Timeline

Teachers "do" timelines in different ways. Some teachers don't consider it important enough to bother hanging on the wall. Some buy a pre-made timeline. Some have the students develop a timeline.

None of those worked for me on a regular basis. Occasionally I'd have the kids build a timeline. But after many attempts at keeping timelines, I settled on one simple plan. I made a bare-bones timeline. It was a pair. The timelines were about 5-7' long each, made of adding-machine tape or something similar, about 4-7" wide. One timeline covered the years 4000 BC to the present, with an inch (or 1.25") per century. The other zoomed in on the final 8% of the first timeline, covering the years 1500-2000, on a scale of 1.5" per decade.

Few events were listed on the timeline. On the full timeline, we listed creation, flood, Abraham, Moses, David, Israel's fall to Assyria, Judah's fall to Babylon, Jesus, fall of Rome, Columbus. On the more detailed, modern timeline, we included the Reformation, Pilgrims coming to Massachusetts, Revolutionary War, Civil War, Laura Ingalls, birth of great-grandparents, WWI, birth of grandparents, WWII, birth of parents, and birth of the kids. This was our skeletal framework. We might pencil in other events: the 7-Years War or the Wright Bros' airplane or Alexander the Great. Even when the timeline wasn't used to record events, it was essentially our map through time. We repeatedly go to the world map to get a feel for where something is happening, be it in a story or in current events. We used the timeline the same way: it was a framework to locate something in history. Because it was a simplistic timeline, it was easy to whip out a replacement when the current timeline was too worn or scribbled too full of additional events. We never had to be without our little map of time.

Meal Plans

I used to cook out of the pantry. With fewer people I can't keep well-stocked the perishable parts of my pantry (particularly the produce). With a part-time job, I can't start cooking a real-food supper at 6:30 in the evening. Partly due to my own failures and partly due to inspiration from Erin, the last few weeks I've been trying to refine the meal plans so that I can make sure to buy the necessary ingredients and to prepare in advance for days when I'm not around to cook. This is what we've got for the upcoming days:

1. Lasagna, lettuce salad, pumpkin muffins.
2. Ham & beans, cornbread, fruit salad.
3. Split pea soup, bread, fruit salad.
4. Pizza, broccoli salad.
5. Gumbo, rice, pumpkin pie.
6. Fish tacos, cole slaw.
7. Baked beans, steamed carrots.
8. Barbecued pulled-beef sandwiches, green bean casserole.
9. Quiche, pineapple.
10. Enchilada soup, tapioca pudding.
11. Crab and California-blend veggies with rotini.
12. Shepherd's pie and a yet-to-be-determined side dish.
13. Salmon and other stuff.
14. Pork & veggie stir fry.

Lunches are
African peanut soup,
tuna salad,
hummus
guacamole,
lettuce salads,
baked potatoes,
deli meat sandwiches,
pbj's,
grilled cheese,
but mostly leftovers.

I like the feel of having this planned out. The question is, "Will I plan again in two weeks?"

I Could Use This

"I could use this."
"I need this."

Those are not the same thing. [Surprise!!!]

I have such good intentions. So few of them are fulfilled. What I have a hard time with, though, is letting go of repeatedly unfulfilled good intentions. There are realities that I just don't want to admit. Cleaning the basement, the attic, the garage, are times when that truth whops you anew.

"I should start roller-blading. I need to keep those skates around. Maybe I could use them." Yes, I do need to get back to exercising. No, I'm not getting around to it. And if I do, will my aging body take well to roller-blading? Seriously? Roller-blading? On hills? Good golly, last weekend I could barely go up and down the stairs to the basement. The injury that precipitated that difficulty would be a mere foretaste of what I'd bump into [hee hee hee] if I took up roller-blading.

For your information, the roller-blades all went to Goodwill.

But I play this game over and over. I lose weight; I gain weight; I keep clothes around in various sizes. Same thing goes for yard tools, kitchen tools, sewing tools, workshop tools, etc. "I should keep those German resources around for when I have time to get back to studying the language."

The best luck I ever had with decluttering was when I removed everything from the living area of the house. I brought back in only the furniture, decorations, entertainments, etc, that we needed. I didn't weed out. I got rid of everything (but only into the garage) and then started afresh. That showed me what I needed. Then everything else had to be disposed of.

How many times are we weighed down by "I think I could probably use this" instead of "I need this"? As important as the nostalgia may be to me, the bigger dragon to slay is how I'm not ready to let go of the ideal in my mind, nor the goals of my heart. Sometimes getting rid of "stuff" means admitting that I cannot or will not ever do that thing I've been meaning to do for ever-so-long. It's admitting defeat. And that is hard.

Mustard

You know that bright yellow mustard that people slap on hotdogs? When I was a kid, I couldn't stand to eat a fast-food burger unless it was made fresh and decorated with ketchup only. I didn't want to know that my mom put a smidge of mustard in the deviled eggs and potato salad.

When I became queen of my own kitchen, I had mustard. I might buy a big ol' bottle of bright yellow mustard once every few years.

Until recently.

When my friend Janelle moved to Nevada this summer, she needed to dump all her refrigerated goods. We ended up with a big pile of bottles that had been decorating her fridge shelves. Lots of different bottles of hot sauces and mustards. My first thought was that we were all set for mustard for a long time. But Janelle's mustards were different. There was a Jack Daniel's mustard. Oh... yummy! There were others too that tasted delicious. My favorite, though, was a chipotle mustard. When I finished the hand-me-down bottle, I had to buy another to revel in its tastiness.

Janelle, I think you just made me a mustard-snob.
And I'm loving it.

The King's Speech

I admit it: I am prejudiced against Oscar-winning films. If a movie wins an award from the type of people who dole out that award, I am suspicious.

But I kept hearing from people whose opinion I respect that The King's Speech was excellent. Even though it's got an R-rating. The PG-13 movies are pushing it for me, with regard to how much ick I can bear. Nevertheless, I bumped into the movie at the library recently and nabbed the DVD to take home.

Oh. my. goodness.

That was one of the best movies I've ever seen. That's right up there with The Blind Side and Rudy and Luther and Anne of Green Gables and Renaissance Man and Gran Torino (and it doesn't even have the ick that Gran Torino does).

The movie says the right thing about duty. About family. About parenting. About persistence. About vocation.

I also liked the way it handled the abdication of King Edward. I remember one Sunday School teacher once upon a long time ago teaching us that it was "such a wonderful thing Edward did, giving up his throne for love. His love was so great, so immense, that he would give up anything, even the crown, to be able to spend his life with his beloved. Isn't that just like God's love for us?" Excuse me, but gag! Edward took another man's wife, selfishly indulging himself. That is NOT a picture of God's love for us; we do not liken the Lord Jesus to an adulterer. So I was glad to see that the movie did not glamorize Edward's decision.

But the thing I loved most about the movie was the "expert." The prince had received treatment and therapies from many doctors and other experts. He finally went to Lionel Logue who was, at the same time, two things: the real expert, and the imposter expert. Lionel wasn't trained, he wasn't credentialed, he wasn't conventional. Who ever let him give speech therapy? In our day and age, he'd probably be hauled before a government tribunal and fined and possibly jailed. The faker!

And yet, he was the one who finally helped. He was the one who employed unique ways of resolving speech difficulties. He was the one who tried to cut to the heart of the problem instead of just treating symptoms. The self-trained guy -- who learned by a) careful observation and b) diving in and doing what needed to be done for his neighbor in need -- found ways to accomplish what none of the other doctors could accomplish. Chalk up a big one for thinking outside the box!

I have some kids who would have been labeled ADD if they'd attended school. But they were homeschooled, and their oddball teacher didn't do the things we're "supposed to do" for ADD kids. My kids thrived.

I have a daughter with VCFS. She is homeschooled, and she is not receiving the typical special-ed that most VCFS kids receive. Neither has she been receiving the typical medical care that most VCFS kids receive. And for some reason, she's doing unusually well -- educationally, socially, and physically. There's no way to know how things would be for her if we'd done what all the medical & educational specialists recommended. But we do know that God has done wondrous things for Maggie "even though" her parents aren't doing what conventional wisdom dictates. The question is, should "even though" in the preceding sentence be replaced by "because"? Who knows? But the tale of The King's Speech shows that "because" ought not be ruled out.

Progress at Work

The paid job: When I started balancing my drawer at work today, the balance sheet came up $1 off. My first response was "So where did I make a mistake on the balance sheet? Did I count one too few $1-bills? Did I put an extra $1-bill in my 'rag' pile and forget to change the entry for mutilated money on my balance sheet?" It didn't cross my mind that maybe I'd counted wrong when I was taking in cash or giving out cash to a customer. That's a good sign! That means I so seldom make cash-counting errors that my assumption is simply a problem with the balance sheet and not the actual amount of cash in my cash drawer.

The unpaid job, the main job: I've been forcing encouraging Maggie to work with me more in the garden. She has been, and she's finding it not as abhorrent as she expected. We're getting the garden put to bed for the winter much faster than if I were doing the work alone. She's learning something. She's being helpful. And on top of it all, it's been very nice to work alongside her, talking as we go. Besides, could you ask for a more gorgeous week to be working outdoors? As unbelievable as it seems to me, most of the garden work is done, and there is actually an end in sight within the next few days.

But the tomatoes are done. The sadness of eating the last tomato is so so sad. It makes a person desperately yearn for next July.

Me? Stranger Danger?

I understand that I was more into free-range parenting than most other parents I knew. I also understand that, in the past 25 years, society has leaned much further in the direction of Protecting Children At All Costs. But, really, now, c'mon....

For the last two days, I have spent copious hours in the garden, catching up on weeding and tilling that hadn't been done properly since last spring last year. I had kids out there helping me for a good part of the time. The next-door-neighbor kids have a babysitter who's been around for over a year. If I remember correctly, Katie has even taken Alia over to play with those kids and chatted with the sitter.

So I'm sitting in the dirt, trying to separate the Creeping Charley and the grass from my perennial onions. The 3-yr-old girl next door comes over to chat a bit. She's done that several times on weekends when her daddy is working in the yard. But today the babysitter is there. The babysitter called the girl back to the patio. Eventually, the girl wandered back in my direction; she was interested in what I was up to; she wanted to ask about my strawberry patch; she was having a hard time understanding that today I was working on the onions and not the strawberries. Please imagine the picture. The girl is in her own yard, and I am in mine. She is nowhere within my reach -- never closer than 10-15 feet away from me. I am sitting, not standing; I can't bolt over to grab her. We are both in full view of the sitter, only about 40-50 feet from her. We are far enough apart that we have to raise our voices to be heard by each other.

But still, the sitter kept calling the child back to the patio. At one point, I smiled and called to the sitter, "Oh, it's no problem; she's not bothering me!" The sitter ignored my comment: "Come back here and stay on the concrete patio. Don't you go over there!" Pretty soon, the sitter even had interjected herself in the boys' game of catch, rounding up the 6-yr-old and 8-yr-old on the patio, putting herself in the yard where they'd been, stationing herself between me and her charges. She gave them instructions not to go out into the yard.

Wow.

It would make perfect sense to me if the sitter didn't want the kids to follow me into the garage. She doesn't know me well enough to use me for a back-up sitter if an emergency should come up. I understand this. But to keep the kids corralled in a small space outside on a gorgeous day because the neighbor happens to be outside too? Oh dear me.

Coals of Fire on His Head

I guess I'm very bad and vengeful. You know that verse?
If your enemy is hungry, feed him,
and if he is thirsty, give him a drink.
For in doing so, you will heap coals of fire on his head.

(Romans 12:20)

It always struck me as if it were saying, "Be really nice to the dudes who hate you. That'll make 'em feel guilty. Oh yeah, if you're good to them when they're rotten to you, that'll show them! So ha!" What a guilt-free way to get 'em back ... by making them feel small for what they did to such a nice person as you.

Now, that wouldn't be exactly, uh, selfless and giving, now would it??

But you know what? When Isaiah saw heaven and was commissioned to be God's prophet (Isaiah 6) the angel took a coal from the altar and placed it on Isaiah's lips and said, This has has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away, and your sin is purged.

So maybe the coals are not about "Ha! Got you! Don't you feel bad now?" but maybe it's just plain about the forgiveness of sins. If your enemy is hungry, feed him even though he expects retaliation. If your enemy is thirsty, give him a drink even though he wouldn't do that for you. For in doing so, you will show mercy and forgiveness, and if the absolution is heaped upon his head, it may purge his sin and work love & faith in his heart. "And you will gain your brother."

Grand Babies

They Didn't Drop Dead

God had said, "In the day that you eat of [the fruit of the tree of knowledge] you shall surely die." Then Adam and Eve ate the fruit anyway. A very common question is "Why didn't they drop dead, then and there?"

In yesterday's sermon, Pastor talked about the answers typically given to that question and that there is truth in those answers: they were immediately separated from God; they began to die. But he posited another answer: they didn't keel over and die instantaneously because God is longsuffering. He is patient. He doesn't zot people but gives them time, calling and calling and calling them back to Himself. Adam and Eve weren't zotted, and this was the first demonstration of a God who put up with garbage from His people whom He loved. (We heard about this in the Isaiah 5 reading and the Matthew 21 reading this Sunday.) He loved, they rejected, and still He loved. Still He forgave. Still He bore with them.

Stephen

The martyr first whose eagle eye
could pierce beyond the grave,
who saw his Master in the sky
and called on Him to save.
Like Him, with pardon on his tongue,
in midst of mortal pain,
he prayed for them that did the wrong --
who follows in his train?

Today's Kitchen Goals

Four loaves of bread.
Turning a pie-pumpkin into a pumpkin pie.
Roasting the seeds.
Stewing two chickens for meals later this week.
Teriyaki chicken and rice for tonight's supper.
Setting some batches of kombucha to brew.
Mashed potatoes to make salmon patties tomorrow.
And hopefully a batch of cookies.

And with these goals, I still think I'm going to do yardwork??? And schoolwork with Maggie? And clean the house? I have no sense of proportion.

Hey, you know what I did yesterday?That's a pile of birch, maple, apple, cherry, lilac, locust, and crabapple branches. There's still quite a bit of tree-trimming to do in the next two weeks before the town's brush pick-up. I better have the good sense not to wield the pruning saw today: my shoulders are still aching from yesterday's efforts.

There was a florist in Delavan who asked us for our downed birch twigs and our tree trimmings from the birches. She loved how they look in flower arrangements. While picking up the mess I made in the yard yesterday, I noticed again how beautiful those twigs are!

Letting Go

Yesterday I unplugged from half my Facebook friends. This doesn't mean they aren't friends any more, but it does mean that I won't be keeping up with their daily lives like I have been. I want to say that I'll still be interacting with many of these people on a homeschooling email list, but I'm not as involved there as I used to be.

As I was getting ready to leave for work yesterday, Katie called and asked about the annual bird-banding presentation in Horicon. It would be a fun and educational outing for her and the girls. Katie's job is a lot more fun and fulfilling than my job.

Last week we cleaned the garage. We took quite a few items to Goodwill. There are homeschooling items I'm willing to sell. But there are a lot more I'm not willing to part with yet.

As much as I may enjoy my job (y'know, with its being a job and all), the downside is that I'm taking on my job at the bank in the wake of having had The Best Job In The Whole World. And that would make anything pale in comparison.

I don't want to get rid of those books. That would mean admitting that I'm done with them. I don't want to get rid of craft kits. That would mean admitting that I'm not going to teach Maggie how to use them. I don't want to disengage from gatherings of homeschool mommies (whether in person or online) because that would mean admitting that I'm done with that job and on to the next stage of life.

We're used to people getting better at their jobs, continuing in increasing enjoyment of their work as they hone their skills and advance in doing the part of the job they do best. But today's economy doesn't allow for that so much any more. So I'm not the only one saying goodbye to the best job I ever had or ever will have.

Pasta Test

Last time I shopped at Aldi, there was no whole-wheat pasta. When I asked the clerk, she said it had been discontinued due to lack of sales. Oh no! We'd been so disappointed with whole-wheat noodles in the past, and Aldi's was not only cheap but also a great product. We didn't have choke down the brown pasta because it was "good for us." It actually tasted great.

Yesterday I bought one box each of five different brands of pasta. In separate saucepans, I cooked about 1/4 cup of each kind. Here are our conclusions:

Hogsdon Mill has the brownest taste of the ones we bought, but it was edible.
15.8 cents per ounce.

Da Vinci 100% whole wheat also tasted brown, but acceptable.
19.9 cents per ounce.

Racconto 8-whole-grain pasta had a nicer texture and a lighter taste than the two 100% ones. It's a blend of grains: wheat, rye, buckwheat, kamut, spelt, etc.
16.2 cents per ounce.

Ronzoni Healthy Harvest and
Barilla Whole Grain
were our favorites. They're both half whole-wheat and half white. The taste and texture is much closer to the white pasta we'd been used to prior to discovering the now-gone pasta from Aldi. The ingredient list and nutrient list on the Barilla and Ronzoni look very similar to the label on the Aldi box.
Barilla = 9.0 cents per ounce
Ronzoni = 10.5 cents per ounce

For nutrition reasons, I'd prefer to buy Rocconto. The taste and texture is comparable to the Ronzoni & Barilla, but the mix of whole grains has a variety of minerals that you don't find when eating just wheat. But the Rocconto is almost twice the price of the Barilla. I think that means Barilla wins out for our family.

Let Me Not Be Ashamed

Our psalm for this week is 25. Four times David talks in this one psalm about being ashamed or not being ashamed. I don't know about you, but I tend to think of ashamed as pretty much equivalent to embarrassed.

But the word shame is in "ashamed." Shame isn't really a feeling so much as it as a status that comes in the wake of one's behavior. We pray in the Sixth Petition "that God would guard and keep us so that the devil, the world, and our sinful nature may not deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice." That part of the Lord's Prayer sheds a different light on what David is saying in the psalm.

Facebook

In an attempt to cut down on my computer time, I've decided to ban myself from Facebook four days per week. I intend to cut my friends-list in half or more. When I originally signed up for Facebook, my plan was to "friend" only close family and a couple of friends. I was "hidden," and my list consisted of around 20-25 people for many months.

Then Facebook took away the option to be hidden. The recent changes on Facebook seem too overwhelming for me to figure out at this point in my life. Facebook wants to give us more reasons to interact on their site, and that's the exact opposite of what I want. Given that I've spent the last few years trying to curtail my attraction to goofing on the computer, this seems as good a time as any to back off in this one area. I'm not willing to axe the whole account (at least, not yet) because I want to see baby pictures and wedding pictures and reunion pictures, all of which are easy to share via Facebook.

If I believed in signs from God, I would say that He sent several this week confirming that this is a good plan. Please don't take it personally if I 'unfriend' you or fail to respond to FB messages. I'm just trying to spend more time with In-Real-Life interaction than electronic conversations.

Wish me luck.

When the Ark Set Out

The pillar of cloud/fire led the Israelites in the wilderness. At the end of Numbers 10, we hear what Moses said when they started out journeying and what he said when they stopped.

Psalm 68 (written by King David about 500 years later) starts with the exact same words that Moses said whenever the ark set out.

I think that's so cool. I love seeing in the Bible how we keep saying the same things over and over through the centuries, how we keep repeating what the previous generations have prayed. Those words which sustain our faith are words which transcend the years, the decades, the millenia.

Two Silver Trumpets

God instructed Moses that there should be two silver trumpets. They would be used to notify the Israelites when to gather, and when to pick up camp and move. They would be used as a call to arms and, at other times, as a call to worship. (See Numbers 10.)

So look at Psalm 81. "Blow the trumpet at the time of the New Moon, at the full moon, on our solemn feast day."

How 'bout that? Those trumpets referred to in the psalm weren't simply the brass in the orchestra used for worship. They were sacramental trumpets. (Don't look at me like that! They were. Look at the story!)

Boring Ol' Update

We keep trying to find time to work in the garden. Andrew and Maggie helped me a lot at the end of last week, but it's been raining constantly since Friday night.

Rachel was here on Sunday. Katie and the girls came over too. Ah, enjoyment!

My mom is home from hospital and rehab, enjoying being back in her own house!

Someone was sent home sick from work. I was the only one available to sub. So I will have three full days this week instead of two. So much for washing sheets or going to the grocery store. Actually, I'm quite pleased that we managed to eat Real Meals both yesterday and today, in spite of my paid-job interfering with cooking.

Also regarding job-news, the best teacher we have at our branch is taking a promotion at another branch. Oh, I will miss him! I have to ask a lot of questions and learn a lot before he goes elsewhere. He has such a calm way of teaching, but always explains well and gives opportunity to the learner to be doing some thinking instead of just rote copying, but he's fun and no stick-in-the-mud. That other branch that stole him away is sure lucky to get him! Thankfully, I really like the person who will probably replace him.

And in still more job-news, my regular schedule was changed with the start of the school year. There are a couple of minor downsides to the new schedule, but it also opens up two important days annually that I look forward to but had to miss this past year. So what worked best for my manager turned out to be what works best for me too! Can't get much better than that.

Saturday we all worked together on garage cleaning. We found plenty of items that had gone missing. This past weekend I also managed to clean off all the kitchen counters and the bedroom dressers. WHY are they already littered with papers and misplaced items? Already?!!

We watched The Blind Side again tonight. Yowza, that is one FANTASTIC movie.

Love Means ...

Love means "I will do whatever it takes so that you might live."

-- Kenneth Korby