LOVE- DAY 18

Long night.

Emotionally drained.

I LOVE you all.

I need sleep.

Good night.

Yes? Well?

So...ehem...I, uh...well, I've been busy?

Busy with, you know, life.

Okay, okay, not THAT busy. But sorta busy.

Actually, I have so many things crashing around in my head, and some of that crashing has kept my head pretty busy.

A girlfriend of mine found out her breast cancer is back.

{{{{{{CRASH}}}}}}

Four days later a friend tearfully told me her husband has cancer and she doesn't know what will happen.

{{{{{{CRASH}}}}}}

That kind of puts all my little blitherings into a perspective that I had to step away from for a little bit.

This Life thing. ouch.

I was going to write something about Fred's birthday dinner two weeks ago because those pictures are loaded on my computer and half my problem lately is getting my pictures out of my camera and onto my computer so that I can have something to blah-og about.

So I have this picture of Fred celebrating his 20th birthday at a family dinner at Red Lobster on Feb. 5th:

We had a lovely time and it was wonderful for our family to be together. It always is.

But instead of talking about all that I have something else to say. I have friends who right now are in The Fight Of Their Lives. When we were 20 did we even think about what it would mean to be in The Fight Of Our Life? Or The Fight For Our Life? Do you remember feeling invincible when you were 20?

What would you say to your 20-year-old self from your perspective-laden vantage point of now?

How would you live your life differently if you knew then what you know now?

Why are we allowed to make such monumental life-decisions when we are in our 20's?

Everyone has a sadness.

Everyone carries a burden.

Ever so gently is how we should be with one another.

Things Keeping Me Busy:

Well, here is something else that is keeping me pretty busy. It is a lot more pleasant than H1N1 and Jake being sick, which he no longer is.

I've been taking another class over at Big Picture Scrapbooking taught by Ali Edwards called "Yesterday/Today". Ali is pretty well known in the scrapbooking world for her unique way of seeing life and capturing that vision. We aren't so much "scrapbookers" as we are "life artists". I'm comfortable with that.

This class is about the telling the stories of who we are. It is about how yesterday has created who we are today, and it is about what today is for us.

We are gathering the photos of our life and choosing which ones to use to tell our story. What has really been a challenge for me has been learning the digital component of this. I'm doing paper layouts, but she gives us text boxes and layers and digital things we can use so that our finished layouts can be either digital or hybrid.

This is a whole new world to me. I rarely type anything on the computer when I do a layout, just because I don't want to deal with making everything fit, etc etc. Now I am spending hours in PSE learning how to do layers and all sorts of other things that I don't even know what to call!

BUT, the fun part has been telling my story.

Below is my introduction page. On the left is a 5 picture photo strip that is all one piece. Yep. I learned how to do that and felt quite pleased with myself after HOURS in the learning curve. (I know, I know. Some of you are shaking your head in sad amusement on my behalf...

You can't see the middle paper with the title "Yesterday/Today" on it very well. The ink is a blue and the words are in outline form so they are hard to see in this photo. I chose 5 pictures representing the 5 decades of my yesterdays thus far, and the large photo on the right represents today, taken in France last month.

This layout is about 6 stories from my childhood. We were to choose 6 stories to tell, and if we had the photos great, but we didn't have to use photos. Another learning curve with me and the computer, again.

I had fun looking through old pictures with the intention of choosing a story to tell. I had a hard time narrowing it down to 6, and I certainly had a hard time keeping myself within the limit of the text boxes. I had emailed my Mom with a question about what year we moved to Nebraska and she wrote me back a HUGE email with all sorts of details and stories!! What a TREASURE! I'm going to write and ask more little questions, Mom, hoping for more packed-full-of-details answers!

This week's story is to be about a challenging time in our life and how we got through it. This one will bare our souls a little bit. The purpose of such a story is to give us perspective (this was hard but I did it) and perhaps to strengthen anyone who reads it. When I was in my 20's my great-aunt gave me her father's, my great-grandfather's, missionary journal to read. He had gone to England. I was soooooooo anxious and excited to read this, to learn about this man I came from, to feel connected through the years. It was the most boring thing I had ever read! I learned all about the weather in England (it rained...almost daily) and how many miles he walked (lots). NOTHING about how he felt or what he thought. Aunt Genevieve had warned me it would be like that.

I've always been a pretty honest writer in my journals. I don't necessarily write all the gory details of the hard times, because I do believe we should let go and move on. I write enough so that anyone who reads it will know something hard is happening, but I'm getting through it. I DO want any children or grandchildren or on down the line to be able to gain strength from things they might read from me.

I remember during a pretty hard time years ago, talking out-loud to one of my grandmothers in the mother-line and asking her, "How did you do it, Hannah? How did you keep going? How did you get through the hard stuff?"

So this is what I need to work on today. Besides learning the technical stuff for the layout, I need to also find the right balance with my written word so that I can tell a challenging story. We'll see how this turns out!

Awakenings

While I've been ever-so-busy a lot has been going on. Little changes are happening.

I noticed the winds blowing last week. They always start blowing in the Spring.

One morning I paused to listen to a bird calling. Kind of a tense sound. I looked out the window and saw the robin, who was making this peculiar sound, sitting on the fence. Then I heard an answering call. Hummm....Robin Love?

Daily I note (with excitement) what time the sun sets, which is later and later.

The air is warming up. The roof no longer has melting snow that drips off onto the driveway, which would freeze during the night and cause a bit of shakey-skatey excitement in the morning.

There is still a lot of brown going on around here. Brown surrounded with snow stubborn enough to try to stay. 

But the strength of green will win this little battle.

The sure signs of Spring are here. 

New growth from the strawberry plants pushing their way through the old growth.

A definite sigh that Spring is on the way? The golfers are back! No matter that there are still some snow patches and the greens are anything but. 

But here is the happiest Spring sign for me:

My Daughter of Spring on her Ikea swing. (poetry, Folks. Poetry)

Has can one resist the lure of the swing? 

And just because it is such a happy color...

Yellow shoes.

Welcome, March. We've been waiting for you!

I Know How to Climb a Mountain

The moon rising over "my" mountain
Snowbird, 2008
("my" peak is the one on the left)

The year was 1981. My parents were living in Portugal. Before they had moved there they had purchased a time-share at Snowbird. I was going to college and was the only one around at the time so I would go to Snowbird during our week and take different groups of friends.

The summer of 1981 I went up to Snowbird on my own for a few days and then some newly-married friends were going to come up for the rest of the week and I would leave. Being a poor college student I couldn't afford a nice wedding gift for these dear friends, so I "gave" them part of my precious time at Snowbird.

But while I was there alone I felt drawn to climb the mountain that I would sit and stare at from the balcony of my room. So I did. I put on my swim suit (the better for tanning as I climbed) and my 1980's style running shorts (emphasis on "short") and my running shoes, of course, and off I went. I found a great stick to use, because that's always what we did on hikes when I was growing up. No water. No food. No notification to ANYONE that I was going up the mountain.

No idea what I was doing.

I just knew there was a mountain calling to me and I needed to climb.

And this is what I learned:

Climbing a mountain is hard work. It is harder than you think it is going to be.

And it usually takes longer than you think it will take.

As I climbed, in my stripped-down unprotected state, I realized that it was just me, the mountain, and God, so I talked as I climbed. And I listened as I climbed. And I kept climbing

Abbie sitting on the balcony in front of "my mountain"
2006

My way of going up a mountain is pretty much straight up. None of this zig-zagging back and forth to make it easier. No. I had a mountain to climb and I wanted to get to the top, so I went straight up. And as I pushed through the scrubby brush, and climbed over rocks and boulders I realized that I was being taught some interesting things about life and obstacles and hard things that can hurt and bruise and my journey of choice, which was to just get over-through-on top of the obstacle and to keep going. There was a mountain top I needed to reach and I wasn't stopping, waiting, or meandering my way up.

It took me a long time to get to the top. I was surprised at how much longer it took than I had anticipated. And it was harder than I had thought it would be. And there was a time, after I had scrambled up the shale to get to the tippy-top, that I realized I couldn't go down the way I came up, it would be too dangerous with all that loose shale. And I wasn't sure how to get down. And I thought about how nobody knew I was up there. And gosh, could there be wild animals up here? (yes, in fact there were.) So I picked up my conversation with God and explained my situation and asked for help figuring out a way to get down. The way down was around the other side and then back around to the front of the mountain.

When my friends came the next day I told Lorraine about my climb and what I learned. She wanted to take my picture so had me get back into my "climbing gear" to memorialize my achievement.

Every year that we go to Snowbird I sit and look at my mountain and I think about that day when I climbed, and how that mountain became a part of me.

I know how to climb a mountain. I have done that. I know how to work hard and how to keep going and how to reach the top. I have climbed mountains.

I am climbing a mountain now. It is a big mountain. It is a mountain of sorrow and sadness, of perceived failure and failings. It is a mountain that has been trying to overshadow me.

But I know how to climb a mountain. I've done that before. And I believe that once you have climbed a mountain that mountain lives in you and the mountain's strength becomes your strength.

I know how to climb a mountain.

I Love My Bosch

A few years ago for Christmas Doug gave me a Bosch and I was so excited to get this work horse of a mixer. I use this mixer for all sorts of breads and rolls. My personal favorite is when I grind wheat for immediate use as I make 100% whole, and freshly ground, wheat bread. There is something amazingly magical about the bread when the wheat is ground within 3 minutes of being made into bread. Maybe I just imagine it, but I think it is extra delicious.

This is my hard working machine

The magic for my children happens when I make 100% white flour bread. You would think this is the best treat in the world! Every now and again I'll whip up a batch of white bread for dinner (and with this machine and the recipe I use the bread is ready from start to finish in just about an hour and a half) and it doesn't matter what else I serve for dinner, everyone is happy because of the white bread. Actually, if I'm trying a new recipe for dinner and I'm not sure how it'll be, I'll make some white bread just so we can for sure have something good to eat! (Now my family knows my secret...) I always feel like such a good Mom when I make white bread! How funny is that?

This is the yummy result of all that hard work!

Last night Sam told me my bread is fit for a king. He told me some other funny stuff before that, but I choose to remember that he thinks my bread is fit for a king!

Recipe for Bosch Bread

3 1/2 cups warm water (I just use the hot water from the faucet)

1/3 cup oil

1/3 cup honey

1 egg if desired-not necessary (I've never done this)

2 TBS dough enhancer (from "health food" stores, its in a can)

1 TB salt

Mix for a second or so

Add 4 cups fresh ground flour--mix for a minute, then add 2 TBS SAF yeast.

Mix again until like pancake dough.

Let set for 10 minutes--this is called sponging your dough.

Then add enough flour as the mixer is mixing on low to allow the dough to clean out the sides and bottom of the bowl. This should only take 2 minutes or so. The object here is to add as LITTLE flour as possible, only enough to let it clear the sides of your bowl.

Let it knead now for 10 minutes on low.

Oil hands and shape into 3 loaves and put in bread pans.

Put loaves into a 200* pre-heated oven and let rise for 20 minutes.

Raise temp. to 350* and bake for 20-30 minutes more.

I am always on the look-out for a good bread recipe so if you have one please send it my way!