Diary of a Homemaker's Week: All Sorts of Adventures

 

Saturday:  We woke really early this morning and went outdoors with coffee.  It's a lovely thing to sit on the beach and watch the dolphins play in the surf.  The birds were so loud.  Little finches and sparrows were in all the trees and shrubs about the motel.  And they were fairly tame.  I had one brave little bird hop up to me looking for food.  Alas, we had nothing to share with them except coffee and frankly, I'm selfish when it comes to my cup of coffee!

It was downright chilly.  I was glad I'd packed my jacket and brought a sweater to go over my dress for the wedding.  

We were to meet everyone at a beach park where the groom's brother was hosting a wedding barbecue.  It was so chilly.  Those who had worn bathing suits looked half-frozen.  Some guests went to fetch jackets, sweaters, towels, and blankets from their vehicles.  Couples snuggled together on benches.  Everyone went out in the sun at some point and stood there just getting warm.  

John provided the music, so I wandered around and spoke to strangers.  Not my strong point exactly but I tried.  I find it easier to stand back and just watch people...but I'm working on getting more comfortable with actually speaking with people.  And learning to curb asking questions and listen to what people want to share.

The groom and his brother are of Cuban descent, so the picnic food was a pork loin with a special grouping of sauces to go on the meat (aioli and two variations on a green sauce, one hot, one not), jerk chicken (one hot and one that was less spicy), black beans, and as a nod from the Southern wife of the chef, a potato salad, and coleslaw that had tiny pieces of broccoli florets in it.  That was a really good coleslaw but it was also the prettiest coleslaw.

The tables were decorated with a pretty piece of net, small shells, glass beads in ocean colors, little bags of saltwater taffy, and the prettiest cookies frosted to look like sand dollars and shells. 

I sat down with the bride and groom and the couple who married earlier this year came along and sat with us all.  I had to ask, based on a reference in their wedding vows, about how they met.  Then Donnie shared how she and Jeff came to meet.   And then I shared my and John's story.  We all sat there smiling happily because we all felt we had a romantic story as our beginning.

Of course, the wedding was this evening but I'm sharing about that in another post.

Monday:  Yesterday was all about driving home and traveling.  It was a slightly longer trip but so much easier than our trip down.  We were far more relaxed and had fewer roads to keep up with.  We slept like tops last night.

John had been called to jury selections so I had planned to do grocery shopping but I told him this morning, I was just going to hold off.  I had no desire to go anywhere today.  I wanted to stay home and love my house.

I don't know what the eclipse was like for anyone else but our bit was just odd.  We didn't get dark enough for the security light to come on.  I told John I noticed it got dark in the house but when I looked out of the windows, I could clearly see shadows and sun, just a cloudier-looking sort of light.  He asked if it looked like one of those old western moonlight chase scenes where they used a dark lens but you could clearly see the shadows on the ground.  I assured him it had looked exactly like that!

John didn't get home until after 5pm this evening.  He has to go back tomorrow as they continue to make selections for the jury.  

Tuesday:  This morning, after I saw John off, I hurried to get dressed. I  was barely finished when I heard a tap on the door.  Sam and Millie came to visit, bringing along 'breakfast' he said.  He'd made me a muffin from banana, blueberry, and oatmeal.  It was very good.  We sat and talked a bit and Millie played while I put on my makeup.

I thought I'd do a little of my grocery shopping before going to Mama's.  I skipped that since I had visited with Sam a little longer than I'd thought I might.  When I got to Mama's I was surprised to find her parking space was filled and you can't park in the neighbors' spots.  I called her and discovered my niece was at her house.  I ended up parking on the street behind their vehicles and went in to sit down with them.  After we'd visited a bit, we all went out to lunch together.  

I haven't seen Ashley in a long time and really enjoyed catching up with her.  Like all the rest of the children, my great-nieces are growing quickly.  They are about the ages of my own grandchildren now.  Bella is Josh's age and Addie is the same age as Taylor.  Ashley told me about their personalities and showed me their pictures.  It was clear that she really enjoys being a mama to her girls.  It's not that she thinks they are perfect because as she laughingly pointed out the two girls are hormonal and at times a pain, but in telling me about them, she focused hard on their good qualities and shared those.  That's nice to hear.  Too many parents want to tell you all the negative things about their children and they do it right in front of their kids!  Having grown up with a fault-finding parent who routinely paraded my deficits to all in hearing, I appreciate a parent who can see the things that are good in their children!

After lunch, I took Mama on a short drive in the country.  We drove by the huge plant that is being built outside of Perry and discovered that they finally put up a sign stating the company name.  "Coming Soon!" read the sign and then listed Jacklinks meat sticks next to the corporate name.  Well, all right then!

After I dropped Mama and Ashley off, I went to the two groceries in that town to pick up the sales items I wanted to get.  I found the previews of the new ads were posted when I got home. There are exactly three items I want to get and all three of those are at one store.  Here is the luxury of having a pantry and freezer. I can watch and wait for those things we would normally use to go on sale and seldom have to pay full price for any item.  God is good to provide in that way for us.  And in saying that I'm not suggesting He isn't providing for anyone else.  He provides for all of us what we need at this moment in time.

Wednesday:  Mild rant alert.  This morning was our payday.  I try to make time to go over my checkbook to see what's in that I might have missed writing down.  What stunned me today was that two bills I paid nearly 3 weeks ago have yet to clear my bank...and that means as of now both are past due.  US Mail strikes again.

I am not one to complain over the cost of postage, nor to slander the carriers.  Most all I've met are perfectly nice people who genuinely enjoy their jobs.  I'm not slapping at the local post offices at all.  They are, near as I can tell, doing their jobs as they've always done them.  But for the service over all, I've got complaints!

A few months ago, we were watching one of those news programs and an official with the USPS came on the screen and said they were 'strongly discouraging people' from mailing checks.  In fact, they were pushing paying bills online and using emails to communicate rather than 'taxing the postal service further'...I laughed.  I mean okay many of do those things already though I admit John and I have preferred old fashioned checks and snail mail as our method of paying our bills.  I asked John at the time, what exactly will the postal service even exist for if they no longer deliver mail?

Recently our local paper's editorial column was devoted to her struggles with the mail service delivering the newspapers that have been delivered by the mail for nearly 150 years.  She was not lambasting the local post office either.  But she did have information to share that I needed to know.  They had closed the distribution center in Macon and were re-routing various types of mail to new centers across the southeast.  And mail was often being misdirected or lost for weeks at a time.  What used to be postmarked and delivered locally now had to leave town to go to the distribution centers.  And what used to be a three-day delivery to most places was now taking weeks.

I'd noted these days bills were arriving late and allowing me practically no turnaround time for mailing in payments before the due date, but I'd been blaming the offices that were generating the bills, not the USPS. To find that these two bills, one of which is for a utility, had not yet gone through my bank has really upset me.  Should I pay the bill again on the chance that the previous payment did not arrive?  

John and I discussed this issue this morning.  "If we do pay online, we'll use a credit card!  I'm not just giving access to my bank account to everyone."  "That's fine...but at some point, we have to pay the credit card bill and how do you propose we do that?" There's the conundrum.  Mail a check?  Pay with a debit card?  Use another credit card?  There's an endless cycle starting.  Do I open another account where I only deposit the funds for the credit card and use that debit card to pay the credit card?  I don't know.  I'd rather just do things as I've been doing them, but I feel I'm being pushed hard to make a change that we will likely have to make sooner rather than later.

But I ask this: when we're all doing this stuff via electronics, exactly how long will the USPS last? What purpose could they have?  I'm sure they can't make enough off the junk mail postages to stay afloat.

And in case you haven't heard, there's another stamp price increase in July 2024.

Thursday:  I don't have big plans today.  In fact, my only plan today was to make bread.  Using the time I've allowed myself as free time has meant I could do a proper shave this morning while I was in the shower.  I can catch up on my reading, plan for next week, etc.    

The day started very overcast and cloudy with a bit of rain this morning but the sun has come out and every leaf and blade of grass has turned the most glorious green.  I told John it's like wearing my sunglasses with their polarized lenses outdoors, only it's all true color!  Brilliant blue sky, breathtaking green, and a lovely breeze that doesn't even hint at being chilly.  Everything is sparkling like diamonds too, since it's all still quite wet from the last shower this morning.  

Last night when John picked up the mail at the box, he was excited because he'd gotten a catalog, at least what is meant to pass for one today.  It bore the name of a well-known mail-order catalog service.  He sat down to happily flip through it.  John has always loved a catalog.  Well, he was only a few pages into it when I heard him exclaim in horror, "What the heck?"  The items up for offer in the middle of the catalog were not what we typically look at.  He ripped our name off the catalog and put it in the trash.  I can't share what those items were because I don't want to start up a host of ads on the matter but it was a lesson to us both that things are not what they used to be. 

This afternoon I sat down to write and got a call from Katie.  "Can we come over?" she asked and I heard Caleb in the background, "Yeah...Can we?"  John and I have been longing to see Caleb.  We haven't seen him since our Easter weekend family day and then we barely glimpsed him.  He was too busy with all the other kids to pay any attention to mere grandparents.

They arrived and I got the biggest hug ever from that little boy.  Then he ran back to his Grampa and gave him an equally as big hug.  He is speaking so very plainly for the most part and uses his hands to talk which amuses me a great deal.  He is just uniquely himself, like all the others, but I love seeing the differences in each one.  We enjoyed their stay.  He'd told me he'd be staying here and wouldn't go back to 'the new house' as he calls his home, but when Katie told him it was time to go home, he was right behind her, "Wait for me!"

It was late when they left.  I was glad I had a supper that was almost fully prepared.

Friday:  I can always tell when the pecan tree is blooming.  Not only does Rufus go about hacking, but I find I breathe through my mouth and wake up stuffy.  I could take an allergy tablet but honestly, I do not want to take another pill.  It's a minor thing at the moment to deal with mouth breathing.  If it gets worse I'll take an allergy tablet readily enough.

We puttered about the house.  John did laundry and I swept, wiped, picked up, and cleaned until the house looked tidy.  Then I decided to take time to wipe out three drawers I'd noted were gritty and crumby.  I culled several items from the utensil drawer and made the spice and baking drawers look much neater.  I mused as I wiped out the crumbs that Passover was near and this was very much a Passover sort of task.  I thought again of how insidious the bread crumbs are at accumulating in the house until we are suddenly overwhelmed with them, just as sin grows gradually in hidden ways until suddenly we're confronted with our mess.

We haven't practiced Shabat candle lighting in a long while now.  At some point on Friday evening, we will turn to one another and say "Shabat Shalom" but we have found it incredibly difficult these past two years to be as observant of the Sabbath as we were once upon a time.  At one point we were almost always at Caleb's home keeping him and later, he was here and his supper and bedtime generally coincided with Sabbath.  We often could only get out of the house and be child-free on a Saturday. And recently, John has a ministry program to work that falls on Saturday.  This week he needs to mow grass at the Manor.  He missed doing it last week and we've had rain (and sunshine) and wind so the grass has grown by leaps and bounds.  He cannot push it off any longer.

At first, I grieved over the loss of that ritual each Friday evening and the quiet peace of the day on Saturday, but over the past two years, I've reconciled myself to it.  I didn't grow up knowing this as part of my faith practice.  God introduced me to it for a season and now that season seems to be past.  But I still feel the tug of the Messianic life, following feasts, looking towards Shabat each Friday evening at sunset. reminding myself that Saturday is the Sabbath and trying to limit what I let distract me from that fact.  

I don't know if we'll ever take it up again...but for a season, I grew in my faith, and that growth will never reverse.  

Shabat Shalom, a bit early, I know but all the same have a peaceful and lovely Sabbath.  

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