This Week Has Been Sick

Today, I did not write what you'll read below. I wrote in a yesterday. I couldn't publish it that day, because I realized it was quite alarming. And I didn't want to alarm you with what may be seen as theatrics. Melodramatic or not, I wasn't exaggerating the description of my feelings. I was actually feeling alarmed, as a mother is wont to feel when her small infant succumbs to whatever germs have been brought home from kindergarten. The baby's doing better today, sunshine smile and all, so I'll go ahead and post this.

Here you are-- melodrama from the thick of our sick week:

My baby is more ill today than she was yesterday

or anyday in her life.

Her sunshine smile is hiding

behind glassy eyes.

She sleeps more, eats less, moans quietly, startles easily.

Her lethargy is killing me.

And my heart,

it is irregularly beating and constantly weakening.

My soul ails in its very depth,

wavers between nagging worry and exhaustive paranoia.

I have never entreated heaven like I did today,

never wanted anything more while feeling so

entirely powerless.

She, draped over my shoulder, paces with me

and I sniff her feathery head.

I think she is the sweetest thing I've ever smelled,

the softest to ever brush my cheek.

My imagination is holding her here

against my shoulder on a happier day

when giggles replace these soft cries.

We'll come out on the other side

just fine.

I believe it.

We'll be a little stronger,

with some more wisdom

and faith.

Advanced Evaporation

My racquetball playing dad, knows another racquetball playing man who also produces his own syrup annually. My dad, in passing, mentioned to the man that his daughter and son-in-law were attempting to tap and process their own sap and the man in turn offered an evaporating contraption that he no longer used.

So we inherited this enclosed fireplace with a deep cast-iron bowl which sets on the top. It allowed us to boil a much larger volume of sap at once, so we increased our tapping to seven spiles and used our new outdoor oven twice before the end of syrup season. On our last day of boiling, we lit the fire at 8 in the morning, boiled down a total of thirty gallons of sap, finished up at midnight with a bit more than a half gallon of quite fluid, but pleasingly sweet syrup.

The season is over already. With the warm winter, we should have begun tapping a few weeks earlier, but we didn't know. We jumped in with very little preparation or understanding and just learned and acquired needed materials as we went.

Annual Obligatory Record of Crocuses

An obligation to myself. See here…

Lindsay's Rulebook for Life
Section Four, Article 178:

Every year when the sun shines again after months without, a photo of the first bloom must be captured in commemoration.

Nolan Ponders the Amish

Mama is my name. Answering is my game. But sometimes he answers his own questions and the answers he gives are far more insightful than mine would have been. Leave it to the five year old.

"Mama, we see a lot of Amish people."

We pass a horse drawn buggy as we drive down County Rd 129 on our way to Waterloo.

"yeah, that's because a lot of them live around here."

"why?"

"because they like to farm so they live in the country where there's land."

Amish owned fields extend in three directions beyond a small crop of buildings. The first structure, a large home, sits near the road to my right. Amish, for sure. A clothesline neatly lined in plain but vibrantly colored clothing stretches between a metal-roofed barn and the gray, shutterless house. Amish don't shutter their windows, I've noticed.

The buggy is a dot in my rearview mirror by now.

"why don't they use a car?"

"because... Hmph" I stammer.

Do you know the answer? I only have a conjecture, so I throw it out there.

"because they believe Jesus wants them to live simply and cars are not simple."

"Do you think we shouldn't use cars?"

"I think if we can have something, even cars, we should use it to do good. What do you think?"

"I think Jesus wants everyone to be kind and reverent."

How Long Can an Introvert Stay In?

The answer, at least for an introvert I know quite well, is a very, very long time. Like years. "Staying at home" can truly be isolating, but isolation is sometimes a comfortable prospect for an introvert. Being social is exhausting, causes heartburn, headaches, and high blood pressure. The weekly excursion to church requires the following six days for recovery.

So the introvert has a internal battle (ranging over years) between loneliness and risk. Loneliness is more comfortable to the introvert than the risk of putting herself out there, especially when she sees herself as somewhat awkward. Ridiculous? Yes, of course, but to the introvert, loneliness isn't so bad. It's tabula rasa for the creative mind. It's an opportunity to explore. Introverts know what they are at their core (not just awkward) and have giant integral webs of ideas which they work in and out of over a lifetime of cognizant meanderings.

Eventually though, fuel for exploration runs low and the introvert knows that the battle has been won. It is time to leave loneliness and comfort. And what? Join a book club? Take a dance class? Get a job?

* * * * *

Now consider for a moment the introvert whose home is the country --far from civilization; the closest town so small it shouldn't be called a village, but an out-post. In the wilderness, people are fairly hard to come by. The paucity of population becomes an aide to the introvert's tendency to hover at home. Thus, overcoming hermitdom is not a seamless task. It takes considerable effort, planning, and travel.

* * * * *

So this introvert I know, she had expended her years of staying in, being a hermit, if you will. She was finally ready to leave comfort and wander out into the world beyond her rural existence. She even had a plan, a date, a place, a time, an activity, and a ready-made group of strangers who were likely to welcome her, however quiet or awkward. She thought about it on the weekend, told her husband and mom, worked at gumption and courage, repeated plans and mantras. This would be two hours of a big deal! --Thursday morning, kids in tow.

And then it was Wednesday and she was talking herself beyond excuse after excuse. She was convincing herself through the morning, through lunchtime, as she waited for the afternoon bus. This was a worthwhile endeavor. At least, that's what she had to tell herself every few minutes. Being social racks the nerves of an introvert, so her cloudy dizziness and fluttery stomach were to be expected, or that's another phrase she had to repeat to herself, "This is to be expected". There are certainly physiological symptoms caused by incorporeal maladies, as any introvert knows. However, it seems in retrospect, that the physiological distresses of her day should have been attributed more to the stomach bug, which had plagued her husband just days prior, than just to nerves.

By early evening, the undulations and vertigo turned to outright flu-like symptoms and all of her days of self-convincing, promoting, encouraging, and arranging were literally flushed down the drain. Repeatedly. All through the night and into Thursday morning. Instead of awkwardly meeting new people, she awkwardly wrapped her arms around the toilet as her face became well acquainted with the insides of the bowl. Poor little introvert. She looked at the clock Thursday morning, sweaty and miserable from a night of ravaging revulsions, and realized that it was exactly the time she should have been out and taking the first step to overcoming hermitdom. So she asked herself in exasperation, "How long can an introvert stay in?"

The answer, my friends, is a little bit longer.

Back in the Burg

I haven't written about Trumansburg since we moved away from it, but if you love the Burg like I do, you know that it's hard to stay away. Every so often, PTB and I leave our children in the care of my parents and indulge in a walk around the Burg. It really is a sweet little town, boasting of... well, not a whole lot. That's what makes it little. Although limited in size and franchise, most every space is wielded useful and crisply appealing.

This is my favorite shop, not just in this small village, but of every equivalent shop in every place I've been. It's called Sundrees. Its smallness mimics its hometown, but it is likewise packed with beauty and color. In it, they sell things useful, whimsical, plain, ornate, for children and adults of both male and female variety. The best part? Sundrees largely draws on the community for its wares. In an age of outsourcing and Chinese products, what ordinary American doesn't appreciate the words handmade and local in the same sentence?

You can find Sundrees downtown on Main Street, next door to NY Pizza and across from NAPA Autoparts.

Oldies

Here are some photos of Auburn (approximately 2 weeks old). She used to sleep through anything! And she had so much hair...

What I Will Make of It

Sometimes, life is frustrating to me. Inevitably, not everything is exactly how I would wish it, so I say to myself, "Lady, you can do something about this. Get up off your rear and go to work." And so I do just that, but rarely do my efforts produce the outcome I was looking for. Then I feel like throwing my hands up. And that is why life is frustrating to me sometimes.

Here is my kitchen sink as an example. We moved the sink to the middle of the room last week. It used to be against the wall near the door, but we wanted to use that wall for things other than the sink. The work of moving our sink created a mess, because the cupboard doesn't have a back on it. Additionally, it's ancient and metal, which implies rust. Ugh. In the end, it should be a lot nicer than it was before, but until the end we're looking at this:

Frustrating.

Frustrating --that's how my morning was. And not because of the sink.

By lunchtime I sent off a note to my husband, simmering with angst. Every task, big and small, enjoyable and tedious, attempted that morning had ended with very little success. In my wake, I left unfinished projects, unkempt rooms, burned food, a whiny boy, and I had rigidly typed out my frustrations, draped in my pajamas well past noon. I ended with something like "what's the point in trying? it rarely works out." Which is ridiculous, I know, but that's how I was feeling --ridiculous and in my pajamas.

I walked away from the computer, through my trail of messes, and kept thinking angsty things. Until it turned to honesty and introspection.

And I came to the realization that honestly, I'm looking for perfection. In myself, in other people, in my surroundings, in my efforts, in my food, in my body. And when bodies, efforts, food, or people don't behave the way I envisioned, I am stunned; my motions forward slow to a crawl. I say to myself, "what's the point? look at this mess! A mess is always the result." And frustrations (plus a good helping of exaggeration) are enough that I give up giving my best. That's why I crawl.

I rarely encounter perfection. In fact, the product and even the process are most typically very, very far from anything that even slightly resembles perfection. Is that a reason to stop shooting for my best or expecting the best from the world?

I think the answer is NO. I don't think the expectation is my problem, I think it's my reaction to the disappointment.

The struggle and messes are what make life real; it's the way I handle those struggles and messes that can make life colorful and even beautiful. I determine my happiness, I prove the beauty.

So these are my resolutions:

• keep on dreaming. Don't shoot for less than my most glorious ideal even knowing that it may not go as planned.
• learn to let go of the things that don't really matter, while clutching tightly the things that do even if it takes courage.
• be patient and maybe learn to laugh when things don't turn out. Just because something isn't perfect doesn't mean it's not beautiful.

Fresh Start

Enter March.
Time to start thinking (and beginning) our next venture:
A garden.

I think our thinking
is that if we try enough times
someday, someday, we might be successful
at least sort of.

The first year we tried gardening, when it was just the two of us in a sweltering Utah heat and a rented half of a house with half of a yard, PTB dug up a manhole in the cultivation phase, so we settled for strawberry plants in a vacancy between the sidewalk and the house's siding. Before we could say "strawberry" our suave landlord weed-wacked our gently tendered plants.

The next two attempts both started in March and with enthusiasm which slowly dissipated as the spring warmed to summer and our newer plans uprooted the original. Thus, weeds and animals took their fair share and we ended up reaping a smaller share, but we could not argue "unfair".

And then last March, we started anew. A new home, a new plot. Handpicked and tilled fresh with muck from the generous horse. How could we go wrong? Well... we sowed seeds as a family one Monday evening, early spring and sweet little three-year-old Pook eagerly helped by tearing open seed packets when we were otherwise occupied. He made piles of soiled seed concoctions amid our neatly marked rows. We knew our plants were sprouting healthy when a woodchuck started to frequent the spot. So we threw up a pest fence (I entered the backyard one day just in time to see the varmint run at full speed into it and hilariously bounce back off). And then the walnut tree we thought was full bloom, became even fuller, casting a nasty shadow over the garden and putting us out of business once more.

So we're here in March,
ready to try again. (Heaven help us.)
This time with a new plot and many lessons learned.

Gerret and I procured seeds this afternoon
Nolan offered his services making a detailed plan.
Accordingly, our garden looks to bloom this year with blueberries, corn, plums, peas, watermelon, pumpkins, and an apple tree
(Heaven help it.)