Things I don’t want to forget that I want to write about

- My connection with the moon and the previous post

-My aha moment about grace

-Lil blips of things that I’ve been reading about (anger, sleep, praying with children)

-solstice pictures

Acceptance… Resignation

I am slowly coming to terms with the idea that I will always be fat. I was really depressed about it yesterday, but I really just have better things in my life to deal with than being fat. I mean, I really really want to be healthy. I truly believe that if I don’t lose some weight, then I will be diabetic in 10 years or less. Diabetes is something I REALLY don’t want to form. I have PCOS with insulin resistance. Diabetes isn’t some random fear, it’s breathing down my neck. I know how to keep my blood sugar on an even keel, and I usually do, though. But, I can’t keep trying and trying to lose weight and have nothing happen. I have other things in my life- I have a child (who I want to be healthy for), and a family to run (that I want to be around for). I don’t want to pass on body issues to Fairy Girl- but are they body issues if you really ARE obese? I don’t know.

I am embarking on another round of my weight loss game, based on the show Biggest Loser. It’s a fun accountability thing- it keeps me exercising- the last time I did it, I got some serious muscle tone, but I didn’t lose any weight. Very discouraging. So discouraging that I kind of went, “what’s the point? Fat if I do, fat if I don’t?” and quit. And I lost all my conditioning and muscle tone, and I kind of like it- it gave me energy, made me feel young again. Yes, I’m 25 and I feel like a fat old blob of a woman most of the time. I don’t feel good about my looks at all, not even a little bit. Sometimes I look in the mirror and can almost see myself under there, but it’s not easy. Anyway, the exercise was good for me, weight loss or no, so I just have to get into the habit of that again.

Another part of it is that I don’t know how to dress myself in a flattering way anymore- the last time I read about how to dress for your body type, I was a pear shape in high school. Now I’m more of an apple. I have extremely large boobs, and a large tummy. I need to learn how to dress myself again. I have More Big Girl Knits from the library right now, and there are good suggestions in the back on this subject, I’ll have to look up some of those books.

And develop healthy habits- I suppose I’ll always be working on this area. I need to remember to eat just when I’m hungry, not when I’m depressed or bored. And I need to stop when I’m just full, not when I’m stuffed. I think part of it is remembering- breaking a bad habit- and part of it is brain chemistry- there are chemicals in your body that tell your body when you’re full, and when you’re hungry, and sometimes those can be off.I found I got fuller MUCH faster, and it was easier to turn down food when I went grain free for a while. It’s REALLY hard to do that full time, though. I don’t know how to do it, and I’m having a hard time finding info on living grain free.  I’d really like to see a doctor, but I don’t have health insurance, so I’ve got to muddle through it on my own.

This is from another forum, but I want to repost it in my own blog to remind myself of the next step:

These are Susun Weed’s 6 steps of healing. I’m at step two/3 right now, getting ready to move to step 4.

0 Do Nothing
1 Collect Information
2 Engage the Energy
3 Nourish and Tonify
4 Stimulate/Sedate
5a Supplements
5b Drugs
6 Break and Enter

I can’t see how step 0 would help me right now, I’ve done that before, and it doesnt’ help with hormones, insulin, or weight loss

I think for step 1, I will journal, and write down all the stuff I know about my body, my digestion, etc. And all the remedies and ideas I’ve collected over the years, just to see what I already know.

For step 2, I’m looking into crystal help and homeopathics

Step 3, I’m really working on taking my CLO and infusions every day- a quart a day, minimum.  Diet and exercise fall into this category, but it goes without saying that this is part of losing weight, at least for me.

Step 4. Cinnamon, nettle seeds…?

Step 5. Chromium, other weight loss stuff- my mom works at GNC
5b: Metformin, other diabetes meds (I don’t have diabetes, but I will if I don’t fix this hormonal issue.)

step 6: bariatric surgery- I don’t think I’m even close to this right now.

I found this you tube helpful, but I’m still working through my feelings about it all. I suppose if I really believed I was healthy at this weight, I’d be ok with it, but deep down,  I don’t really think it’s healthy to be nearly 200 lbs when you’re just over 5 feet tall.

Still trying to come to terms with being fat for the rest of my life…

I’ve been tagged!

I feel so special, this is the first time anyone has tagged me! I got tagged from Yarrow of Witchwood.

So here is how it works:

~Link to the person who tagged you
~Mention the rules in your blog
~Tell about six unspectacular quirks of yours
~Tag a new set of six following bloggers by linking them

My unspectacular quirks:

1. I have to have the blinds closed after dark- otherwise I feel weird, like people are watching me.

2. I also like the towel to face the right way, with the design front and center, in the bathroom. (Otherwise, why have pretty towels?)

3. I like oranges, but not orange juice.

4. I’m a compulsive groomer- clogged pores bother me. It extends to my family, I pity them.

5. I think frosting and cheese is a pretty tasty snack- not one I indulge too often, but there it is.

6. Drawers and cabinets must be completely closed at all times. If it’s mostly closed, it’s STILL OPEN. Fairy Girl inherited that one from me.

I tag:

Mary from Attachlings

Rebecca from Herbwife’s Kitchen

Rockin Granola

Dawn from By Sun and Candlelight

Darcey from Gaias Gifts

Kiva from Medicine Woman’s Roots

Herbwife’s Cottage Grand Opening!

FINALLY! I am a for real WAHM! I’m so excited!

I currently have items for pregnant, breastfeeding, and newly postpartum moms. I am working on a culinary herbal line, and maybe some homemade mixes. But right now, check out what I have! If there’s something you want and it’s “sold out”, please ask me about it, I likely have more!

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5141313

Simple Woman’s Daybook

FOR TODAY

Outside my Window… a hillside with tall grass and bolted dandelions.

I am thinking… I’m thinking about tomorrow, and my face off with the pesticide sprayers, and about my now dreadlocked hair, and that I should blog more often.

I am thankful for…sunshine, flowers, Fairy Girl, and pretty scarves.
From the kitchen… REAL root beer, and homemade from scratch chocolate pudding

I am creating… I’m about to get started on a few more dishcloths while I wait to be able to afford the supplies for Crumpets. And thinking about making some sock puppets.

I am going… to pick up my produce later today.

I am wearing… a long denim skirt, a brown tank top, and my hair is up in a snood topped with a scarf. Barefoot, as always.

I am reading… Kitchen Table Wisdom.

I am hoping… that my mother can come visit next week, so I don’t have to be alone for four days in a row with Fairy Girl.

I am hearing… Native American flute music and the birds outside.

Around the house…I still have to hang up the whites and start the dishes, but everything else is under control- unlike last week.
One of my favorite things… naptime!

A Few Plans For The Rest Of The Week… The Boy needs new running shoes, and I need to go to a teacher supply store to get some things to make a weather tree for our homeschool, and then we’re heading to the park!

If you aren’t angry, you aren’t paying attention

The Revolution will not be Microwaved!

I LOVE this book. LOVE it- can’t say enough good things about it. So, I won’t. I’ll just launch right into copying down the quotes I want to save, let you intelligent readers put the pieces together, and hope I get done before the baby wakes up.

Ready, set, GO!

Katz met a guy who has an illegal bakery- laws are set up so that you can’t bake using your own household kitchen, which means that you have to go into a ton of debt or be a big corporation to make homemade goodies, so this guy just decided to start baking, letting his friends know, and move around every week, hoping he doesn’t get caught. AWESOME- civil disobedience, I love it!

“Investigative journalist Greg Palast obtained an internal State Dept document dated Feb 2003 (a month BEFORE US invaded Iraq) that included seed and plant patents as part of the US economic agenda in Iraq- war devastated most Iraqi agricultural research centers and seed stocks- resulted in the loss of nearly all generations of seeds and all crops- appears that US military agenda is to disrupt agricultural self sufficiency and create dependency on high tech global seed market (GMOs), while imposing legal framework to permanently disempower local farmers.”

Monsanto is evil, just in case you didn’t know, “Monsanto is polluting American farms with it’s GE crops,, not properly informing farmers about these altered seeds, and then profiting from it’s own irresponsibility and negligence by suing innocent farmers.”

And check this out: “Michael Taylor worked for Monsanto drafting proposed regulations for GM crops for Monsanto’s lobbyists to promote. When we was appointed deputy commissioner for policy at the US FDA, Taylor was able to implement the regulations he had drafted. Taylor’s good work at the FDA got him promoted to the position of administrator of the USDA’s Food and Safety and Inspection Service, where he continued to be involved in setting policy related to GM foods. He was later hired BACK by Monsanto as it’s VP for public safety.”

Most of the world is against GMOs- I can’t type out all the ways various countries have opposed them, but this is notable: “French court sentenced sheep farmer and activist Joze Bove to 4 months in jail for his role in destroying GM corn.”- Bove was invited in 2006 to speak at an American university, but wasn’t permitted to enter the country. - wonder why….?

Katz says, “My personal paranoid fantasy of where biotechnology industries are headed involves human reproduction. Isnt’ that the next frontier after plant reproduction and animal reproduction have been fully commercialized? There are already plenty of signs that human reproductive abilities are on the wane: decreasing fertility rates, reduced levels of sperm vitality and viability, the massive use of drugs by women to increase fertility, and by men to overcome ED (excuse me, incompetent penis- HWM ;)), and diminishing penis size linked to exposure to chemicals called phthalates, which are commonly found in plastics, cosmetics, and perfumes.”

I think he takes it a little far, and I think he knows he is, but the realities of decreasing male and female fertility are real.

Regarding the loss of small farming as a profession:

“We can all survive without another condominium, Taco Bell, or shopping center. Can we really survive without fertile soils, without fresh and unpoisoned food, without a place to teach our children about interconnections and context, or a place to gather on the land?”

The farmer who said that, Michael Ableman fought to keep his farm despite heavy pressure to sell to developers- all the rest of the land around him was sold and developed- “We protested the sacrifice of the richest topsoil on the entire West Coast. We cited the agricultural history of this valley, our perfect Mediterranean growing climate, the loss of farmland everywhere, and the importance of small farms and local food for our children. Our voices were drowned out by housing statistics, traffic studies, and promises for parks and tennis courts, all supported by sophisticated maps and graphs.”

“After the plan went through, the farmer who had sold his land was quoted in the paper as saying, “Farming is a dying profession”, to which Ableman reacted, “I had to wonder where HIS food came from.”

Cool organization: WWOOF World-wide opportunities on organic Farms: match young farmer wanna-bes up with older farmers who have no heirs to learn from the old farmers so the farm doesn’t die out.

In May 2005 23 women working in a California vineyard had to be rushed to the hospital after chemicals being sprayed on a neighboring field drifted in their direction and engulfed them. First they smelled something odd, then they started feeling dizzy and nauseous. They tried to run away. Four of them fell into convulsions.

In the Mexican tomato fields, Barndt finds that many of the pickers are women and their children, not uncommonly breast-feeding mothers with babies on their backs. “In breastfeeding her child, Reyna (a tomato picker) passed the pesticides from the plants to her hands, which then got into his mouth, and almost poisoned him”, reports one of the tomato pickers she interviewed. Indigenous women and children are clearly in the most precarious position of all who bring us the corporate tomato. (From “Tangled Routes: Women, Work, and Globalization on the Tomato Trail”)

The Makah, a Washington state tribe that traditionally subsisted largely on the meat of the gray whale made an attempt a few years ago to revive their food tradition. The gray whale is so central to their culture that in an 1855 treaty with the US, the Makah traded 90% of their land for the right to continue whaling. As the commercial whaling industry grew, the Makah watched the whale populations dwindle. In the 1920s they made the voluntary decision to stop whaling altogether, 50 years before the gray whale became legally protected as an endangered species.- In 1994 it was removed from the endangered species list. Because of that 1855 treaty, the fact that they do not hunt for commercial purposes, the Makah are at least theoretically exempt from the commercial whaling ban. They decided to resume tradition- some misguided environmentalists and animal rights activists protested with slogans such as “Abolish the treaties!” and “Save a whale- Hunt a Makah!”- in 2000 a federal court ordered the Makah to stop whale hunting, treaty or no treaty, extinction threat or not, preventing them from practicing their ancient food traditions in a sustainable way.

In 1998 India banned the sale of mustard oil and imposed new packagine requirements on other oils- triggered by the death of 50 people in New Delhi, caused by contaminated mustard oil- strong case for sabotage, no other reason why the contamination was so extensive. *On the very same day* they lifted all restrictions on the importation of soy oil. Markets were quickly flooded with soy oil, mostly GMOs.

Small scale, individual production eliminates large scale contaminations.

In Wisconsin, “America’s Dairyland”, the state agriculture dept engaged in a campaign of deception and espionage in it’s unsuccessful effort to shut down raw milk cow-share programs. Officials agreed to sanction a cow share at Clearview Acres, a Hayward WI dairy farm, and in negotiating the contract, they proposed inadequate safety and testing requirements, which farmer Tim Wightman replaced with his own more demanding protocols. Internal documents later revealed that the dept had acted in anticipation of people getting sick from raw milk so they could shut the whole program down. The agency sent a spy to buy a share, who secretly picked up milk weekly and had it tested for over a year for the presence of Listeria and Salmonella. Officials complained when the tests kept turning out negative- “So basically, the WI agency responsible for food safety has been caught deliberately promoting raw milk sales with improper safety protocols in an attempt to cause an outbreak of illness.”

I say it again: if you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention!!

In regards to trans fats: “Until this point, the law always considered traditional foods as “real”, in contrast to imitations. The 1970s law eliminated this distinction. Fabricated and fortified fragments of foods became the legal equivalents of traditional whole foods.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America claims that direct to consumer (DTC) drug advertising “enhances consumer knowledge” and “improves public health”. But two Harvard medical professors, both former editors of the New England Journal of Medicine counter that “DTC ads mainly benefit the bottom line of the drug industry, not the public. They mislead consumers more than they inform them, and they pressure physicians to prescribe new, expensive, and often marginally helpful drugs, although a more conservative option might be better for the patient.”

To this day, coca leaves are brought into the US by the Stepan Chemical Company of Maywood, NJ, the only legal importer in the country. Once the cocaine has been removed and sold to the pharmaceutical industry, the residue containing the essential oils and flavonoids is shipped to Coca-Cola. The company is not especially proud of this fact, but it ought to be, for it is the essence of the leaves that makes Coca-Cola the “real thing”. So the exceptions to the coca ban are granted for Coke and pharma manufacturers. Unfortunately the diverse highlands peoples whose traditional cultures revolve around this plant have not been granted similar exemptions.

Poppies are not banned outright in the US- you can posses poppies, as long as you don’t knowingly use them to get high. Jim Hogshire, the author of a diy guide called Opium for the Masses knew too much and brazenly shared his knowledge. One day, a police SWAT team raided his Seattle apt (his book constituted probable cause), found several bunches of dried poppies he had legally purchased from a florist, and arrested Hogshire and his wife on felony drug charges. Hogshire reports that a police officer waved a copy of his book in front of his face and asked, “With what you write, weren’t you expecting this?” It was Hogshires exercise of free speech that rendered his activities illegal. Whether or not the opium poppies in your garden (or indeed, purchased from a florist) are illicit depends on what you do, or even intend to do with them, but simply on what you know about them, concludes Pollan.”

This distinction, in which knowledge places people in legal jeopardy, is appearing in more drug laws. In 2005 LA enacted a law making it a crime for any person knowingly or intentionally to posses a material, intended for human consumption which contains a hallucinogenic plant. The law names 39 different plants and fungi, many common weeds. If datura grows in your yard, no problem. If you accidentally serve it in a salad and people get sick, still no problem, at least in terms of criminal liability. But in Louisiana, if you were in possession of a book of ancient witchy knowledge, with recipes for extracting datura into a flying ointment, that same weed in your yard becomes criminal due to your knowledge, and you could find yourself doing 10 years with hard labor.

I have to stop there, my hands are cramping. I only have a few things left to say, so maybe tonight I can finish it. Check back for another edit or two.

Edit: Here are the last few things I found especially apalling about this book:

“In the long, inscrutable anonymous food chain of the supermarket, we’re trusting mass producers, mass marketers, and mass regulators. The mass scale makes for mass risks. In the course of my research I learned that the FDA has been permitting meat packers to use CO2 in sealed packaging to preserve the fresh color of the meat, disguising age and spoilage. This practice, banned by the EU as deceptive and unsafe is defended by the industry’s American Meat Institute Foundation because it keeps meat looking presentable for longer in supermarket coolers.”

Not appalling, but really gets to the heart of my personal lifestyle:

“Reduce, reuse, recycle. Live this ethic fully. Eat it, wear it, drive it, live in it, create it. Become more connected to the cycles of life and encourage other people to join you. Extricate yourself from constant convenience consumerism and strive to eliminate waste.”

More evidence that Coke is evil- well, really, it’s not that unusual, and I think that’s what I’ve found most disheartening of all. I already knew selected companies were less ethical than others, but truly, the WHOLE system, the whole corporate world is corrupt.

Talking about Coke’s presence in India:

“In some cases, particularly in dry reigons, the pumping of water from underground aquifers has dried up wells and other traditional water sources. Residents of several different towns in India have risen up against Coca Cola bottling plants for their drining of local aquifers and polluting of local waters and land. In Kala Dera, Rajasthan, Coke’s state of the art groundwater extraction resulted in a dramatic reduction of the water table. After only six years of the plant’s operation, fifty nearby villages reported water shortages as wells dried up. Many of these villages formed “struggle committees” and together they brought together 2,000 people to marth on the plant in 2004 to demand that they water extraction stop.- And Indian government hydrogeologist warns that continued extraction will lead to deterioration of the water quality and ecological repercussions such as rising surface temperatures and an increased likelihood of earthquakes, cause by the earth’s upper crust drying up.”

Think about that the next time you drink a Dasani.

In another Indian village, protesters keep vigil outside the plant “In addition to depleting water resources, this plant was distributing it’s solid waste to local farmers as “fertilizer”. Testing revealed cadmium and lead in the fertilizer, meaning that the land it had  been spread on was contaminated with heavy metals; the state has since ordered Coke to stop distributing it’s toxic waste to farmers.”

If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention! >(

Family Culture

Like about half my posts (and I really hate it), I’m not exactly sure what I want to write about- it’s been brewing in the back of my mind for a while (like most of my posts). Three books that I’ve read lately really kind of comprise the beginnings of an idea- one is the Family Virtues Guide by Popov, one is called “What to do after you turn off the TV” by Francis Moore Lappe (the one who wrote Diet for a Small Planet), and one is called “Awakening the Hidden Storyteller“, which I also read in conjunction with ‘Storytelling for Children“. Anyway, each of these books has a piece of what I’m looking for- and I think what I’m looking for is a way to define our values as a family and impart them to our children. I’d really like to get together with The Boy, and talk about what our joint values are, and write a mission statement of sorts. Decide what we believe, and what we feel is important enough to pass along to Fairy Girl (and any future hypothetical children- can you tell I’m not done yet? :))

But it’s not JUST about imparting values. It’s also about having fun together, and really bonding, connecting. And I don’t believe you can do that very well while watching TV. I think you can impart values while watching TV- we all get together to watch Dancing with the Stars on Monday and Tuesday nights- it’s about the only time we turn on the network TV- the ads really are striking- it’s amazing how COUNTER to my values most of them are! I am really looking forward to using our slight TV watching time as a way to teach Fairy Girl about media literacy. I want her to know how tricky those ads are, and not to hold herself up to those standards of beauty that are just everywhere in the media. Part of that is to watch, and talk while you watch, part of that is to limit media exposure in all forms (though I believe to severely limit media exposure is unrealistic and rigid, and has the counter effect of making children less immune to the ways of advertising), and part of that is to expose yourself to the tricks of the media (psychology, twisting of facts, airbrushing… etc). But where was I? Oh yes, imparting values- I don’t want the media to impart IT’S values to MY family, thankyouverymuch.

Ok, that was an only slightly related tangent- since my idea of Family Culture doesn’t really involve sitting down in front of the TV (with notable exceptions), I guess I had to think that one out. But what DOES it involve?

It involves games, music, and storytelling. I am especially interested in storytelling right now- the oral tradition of fairy tales, making up your own stories, storytelling games, having an oral or visual ritual to the beginning and ending of storytime. And I don’t mean the “once upon a time” kind of storytelling, that you do with children, but the “gather round the fire” kind that has been virtually lost in our American culture- with adults and children all together. This is where things kind of get fuzzy- I’m not really sure where to go with this now. One of my favorite parts of “Storytelling With Children” (which is actually about the adult kind of storytelling too) is where she asks you to visualize your inner storyteller- mine is a round, strong, ancient woman with a long white braid sitting in front of a hearth that looks remarkably like Tasha Tudor’s hearth. Her eyes are wise, her voice is aged but strong and clear. She’s me, in about 60 years, I hope she is, anyway. She doesn’t have to speak loudly to command attention. She’s like Maya Angelou- she commands attention just by BEING. And you know that whatever comes out of her mouth is important, and is going to reveal some of yourself to yourself. THAT”S the storyteller I want to be.

I see storytelling as a way to impart our values, tell the stories of our family’s history, and to have fun. Part of our family’s culture.

It’s 3am here, and I don’t think I can be more concise tonight. I’ll just ramble in circles if I continue. So, hopefully I can come back more clear tomorrow and finish this.

Simple Pleasures- Laundry

So, instead of calling it “housekeeping geekery”, I figured I’d call it a simple pleasure. But it’s true. I LOVE the laundry. I used to hate it, mostly because the perfumes in the detergent made my nose hurt, but since I started making my own, that problem is virtually gone.  And since it’s warmed up a bit here (only a bit, but it’s coming,  I’m ever hopeful!) I’ve been hanging the laundry out on the line- I LOVE the smell of line dried sheets! And diapers! *sigh* Since I’ve been able to completely “eco-fy” my laundry routine, I thought I’d share it.

I make my own detergent from washing soda, borax, baking soda, and grated castile soap. I use Dr Bronners Lavender soap, and it smells great- the smell doesn’t really linger past the rinse cycle, which is good, it tells me all the soap is leaving the clothes, but I do like the lavender scent- I’ll have to figure out how to make it linger without using a dryer- If I had a dryer, I’d just toss a lavender sachet in, but I don’t, so I need to figure something else out. Anyway, I put in a small amount of the soap, maybe a quarter of a cup, and add the clothes- I put vinegar in the fabric softener spot, and it works really well with the diapers, but I haven’t noticed any difference with our regular clothes. I turn on the water- I use cold water for everything but diapers and kitchen linens, which I wash on hot. I believe that hot water DOES kill germs, though I”ve heard it said in some “green” circles that it makes no difference- for my regular clothes I don’t mind, but the diapers and the kitchen linens (which include my cloth “paper” towels) can get REALLY gross, so I figure they need all the help they can get.  When they’re done, I either hang them on drying racks or on hangers in the shower (we live in a small apt, so space is at a premium)- and lately, I’ve been able to hang them out on the line too, which means instead of one load a day, I can do 2-3 loads a day, and have a couple days off! Yay! Right now, they’re still taking all day to dry, but once it warms up a bit more, and we get sunshine all day, they’ll be dry before the day is through (the stuff that dries inside takes overnight to dry- it’s not as horrific as it sounds), which means less time looking at laundry hanging up too!

Then I sort it into piles of which ones belong to whom, and I fold them and put them away- I really hate to look at piles of laundry, clean or dirty, so I try to do that before we have to go to bed that night- again, there is NO SPACE to have piles of laundry about, without having to see it, and that would make me very depressed (like, clinically, not just sad), so I like to keep it out of sight and in the drawers where it belongs.

I really thought I had more to say on laundry, because I just love it so much, but it’s pretty simple and straightforward. I’ve noticed that about myself lately- I’d like to write about how I discovered my “crunchy” ways, and what made me decide to do various things, but the answer to most of them is very simple, I just think it’s better that way- usually it involves either saving money, being healthier, or being better for the environment, and most often is all three. I don’t have a lot of complicated reasons for doing things how I do them.

Coming Full Circle

I’m reading this book called Everyday Sacred. It’s a book about- well, it’s hard to describe. It’s not the kind of book that flows, it’s more like a collection of short stories- I mean, short real stories, not “short stories”, like you were sitting at a table having tea with the author. In it, she tells a story about Helen, who lost everything in a fire- in unexpected ways, what she lost comes back to her- recipes, patterns- she believes something good will come out of it.

Other people find that what they give away is what people give back to them when they lose their possessions in the fire- one woman gets back something precious she nearly didn’t give away in the first place, one woman gets back things she gave away because she didn’t want them.

I pause to contemplate this, and catch a bit of the music that’s playing: “You’ve got to know that all you give away will come circling back to you…”

Maybe I should try being more selfless, more loving. I get mad when I think The Boy isn’t being selfless enough to me- isn’t that totally selfish of me?? Pot/kettle anyone? I just have to laugh at myself. I wonder if he’d notice if I started treating him the way I wish he’d treat me. I try for a while, but then I get impatient when he doesn’t do what he’s “supposed” to, but part of the whole activity is to not be attached to an outcome.

I feel inspired to give away $80- $20 to 4 people, just for the heck of it. If I give away money, maybe I won’t feel the lack of it. After all, who gives away money unless they have enough to give away in the first place? Will The Boy go along with this? Not likely- I have to do it anyway, with my money, not his. I think it will bring more money back to us, but that’s not why you do it- you do it because you will bless someone with your generosity.

Gratitude List

I have been keeping a short list of things I’m thankful for on a little chalkboard on my dining room wall. I change it whenever I feel inspired. I keep it to three or four things- that’s all that will fit on it, and I don’t pressure myself to do it daily, because then it would just become another thing to do, and not an opportunity for real gratitude. But I realized today that I like having the lists to look back on, so I think I’ll keep them in my journal.

This one is from the day we had our Valentine’s Tea:

Family

Friends

Love

Tea

This one is from The Boy’s Birthday:

The Boy
The moon

Cake

This one is from a day spent in a state park from a warm spell a week or two ago:

Nature (that’s shorthand for the ineffable grandeur and wonder of it all)

Mud

Maple Syrup

Wind

And today:

Friends

A full fruit bowl in winter

Ponchos

Chocolate

I’m just going to keep adding…

Sunshine

Daffodils

Butter

Picnics

Hammocks

Violets

Fairies