Dear Home Consultant

I am writing to voluntarily withdraw myself from any and all future home parties.
Direct sales ventures contain a toxic quality which inadvertently and uncontrollably render me incapable of basic party etiquette.

For example.
When you tell me that your products are bought by celebrities (!), you've actually triggered my defense against this culturally accepted obsession of imitating starving Hollywood women.

After that, I just need you to pass me the cheese tray.
I definitely don't want your bangles; your charms.

When you tell me that your product is electroplated seven times (!) I want to pressure you into admitting that the fancy rhetoric is supposed to make me feel like I'm buying Lady Di's jewels. I smell a rat. Electrocuted.

Pushing these themes further, you've indicated that purchasing jewellery in the kitchen of my cousin is actually investing in my future. If I were less irritable, this may have captured my full attention. I worry about the future. With words like "rhodium"; "top-selling"; and "exciting"; I wish I was ready to become the next hostess; nay, the next consultant!! This just might be that investment into the future that will pay my children's tuition; their travels to the four corners of the world; my retirement; his retirement; the roof on the house!

But, alas. Cynicism rears her bullish head.
I could never be a team player.
Quitting my gritty day job to peddle rhodiums in strangers living rooms while sipping their sangria. Insidious.
Promoting a lifetime of hoarding semi-costume jewels.

I should be happy that you're able to give up your monotonous day job performing laser eye surgery in order to loaf about balancing grapes and wine on tiny cocktail napkins in the homes of unsuspecting strangers.

Instead I offer you a simple truce: ban me from your parties; your wares; your catchy ice breaker games and your free prizes (with the purchase of twenty four earrings, bracelets, and hangy bits that you don't really like) and I promise not to become a consultant. I won't rise to unit leader. I won't rob you of potential sales. And just to prove to you my sincerity, I won't even buy a single bangle out of your glossy catalogue.

I guess I'm just gracious that way.

Sometimes I Get Peed On

And sometimes I get really tired of my house being a chronic mess.
Full.
of crumbs and kids and marker lids.
crusty bits and missing
magnets
that used to hold things
on the fridge.
broken chairs from
too much climbing
tipping
pushing.

But I got peed on because some sweet soul
missing her mama
climbed on my lap.

And while I stroked her angelic hair
she drifted off
and warmed
me
more.

Sometimes the kids will call me
Mom.
They've forgotten
where they were.

and I'm happy.
To think
I could have such
trust
and drippy
love.

Even on my couch
floor
counter
bed
table
chairs

Lap.

Tante Marie

She left in the middle
of living

Flour dusting her sifter
because she was not yet done

We who were left
met together for faspa
with her jelly
her cookies
her platters and
mugs.

While sifting through a lifetime of her buttons
and planning
more life
for them all.

The Passage of Time

On the night before my 44th birthday, Brian wanted to take me out for dinner. To a quaint, sophisticated Italian restaurant right downtown Winnipeg called Tres Visi. It's beautiful and yummy- we've been there before.

I told him that I really love food courts.
I love the sociology, the diversity, the many faces and paces of humanity, and the sense that I can get up and wander around at any moment that I so choose. I'm not trapped in my pretty seat with a heavy expectation that I'd better be having a really good time.

So, Brian enjoyed pad thai under the sparkling, newly hung Christmas lights, while I ate colourful food from Cultures. The cutlery was plastic. The place was packed with potentially fascinating people.

And all that for under twenty bucks.

Afterward we wandered around Chapters indulging ourselves in possible reading material, and considering overspending on coffees from Starbucks. Instead I found a small set of playmobil and bemoaned the fact that our children had never loved the toys as much as I'd wanted them to.

Brian bought them for me.

for my birthday.

He'd already bought me gifts the previous weekend when we'd travelled up to Lac du Bonnet for a volleyball tournament. Stumbling upon an antiques shop, we spotted two gorgeous old clocks that we both knew I badly needed. Previously, I only nineteen alarm clocks, none of which tell the accurate or actual time of day. That's what the microwave is for.

The pink and silver clocks round out my collection nicely; bringing the total up to a paltry twenty-one clocks.

Well, there's always Christmas.

My birthday this year was so much about the passage of time. I anticipated it to be a significant birthday, since I'd been thinking of my brother on and off the entire year that I'd spent being 43. What must it have felt like for him to know he'd be leaving?! At this age? With so much living yet to do- with so much left to ponder, to struggle with, to learn? And so I knew that when I reached my 44th, I'd think of him a great deal. And have that strange, inexplicable feeling of having outlived him; my bigger brother.

I thought of how I'd like to celebrate. I considered many scenarios, but settled on a simple one that didn't require any of the costuming or hilarity of past celebrations. I was craving wisdom. I invited some women friends over for a dinner entitled; "Wine, Women, and Wisdom". It was just what I'd been hungry for.

It didn't turn out the way I'd hoped; although it certainly fit thematically with my yearlong preoccupation with the passage of time, and fragility of living.

Before we'd quite raised our forks, my mother phoned with the sad news that her last sibling had died that day in a traffic accident.

In the days that have followed this strange birthdate, I've had some meaningful moments. I've spent more time than usual with my family- both immediate and extended. I've observed some wonderful wisdom. I've watched my mother. My auntie's children. Their children. I've listened to stories about tante from grandchildren, cousins, sisters.

And here's the wisdom I'd hoped might come from my party:

There isn't a moment in this life that the choices between

kindness and impatience;

love and indifference;

investing or complacency

don't matter.

It always matters.

Kindness adds up, and up, and up. It pours into people- this resource in our lifetimes that is most worthy to invest in. Every time we choose to be kinder than necessary, our life becomes softer. Lovelier. Richer.

This year on my birthday I was craving wisdom, and it came in the strangest of ways.

I hope that I make the kinds of choices that tante Marie made in her life years of nearly ninety four. I hope I strive to have the energy for the extra mile, the cheerful smile, the generosity of busy hands.

And I hope to have another dinner party.
A festive one, next time.
Wanna come?

The Posts I Meant To / Dreamt of Writing This Week

• 44 Thoughts On My Birthday




• What I Learned From Burger Night




• Hell Hath No Fury As a Pacifist Spurned




• Why Sometimes a Trip to the Thrift Store is all I Really Need

I didn't have a chance to write any of those.

And I really miss you, my online friends.

Farewell

This morning there's no big white car across the street from my house.

My auntie has been roaring around town in that car for years- picking up the elderly and depositing them at the church door before parking at the far end of the parking lot to leave the close spots for the infirm.

She's ninety-three.

Two days ago she and her elderly friend left an event early, in order to get home before dark.

Instead, they met with a cement truck.

My tante lived the most anyone could imagine. She never got old.

And its strange- no white car across the street.

xo Tante Marie, you'll be missed.

From The Creepy File

When I'm feeling blue or bored, I love to spend time on such internet vehicles as pinterest ; craftgawker, etsy, stumbleupon,dwellinggawker, apartment therapy and even kijiji.

I'm amazed at the creativity out there.

But sometimes; inexplicably, I'm troubled. Creeped-out, even. Possibly enraged and anxious at some bizarre artistic level.

So please.

Do not photograph innocent barely born humanoid babies in questionable elements such as: flowers, (especially sunflowers), nests, tree branches (even facsimiles of the same), acorn-shaped items, pea costumes, wooden bowls, old tin cans, pumpkins, eggs, terra cotta pots, or driftwood. Please place babies into soft sleepers, then wrap them in flannelette blankies, and cradle them in your arms. You'll be glad you did.

Do not. Take a sweater that was obscenely ugly in the first place, then haul it down around your waist, and pretend its a skirt. A sweater is not a skirt. never was. never should be. And those pom poms? Give your head a shake.

Besides. How many women do you know who have the type of hips that enable them to pull their sweater down over them and prance around like santa's little helpers? Creepy. And just plain wrong on many, many levels.

Don't write on your kids banana before packing it into their school lunch. That's just wrong. When you put a banana into a paper bag alongside a ham sandwhich, you will have banana-infused-ham-and-cheese shortly after heading out the back door. Doodling on the fruit merely adds insult to injury. It must be stopped.

The pencil carving. This is brilliant, but it creeps me out. I hate to think of the artist in his poorly lit studio slaving away on his intricate pencil carvings and slowly losing his precious eyesight. Besides. What does he do when, 15 hours into carving a heart shape out of the top of a pencil, it suddenly snaps?

These things are easily prevented, and cause unnecessary stress to many innocent bystanders.

Now I've told you, and now you know.

Leave creepy to Halloween, and the rest of the year do something awesome instead.

A Page From my Psychology File

Some people are really good at presenting themselves. They have simple, waste free ways of toilet training their babies by one and a half hours of natural childbirth. They cook all their meals a day ahead in the crock pot using dandelion greens their goat chewed off the front lawn. They're thin and occasionally munch on whole grains while busying their hands on stitching organic undies for their loved ones. They know the difference between animal fibers and some other kind of fiber that I can't remember just now.

They run their own equestrian farms, manage fair trade corporations (oxymoron, right?), despise hair dyes, and never shop at Wal-Mart.

They're what I like to call Social Maximalists. They could write pamphlets on how Best To Present The Self.

Then there are the Minimalists.
Minimalists like to poke fun at their own lives. They tend to give you the lowest common denominator on anything they've set their hand to. If they've recently lost a hundred and four pounds, they'll tell you that it would have been hundred and ten if not for that box of digestives that spoke to them softly and gently one lonely afternoon.

If they own the cattle on a thousand hills, they'll tell you in great detail about the one named Bessie who they forgot to call in one night who died alone of thirst and old age.

Minimalists exist to question the authenticity of the maximalist.
Maximalists exist to provide a prototype for the minimalist to despair ever aspiring to.

For entertainment at your next social event, plan the seating so that all the maximalists are together. Listen to them out-shout one another in their quality of life proclamations.

Put the minimalists in another corner. They'll blissfully sip their G&T's because they're
pretty sure
they're not
all that important
anyway.

I Hate The Phone

People talk about texting and e-mail posing problems because you communicate without the aid of body language and inuendo. I say- give me the written word. I never think fast, and writing allows me to pause mid-sentence, mid-thought and re-evaluate, edit, and re-read so I'm more sure that my words are saying what I want them to.

The phone makes me feel panicky because its jarringly immediate. There's no body language. There's no smiling to make up for the fact that your brain has gone on the blink. You've just got to spit it out right quick. And it better make sense. Right. Now.

I bought an electrolux at the thrift shop a few weeks ago for $25.oo. I couldn't believe my good fortune. This vacuum put an entirely new spin on the whole concept of vacuuming. Instead of passing over the same thread fifty times without much success, my new/old electrolux pretty near relocated the laminate strips in my living room.

On day two of deleriously happy housekeeping, the vacuum made a tired sound.
On day three it sunk down to a dull, bass sound and the powerful suction had become a thing of the past.
The moter had blown.
Wanting to give the guys at the thrift shop a break, I decided to steel my nerves and call up a guy from around town who has a reputation for being a bit of an electrolux genie.

It took me about two weeks to build up the nerve, but eventually the anxiety of seeing the same thing on my to do list every day spiked my anxiety to the point which the only way to properly resolve it was to just get it over with.

Armed with the local phone book and the cordless, I faced my giant.

"hello?" (low, gravelly voice answers)
"Oh. Hello. Mr Sneed?"
"Who's calling?" (low, growly, suspicious voice)
"Well, it's Joyce Hildebrand, and I'm calling sort of on behalf of the thrift shop about an electrolux vacuum?"
"Oh. Yes....?"
"Mr Sneed, are you the electrolux guy?"
pause.
"This is Mrs Sneed. Mr Sneed's wife."

oh.
I'm
so
sorry.

I think maybe I'll buy her a carton of cigarettes and a flat of scotch to make up for my phone blunders. And swear never to condescend to the telephone. Ever. Again.

On Why I've Fallen And Can't Get Up

Because when I spend all my free time/drool on my keyboard/abandon all hope of keeping up with the house
Because when I invest valuable time on pinterest nurturing my creative side, finding inspiration which in turn I use to make my home a sanctuary, thereby immeasurably enhancing the lives of my children and all who cross my threshold...

It makes me a better person.

Really, it does.

It has to, or I'll be forced to reevaluate all my priorities, and that would take away valuable free time which I'd rather spend on pinterest.

Allow me to expound.

Recently during my forays into bettering myself, I came across the image above. It brought me fully into a place where I was able to speak in unknown tongues. I may have shouted out;

"SHUT. UP!!!!"
"I WANNA BE YOUR NEW BEST FRIEND!!"

Among other possible brilliant, eloquent, profound expulsions.

Why? You might ask? (being less nurtured, less informed about pinterest, less wise about your own use of free time)
Because I care about you, I'm willing to point out all the things about this image that make me a better person. If you listen closely, you may find that you have also developed enviable personal qualities of your own.

I've provided the image again so that you can follow more closely. I'm willing to point out areas of brilliance, in order to disciple you in your quest towards awesomeness.

1. 
   
   The tablecloth. Did not come from Wal-Mart, Zellers, Dollarama, or Bowring. Nope. It came from a boot sale, or a tag sale or an op shop, or a thrift shop or a garage sale or a nearly deceased auntie.
   



2. 
   
   The broad, white, distressed coffee table. Need I say more.




3. 
   
   The entirely NON-matchy matchy furniture. The orange, pink, turquoise, white, grey, and brown that totally work together. They just love and accept one another like some church groups of my imagination.




4. 
   
   The quirky chandelier over the table. It's entirely precious.




5. 
   
   A brown iron framed bed in the dining room? Outrageous. I love it.




6. 
   
   That lamp shade.




7. 
   
   The banner bunting over the bed.




8. 
   
   The two fireplaces. One painted ridiculously pink. I adore that kind of nonsensibility
   

And there's more. If you've listened carefully, and you're a proper kind of person, you'll go now and find it for yourself. At pinterest.

(and. pinterest doesn't place huge annoying spaces in its text like blogger does. Blogger has been really committed to unwarranted large spaces. It really bugs me. Just sayin')

Frugal Living: DIY

Christmas is expensive.
So is summertime; what with the holidays, the car trips, the snack foods, and the cooler drinks.
September is outrageous! All the school fees, lesson start-ups, school supplies, overpriced agendas, sport fees, special groceries, new shoes......
Spring is expensive too. It must be because everything else is, and at some point when I wasn't thinking at all, I got a house, four kids, some vehicles, a camper, some cats, and then a couple of guinea pigs just for variety.

So every now and again when I have a moment to catch my breath, I decide to make a few frugal changes to my lifestyle. So that August isn't still nipping at my heels while I'm decorating a tree for spendthrift days of December.

So, this fall, I thought maybe I should do grocery runs when I can also accomplish a few other errands along the way. Combine trips, so to speak.

Brian does this sort of thing. He drives to another town every morning on his way to work so that he can swim some manic amount of laps in a cold, wet swimming pool. He's into muscles that way. Then he goes to Superstore to get the deals before he heads off to work. What a savvy guy.

Well, the other day, he went into Superstore and filled up his cart. When it came time to pay the piper, he realized that he'd transferred his debit and credit cards to a different pair of pants entirely, and he was left... figuratively... with his pants down. No way to pay for the goods.

Never mind that. I had to go into the city just that evening to pick up some fabric that had been donated to the bag cause. I'd efficiently roll the groceries and the fabric pick-up into one convenient errand. Furthermore, I'd shop frugally.

So, off roared daughter and I to the Giant Tiger. I have a secret love affair with that weird little chain. You never know what you might find.

No disappointments this day- four big yogurts for $5.00?! wow! Load 'er up, sista.
Then the lettucemayomeatapplesgranolabarsmilkcheesecreamjuiceboxespizzaryebreadwatermelon
and off to the cashier we go. With half the groceries in bags, I reached into my bag and found.

kleenex, a diaper, and a pen.
I'd inadvertently grabbed the "we're going for a walk" bag and left my "bag complete with wallet" hanging on a hook just inside the back door.

Apologizing more times that legal or necessary, I made my humble exit, empty handed.

I had no means to go for nachos and margueritas; beer or spirits; or even a Starbucks coffee.

Which made that particular day
Very, Very successful in my quest for frugal living.

How To Make Salsa

(heretofore referred to as "The Tomato Story"

There's nothing quite like home-cooked salsa. Canned in the midnight days of summer; the ripening days of fall; and munched down all winter long. It's kind of like canning sunshine.

Now, I'm no miser when it comes to sharing my secrets. Please enjoy this, the second post in the "DIY Series: A Beautiful Thing". Feel free to take notes, republish this to your cookbooks, and share with neighbours and friends.

Start with the freshest possible ingredients. If you're worth your salt, you'll grow your own. Organic. Free range. Pesticide free. Sung to. And petted.

Then use the best salsa recipe ever to have been salsified. "Mary's Most Amazing Salsa".Spend several hours chopping vegetables. You weren't doing anything anyway, and its been a prolific year for tomatoes. Cut up enough for four recipes. Dash out to the store for some additional celery and onions, and weep your way to the finish line.

Glance at the calendar. Recognize that it's tapas Friday and you have to get your house to shiney perfection within the next three hours. Deposit the roughly 147 cups of veggies into the largest bowl you've ever imagined in your life. Glance into your kitchen fridge and surmise that the door must contain more than ten percent lycra, because there's no other possible way that it would remain closed.

Remember that we have a "beer fridge" in the garage. Grip bowl in both hands and proceed to garage. Remember that your brother gave you all his leftover cabin food when he hightailed it out of the country. The beer fridge contains no beer and lots of random groceries. Definitely no room for the biggest bowl in the universe.
Reason that a concrete floor is always cold on the feet.

Place salsa on cold concrete and proceed to fumigate the house for company.

Eat.

Sip wine.

Laugh heartily at many funnies.

Go to bed really late and really happy.

Get a morning phonecall from some of my favourite people asking if I'd like to join them for a trip to the St Norbert farmers market.

Happily oblige.

Oggle colourful vegetables, finger creative button jewellery, and make some new Hutterite friends who sell their bread and baking to support an orphange in Liberia. Buy some spelt flour to embellish my image of being a tomato-growing, salsa-canning homemaker.

Stop at my sister's for a glass of wine.... some dinner.... and a movie.

Go to bed late- tired and happy.

Sunday morning, resume salsa making.

Observe that the fruit flies are having a grand feast, and that I've inadvertently grown penicillin.

Throw the whole mess into compost.

Go out for nachos and beer.

DIY: The First In The Series : The Beginning of a Beautiful Thing

Find a lovely dresser beside a dumpster. Drive under the cover of dark to avoid shameful exposure to townspeople with dignity. Load curbside furniture into backside of van and drive home very carefully so as to avoid newly acquired prize from sliding out of rear of vehicle.Note the likely reasoning for depositing dresser at curbside. Recognize my own thrifty- and resourcefulness. Feel a sense of pride growing at the possibility of becoming the next, great recycler extraordinaire. Begin to imagine a huge following of fellow curbside rescuers. My own pinterest page. My own shop filled with beautiful, rescued furniture. Becoming mortgage free in a manner of weeks after sure success. Gaze at the strong, stately legs. Lovely lines.
Begin to perspire potentiality.

Remove hardware.
Sand existing paint to prep for The New Old Look.
Cover in several coats of clean, white paint.

Begin to dream of the apparently effortless appearance of the Distressed Effect upon completion.

Go to sleep.
Wake up to rain.
Recall that there hadn't been rain in approximately seventeen weeks,
Hence the furniture fix-up station in the grand, dry outdoors.

Note the painting roller soaking in rain water and

the prized dresser now appearing rather damp.
Note a veneer on curb project that is beginning to lift.

Refuse to lose heart.
Determine that this is, in fact, a gift.

Peel off veneer to reveal a beautiful wood grain.

Erupt in praise of the heaven's rains.

Dresser shall be even more covet-able that formerly ascertained!

Enthusiastically begin to slide wooden drawers into dresser.

Look at rescue project + night of rain a little more closely. Become fully aware of the rather pronounced swelling of its natural fibers, making it utterly impossible to fit back into the dresser. Rather like a January attempt to fit into the size seven Calvin Klein jeans that one shelved in the closet from grad 1985.

Hurl the dresser off the deck in a sudden burst of disillusionment. Commission strong husband to stomp upon item.

Enlist son to build a large backyard fire.

Go for drinks.

Dear Febreze

"Febreze® believes everyone deserves to breathe happy, and we want to prove it every day, to real people, in real life. "

These are your words.

Lifted from your web page.

I'm a real life, real people. And I'm not happy.

My children watch way too much television. And if that isn't enough to make me unhappy, I am vicariously subjected to your disgusting commercials at frequencies well beyond tolerable.

I like thrift shops. But I don't like watching your suckers sit in a filthy excuse for a thrift store smelling rotten old sneakers, sitting on a bedbug infested couch and making cooing noises while they inhale your "happiness-in-a-spray-bottle". I find it disturbing.

And just for your info, my peeps in the "new to you" industry don't put out filthy sh*t like that.

Here's the other thing. I like to spend an obscene amount of time on pinterest. I also like to scroll through hundreds of pages of craftgawker, and pin, pin, pin to my hearts content.

But then you know what happens? While I'm merrily scrolling along, catching visions of red, turquoise, and yellow.... a nasty pop-up of a hysterically happy woman in a blindfold smelling a foul looking string mop takes over my line of vision. Do I want to pin this?! I THINK NOT!

Why the impassioned response to your ads? Because. I personally think that febreze stinks. More than soiled running shoes, kitty litter boxes, tattered couches, and blue cheese. I used to work in a facility that was maniacally committed to your product, and sprayed their couch in its sinus clogging matter fortnightly. Yuck. It was impossible to relax on that couch. I felt violated and assaulted at every subtle shift in my darrierre.

Febreze. I deserve to breathe happy.
In real life, as a real person.
So quit butting into my pinterest and generally spraying your nasty attitude in all sorts of places that I don't want to smell it in.

Or I'm going to make a real life really big stink.

life is just so full of blessings

Somebody fed the dog corn.

Which said dog ate, then puked onto the blanket that was (fortunately) strewn across the couch.

The blanket got balled up and deposited outside the bathroom/laundry room.

The daughter got sudden onset stomach flu, and rushing off to the bathroom, she came up to the locked door as

someone else was taking a shower.

Seeing the balled up couch blanket outside the bathroom door, she made do with what was immediately available.

Being not squeamish, and preventing the possibility of toddlers taking an interest in the much- dampened quilt....I took the whole mess outdoors to spray the worst of it away.

Having accomplished all that (and more) I decided to write out a cheque for the speeding ticket my husband incurred while driving his fancy new car to the big city for a haircut.

And its just past noon.

Oh Boy!
I can hardly wait to see what the afternoon will bring!

Well Worth the Read

Perception.

When warped, is the start of much of our troubles.

Once I started reading this painfully honest memior of life with anxiety and its evil stepsisters- anorexia and bulimia, I couldn't stop til I got to the end. And then I wanted more.

I must commend this actress, living in the very public eye, for revealing her dark, dark journey for all the world to read. I know she'll be appreciated by any woman who has viewed herself as ugly, inadequate, a fraud, too wide, etc, etc. But there will inevitably be those who misunderstand her words, her life, her journey.

And I'm sorry about that for her sake.

But I'm really grateful that she has the courage to take it on.

On Why I"ll Not Be The Next Super Model

(alternate title: "she worries she'll never really be well"
and/or: "she wants more for her daughters... and yours")

Starting out is easy.
three cups of coffee.
black.

no cigarettes since I couldn't see the sustainability of it.
not that I haven't considered.

Several hours later, I get the hunger.
and remember.
cut back on carbs
sugar
fat
carbs.

Should I eat an egg?
Not with those garden tomatoes flaunting their taut red skin there on my counter.
Right next to the shrine.
the bread box
and the butter.

Its ok to eat some carbs for breakfast.
tis the start of the day, with many miles to travel.

Another black caffiene gets me to the lunch hour.
fishy crackers for the kids
pasta
and sauce
toast.

Carbs.
mmmmmm.

Don't want a salad out of the wilted fridge zucchini, three week old carrots, and absolutely no lettuce or spinach leaves. Yuck.

Tomatoes with toast is good!
sooooo good.

Three o'clock and kid snack time.
I'm looking hungrily at my own limbs
and imagining life without
handsful of cheerios,
teddy bears
oatmeal cookies
puffed wheat cake

What could I eat and not
induce
the guilt??

But I'm famished and there's
chocolate zucchini muffins
flax bagels
salted peanuts

And who should dwell on carbohydrates at a time like this?!
We're hungry!
and we've miles to go.

By half past four, the wine is looking chill.
In an hour I'll be faced with the second shift.
Dinner making.
Laundry sorting.
Sandbox from under couch vacuuming.

And there's bacon.
and cheese perogies.

And a garden tomato
on the side.

I remember my objective thoughts on aging and the expected shift in metabolic function.
I remember something about sugars, starches, size eights.

and I'm utterly unwilling to boil some eggs with a side of boiled brocolli.

I want the delicious life.

It's a shame I've been made to believe
tis only good
in
lesser.

and I find
i want
so much.

Closin' Time

It was time to unpack her bags, and reset her early morning alarm.
She knew she'd be happy to see their little faces at her door again.
She knew they would make her laugh and she would marvel again at the wonder wrapped in pre-school packages.
She knew she'd feel relieved at the return of routine, she'd enjoy living in the back yard, and filling their days with the simple pleasures of walks, playground, and sprinkler.

Still. She mourned the passing of summer with its trips to the lake, books at the beach, and languishing midday patio meals with friends too long neglected.

Summer, you've been good to me.
You've given me the hot, bright days that make me happy. You've brought me old friends, time with family, camping trips under tall pines. Fresh beans from the garden. Zucchini. Strawberries. You've filled my pores with rich heat that will sustain me in these upcoming basement days of January.

But its hard to say good-bye.

A Part Of Our Proud Heritage

Mennonite

In Niverville

Sews in her basement.

Entirely Too Late......

.............it dawned on her.

There was simply no time whatsoever in which to fit in

her job.