totally normal

what?!? you see something wrong with this?!

This is completely absolutely perfectly normal.

Definitely.

Reading Round-Up: Nov and Dec 2010

Anybody waiting on the edge of their seat for my End of the Year Book Addict post and Final Total for the year??

Don't worry, it's coming. Soon.

But, first . . . here are the books I read in Nov and Dec (I'm behind, you see). I've starred the ones I gave 5 stars in my Goodreads reviews.
I'll try to say a little bit about them, but I can't guarantee much because my brain is a sieve and I easily forget. (That's why I have to read so much, to keep things in my brain, because otherwise it would very quickly be emptied. haha.)

1. The Forgotten Garden - Kate Morton*

I really liked this story. That's all.

2. My Secret: A PostSecret Book - Frank Warren

oh, these postsecret books - such a guilty pleasure. Disturbing and comforting all at once. Do you have a secret you haven't told anyone? How would you feel about writing it on a postcard and sending it anonymously to someone you don't know? I can't decide what I think about it. But it's interesting.

3. Velvet Elvis - Rob Bell*

As I wrote in my Goodreads review this book on Christianity "has many good insights, interesting perspectives, and a unique voice that I appreciated."

4. Remembering Isaac - Ben Behunin

story of a potter who goes to take over the village pottery, and learns lessons from what other people learned from old potter. Hm, that doesn't explain it very well. But it was a bit too preachy for me. Subtlety goes a long way, folks.


5. A Live Coal in the Sea - Madeleine L'Engle*

another really great L'Engle book


6. The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank - Ellen Feldman*

this is historical fiction about the boy Peter who was in hiding with Anne Frank and what might have happened if he had survived and come to America after that ordeal (he actually didn't survive). But this story was heartrending but painfully beautiful. I really liked it.


7. If I Stay - Gayle Forman

good, but not great - and not clean enough to recommend for YA


8. Flipped - Wendelin Van Draanen*

but this YA story was fun and enjoyable


9. Born To Run - Christopher McDougal

awesome story of an obscure little tribe that runs far barefoot - and what that can mean for the rest of us

10. Abide with Me - Elizabeth Strout

very good

11. The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy*

I like Hardy books. I do.

12. The Actor and the Housewife - Shannon Hale

ah, too much fluff and stereotyped obnoxiousness

13. The Gentleman Poet - Kathryn Johnson

pretty interesting historical fiction involving Shakespeare

14. Imperfect Birds - Anne Lamott

hmm . . . didn't care for this

15. Two-Part Invention - Madeleine L'Engle

I really love L'Engle's nonfiction. Can't wait to track them all down and add to them my growing list

16. The Return of Merlin - Deepak Chopra
interesting stuff


17. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat - Oliver Sacks*

this was one of my favorites that I finally now own for myself. It's been about 12 yrs or so since I first read it and I'm glad to say I still found it fascinating.

18. Change Your Questions, Change Your Life - Wendy Watson Nelson

really good reminders and challenges to question the assumptions we make about how we perceive ourselves and others, our challenges and problems.

There. Phew!!!

song of the day

"We are okay,

we are alright
We sing very loud
Yeah, we're singing

We are okay,

we are alright
Close our eyes, close our mouth
yeah we shut our eyes though we're in doubt"

- Joshua Radin

This song came on my ipod this morning and I had to smile as I heard it and listened to Elisabeth singing (loudly) to herself from her room. Earlier she was belting out the chorus of "Angels We Have Heard on High" complete with her own little trills and ornamentation (and her own words of course). Yesterday, Isaac was singing "Day Tripper" as he got ready for school. (if you're my FB friend, you've seen these as my status updates, but I have no qualms about being repetitive here and there)

Anyway, it just struck me this morning how wonderful this really is. That my home is filled with kids singing to themselves. Or Abigail making up dances in the basement and writing stories. Isaac pacing the floors early in the morning, "thinking" (who knows what). He has a bit of insomnia and a brain that never stops. Samuel with his love of "rock and roll" and break-dancing (don't ask). ;)

But just in case I have neglected to mention it lately . . . I just wanted to tell you that today, this morning, as I think about my life, as I look around my messy house, my endless to-do's, and despite my many failings and the chaos that is often my brain, despite the craziness of kids that fight and refuse to listen . . . somehow in the midst of all of this, (sometimes),

we can "sing very loud,

yeah, we're singing . . .

we are okay,

we are alright."

same tree, different verse

(a little bit louder and a little bit worse?)

Well, yeah. It's the same tree as always.

End-of-January Style.

(I know what you're thinking: if only I had a more interesting landscape to snap pictures of.) ;)

I can feel the very edge of the end of winter approaching, though. It's a slippery, sort of illusory edge. If you look too closely, it will disappear. But I just almost see it out of the corner of my eye.

Our Family: by Elisabeth

She has just recently started drawing cute little people and I love it. :)
Surprisingly, in this family portrait the tallest in the group are Isaac and Abigail. She said they just kept growing and growing and growing. ;)

Healthier Me 2011: Week 2, being committed makes all the difference

(this is the post I wrote on the private Healthier You blog. This past week's challenge was to eliminate all white sugar, junk food, and fast food. Going into this next week, we are continuing food journaling and the sugar/junk elimination and adding 2 servings of fruits and 3 servings of veggies everyday. Who's in???)

(ps - hope you don't mind me adding this to the already somewhat eclectic mix of blogging topics around here . . . oh well.)

Hey everybody! Another week down. :)

I don't know why I never really realized this before, but being fully committed to an idea, a goal, a change makes all the difference for me. Knowing I just "can't" eat certain things, it's not that hard for me to say no even if other family members are eating it (yes, I know it would be better for everyone to be on board together - but, baby steps, right?).

This has made me thankful for the experience I had when one of my babies had a milk protein allergy and because he was exclusively nursing, I couldn't eat ANYTHING with any milk product in it at all, or he would have blood in his stool. Casein, whey, butter, milk . . . nothing. And it's in EVERYTHING. I ate an animal cracker once - just one - and he reacted to the whey in it. So anyway, looking back on that, I know that I can resist temptations if I have to!!

So, with this past week's challenge, I am just telling myself this is something that I have to do. That helps.

Another thought process that has helped me in the past and I am using again now, is to remind myself that yes, I know how good that tastes but I just don't need to eat it right now. And whatever it is, it's not going to go away. This is not a one-time-only chance to eat something yummy that I might want. Someday, I think I will eat treats again (in moderation . . . and only occasionally). But it can wait. It will always be available another time. So I can pass it up right now. (I don't know if this is the absolute best attitude to have about giving up sugar, but so far it's working for me, so I'm going to keep with it for now.)

So, I am finding that giving up sugar is do-able! Yay! The hardest part is paying attention to labels and planning ahead a bit to make sure I won't slip (at least that's how I feel about it today, we'll see how the coming weeks go). ;)

This past week I also started with trying to get in all my fruits and vegetables since I know this is a struggle for me. What has made it easier for me is to make sure I am getting 2 servings at every meal. Yes, that gets me up to at least 6 servings, but it's just easier to plan on 2 per meal to make sure I'm getting it, rather than thinking, oh I'll just eat that for a snack later or whatever. I am just making myself eat it at every meal.

I've been eating 2 cups of raw spinach with salad dressing every single day for lunch, with whatever else I am eating. And there have been a couple times I've microwaved myself a bowl of frozen green beans to eat at the end of dinner just because I needed another serving of vegetables!

So, as we go into this next week I'd like to hear how the rest of you make sure you're getting your 5 servings a day? What fruits and veggies do you eat every day?
And what do you eat for quick, easy, healthy lunches?? I hate fixing lunch. lol.
I'd love to hear some new ideas.
Thanks!!

how's it going

I recently finished reading this marvelous little book:

which I would really highly recommend. I have 5 passages marked that I really liked, and there were probably more that I would have marked had it been my copy of the book and if I'd had a pen nearby (as it is, I was tearing off bits of the scrap paper I was using as a bookmark and hoping I would remember why I had stuck it in that page).

One of these passages tells the story of her artist friend who lived nearby on an island in the pacific northwest. She was visiting him one day and asked how his work was going. And he responded by telling a rather long and involved story of another fellow who had lived on the island.

(I'll try to paraphrase it.)

Apparently it was very common for these islanders to scavenge logs out floating in the channel to use for building. This other man saw a good log out there and rowed out to get it. He tied onto it and then started the attempt to row back to the island. But the tide then changed and pulled the log and him further south even as he continued to row north.

(ah, I'll just quote it)

"He was rowing to the north and moving fast to the south. He traveled stern first. He wanted to be going home, so toward home he kept pulling. When the sun set, at about nine o'clock, he'd swept south the length of this beach, rowing north all the way. When the moon rose a few hours later - he told us - he saw he'd swept south past the island altogether and out into the channel between here and Stuat Island. He had been rowing though those dark hours. He continued to row away from Stuart Island and continued to see it get closer.

"Then he felt the tide go slack, and then he felt it coming in again. The current had reversed."



"He kept rowing in the half moonlight. The tide poured in from the south. He kept rowing north for home - only now the log was with him. He and his log were both floating on the current, and the current was bearing them up and carrying them like platters. It started to get light at about three o'clock, and he rowed back past this island's southern tip. The sun came up, and he rowed all the length of this beach. The tide brought him home."

"He pulled up on his own beach. They got the log rolled beyond the tideline. I saw him a few days later. Everybody knew he'd been carried out almost to Stuart Island, trying to bring in a log. Everybody knew he just kept rowing in the same direction."



And then he said
"So that's how my work is going."
"what?"
"You asked how my work is going, he said. That's how it's going. The current's got me. Feels like I'm about in the middle of the channel now. I just keep at it. I just keep hoping the tide will turn and bring me in."

So, I don't know why exactly, but this struck me. That is just how things go sometimes. Life. It's like this. And some might say that is pessimistic, or fatalistic, or irresponsible. Don't we create our own destinies? Don't we choose our happiness? Don't we control the things we do and the way our life goes?

Well. No.
Not always.
I don't think we always do.

Sometimes we get swept out beyond where we intended to be and the only thing we can do is to wait for the tide to change. Sometimes we just keep rowing in the direction we want to go even when we can see that we are constantly slipping the opposite way.

Sometimes the only thing we can say about an experience, or a goal, or a challenge is that we didn't give up. We didn't stop rowing. Sometimes the wait is long and everyone on the shore is pacing, concerned and alarmed, wondering what is going on, what is going wrong, where you are and what's taken you so long. But sometimes it's just all we can do to keep rowing and wait and hope for the tide. Sometimes that's enough.

So, sometimes, perhaps you might ask me, or you might ask someone else, "so how's it going?" how's the 'work' going? how are you? how's life?

And, sometimes, I might respond by telling you a story about a man on an island, who saw a log out in the channel that he wanted to bring in, who rowed out for it and got caught in the tide and kept rowing towards home all night long until the tide changed that brought him back.
And that's how it's going.