Shift Happens

When I am feeling down there are countless avenues before me to shift the downward movement into the upswing.  Being with children makes me smile even before I feel the corners of my mouth moving upward.  Doing something for someone else lightens my heart.  And sitting in Mother Nature's lap is a certain mood elevator.  I especially like being with flowers and listening to birds.  I have an obsession with birds... don't know why, just like them, even the big black noisy ones. 

I walked by our patio door one day and was stunned at the amount of birds covering our lawn.  It was like a scene out of Hitchcock's movie.  No kidding, there were black birds everywhere my eye traveled.  I ran to get my camera to document the event and by the time I returned the brood had already taken flight.  I quickly aimed my lens out the door and was able to catch only a few wings fluttering up, up and away. 



Flowers make me happy.  I try to have at least one vase of the little beauties somewhere in our house through out the year, no matter what the season. Yesterday I made sure there was more than one vase adorning our abode.

One on the dining table...

         one in the alcove above the stove...

 



   

one behind the kitchen sink













and one on the coffee table in the sitting area off the kitchen...

If you're feeling blue look around you and see Mother Nature holding out her hands, ushering you into her beautifully decorated home, offering you every color, smell and texture to choose as your own.  Mother Nature is very generous.  She shares all she has with us solely or should I say souly to bring us pleasure.

Cloudy With a Chance of Pain

I'm feeling a bit cloudy today.  Maybe it's because of my root canal yesterday or the weekend with family in Texas, or he-man-hubby being on night shift.  I am definitely a creature of habit.  I work well with routine.  He-man has been a good teacher for me over our 30-something years of marriage.  Spontaneity is his middle name and he likes nothing better than to drop whatever he is doing when someone calls asking him to lend them a hand.  I, on the other hand, pause when this happens.  I have to think about what I have planned for the day and if the caller's request can be worked into my schedule.  How naked I feel in that confession.  For what I like most is to be perfect and not immediately responding to a call for help seems less than perfect to me.

Oh well, revealing my need for consistency was not my intention for today's post.  My thought for today's post was to share my weekend trip to Texas.  I took 70 some pictures of my sister's and brother's-in-law beautiful home and the family they always welcome there.  I had  planned  to use some of those pictures in this morning's blog and then move on with my day of volunteering at Clarehouse.  But something happened to interrupt my routine.  The pictures mistakenly were deleted from my SD card on my camera.  BUMMER GALORE!  Clouds just keep building.

Feeling like I just couldn't get it together, I gave up on blogging and turned to today's meditation in The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo.   Spontaneously, I share this with you as today's post.(There may be hope for me yet)

Mark writes, "Some days I wake with a cloud around my heart, and it dulls everything except the weight I carry deep inside.  Yet, just because I can't make it to the light today doesn't mean that the light has vanished.  In truth, the heart, like the Earth, is continually blanketed by ever-changing atmospheres that come and go between who we are and how we live our days.

So faith, it seems, can be defined as the effort to believe in light when we're covered by clouds, and though it feels like the sun will never come again, the truth is it has never stopped burning its light. In fact, its heat and warmth is burning steadily, right now, on the far side of whatever cloud we are under.

If we could only suspend our judgment when clouded in the heart.  For many skepticisms are born from conclusions drawn while unable to see, as if any kind of understanding will prevent the clouds from coming or going again and again.

But no cloud lasts forever.  The Earth and all that grows from it knows this well.  So does the heart and everything that grows from it, in spite of all our very understandable pains."

Pretty in Pink....... and orange

One of the most fun for me as grandmother is buying presents for my grandchildren that I didn't afford my children as mother.  Back in the day when I was rearing babies and pulling cotton, I designed and sewed most of our children's clothes which I thought were absolutely adorable.  Only after they had grown and left home did I find out that they thought the whole "matchy-matchy" thing appalling.  Fortunately, a good therapist and having children of their own has given them a greater understanding and a slice of appreciation for growing up in a rural home with hippie parents in the 70's.  However, my son still reminds me from time to time that he did not find dressing in short pants made from the same fabric as his sister's dresses adorable at all.


Taking full liberty as grandma, I now go for the gusto and buy my grandchildren matchy, patchy, snatchy clothes on any occasion I consider special. Which is any time I want.

Off to the Tulsa mall I wandered the other day to discover racks and racks and racks of little girl's Easter dresses.  "Hum," I thought.  "Wouldn't it be fun to send a flower garden to Anna, Kate and Molly?"  So I picked a colorful bouquet to be packed off to three little girls still wrapped in a Wyoming winter wardrobe.






I plucked a large pink chrysanthemum for Anna,














 

 a wildflower arrangement for Kate
















and party balloons for Molly.

Of course I had to add a few other flowers for a bit of interest...purple delight for Anna, orange marmalade for Kate and yellow sunshine for Molly.

Now that ought to bring some color into those snowy mountains!

Happy Easter my lovely 

grand daughters!

And all the adult children may wear whatever they want 

absolutley no matching required.

It Comes.... It Goes...

Sorry for the delay in posting today.  I was having some security issues with my pc last night and had to use my normal posting time this morning fixing the problem.  Oh well, such is techno-life.


My he-man hubby is a pipeline controller by trade and a wood worker by passion.  Our garage is a place to put our car and an even bigger place to set up shop. Hubby has made dozens hundreds of pieces of furniture for our home and many others over the years.  But only ten years worth since moving into our current home.

I can't believe we have been here for 10 years.  It seems like we are still in the process of evicting the previous owner and making it our own,

Several months after moving in hubby made a large dining table to accommodate what we then thought was a large family.

The table measures 4 feet three inches wide by nine feet long.  We can fit fourteen people around it's perimeter and do so as often as the Wyoming or Texas crews come to visit or hubby and I entertain friends.

Some time after our robust dinning table was crafted we remodeled our kitchen, opening up a few walls, making one large dining space out of two small gathering rooms and adding a breakfast bar.  I picked up a second hand expandable table from a thrift shop that I frequent often.  The sales personel don't know me by name yet, but they recognize me when I walk through the door.

I painted the table and chairs, reupholstered the cushions and we began using the new space and the new table whenever friends or family gathered for a meal. 

I like the new configuration because when preparing a meal I am not isolated from family or guests.  And it is much easier to carry food from an adjacent kitchen than half way across the house.

"Big sigh." But now the forlorn dining table that hubby built is used to gather dust and act as my sewing table from time to time.  When the grandsons visit they claim the table as lego-building territory where it becomes hoarder of countless itty bitty parts for soldiers, knights, cars, towers, tanks or whatever else they build.

Oh bigger sigh."  Last night our large dining table found a new home.  A young family (friends of our daughter's) moved into a new home - a very large home - and they did not have a dining table.  They have six children; three natural born and three adopted from Africa less than a year ago.  They were able to move into the new home because the builder and the bank we eager to offer them a oober-fantastic deal. When daughter, Cindy, told us that they might need a dining table we quickly offered ours.  While I love the furniture that hubby builds and cherish all the scrapes and scars our dining table has gathered from family feasts over the years, it seemed silly to have a table one seldom uses when someone else is in need.  To know that another family will gather around it's border and eat and play and tell stories and make it their own makes my heart giggle.  Family, friends and food are a delicious combination.

Indentions in the carpet are all that remain of our hand crafted table.  I don't know what this empty space will transition into as of yet.  Maybe for now it will serve as a wresting mat for grandchildren...or... hubby and I when he feels courageous enough to take me on.  Whatever this space becomes I hope it will remain a place for family and friends to voice dreams, relay fears, feel safe and laugh a plenty. 

 I am content to think of our table in a new home.. a place where Africa and America eat together.... a place where children learn to use their napkins, not eat with their mouths full and listen when someone else is talking... a place where Adoptive parents gather to share the challenges and joys of blended families... a place where a pumpkin centerpiece is displayed, Thanksgiving turkey is carved and Christmas pie is devoured.
 

What's in a Name?

Some have wondered how the name for this blog came about.  So here is my story, and I'm stickin' to it!

My son and his family bought a new home in January.  Before that time they lived in an adorable little house near our quaint, brick-paved, mom-n-pop shops downtown.  A kid-infested park practically shared their backyard and they were literally minutes from grocery, hardware, bank and Joe's work.  The house was perfect for Joe the bachelor.  It was 1000 sq. ft.of easy-comfort-living.

When he married Tara two years ago she moved in and made the bachelor pad yummy, homey and perfect for their little family (Tara brought two terrific children to the marriage).  Ashton and Brock walked to school only blocks away and played with the endless stream of children who inhabited the neighborhood.  But in a blink of an eye life changes.  Tara and Joe added to their family almost before their wedding vows were neatly tucked away in a keepsake envelope.  Sims was born June 1, 2010 and Joee will join him June 16, 2011.  All too soon the adorable, charming house was holding them too tightly and with only ONE potty, bladders were held even tighter.

Speaking of holding it, that's what you're going to have to do as I work my way toward the focus of this post.....

After months of visiting more houses than they were able to remember, Joe and Tara signed a contract on a house in the very neighborhood Joe lived in when we first moved to Oklahoma from Wyoming 20+ years ago.  It is a four bedroom, two bath, two-story home on a lovely tree lined lot.  The children each have their own bedroom (except for the wee ones).  Their parents have a closet which actually holds both dad's and mom's clothes and when face washing and teeth brushing happen in the morning, there are no more traffic jams.

I helped Joe and Tara get their new house in order.  We unpacked boxes, moved furniture, loaded cupboards, moved furniture again., painted walls, hung curtains, made beds and moved more furniture.  In fact Tara is still moving it.  It takes a while to fit everything in place until it feels like home.

The house has a front parlor-type room that Joe and Tara decided would be their family game room.  A place with little furniture and open floor space for wrestling, game boards and sprawling art projects. Ashton and I spent one day concentrating on transforming parlor to play by painting some furniture pieces to use in the space.  Tara had fallen in love with a rustic cabinet she found at the Salvation Army.  We teased her that it looked like an outhouse and she said, "Just wait and see.  It will be perfect in the game room.  And she was right.

Ashton and I painted over the rough surface of the "outhouse" with watered-down red paint. We then dry-brushed on some white paint and that was that! Wala!

I took an old picture frame and painted it apple green.  Ashton painted a foam board, cut to fit the frame, with chalkboard paint.  Before we affixed the chalkboard to the frame, I rubbed over the green paint with a gel stain and then wiped it off, leaving dark steaks and embellishing the decorative elements of the wood.  I was happy to have an eager student in Ashton and was proudly announcing the term of each painting technique we applied.  She asked why I had put that brown stuff on the frame and I told her it was called antiquing.  "It's what you do to give a piece character." I said.


Brock, then 8-years-old , was eager to help us, but we wouldn't stop what we were doing long enough to give him a brush.  After little response from the painting duo, Brock ran to his room and retrieved a longhorn wall hanging his Papa had made.  He lugged it downstairs and placed it on a section of the drop cloth we had covering the carpet and asked if he could please paint THIS!  I gave him his favorite orange color a small brush and away he went.  As he was painting in random strokes, very much his own method, he told his mom that he was unique-ing it.

Thus the name for my blog was born.  I decided that Brock had created a more accurate term for what we were doing that day in their game room as well as what I wanted for my blog.  I wanted it to be a place where I brought daily, uniquely fleeting moments of life and all the millions of miracles that tug at my heart.  I love painting anything, including my face.  But as the years add up there is less area to paint and a whole lot more antiquing going on.  Oh, in a blink of an eye, life changes.  Thank God!  More and more things to blog about and more and more for you to read. Thanks for indulging me and sharing my you-nique-it, an-tique-it life.

Old habits are hard to break

My he-man husband and I decided that we would start eating healthier again.  I used to cook EVERYTHING from scratch.  Our children's after school snacks were home made bread, cookies or cinnamon rolls fresh from the oven.  All made from whole grains, farm fresh eggs, wheat germ and milk from the dairy on the hill.  In the hotter months it might be sliced apples or celery with peanut butter or a cucumber out of the garden.  I guess that wasn't what their friends were eating because when we went grocery shopping they would beg me to buy Oreos like Robin's mom.
 
I even went vegetarian on them for about four years.  Then one night, out of the blue, I served pork chops for dinner.  My six-year-old daughter asked me, "What is this mom?  Is it like meat or something?"  I began cooking more meat for our evening meals from then on, but still served lots of veggies and home made bread.

 Later, when I began working longer hours I gave in to the Oreos and a few boxes of mac and cheese.  Over time my grocery list grew to include snack crackers, seasoned noodles that only required water or frozen lasagna. Not only did I welcome the shorter time it took to prepare meals, I was giddy with appreciation that I did not have to think about what I would fix for dinner.  All I had to do was look over a grocery store shelf where several dinner menus were displayed directly at eye level.  I didn't even have to bend down or stretch high to fill our cart.

Now that I am retired and spending time at home once again, my love for cooking real food has returned.  But years of practicing the other has left an accumulation of boxes and bags in our pantry. So as not to be wasteful my husband and I have decided that we would eat very few boxed or bagged items (the grand children are helping us eliminate our stock) and eat more fresh fruit, vegetables, cheese, salmon, some chicken and whole grains on occasion. Our grocery shopping would now be limited to the produce and fresh fish isles.  No processed foods!

It was easy to go with more fruits and vegetables as we both love eating those..... but to give up the chips, crackers, cereal, canned soup, bagged pasta, ketchup, bottled dressings and sticky white rice has been a challenge.

Tonight I cooked salmon, butternut squash and a green salad with cranberries, almonds and oranges.  Sounds yummy, and healthy, doesn't it?  But all the while I was lovingly cubing the squash, a teeny little voice from the pantry was wafting through the kitchen, "What about me, your crunchy, peppered, rosemary friend? You know how you like to eat me with cream cheese.  I'm still here waiting to be served for happy hour." 

So what do you think?  Should I listen to the Cracked Pepper Triscut or plunge a celery stick in my Virgin Mary and call it sweet?

Darkness and Light

This morning as I read from The Book of Awakening,  Mark Nepo wrote of a plant growing toward the light while it's roots continue to dig deeper into the dark soil.  The plant stays alive by turning light into food. Leaves grow toward sunlight, turning it into sugar, which feeds the roots and the roots once nourished then make the stems and leaves grow further. 

I know I learned of this in grade school.  I even remember the name for this process.  Photosynthesis.  But before today I did not fully understand how this process works in everything, including us.  Until I began the painful process of going deep into my own darkness did I begin to grow into the very person I was created to be.  Without a doubt, it is the best gift I have given everyone intimately and remotely involved in my life.

If you have ever grown anything yourself, you know exactly what Mark is referencing.  Just look at these tiny pots growing sun flowers and cone flowers on my kitchen counter.  The difference in growth is one day. Without seeing it in the picture you might be able to tell where the kitchen window is too.  It's the direction toward which the leaves are turning.  Those unformed flowers naturally seek the sunshine.  It reminds me of a new born calf looking for his mother's utter.  I look at these pots every day and am continually amazed at how fast they are growing.  I planted the sun flower seeds only three days before the first green bud rumpled up the soil.

I pushed their seeds down into that dark, dank soil, expecting a week or so to pass before any growth would appear.  But daily watering and sunshine makes things happen.

It is difficult for many of us to find time to sit quietly and listen --- listen to the air moving across our face --- listen to the air escaping from our lungs --- listen to our hearts beating, singing, crying  --- listen to the love that formed us and unites us to each other. 

Since I have been sitting quietly for twenty minutes each morning, I feel more connected to the earth, the birds, my neighbors, my husband and the grocery store clerk.  For I know the pain they carry and the yearning they have hidden deep in their hearts to be desired.  It is the same for all of us, we can't help it.  Our leaves naturally want the light.  But without a daily watering of intention and a deep rooted journey to our interior space we won't withstand  blustery winds or heavy hail or whatever else life might send our way.  Darkness and light are both necessary for steady growth and flowering beauty.