that other people's lives intersect with yours, and you are not going to be able to change anything about them.

 

But if you want to tweak a few things about how your own days go, here are some suggestions of what has worked for me.

1.)  Best advice my mother ever gave me is this: Depression is to be avoided at all costs!

Writers, artists, musicians, photographers, etc. tend to be blessed with a streak of melancholy.  Keep that melancholy in line!  You grab it -- don't let it grab you.  Nobody can do this for you.  Friends might try to remind you.  Listen, when they do.  But only you can do it.

When you look deep into that hole, do not be charmed by it, do not think it is your tragic destiny, do not rationalize about the creative beauty it can evoke.  That's a bunch of crap!  YOU are the creative person -- not the ethereal sense that wraps around you.

I repeat:  Depression is to be avoided at all costs!

2.)  If you feel overwhelmed, just grab the task in front of you and do it.  No task invites you?  Then wash your kitchen counter.  Or mop a floor.  On your hands and knees if you don't have arthritis too bad for that.*  Polish your bathroom mirror.  Little stuff like this is easy to do.  Do some more little stuff like this.

Don't feel as though you have to dive 100% into spring cleaning or self-improvement.  Just do some little thing.  You don't have to feel like it.  Just do it.  It's little.  It looks nice when you're done.  Smile at it.

3.)  Do this first -- but it's no big deal:  Pray.  Doesn't matter if you don't believe God will help you, or even that He exists.  Ask Him to help you anyway.  What harm could that do?

*Note about the kitchen floor on hands & knees -- I don't haul out a bucket and scrub brush any more.  I grab a spray bottle of Mr. Clean or some other brand.  I grab the roll of paper towels.  I do it like that.  Pretty easy.  Not a big drawn out affair.  Looks good.  Smells good.  Makes me feel so dang "righteous" when the floor is shining after just a couple minutes worth of scooting around.

Nature Should Be Nurtured

Nature Should Be Nurtured
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes

God put everything we need in place before He created us.  In the beginning, we were created to tend a garden, to conceive and raise children, and to walk with God.

In everything we have to do on earth, the challenge is to find what is best, and to nurture that.

Gardening, raising children, walking with God -- the way to be most successful in life on earth is the same for all three.

Find what is beautiful, and nurture it.  It is perfectly fine to move things around -- just do so carefully, and at the proper time for each thing.  Keep the soil well-fed and aerated.  Pull the weeds when the weeds are young and tender and when the soil around them is soft.  (They come out easily then.)  Enjoy, celebrate, and praise.

That's life in a nutshell. 

Maybe I'll just do a journal entry

Maybe I'll just do a journal entry.  If I don't get too personal, maybe I can share it with my Multiply friends.  But maybe I'll just write the way I do in my journal.  Because I probably ought to write right now, so I don't get all stoved up with emotion and get myself a writer's block and then wander off into other pursuits, trying to keep the pain at bay.

It is Thanksgiving night.  Today we remember to be thankful.  Today we also remember all the yesterday holidays.  Or maybe we think about somebody else's better holidays.

Some of my friends have losses.  No.  Make that ALL of my friends.  I am certain that all of my friends have losses.  Life can be so full of losses sometimes.

No, apparently I cannot write about this.  It just causes me total creative shutdown.  Temporary, I am sure.  It seems important to me, though, to actually DO the stopping.  It's this way.  Some things DO require some mourning.  Some things are really bad, you know?

Can you read between the lines?  When you read between the lines, do you think that I have some "fresh" loss?  No.  Not fresh.  Maybe you do, though.  And when I see (or think I see) that you do ... well, then I can barely speak.  Or even think at all.

Thanking God for Life.  Mine, yours, and theirs.

Sigh.

Penpals are real people

I just read an essay here: http://blogs.northlandchurch.net/2008/11/19/perceived-connection-actual-isolation/

Okay, well I'll confess, I read part one.  I did not continue after that.  The writer's thesis seems to be that our online connections are not "real".  Writer tells a story of 2 people who go into a coffee shop, fire up their computers, and chat with each other, neither of them realizing they are both physically in the same coffee shop while they chat.

Okay, I guess that's funny.

But crimeny!  What's the big deal?  Let me give some "historical perspective" here.  I dig into genealogy.  I also like to read "old" books.  I know a bit about days gone by.  People WROTE LETTERS.

ALL THE TIME.

That is all we are doing, kids.  We are able to choose friends who don't live near us nowadays perhaps -- people we find interesting == people maybe who share our interests, or broaden our horizons.  We know they are real people!  We are NOT "isolated" (as the essay I read thinks we are) when we share ourselves with people through our CORRESPONDENCE.

Sheesh!  Just because we have a "new" word: Blogging ... or Chatting ... or IMing --

Dude, it is CORRESPONDENCE!  Humans have been communicating this way since before the printing press was even invented.

We just do it "in real time".  And I LIKE that.

Deviating only slightly from this theme -- my husband made an interesting comment today.  Talking about his sister when she first got married (20 years ago or so).  He said of her and her bridegroom, "They didn't have time to psychoanalyze.  They had a farm to run."

Okay, maybe that's deviating a lot from the theme.  I see I'd better tell you why this latter comment seems connected to the beginning of my blog here today.

I think sometimes people gripe too much about the wrong things.  And I think sometimes people "buy" the song-and-dance that we are all so isolated these days, sitting in our own little spaces, able to communicate with people almost everywhere.  DANG!  That just simply is NOT what I call "isolation".

My grandparents' grandparents were isolated.  If they moved across the country to settle the Michigan wilderness, they maybe NEVER got to communicate in real time with the folks they left behind them EVER AGAIN.

Shoot, my sister even chatted with her son when he was in the Navy ON A SUBMARINE!

Gotta love this century!  Quit psychoanalyzing! 

Now for your laugh of the day:  This is the link that first sent me to the website where I read the essay I have here blogged about.  I got this one in an email today, and it is HILARIOUS!


The Mom Song- LIVE from Northland Video on Vimeo.

http://blogs.northlandchurch.net/2008/08/11/the-mom-song/

It is called "The Mom Song"

Old Age - A new Perspective

Link

My Multiply friend, Ronnie, posted a wonderful essay she received via email.  You should read it!

Quondam Quote du Jour (Okay, so I'm quoting myself again)

Here's another Rani-Kaye-ism for ya'll:

"Sometimes the best place to hide something is in plain sight."  -- Rani Kaye

Today's List

What I am reading:
A History of the American People (c) 1997 by Paul Johnson, originally published in Great Britain in 1997 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson; published in the USA by Harper Collins Publishers.  I began by reading the section on Industrial America 1879-1912, and was so impressed with the book, I started at page 1 and read through page 99 yesterday.

I am also re-reading Nicholas and Alexandra (c) 1967 by Robert K. Massie, published simultaneously in Canada by McClelland and Stewart Ltd. and in New York by Atheneum.

Book I read in high school or college I want to find a copy of and re-read:
Black Like Me.  I do not remember the author's name, but will find out and check second-hand booksellers locally.  Just noting it here so I'll remember to do so next time I go out.

What I am thinking about:
Economics.  Specifically now, Value.  The "true" valuation of goods and services.  Especially this morning, of real estate.  And the lie of "Location, Location, Location."  (That the 3 most important factors that affect the value of real estate are location, location, and location.)  I have always believed that to be a lie.  Which is why my home is in what is called "Urban" Grand Rapids, but was until very recently called "the Inner City."  The Value here is tremendous.  The materials and craftmanship of my home could not be replicated today without emormous expense.  The fertility and beauty of my back yard pleases me very much.  I have public transportation, nice neighbors, nearness of churches and stores.  But where I live, until very recently, most of my contemporaries were "afraid" to come, because I live near so many of "those people" -- you know, the ones with the same ethnicity as our President-Elect.  Sigh.

What I have to do today:
Rake leaves.

What this younger generation needs is

OUR BLESSING!

Rani Kaye

Genealogy/Humanity

Here's what I've got to say:

Every man, woman, and child alive today "found grace in the eyes of the LORD" in our 95th great-grandfather, Noah.

And Christ died for ALL of us.

See Genesis chapter 6

See the New Testament

"Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another"  Romans 14:19 KJV

We are ALL cousins.  Be good to your family.

Rani Kaye