Month: September 2006

Tidbits I’ve gathered today from previous posts: I’m partial to Susan Branch stuff—Cookbooks, Keepsake books, Calendars… stuff! I just received an email update about her site… I think you’ll like it! Her work reminds me of Karla Dornacher whose work I so admire and like seeing around our home—probably much more because it’s inspirational!

Site-seeing: Another great site with GREAT stuff! Though I love-love-love the Silpat sheets that my daughter-in-law gave me, I cannot justify buying more of them at this time (they’re pricey—but worth it, to me!). I just visited a site which offers a baking sheet and I really want to try the nonstick material for baking! These sheets at 12.00 per, look a bit more ‘doable’ than the 27.00 Silpats. Additionally, I’d be more apt to use one sheet for crafting —at that price! Apparently, glues don’t stick to the material and they’re not damaged by heat, thus they’d be great for under crafts with the glue-gun and Fimo or Sculpey stuff. While you’re at that site, check out their GREAT prices on needles!!

The Bittersweets: My Dad’s birthday came and went this week and today, seven years have passed since the morning he died… and O, how I miss my daddy today! O, the bittersweet’s of life. I wrote this letter about him a year after his death—I could have written much more at the time and since then have filled many pages. O, the power of life and death… it is so over when it’s over! He was an amazing individual… one of those larger than life sorts of men—a real gentleman and surely, one of my heroes.

On Men and Boys: Though I’ve had friends reject the writings of this author, I still think the things I’ve learned about men from reading books by John Eldredge have been extremely helpful. His book, Wild at Heart, has been used of the LORD to teach me a little more about my ‘boys who would be men’ and about my role in their lives and in my husband’s life. Over the years I’ve observed ways of boys and because of this, things don’t surprise me like they used to… things don’t discourage me in the same way and things aren’t as hard for me as they used to be in raising boys. I guess our trainer set really was the greatest blessing. They know that’s an endearing term I have for them and they also know I adore them—but truly, still, they’re a trainer set and I’m still, in many ways a trainee mother.

On raising boys to be men: I wish I’d said all this as succinctly as Jack Heald did. In the raising of many boys to be men, I’ve shared many of these exact thoughts with each one of them; Wes has enlightened them on many of these same points. This piece is sort of like Wear Sunscreen, the piece by Mary Schmich that has been attributed to Kurt Vonnegut (who probably wishes he’d written it!). In this QotD, Jack Heald shares advice to sons on such topics as: “…the gamut – Life, God, Women, Fighting, Working, Dying, Friendship, Money, Politics, Education, Culture, Leadership. It may be a book one day, a la Chicken Soup or Jabez…”

More on boys and men: I sometimes think that I’d sure like a mulching vacuum—you know, for all those little bits and pieces of things in the carpet. I don’t know how many little Lego’s have been vacuumed up over the years—our incomplete sets would give a clue. I also don’t know how many pennies have shot into the motors of our vacuums—many, I’m sure! Yes, that’s plural: many pennies and many vacuums. Now, most of our home is not carpeted—BUT—for the rooms that are, a Hoover Mulcher would be great. My sons thought this: would be a great vacuum! I’m not sure we’d get much actual work done with one of these!

I’m looking around and thinking about how to change or beautify the decorating scheme of our home.   I’m thinking about space.  Mom’s of many do this a lot, I think.   Interspersed in thoughts of “simplifying” and decluttering, I think we look around every day and say something like, “I’m sure there’s more space in this house― somewhere!” And then I think, hmmmmm, how can I get a bit more creative with windows, bookshelves and bunkbeds –bcz that’s pretty much the list of more prominent items or space grabbers in our home. I initially think perhaps we ought to downsize –the stuff, not the house(!!!).  Maybe get rid of some lots of the books—I sure don’t want less bunkbeds, that’s for certain.  And I wouldn’t want to trade windows for wall-space.  Then I think perhaps, no, maybe we ought to just get taller bookshelves.  Then I realize we cannot have taller shelves bcz they wouldn’t fit in the upstairs –both around the tight turn of the stairs themselves and in each of the low-ceilinged attic bedrooms.  Besides, the bedrooms are filled, with no space to spare, with bunkbeds and shelves already.  And, downstairs, well… windows.  But maybe… enough room to squeeze in another bookshelf or two.  The way we figure it, there’s always enough room for more children, more books and more teacups.

Full bookshelves do provide for interesting decor, however.  If the books are read and reread then the decorating scheme changes as the books are replaced on a shelf other than their original location.  But oddly, one bookshelf never becomes or looks sparse.  They are all overloaded, but that overloading is never due to one or another shelf’s diminished volume of books.  I don’t know how that happens.  And I don’t know how exactly we came to have all these books.  No, wait.  I do know… and it’s not just eBay and Vision Forum.  And we don’t own the ever changing mass of library books though they have a designated spot.

I don’t know where I was going with this, but initially I was thinking about making new coverings for the boys’ bunkbeds.  I s’pose they ought to be painted, too –the bunkbeds, never the boys.  So, a friend and I were discussing how the “bargain bin” at Macy’s always contains king-sheet sets and how I could get a few of those and use them for making duvet covers for each of the beds –coordinating navy, cranberry, and hunter greens by sewing tops and bottoms of different sheet colours together.   We thought of how we could make covers and sew extra large buttons onto the blankets/duvets and buttonholes in the top of the duvet covers so the duvets don’t slip down and around in the covers.  What a sweet gesture that would be and they’d (well, maybe) be enthused to keep their room tidier.

I then thought if I did that, then that same sweetness would be required at the other end upstairs as the girls’ bunkbeds would need new coverings also.  Then I thought… well, if I do that then maybe we ought to paint upstairs, too. But then I thought of all the bookshelves that line the hallway and in each of their rooms. Hmmm.  Maybe I will just go refill this teacup and think on this sweet plan a bit longer.

During a newscast this morning, I’m standing talking to my radio (I know, I know… second mistake) and I’m saying: new-klee-er, new-klee-er, new-klee-er!

I hear new-cue-lur.  Again I say:  new-klee-er! It’s: new-klee-er, new-klee-er!

I listen on… blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, newcuelur blah, blah, blah, blah, nucuelur… blah, blah, blah, blah newcuelur blah, blah…

Ack! No… not new-CUE-lur It’s new-klee-er, new-klee-er, new-klee-er!  C’mon! You’re the President.  Home-schooled children are listening and I’m attempting proper pronunciation and clear speech in our home! NuCLEAR.

It’s all stuff I think about. Pretty often.  Whatsoever things are true…  Truing past events and warding off Truthiness.   The longer I live the more I see that people would rather be -truthy- than just about anything else.  For, really,  if we are truthful, people might not like us or at least might not like what we say, do or think.  But, if on the other hand, we are truthy, we think they’ll likely “buy” our stuff.  You know… stuff like “fine, thank you, and how are you?”  If it’s true, fine. Thank you.  If it’s not true…well, then, it’s truthy.  It’s what you *want* the other person to perceive.   It’s not what’s necessarily true, but what you hope they’ll accept as truth.  Truthy.  Truthy works on most of the people most of the time, some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.  There’re people truthy doesn’t work for.  Mothers, usually.  Mothers usually don’t buy truthy.  Well, and dad’s don’t buy truthy, either.  Usually.

Truthy is what you want people to believe or perceive about you or about what you’re saying.  I was raised with truthy.  I know truthy… and that’s probably why I hate truthy stuff today.  If you were raised with truthy, you probably hate it, too.  You know… things are completely out of control in the home and the doorbell or the phone rings: (sweet voice suddenly answers) “Helllloooo?  O, yes, wonderful…”  And on and on.  Truthy answers: Fine, thank you, when it’s anything but finethankyou.  Truthy works, though.  Truthy works because, in reality, everyone only wants to hear the finethankyou answers.  People don’t really want to hear any thing besides finethankyou, because if they hear anything other than finethankyou, they will necessarily have to do something about it… whatever it is.  Anything but finethankyou requires a thoughtful response.  Truth is, most people don’t want to deal with more than that.

But then there’s truing. Truing is what happens after the finethankyou answer is given.  People who care will get past the truthy and onto the truth by truing.  Builders use planes to true warped or twisted beams or boards and make them fit for use by truing them.  Cyclists “true” spokes of wheels by truing.  They set them in balance to eliminate wobbles or bumpy rides—and to protect from or prevent damage to the wheel.  The truth is in the ride.  I think that truing sort of needs to happen when it’s obvious that the finethankyou answer is, well, truthy.  But you know… it takes someone who cares enough to do some truing to get past the truthy and get to the truth.  Those are the people we probably trust enough to allow some truing of our warped answer or our out-of-balance answer.   But then, there’s gotta be trust to allow that to happen.  It starts not with truthy, but with truth.