Coffee Chat: All Winter Long

Hello there.  Come in and have something hot and comforting, won't you?

I've been busy.  Not with my new business, much as I'd like to have been, but with life.  Wednesday Katie texted that Taylor had flu.  Before I left home on Thursday to go up to her house, Bess texted that Isaac had flu as well and Josh was sick with a virus.  I knew Sam was heading home that night and so I went on to Katie's.  She has just started her job and can't miss work and that was where it seemed the most need of my services lay.  So I spent two nights there with them, leaving to come home on Saturday morning.



Taylor felt somewhat better Friday morning, though she wasn't exactly happy to have no one but me at home with her.  She soon got over that and bounced about like a normal two year old and was good fun in helping me as I cleaned and took care of the house.

I was worn out when I arrived home on Saturday and quite glad I'd used my pre-Taylor visit brain to plan ahead and set foods in the fridge to thaw for Saturday dinner.  John was quite surprised at the meal I pulled together as well.  It was easy enough with all of it coming from the freezer save the green beans I heated up.  I took a nap that afternoon.

Sunday was rainy. John had offered to work a half shift on Sunday so we were up at 5am that morning.  I told John I didn't feel in the least like going anywhere but we had no coffee.  No.coffee.  How did that even happen?!    Well I haven't really been on a proper grocery shop since  early January which is why I'm out of many things at present.   Somehow we'd gone through all the coffee I'd bought in a month's time. 

I went to the local store to buy necessary items including coffee.   It poured rain as soon as I'd gone into the store, just as it did yesterday when we were out.  I waited out the heaviest of the shower then headed home again where I made coffee right away and then settled in to watch church services online.

That was pretty much my day right there.  I didn't get a lot of housework done.  I didn't get a lot of study or work done.  I didn't write.  I seem to have gone into some sort of semi-coma state and stayed there all day long.  I made John's work lunch for the next day and made sure there was coffee and something to eat when he came in from work and then I  fell into bed after.

Monday flew past: taking Mama to the grocery, stopping to pick up a few things for our home in the next town, running errands and such.  I came home exhausted and ready to focus on my other work but before I'd had a  cup of coffee to boost me over the threshold there was Sam pulling into the yard and the evening whirled away from me.  I spent Tuesday catching up with myself, or at least trying.    I never seemed to get far and I was disappointed come evening to have dozed off in my chair.  I woke up to find John looking at me.  "You stopped mid-sentence and went right off to sleep...I think you need to go on to bed."  I agreed.  I think going to bed early helped me to really get all the sleep I needed.  I woke naturally at 6am  the next morning.  It was John who grunted his way to the coffee pot that morning, lol.  Quite a change of places, lol.

I have today alone, which is a novelty almost these days. I've said often and often how much I crave my alone time.  It does seem since November that has been at a high premium.  I recall a prayer I said at the beginning of last summer about giving up alone days.  I told God I'd give whatever asked and I'd trust Him to provide alone time in the right measure.  Well here I am, with less time to myself than ever, yet just as I think I can't possibly carry on, there comes a day of being alone in which I can concentrate on tasks, writing, and generally sorting out my head and it's enough.  I am not saying it's easy but it always proves to be enough and to come at just the right moments.

I find that schedules are forever changing and changeable.  In a few weeks, Sam and family will have moved here.  They accepted an offer on their house this week.  I expect them to be moving by end of March.  Then life as I know it now will be different.  How shall it change?  I do not know.  I will see more of Bess and the boys.  I expect we will spend more time together and there will surely be babysitting.  As the boys get older, I expect and hope that they shall come of their own accord to visit.   Bess has asked if we might do a Bible study together and that would be something I'd enjoy greatly.  It will be nice to have a friendly female upon the place once more. But I shall continue trusting for that much needed time alone, as well, because I am certain of my need of it.

I've taken time this morning to watch the last of the National Skating Championship.  This was the final competitions prior to The Olympics which begin to air tonight at 8pm.  I am so inspired by Ice Skating, just as I am by ballet and color and music and certain authors and flowers.  There are just things that seem to somehow elevate the core within me and these are my things,  the ones that most consistently seem to lift me up, inspire me to do and be more.  

I chuckled to myself this morning as I watched the competition.  For all that I was a plump little girl, for all that I am now an older more than plump, not in the least athletic, grown woman, there is still an optimistic four year old child  within convinced that I can dance like a ballerina, skate like a champion and fly like a bird.  Despite all the struggles and reality checks, there is some place deep within where hope continues to spring up that I might yet manage to accomplish what I've never done.  I am grateful that while those things are not mine to call my own, I have found my way to that inspirational peak through cooking, creating a home, representing my own fashion  sense, in writing.  I have found voice for my own passion  when I am moved  by beauty.

I've read that the inspiration to create, to be creative, is a very human desire to be like God the Creator.  I don't think, we are meant to ever excel completely and never repeatedly.  I think that is what keeps us humbly aware that talent and expertise still will carry us only so far and only now and then can we reach a pinnacle of success in any area.  We want to succeed I think, to excel, to reach higher and some want it so badly that they will sacrifice much to gain it.

I watched these young people skating, many of whom had been practicing and striving since age 4.  And now, at age 18, they go before the world to determine if they are best among a handful.  I can't imagine the funding required to purchase costumes, pay for coaching, travel, nor the sacrifice of rising at 4am daily and practicing for hours before heading to school.  I wonder what keeps them motivated, what spark makes them continue to strive to achieve something that surely must look impossible.

For some of us, it is enough to be ordinary.  I long ago realized that ordinary lives are the most quietly extraordinary ones.  I ran into this fact headlong over and over again in my years as a nursing home social worker.  Some age shrunken person sat before in admissions who looked like anyone else.  Later as I got to know them, I came to see that they lived,  that they had suffered and struggled and excelled in some way all through their lives.   They had stood out as an individual among a multitude.  No, there were no great artists nor authors nor people of fame among those I came to know.  Their stories were never the same.  They were ordinary people who'd lived their lives as best they might and survived things that gave the heart pause just to hear of it.   There were talents that had been set aside for the necessity of scratching out a living.  There was knowledge born of experience and 'have to' that experts would have paid thousands to learn.  They taught me that living is just what you do, regardless of your circumstances while others clearly demonstrated that they had long ago given up on life.  I am sad to say those were the people I least admired and yet they took were teaching me something in their malaise.

I've been inspired by other things this past week.  Have you seen "The Marvelous Mrs. Maizel?"  I was intrigued by the still shot that advertised the program.  1950's period costuming and hair and makeup just tick all my boxes.   I was ready to watch the show for eye candy alone, especially after reading a post from Bridgette Rae touting the color combinations in costumes alone.  I have been pleased to find the program quite enjoyable.   Honestly, the 1950's homemaking Midge is a glamour queen with a strong practical side and I would tell you sincerely that just such as she was my mentor in growing up and throughout my homemaking years.  The storyline is good and sometimes hilarious an sometimes subtly funny and sometimes painful.  There is one bit of nudity during the first program and it was unnecessary.  It was there strictly for shock value but the character is immediately arrested as well she ought to have been!   Language is sometimes an issue with the show as well but it's inconsistent in use.

What I love is the décor, the costuming, the overall story of a young woman who loses her place in her life and scrambling to discover where she has landed while questioning the whys and mores and expectations of a society that has in one sense betrayed her.

I've also been reading Lucy Worsley's Jane Austen At Home.  Mind you I've barely begun the book but I am deeply involved in it already.  The description of the Steventon Home, Jane's first home, reminds me of the home we saw in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice film with Kiera Knightley.  Worsley's historical explanations of 'dry nursing' a child, of the role of a rector as both head of the local church and landlord/overseer for his patron are all fascinating to me and flesh out the story of Jane as few other biographers have to date.

It's a big birthday month in our family.  Five birthdays currently.  It amuses me to read my family genealogy and discover how many of those who were directly related also shared a February birthday.  Our birthdays this year, mine and John's, were very low key.  He worked on his birthday.  Knowing his dislike of having his birthday made public, I kept it quiet.  On my birthday we were both in recovery, me from the small virus or whatever that I'd had, he from work.  It was Sam who dragged us up out of our malaise and brought home cupcakes.  They were lovely, overly frosted cupcakes.  My own was strawberry.  John's his favored vanilla cake with chocolate frosting.

Age came up for discussion and both John and I agreed we neither of us feel old.  We shared with Sam our very real struggle with the constant invitations from the senior group at church and our own unwillingness to give in and just go.   John told Sam, "Oddly enough though, they'd love it if you joined them and you'd be right in your element...but none of the younger groups wants people of our age..."  The question then came up of 'When did you feel grown up?'   John said for him it was when his dad died.   He asked Sam if he'd felt he'd grown up when his father died.  "No...I suppose I will when you die, but no...not with daddy..."  

I guess I looked as puzzled as I felt.   I have often felt so when people say that they don't want to grow up, that they are still a kid inside.   "What's the matter Mama?"  "I don't remember ever feeling like a kid...I've always felt I was grown up."   John and Sam both nodded.  "It had more to do with the difference in how you grew up..." John said.  And Sam added, "I know kind of what you mean.  At some point in your childhood the contrast between what you saw others being and what you knew was right made you grow up."   Yes, that is exactly how it was.  Someone had to adult in our home and just as I've always looked at tasks to see what needed to be done and automatically taken it up, so too I did the job of being an adult.  It is ironic to me that NOW, now as I am in the last year of my fifth decade, I more and more frequently find myself feeling quite young, not at all the old soul I'd thought myself, but a mere child, still filled with wonder that life could take such a lovely surprising turn.

Isaac will turn one next week and he's starting to walk with the help of one of those little activity walkers.  For all that we were warned he might be a little slow due to his too early start in life, there's no sign that he means to be in the least backwards nor slow.  He's had the funniest method of crawling that makes us all just smile to see him go at it.  It's a combination of a one knee half sitting sort of creeping, but he was quite quick at it.  Now he's decided that he likes to walk and has amused himself with the walker.

I chuckled last week when Bess called to say how ill Isaac was with the flu.  "He's had only enough food for a baby his age instead of his usual full breakfast...I know he's feeling awful!"  Isaac loves his food and yours and mine, lol.

Amie and Jd also have birthdays this month.   It astonishes me that I have children as old as mine are.  It truly does give me pause to realize that I have children who are middle aged...which comes right back to that feeling that I don't belong among senior adults and yet my children's ages suggest that I do!

Well dears, I've struggled mightily with writing of late.  Not just with writing mind, but I'm speaking especially of writing at the moment.  It's a good case of too many demands upon a limited amount of time but I hope that in the weeks ahead I shall hit my stride once more and be more on point in my life  I'm working hard, but trying as well to insure that I get the rest needed to continue to push hard.  I had so much extra time on my hands previously which is why I decided to take on Jamberry and now those extra moments seem to have flown away and are filled by too many things at once.  But I've got all winter long to figure all these things out and set them in the right places in my life.  It shall all settle down.

And now dears, I shall bid you adieu.  I am, it seems, in need of a nap so that I can function this afternoon and evening and accomplish something more...