A Busy Week ahead...

This week, barring Hurricane Emily or other disaster, I will be going to see my oldest niece get married.

I remember the day she was born. My sister-in-law had been going into false labor several times, and twice before we had sat in a hospital waiting area for hours until they decided to send her home.

This time, my mom, dad and I were bowling in our Sunday night bowling league, when my brother called. We finished the game, and hurried to the hospital to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

I was crocheting a big afghan, which was handy, cause when I got tired, I tied off the yarn, and used it for a cover. I fell asleep, I think, for awhile.

Suddenly, they wheeled an incubator through the waiting room on the way to the nursery, where we got our first look at her. My mother, almost in tears, cried, "She is so beautiful!" And she was.

And now, twenty three years later, she is going to be a bride. A poet, like her auntie, a student studying criminal justice (she used to want to work for the FBI, but I think that has changed), working in the hotel business (which I wouldn't be surprised if this became her real career), and gracious and sweet.

The little girl who I told endless versions of "Once upon a time, there was a good and bad little girl, who the bad witch wanted to take away for being mean to her little sister, but the good fairy rescued her, because she wasn't a bad little girl, but who loved her little sister." This is the girl who fell in love with a silly movie called Labyrinth, and who could tell you every line in it. Who for some reason went gaga over Elvis, and the time she got to go to Graceland, she came home angry that her great grandmother had had my mom so late in life, because that meant she was born too late to see Elvis alive. The girl who liked lizards, and English and science, but not history (much to her auntie's disapointment!), who understands the importance of family and who keeps trying to talk me into making her a poodle skirt like the one she had when she was a little girl.

Grown up.

I better be sure to pack enough hankies.

Thoughts about Laundry

Midday Saturday, and I am just getting around to writing.

Yesterday was a working day. Laundry, mostly.

Also, I was doing the church linens this week. Some of them come in lipstick stained from wiping the rim of the communion cup. They have to be cleaned, then starched and ironed. It's not a job I mind...for some reason, because I don't have much that has to be ironed, I think of ironing as a pleasurable activity.

And because I do history, and reenacting, it made me think of old ways of doing laundry and ironing. Washing was done for linens and cottons, but not usually for wools or silks (they got special treatment, and were seldom cleaned).

It began with water. Water to haul into the kettle to heat. I know what that feels like. There was a time for a few months I had to do my own laundry by hand. Just filling pots up and carrying them to where you are going to work is heavy work. About 8 lbs. a gallon.

Then you wetted the clothes, scrubbed them on a board to loosen the dirt, and often boiled them to get them really clean. You'd use bluing in the whites to keep them looking good, and dip them into starch.

And then the wringing. That's the worst. How your arms give out squeezing the water out.

During the 19th century, Monday was washing day, a custom that lasted well into the 20th century. In New Orleans, it became the custom to put a pot of red beans on the stove you had fired up to heat the water, both because the heat was there anyway, and because if you were doing the laundry, you didn't have much time to do any fancy cooking. It's still the custom there.

Tuesday or Wednesday were ironing and mangling days. Flat irons had to be heated on the stove, or sometimes had a spot to hold coals. There were special irons for ruffles. And in the days before perma press, sheets wrinkled, and they were ironed or run through a mangle, which was a device to smooth the wrinkles. Later it would look like wringers on a wringer washer, especially after they started to have electric heat for them, but the earlier ones involved boards. Took a good bit of elbow grease.

Everybody who could sent their laundry out, especially those living in town, or had their daughters or servant girls do it as much as possible.

So there, as I took the linens out of the dryer and took them over to iron them with my nice electric steam iron and my aerosol bottles of starch, I said a little "Thank you, Lord," for not having to do this the same way my great grandmother might have done it.

Meme Tag games....

Not particularly good at this, but Jane tagged me, so I guess I will play:


Where was I ten years ago?

I had left my job teaching English to care for my mother who had diabetes and congestive heart failure. It meant leaving the state I was living in, and moving away from everybody I knew at that time. Instead of being a college instructor, I took a job first at a McDonald's (didn't last long, and Lord, I hope you never see fit to send me back to one) and then as a part time secretary.

Was it worth it? Absolutely. Always close to my mom, I got even closer as her health deteriorated and she leaned more and more on me. Would do it again, and only wish she were still here to take care of.

Five years ago:

Five years ago I was happily married to my sweet hubby, learning to deal with teens, healing up from having my gall bladder removed, and learning all about the wildfire cycle in the west.

One year ago:

I had to have five gall stones removed from my bile duct. Very painful condition. Some of us still make gall stones after we have our gallbladders out! I was also dealing with a son who like this year, had gotten a bit in trouble with the juvenile court (why he does this so he'll have to do community service all summer is beyond me!)

Yesterday:

Went and picked up my stinker at the airport, where he had a good time being with his aunts and uncles and grandmother for three weeks. Did laundry. Wrote.

Five snacks I enjoy:

Genisoy chips
Blueberry non-fat yogurt
Beef Jerky
Cashews
Chocolate

Five Songs I know all the words to:

Hold Me Now - Thompson Twins
Unchained Melody - Righteous Brothers
Happy Together - The Turtles
Could it Be Magic - Barry Manilow
The Look of Love - Sergio Mendes and Brazil 66

Five Things I would do with $100 million.

Start a foundation to help feed college students who run out of money and can't afford to eat.
Create a free remediation clinic for students having trouble with their studies
Donate to the local library
Invest carefully so I could do more things like those above
Visit Rome

Five Locations I would like to run away to:

(don't want to stay there, though!)
London
Bits of Wales important to the Arthurian story cycle
Places in Scotland that I and my husband have family roots in
New Orleans the third week of March (long as Mardi Gras has already come and gone)
Most any place on the Oregon coast

Five Bad Habits I have:

Blowing up fast when angered
spending way too much time on the computer
procrastinating
talking too much or not enough
taking things personally when they weren't intended that way

Five things I like doing:

Reading
Doing historical research
Knitting
Travelling
Writing Poetry

Five things I would never wear:

Jeans cut so low I would have to go commando to wear them.
A dress cut down to my navel (saw one in a celebrity magazine this week. Her navel was really showing.)
Chartreuse anything
A tongue piercing
A man's great kilt (you have to lie on the ground to tie the darn things on!)

Five TV shows I like:

(I haven't watched TV since 1999. I don't think I can answer this one. )

Five Biggest Joys of the Moment:

Getting to go to my niece's wedding
Doing well on my diet
NOT feeling depressed (had problems bad with depression this year)
NOT having the problems with my bile duct (feels like a heart attack. Had it for a year and a half - one of the ways my body reacts to stress)
Being married to my husband

Five Favorite toys:

Computer
my several hundred knitting needles (OK, I'm compulsive a little)
My digital camera
my flintlock, blackpowder longrifle (I reenact the 1790s)
my victorian craft books

Now at this point, I am supposed to tag five people.

But everybody I could tag either runs a politcal or religious blog, or doesn't blog.

So instead, if you are reading this...I tag YOU! (if you want to!)

Weigh-in Day

210 - 2 lbs down…

Chest (not bust) 39 3/4 (down from 40 1/2)
waist: 39 (down from 39 1/2)
abdomen 47 1/2 (down from 47 3/4)
hips 45 (down from 45.5)

First major dietary test is coming up. My niece's wedding. I will be out of town from Thursday til Monday. A wedding reception coming up. Having a family get-together in a family that likes to eat. I suspect I'll be taking at least some of my meals alone...I will be taking my food journal with me!

But this next week will be filled with the excitement of getting ready to go...finally deciding what clothes to bring, what needs to be done at home before I leave, and all that fun stuff...It's been six years since I saw most of these people last.

I am praying that Hurricane Emily doesn't decide to wreck everything. I wish she would break up. She looks pretty bad this morning. It would be my luck to fly south just to fly into a storm.

Teenager is home...

He came down the escalator at the airport to the baggage claim/passenger greeting area with a new hat, a new teeshirt on, and new sunglasses, carrying his skateboard. He looked good, chattering about how he had skated at this neat skate park back in Tacoma, and had slipped and hurt his wrist a little.

I know come the time he is 40, he's going to be an achey old man, but right now, he sees each injury as some sort of badge of courage, a tangible proof he is tough, and no longer that crybaby little boy who couldn't take any pain.

We waited forever for his luggage to come. They had some sort of problem on the conveyer system. The crowd, a mix of the usual Utahns and about five guys who had to be basketball players, very tall, and who all knew each other.

We waited a long tine by one luggage carousel, but after getting the previous flight's luggage out, nothing happened. Someone noticed that there was another carousel that wasn't moving but had lots of bags just there with no people, and went to check. Yes, it was some of the bags from my son's flight. But only part of them.

Something had broken down. About thirty minutes later, it seemed, they got the rest of the bags out, and we finally got to leave the airport.

Son went on about how he was now over his old girlfriend - they had been having a lot of friction before he left, and now he declared, he was through with her.

So he comes home, gets immediately on the phone, and calls her up.

Three phone calls later, he comes downstairs and asks; "Can I go hang out with C---?"

I wish they would figure out how they want to relate to each other. This one day he loves her, the next day she's horrid is driving him (and me!) nuts.

It's good to have him home.

A Moment's Rant

Just read a blog by a young woman, barely old enough to drink who says she hates mommy blogs because she's a feminist.

Let me see. Why is this irritating me.

Many years, I considered myself feminist. I believed and worked for equal pay, I was just about the first woman in New Orleans who was on the payroll of a major car dealer to do body work (as a helper, learning the job, but still on the payroll, and I worked on a lot of cars while I was there.).

Yet some things are incredibly important.

Passing on the torch to the next generation is probably the most important thing we do in life. It's been my role in life to care for other people's children. When they were little I helped raise both of my nieces. I fostered my best friend's child the year after her death, until the family decided to take over. I am the stepmother of two children, who had a horrible trauma and many problems.

There's something about being intimately involved with another's life that tells you, if you are listening, truly, and not wrapped too much up into yourself, what really matters.

The niece I helped give her first bath to, who I rocked, and fed and played with, who I carried on my shoulders one day when she was almost two to go to college registration because I needed to care for her and get registered, who I told endless stories to and put up with watching endless repeats of the Great Ewok adventure, is getting married next week. One torch passed down.

I gave up my career as a college English instructor to care for my mother her last three years of life. I wouldn't trade those three years for anything.

My alienated, angry eldest stepson is now still dealing with some issues, but he likes his family again, and knows who's there for him, and who cares enough to let him fly. A torch nearly there.

My youngest son, the day I met him for the first time, laid his head in my lap and asked me if I was going to be his mommy. He has deep wounds about the death of his birth mother. Another day, he walked up to me, and asked me what happens if you overdose on Tylenol. I remember how bad my hand shook as I called 911, and how he needed to hold my hand as they pumped his stomach. He is the one I grieve most for, because I cannot really heal his wounds, only lead him to the medicine that can help.

What is really important? I have been many things in life already - a short order cook, a typist, a body and fender mechanic, an instructor of reading and English, a wife, a mother, a writer, a poet, an historian.

Which role will count most when I am gone?

Being an average Joe who will leave few ripples on the fabric of time, I like to think that my taking time to rescue these boys, to be there for my nieces when my brother's marriage fell apart and for being the type of person who knows that kindness and understanding have more value to the world as a whole and to the future before us than what type of money I made, what type of car I drive, what clothes I wear.

What matters isn't the things you have. It's the people's lives you touch. Mommies and daddies are the ones who touch us most intimately, and it's a HARD job, and one we wonder about, and grieve over and despair of - and one that matters most to the world in the long run.

Without mommies and daddies and their sacrifices, and griefs and struggles, and willingness to do what has to be done, tomorrow wouldn't come. This is the bedrock, and we ought to celebrate those who care enough not to run away from the future.

Enough said. Rant over.

Hot

Here it is, hot as blue blazes, and I find myself thinking about what I am going to wear in a few months when the weather turns cool. I know already that my winter coat will be too big. And it snows here. A lot. And my hunting clothes (something I do with my husband), my Columbia camo coat which is probably the best coat I have for nasty weather is already way too big.

So I find myself looking at fall clothes - blazers, sweaters, long sleeved shirts. Boots.

Yesterday I read the L.L. Bean fall catalog, and know that I'll be able to wear clothes from them this year.

I've been browsing Land's End.

I'm tired of Walmart, yet on the other hand, what I buy may be just for the season, so I don't want to buy the good stuff that will last for years.

Quandries.

Mellowing Out....

Had a nice day. Handled my diet well, ate about 1200 calories, finished dinner off with my favorite coffee, fresh brewed and freshly ground.

These pleasant moments are worth savoring.

Outside, in the backyard, I have a bunch of bird feeders. Yesterday, I reloaded them with what I thought would last two or three days. Nope. Busy momma and pappa birds are working the bird feeders, dashing back and forth from the seed bowls or tubes and hurrying back to their demanding, needy young.

I can hear some of them, continuing to cry in a one note insistant call.

A little later, when the babies are fledged enough to fly, but still are being fed by momma, the sparrow mamas will bring them to the feeder, and feed them directly there. At this point they are nearly as large as the parents, but haven't learned to feed themselves.

This makes me think about my boy. Oh, he's taller than his dad, and wants to try his wings out, but he's not quite ready to leave. He still makes plenty of mistakes, but beneath the angst, and bravado, I see the good person he could become. I hope he makes it.

Wednesday Doldrums

It's hot.

Today I had blood work done to check on my thyroid levels. I have and probably have had for a long time, a slightly sluggish thyroid. Tends to run in my family. Anyway, I have a big lovely bruise from the needle. And it didn't even hurt when she stuck me, but I have a lovely infiltration.

My last full day without Teenager's emo music. I am going to miss the truly placid quiet, I think. No noise in the house but what I and my dogs make. Sigh. I just dislike emo, and when he's not playing that, he's playing AC/DC.

Back to the diet. One of my diet tricks for when I get the munchies is to eat a protein snack, preferrably something like non-fat plain yogurt or non-fat cottage cheese. This, for some reason, usually puts the hurt on the carb cravings, and I can get on with my life.

But now that we are in a heat spell, I am coming across an old problem. When I get hot and a little dehydrated, sometimes my body interpretes that as being hungry, not thirsty. I've had to resort to the yogurt two days in a row now.

New problem to solve! But I have managed to stay within my diet's parameters, so I'm not really unhappy. Just have to remember to drink, drink, drink!

Sauerkraut

Sauerkraut almost as bad as pickle juice? Maybe so!

Learning all these tricks about water retention is an interesting experience.

For exercise, I am moving crafting materials and books from the basement den to the top floor soon to be my sewing room, and moving history books back into the downstairs bookcase.

Yesterday, I managed to empty a four drawer heavy file cabinet, and move it from one room to another. Had to slide it on cardboard to get it over the rug. What fun, this practical calisthenics! But it's getting my space reorganized.

Teen comes home Thursday. My low stress vacation is almost over. It's been nice. It lets me know that I will be looking forward to the day where it's me and hubby.

Found a zillion recipes my mom collected off an old Fidonet recipe group back in the pre-Internet days. A lot of them are low fat or diabetic or just interesting.

Maybe there's a cookbook in my future - Relearning to cook: healthy meals that taste good!

New Week, New Energy, New Ideas

A new week. This week, Teenager comes home from his trip to his aunt's. My vacation from parenting is nearly over, and I am coming back into the fray much less stressed. Or at least it feels like it.

I have plans for this week. I am reorganizing two rooms. One used to be the room I had the kids' TV in, and a computer they used to play games and do homework. It became the junk room. I am determined to redeem it from it's junk room status and turn it into a sewing room.

The room that Older Son had as his bedroom is destined to become an office, where I can write (necessary to get away from the internet to do serious writing, I've discovered!), and maybe revitalize my home crafting business, doing historical items and patterns for reenactors and others who like old stuff, which this last year I basically let die because I had been too sick and too depressed (hard to believe I haven't picked up a knitting needle in weeks!).

Lots of work involved in this. But finally, after getting help with depression, after getting a chronic pain problem resolved, and losing what is now 41 lbs, I feel a lot more capable of doing this.

Besides that, there is working out by design, where you spend an hour or whatever, and feel better, but don't have anything made afterwards, and there is labor, which is also athletic, and burns calories and builds muscle, and by which you have something to show for it afterwards.

Right now, I have a lot of the latter to do. And a split level house which has me going up two short flights of stairs a lot, as I move the crafting stuff out of the den my husband and I use as our living space upstairs into the new sewing room.

Yesterday's physical activity was shoveling juniper branches into plastic bags after hubby trimmed the hedges. We have a lot of juniper hedge, on both sides of the driveway. We shovelled up something like seven bags of trimmings. Used a snow shovel to shovel them up with.

All the water retention of yesterday is now resolved. Green tea, lots and lots of water, and no pickles. Lost another half pound on top of that. 41 lbs!

Summer draggies...

Oh it's hot here!

What I need to do is go make a big pitcher of green tea, unsweetened, and sip on that all afternoon.

Today, I'm retaining fluid (which I do every so many days - probably related to diet, and all those pickles I ate yesterday, but it makes my hands and ankles ache), my favorite bra is getting too large in the cup (which means I can kiss being a skinny D cup goodbye!), I have the afternoon draggies, and don't remember where I put the costume jewelery I am planning on wearing on my trip to Texas.

But with even all these things, it's a beautiful day in here in the intermountain west, I feel so mellow that I'm taking it all in stride and will fret about it tomorrow.

Today is a day to remember to be thankful for what I do have, and to remember those who are facing Hurricane Dennis, dealing with the tragedy in London, and all those other tragedies which face so many people every day, most which we'll never hear about.

On another note, since I've been losing weight, and having to buy clothes, I've discovered a lot of neat internet stores that carry plus and regular sizes (nice to know what sizes a store actually carries before you go shopping.)
One good place to start looking is Online Clothing Stores' index of women's clothing stores. I found a lot of stores stores that I wouldn't have thought about carry plus sizes, and there are a lot of plus size women's stores out there. Just looking is a good way of reconnecting to what is possible to wear, after only wearing what was available in the plus sizes at Walmart!