Journal of My Days:

 

Saturday:  We had another night of freezing temperatures.  I will say that these super cold mornings make that cup of hot coffee so enjoyable each morning.  I've always had coffee in the mornings, even as a child, but I swear that the older I get the more I enjoy it.  Sometimes, even when I want to 'lie in' as my British friend says, I will go ahead and get up early because there is coffee.  

This morning as I had coffee, I rifled through my book pile.  I had already put all the library books to one side so I could return them this morning.  So I went through my personal pile.  I pulled out a book I bought last year.  Naturally, having finally gotten started with it, I can barely stand to put it down.  I am already a third of the way through it.  It's written by Janice Hadlow, The Other Bennet Sister.  The book  based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice revolves around the middle Bennet Sister, Mary.  It begins as Pride and Prejudice does, with the advent of Mr. Bingley's arrival in their neighborhood and follows along with Mary throughout the progress of Austen's book.  It's really good!

Last night there had been a change of plans.  I was asked to keep the kids this evening, so I planned to take them to the library, grab them a snack and then drop them back home.  I was going to make pizza for them at their house.  This morning at 7am, plans were changed again so we went back to the original plan of lunch and playground (their request).   I'm afraid by this point, my heart wasn't totally in this outing today, though it was not the children's fault.

I took the kids to the library today and then out to lunch at Burger King.  The one in the next town has an outdoor playground and the kids were delighted they could 'eat lunch and play, too,' as Isaac said.  I was worried the weather would be too cool for them.  They ran around like complete kids and got hot and took off coats.  I sat on a bench and dang near froze.  It was in the low 50's and sunny but the spot where the bench was placed was in direct line of a very cold southern breeze that blew steadily down my neck and into my ears.  When Josh took off his jacket, I snatched it up and wrapped it around my neck like a scarf, but I was still shivering pretty hard.  If only there had been a bench on the other side of the playground that didn't rest at the foot of the only slide nine children were playing on...After an hour of shivering, I told the kids it was time to go.  I might have stayed longer had I only been able to be warm!

We amused ourselves singing on the way home.  Once home, I picked up my book all over again.  Which reminds me, I left my most recent library book in the car.  I'll have to remember to grab it tomorrow when we return home from our Sunday out.

Sunday:  Today after church we went to Katie's.  John was dying to see the children and wanted a haircut.  I just plain enjoy being around the kids, grown and littles alike.  I will say Katie is much more relaxed about Henry than she ever was with Taylor (her first), because when we'd visit if it was naptime, down Taylor went regardless of the fact that we had a mere 2 hours to visit (the length of her nap).  Henry was in the pack and play in the living room and he was meant to nap but Gramma leaned over to look and see if he was awake.  He smiled at me and got so excited he kicked and wiggled all over.  Katie told me "You can go ahead and pick him up..."  Nap be damned, Gramma's here!

I recall being the same with Amie.  Guests arrived during a naptime to see the baby and oh well.   I was much more relaxed about Katie's schedule.  By that third baby, you a whole other sort of mama, aren't you?

Katie had some chocolate she wanted me to try.  She was telling me it was fair trade and organic this and that.  It was a dark chocolate with a key lime filling.  Was it good?  It was delicious!  I mean it's a really lovely chocolate.  The tartness of the filling mixes well with the dark chocolate, bringing a nice balance and they added a bit of graham cracker crumb in the filling, so it has a nice texture, too.

But then Katie read off the back of the package to me and I sort of choked.  We are so brain washed by labels, aren't we?  It's not that the chocolate had a lot of additives and preservatives.  It was the sourcing that made me wonder how something good can possibly be balanced by the bad.  The carbon footprint of that chocolate is absolutely crazy!!

The cocoa is sourced in West Africa.  It is sent to Switzerland for manufacture into candy.  And then it's flown to America from Switzerland...And then it's trucked all over America...Mind you all, this was just something that hit me yesterday it's not at all how I normally think.  But it's one of those things that once you are aware, you can't unthink it, you know?

Which brings me to another thing I've been noticing a lot of lately.  People always talking about this supplement or that, and where it's sourced from and how healthy it is for you, etc.  No distance is too far to source a supplement or salt or whatever the latest trend is.  

What happened to the whole 'eat local' movement that was so popular just a few years ago?  You know they started out saying 'Eat nothing not produced within 500 miles of where you live..." and quickly changed it to "Eat nothing not produced within 100 miles of where you live..." and now here we are with Celtic Sea Salt and Ashwagandha and such.  

As I pointed out earlier this year when Beef Tallow made the major news once more, things just go round and round, don't they?

Monday:  I'm through the morning's work, but I can't say it's been the best sort of morning.  I felt fine when I woke and was eager to make an especially nice breakfast for John, which I did.  But while we were preparing plates, I asked for a fork and for whatever reason John thought I meant to scrape honey from the jar with the fork (which had been used in preparing food).  I said, "No!" and he got his feeling hurt and pouted.  Then we were doing something else, and he snipped again.  By that point, I let his ill feeling cast the color of my day, which was pure silliness on my part.  It made me tense up, which made me fumble things and make messes I wouldn't normally make, and I began to feel more and more bleak as the morning went on.  

I was determined to at least wrest a bit of good from the morning by accomplishing something, but you know I'd have been better off not accomplishing anything and simple sitting and reading and journaling out my thoughts.  Which had nothing to do with John and his ill mood, simply all the stuff I had pushed to the back side of my own mind in order to avoid thinking about.  

I have decided that John and I are far too much at home these days.  We do get out and go grocery shopping a couple of times a month and we're seeing Katie and children most weekends when we go to church, but we are doing absolutely nothing for ourselves.  No little trips anywhere, no little outings.  We never did a thing for our birthdays, and we had plans!  We just sat here at home like lumps and when I said to John last week, "We never did go..." he said "Nope, we did not."  We made no plans to remedy our lapse, either.  

That's just a portion of it.  The other part is that I have 'wintered' this year, staying mostly indoors, not getting out in the sun as I made myself do in years past.  Mind you I was not happy with my 'sunning' on Saturday when the wind blew so cold upon my neck, but we were in the habit the last couple of years of sitting on the back porch in the sun for at least 15 minutes each afternoon and I did find it very beneficial.  

I have also tucked myself into my chair and read and read and read.   A LOT.  Not that I'm sorry to be reading once more because truly I've found some really good books of late, and I've deeply enjoyed them.  But I'd have been better this month for setting myself some projects as I did in January.  As it is I'm ending this month feeling rather useless and vaguely anxious as though I'm behind on something important.  

And finally, I've been out of balance.  I've focused too fully upon the Pantry/Freezer challenge and meals and restocking foods, and I've come to the point of being utterly sick of dealing with the necessity of food at all.

As you can see, my foul mood that developed was just looking for a 'starter' this morning and John's bout of irritability (and who knows what he was worrying over...I haven't asked, not once) proved to be the yeast I needed to get my own unpleasant mood rising.

Well, the work is done.  Supper is prepped and we can easily call it a day from here.  I'm going to tuck back into that book I've been reading since Saturday and finished it off.  And then I'm going to do a bit of journaling.  I'm going to talk to John about making an outing somewhere this week while the weather is nice. And just chill...

Thursday:  I have the flu.  I felt fine on Monday, but Tuesday I felt pretty crud.  By Wednesday I'd lost my voice and over the past 48 hours I've probably slept roughly 40 of them.  Fortunately, I stocked up on all the components of Tylenol severe Cold and flu, so I have plenty of medications on hand.  

Caleb called (with his Mama's help) Tuesday evening and asked if he could come stay at our house.  I explained I wasn't feeling well.  After a moment's contemplation he said, "Let me talk to Grampa."  "Grampa if I come to your house can you keep me?"

The biggest issue was that he had school all week and couldn't come anyway.  

I'm going to end my week here.  I'm about ready for another long nap.

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