I was playing an online game when the advertisement below was put up on the side bar:
I don’t know about you, but never in my life have I ever said,
“You know what? I want to look like a glazed donut.” 😂
Or put snail slime on my face, for that matter, LOL.
Happy Sunday my friends! May you all have a non-glazed donut glow today. 😉
Some of the following links may be affiliate links
Tuck Everlasting – Natalie Babbitt
5 stars – I thoroughly liked this one, a story about a young girl and a family trying to hide a secret – they can live forever. I can’t quite say loved, as I have loved other books, but I liked it enough to give it five stars. It was very close to love. The authors artistic use of language was complimented by a storyline that had continued movement throughout the book. It is a middle grade novel but that is just my speed right now. I liked the ending , it left you things to contemplate while still having some sense of finality to it.
The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
Objectively, I think many would find this book boring. So much talk of how to properly “butler” (or is it “butle”?) . And yet, I don’t mind, and in fact find it fascinating. I did want to punch the main character on more than one occasion. 😉 Very much a slow burn. The narrator of the audiobook reminded me a bit of Molesley from Downton Abbey which helped. (I just realized I was listening to it on 1.25x speed – it sounds much less like Molesley on normal. 🙂 ) I gave it 4 stars.
Frontier Follies – Ree Drummond
Cute and funny from start to finish, as Ree often is. The only thing that shocked me was that as the star of a cooking show Ree did not know that the only sane way to cook bacon for a large family is in the oven. 😉 It’s not a completely family friendly listen, just FYI. Four stars.
I usually love books by this author. I was enjoying this book until about half way, when it turned into a book on Covid, the lockdowns, politics, George Floyd, and the riots. It read like two books sloppily put together, one fiction and one non-fiction. I particularly did NOT want to be reading a book on the horrors of 2020 Covid while my own son was suffering from it in the next room (albeit a much milder version…but still). I gave it 3 stars in the end – 4 for the first half of the book, 2 for the second half.
A Higher Loyalty – James Comey
Don’t laugh, but I had very little idea who James Comey was when I picked up this book on the recommendation of a Goodreads reviewer. I stay away from the news and politics for my mental health, and I’m horrible with names. I borrowed it because I like non-fiction and memoirs about famous people. I gave this three stars – I thought it was well written enough, so I guess in reality I’m giving the book four stars and James Comey himself three 😉 . Mostly because he spent 70% of the book patting himself on the back while simultaneously saying how upstanding, moral, and forthright he was. He forgot humble, LOL. I wish he would just state the “facts” and let them speak for themselves. Then when it came time to talk about a certain president everyone loves to hate, he makes it a point to mention on various occasions his odd skin color, his hair color, and his hand size. Why? I think a man who is truly upstanding would have left those trivialities out of a book on politics and the FBI. So it all eventually started rubbing me the wrong way, despite it being somewhat entertaining.
Five-ish because only three were actually finished – and even one of those was iffy. Three were not finished, but one was barely started so I’m not counting it in my five. 🙂
(FYI, I gave this post a re-read and it is awkward and mushily written – my apologies. But like I say in my sidebar, I don’t really edit, I don’t have the extra brain power yet. Also note, this post contains affiliate links.)
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
What can I say about this one? SO MANY WORDS, LOL. I read this at the bidding of my daughter who loves it. It is her current favorite book and she wanted to talk to someone about it. I was probably not the best choice. 😉 I liked the first hundred pages, and the last chapter. The rest was just too much for my over-sensitive brain – this was on audiobook so it just turned into so much babbling in my ear. If you have read it you might understand even if you liked it. I didn’t *dislike* it, I just couldn’t deal with it.
Boundary Boss by Terri Cole
A typical book on boundaries, but I did come away with a few new to me ideas, like the fact that I was crossing my OWN boundary if I did things like having a drink at a party after I told myself I wouldn’t. It didn’t veer TOO much into the typical feel-good “just do whatever the heck you want, you are the one that matters the most” territory, which is good.
Oh William by Elizabeth Strout
I’m not sure I like her writing style which is funny because I write here just like her, with dashes and constantly interrupting herself to say something. Case in point –
“The girls both cooked, and the four of us sat in the kitchen — Estelle had left behind the round kitchen table — and William had two glasses of red wine, which he almost never had — I mean William almost never drank is what I mean.”
It’s not all like this but often enough. My biggest beef is that this character is a famous writer. Hmmmm. Despite this not being at all believable to me, I couldn’t seem to stop picking it up. I didn’t appreciate most of the handling of (SPOILER ALERT) finding a “surprising” relative in an ancestry search, but that could just be my personal beef having been a mystery person myself and finding several surprises in addition. Other than this, there is not much real plot however, it is more a character driven book.
So, two stars for writing style, two stars for a thin and annoying handling of my hot button topic, and five stars for the fact that I kept coming back to it and read it in two days.
Three books I did not finish – and I apologize for the thinness of these reviews but I ditched them a week and a half ago and the first two were so unmemorable I forgot the specifics of why I didn’t like them 😀
Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid
I gave this one a fair chance, but by about 6 hours in I didn’t want to waste any more time. If I don’t care about any of the characters after six hours, there’s a problem.
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
I think I only gave this one or two hours (audiobook) before bailing. Eleanor’s brand of awkwardness/quirkiness did not make any sense to me, and I know a lot of quirky people, LOL. Heck I am one of them. Her character did not feel at all believable to me, and since the book seemed to be all Eleanor all the time, I bailed.
You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal With It by Rachel Jankovic
I thought this was going to be a good one. I wanted a book that was Christian based and didn’t go easy on me – most books on developing “self” take one of two tracks: either “anything goes, do what makes you happy” (most secular books) or “do ONLY what makes you holy and completely die to self no matter how much it harms you” (most of the Catholic books I have read). This seemed to be different at first. However I got halfway through the book and I realized that I disagreed theologically with way too much of the book, as well being put off by the jumps in logic she was taking. If it’s not logical, it’s not truth, so…I shelved it.
Like I mentioned last time, I am walking a virtual Camino de Santiago (Way of St. James) pilgrimage, using The Conqueror app. For every mile I walk in my neighborhood, I log it into the app and it brings me along the Camino route in google maps. There are actually several routes in the real Camino, and the app uses one called the Camino Frances. My favorite part is going back through the map with the images on so that I can see the scenery I have passed.
Here are a few of my favorite scenes from the first few miles of the Camino, captured by screenshot off of Google Maps in the Conqueror app. The route is 480.9 miles total, and I only have 476.04 to go 😂.
A heart shaped field.
A beautiful view – I think this whole part of the trail is in the Pyrenees.
A bicycle basket with a scallop shell (a symbol of the Camino and St. James) and a rosary.
The Refuge Orisson, a restaurant and dormitory on the trail.
A sweet lady and her ukulele seen outside the Refuge. I hid her face because Google did not.
A flock of sheep.
Some cows join the pilgrimage 🙂
First of all, I can’t believe it’s been two years since I last blogged. It feels like just a few months ago I asked people if they were still blogging and started this little hideaway subdomain off of hspmom.com.
Not sure why I stopped, but the ups and downs of chronic illness probably had something to do with it. There are weeks at a time where I can handle screens and can think of words and then weeks at at time where I just can’t. :/
I have started working on brain retraining practices after having figured out that my greatest contributor to my illness was not lyme disease, mold illness, or the assorted co-infections, but was a continually overactive nervous system. And by continually overactive I mean since birth, or before. You know, 29 years ago, LOL 😉 If you are interested, googling things like CFS School, Gupta Program, or Primal Trust will show you what I am doing. Or attempting to do, more accurately. The infections are still there, but countless people are finding that if they get the nervous system under control, the infections and sensitivities come under control as well. It can be a slow road though.
Speaking of slow roads, I walked my first mile today in I don’t know how long! At least 3.5 years that’s for sure. I love that the only way out from my house is uphill, so that the last half of my walk is all DOWNhill. When I’m tired I can kind of just let momentum take me home.
In other news, I disabled my Facebook account. To be as “nutshelly” as possible while still explaining why — I have felt God nudging me to do this for a long time. The last straw was when I found a large group of people, who I knew IRL and considered friends, were actually talking about me behind my back (and in front of my face because it’s not like they hid it, they just didn’t use my name) all because I had dared to say how a hot button topic had personally affected me, and honestly, I don’t need more of that in my life. Facebook in general encourages (and practices) mind games and I no longer wish to be a part of that dance. I do have a tiny pseudonymous account because there are two groups I need to have occasional access to. But other than checking in on those, I’m off of FB. Now to conquer my Instagram account…
OK now that I’m all jacked up thinking about that again (see paragraph about my always freaked out nervous system), I’ll share something fun – I’m doing a virtual pilgrimage through The Conqueror app – I’m “walking” the Camino de Santiago by walking for real in my own life. As I add my mileage in the app, it brings me along the Camino route and I can view the landscape I’ve traveled through Google maps. At the rate I walk, I’ll be done in 2025, but that’s OK! 🙂 I am enjoying watching YouTubers that are doing the walk in real life, too — seeing the scenery in a video brings it to life in a way images in google maps cannot.
Probably the biggest change in my life is that we are no longer homeschooling! My oldest four are all in college or beyond, and my son decided to attend a local private school. We give our highschoolers the choice of school/homeschool, and I agree that this is the right choice for him, considering everything. I have been forcefully retired, LOL.
It was a good run. A very good run. And now I can think about what I want to be when I grow up. 🙂
This post was started two years ago, but I wanted to remember some of these thoughts so here it is.
With a nod to 7QT or “Seven Quick Takes” hosted by Kelly at This Ain’t the Lyceum. (2023 Edit: I don’t think she is hosting this anymore, but check out her site anyway!) By the way, GO ORDER HER BOOK! 🙂 I honestly haven’t read it yet, because I can’t read a book anymore without feeling sick, but I’m sure it’s great because she is a great writer and a wise woman.
So here are my unrelated ramblings. 🙂 It just sounds better when I call it “Seven Quick Takes.”
~1~
Last week I watched The Truman Show for at least the third or fourth time. I’m obsessed with it because of how much it feels like my life, and I think I watch it for therapy. As a midlife adoptee, somewhere along the way I woke up to how “strange” it was that people made decisions in my life to hide my true identity and “pretend” that I was their biological child. Add in several very important people in my life that were huge gaslighters to get *their* needs met, and you have Amy Truman, LOL. (Spoilers ahead, skip if you want to watch it someday.) Seeing Truman break free at the end makes me want to jump around my room cheering for him! A man commented on a Facebook question – “What is one thing that wasn’t supposed to be scary that scared you anyway?” with “The Truman Show is the scariest movie ever made,” and I don’t think he was kidding. The thought of living that life can be terrifying for some. So if normal people can’t even “go there” in their minds, it makes me feel better that I had trouble living it. The video below touches on the tragedy of a person living a fake life, even if it was a “good” life.
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~2~
Our dishwasher story – many months ago our dishwasher died. We lived with that fact for awhile and then started looking for a replacement. I asked everyone online what they recommended and the overwhelming winner was Bosch. Well, with Covid and other issues, there were no Bosches to be found. So we ordered a Whirlpool. The workers came and removed our old dishwasher, and tried to put in the new one. It didn’t fit!! We were told it would fit, it was not our mistake. So they took it away. We ordered a new one, but the only one in stock that fit the odd space was a GE – which we were told to keep away from. Sigh.
Well, the company said they’d be out in a few weeks to deliver and install. Fine. They cancel the night before. We schedule for a week out. They cancel again. A few weeks again — they cancel a THIRD TIME. We call and complain, and lo and behold, the GE’s now aren’t in stock and the only one we can get is… a BOSCH. Yay! We schedule, they cancel, and we tell them to DELIVER THE BOSCH even if they won’t install. LOL, we wanted it in our possession at this point. So this is where we stand, with the beloved dishwasher in our garage, and an installation scheduled yet again, for a few days from now.
This story reminds me of how even though I’m going through hard things, they are the things that are instrumental to getting what I want (or what God knows I need). The way it all played out, it really feels like God orchestrated it all — even the inconveniences and disappointments, to get the right dishwasher for us. I will say, I believe our attitudes about it all contribute to this happening — not throwing a hissy fit when things went wrong, but being calm and thanking God for what we did have, and knowing it would all be ok. It feels like the Bosch is a reward for that, because it’s not the first time things have happened that way. (Thinking back, I think my timing is off on all of this, but my point is real.)
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~3~
So I’m taking Disulfiram, aka “Antabuse,” a drug designed for alcoholics to make them sick if they drink alcohol. I’m using it off-label (see, that is a REAL THING, using drugs for reasons other than their original design – *cough* I-ver-m3ct1n *cough*). I’m taking it for Lyme disease. I’ve had to revamp my diet yet again, as one cannot eat anything with alcohol, vinegar or other fermented food (i.e. soy sauce and most store bought sauces and mayo), also no really ripe fruit, no standard vanilla or other extracts, and a huge handful of other things. Apparently we can’t even smell alcohol or vinegar.
A full dose of disulfiram is 500 mg once a day. Right now, I can only handle 30mg once a week!! I use a pill cutter, and by the time I get to an 1/8 of a pill I’m basically pulverizing the thing and licking the dust off my hand as my dose. 😀 Apparently many Lymies can only tolerate very small doses, as it creates die-off of the Lyme and co-infections, which their body can’t release properly. I’m amazed that “disulfiram dust” can put me out for a week. I take it on Sunday or Monday, and feel sick from that night and for at least 4 more days. If I do nothing else that week that sets me off, I get one normal day before having to start all over again.
(2023 edit: I lasted four months, couldn’t get past 1/8 of a pill once a week, and I broke out in a rash that told me I probably have bartonella, which is aggravated by disulfiram, so I stopped. I feel much better off things than on anything.)
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~4~
The other day I boiled some veggies and thought I should use the cooled cooking water to water my pea and carrot seedlings, because it adds nutrition back into the soil. But isn’t that a little gruesome? “Here my pretties! Drink up! Here’s the water in which I boiled your cousins.” 😀
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~5~
I don’t typically suffer from outward anxiety anymore, but my body still seems to be on high alert 100% of the time. I thought this video had some good exercises and information so I’m sharing it here.
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~6~
How much the Facebook and Instagram algorithm triggers me: they seem to be telling you something about yourself –“look you are so popular” or so “unpopular” but in the background THEY are the ones pulling the strings to show or not show that post to people. It reminds me so much of narcissistic abuse. Abusers say “look, nobody likes you,” — but they are the ones going behind your back to badmouth you to others.
At the same time sometimes the algorithm works in my favor. For some inexplicable reason, my Highly Sensitive Homeschooler Facebook page has had over 90 new “likes” in the last month, bringing it from around 100 to 200. I don’t promote it anywhere, I barely even post there, but every day there are a few more likes. For comparison’s sake, my other page (HSP Mom) maaaaaybe gets one or two a month, if that, and I treat them exactly the same. So it’s some sort of weird glitch in the matrix.
~7~
The neighbors behind us are cutting down their weeping willow, and I’m…weeping. I love that tree. But the benefit is that the tree company is going to hop their fence and take care of a few of our trees for a discount because they are already here.
~8~
From a Facebook memory: Things I never thought I’d say: Go sit on your bed, we don’t throw saints at peoples heads!
Let that be a lesson to you. 😉
Me writing a blog post pivoting off of a Melissa Wiley post is oh so 2006! And I’m here for it. So first up, Melissa blogged– go read it! And come back eventually, please. 😀
Something Melissa said reminded me of a challenge I have been facing…one that might seem odd to many. Not a bad challenge, actually if I am successful it will be very good for me, body, mind, and soul. The stumbling block I’m trying to overcome is this: I have no idea what activities bring me peace and restoration, bringing me energy instead of depleting it.
That’s not to say I don’t *enjoy* many things. Currently I’m learning Chinese and refreshing my Spanish. I’m occasionally blogging. I’m very occasionally writing haiku. I’m working towards making teaching English to speakers of other languages a second career or ministry (in the very distant future). I’m trying to get healthy.
But with everything I do, I do it kind of intensely. I take in info like someone opened a fire hose in my direction. I open a hundred plus tabs, and open wide and absorb it all. And I *love* it, yet I love it the way a runner loves the feeling of the 50 meter – you are running all out and are exhilarated, but you can barely breathe at the end.
I don’t think this is particularly healthy, but it’s what I *do* and I don’t know any other way. Add in a lot of childhood trauma, particularly around creative endeavors, and everything I even *think* might be a good choice for “refreshment” goes right out the window. Everything feels tinged with ICK.
I guess I’m an overthinker and intense, and working on that may go a long way towards being more balanced. Like even when I’m reading a book, I’m reading fast (or lately, listening at 1.5x speed) and it turns into “how many books can I finish this month” which negates any relaxing benefit I may have gotten from the story. Perhaps mindfulness — making sure I’m focusing on what I’m doing instead of all the things *relating to what I’m doing* — could get me to enter a regenerative state. (*Amy goes to open 101 tabs on mindfulness and spend the next week speed reading this new project*)
Hopeless, LOL.
On a more peaceful note, here are some garden pictures. My tiny container garden was mostly a bust this year, but I did do some fun things that I will do again. One was growing Chinese Red Noodle Beans. I could never get the hang of regular green beans, they all grew very uneven and had a weird texture. But these “yard long” noodle beans seem to take care of themselves and are fun and different and yummy when quickly stir fried. But I only grew one plant, so only harvest one or two at a time. Not enough for my family of 7, but I throw them in a pan every morning and eat them myself for breakfast. 🙂
I will also try these Minnesota Midget Melons again next year. I only grew two (and a half, lol) but they were sweet and delicious, and again, fun.
I love the look of baby cucumbers. These beit alpha cucumbers are great in that they are the kind that don’t need pollinators to grow (I forget the technical term). The taste is pretty good, but even at a harvestable size, mine seem to have a spiky skin that I have to peel off.
This is my banana pepper. It went on strike until this week. This is the first bloom. It’s September 20th in Zone 7, people. This does not bode well for a pepper harvest. 😀 It’s starting to get very cool at night although the days have been hotter than normal.
Barry’s Crazy Cherry Tomato’s last ditch effort for a bountiful harvest. I may do this one again. I need to start *everything* earlier in the year than I did. But hey, my goals are always bigger than my energy level (see my treatise on intensity above 😉 ) .
Not pictured are my luffa plant – no luffa gourds grew, not even a blossom — an Amish Paste tomato with one lone green tomato on it, and my new sprouts of pea plants and carrots that I planted a few weeks ago. I think the neighborhood chipmunk has eaten a few of the sprouts. I’m hoping they gave him a little stomach ache and he won’t be back.
Indoors, I’m growing a new living room! This is a room that had been empty except for a few bookcases for four years. Yes, I know…but I got sick right when that was my next project to tackle. Dear hubby was way too busy being both mom and dad and working more than full time. It was very low on the priority list. Now that I feel good enough to sit in front of a computer for awhile each day, we ordered some furniture online. The last few weeks brought the chair, loveseat, and rug. And the air purifier in the foreground because the rug *S*T*I*N*K*S*.
The rug is not in position, we are still trying to air it out and flatten out the bumps. Somewhere on that bookshelf are Melissa Wiley books. 🙂
And so to bring things full circle to Melissa’s post, her mention of trucks struggling to get things from point A to point B made me think they don’t have the right Guinea Pig Bridge Technology. You’re welcome.
This article on codependency and self care
shame and interleukin 6
I was watching The Ramen Girl, a movie about a girl who is abandoned by her boyfriend in Japan and decides she wants to become a ramen cook. Kinda stupid movie, lol, but sweet at the same time. Anyway, there is a scene where the girl is talking with the mother of the ramen restaurant owner, about why her ramen broth wasn’t good. I loved this:
You cook with your head. Understand? Your head is full of noise. You must learn to cook from the quieter place deep inside of you…each bowl of ramen that you prepare is a gift to your customer. The food that you serve your customer becomes a part of them. It contains your spirit. That’s why your ramen must be an expression of pure love. A gift from your heart.
I love the image of my intent being almost physically “poured out” into what I create for my family, but my head is full of noise, always has been. I have always “stayed up in my head” to avoid what was going on in my life. Being a good student and avid reader, it was easy to daydream or read my way through life. But it has come back to bite me big time in health issues – my body “stored” what I couldn’t deal with at the time. (For a good treatise on this read The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk.) I do everything in a kind of dreamy state…although sometimes the dream is more akin to a nightmare, in a “I’m being pecked to death by baby ducks” kind of way, lol .
Hiding in my head was all well and good for its time, but now I realize more how it affects my family. From a simple meal to the atmosphere in the home, my lack of “being there in spirit” hurts my family in ways they probably can’t articulate but definitely feel. You’ve ever been in a room where you’re having a conversation with someone but they’re not really listening? It’s like that, but more subtle. Subtle and pervasive is still harmful. And it isn’t that I don’t want to be with them, far from it! It’s just a 50 year old habit that I rarely even realize I’m using because it’s all I ever knew. There’s little “heart” or “spirit” in what I do, I am not “poured out into my ramen in an act of love.” I’m going through the motions.
My goal, for my health and my family, is to learn to show up in body and mind. To be “all there,” whether I’m conversing with my kids or making a meal all by myself. I’m getting better at it little by little, and since my children are all teens and above, I’m learning to be honest with them. I let myself feel the joy or pain or overwhelm of the day and tell them when something is too much for me, or explain to them why I might look weepy or tired. I have a long way to go but I’ve made strides in the right direction.
Spoiler alert, a funny scene happened after the ramen store owner’s mother talked with “Ramen Girl” — the mother explained that if she didn’t know what love is, that she should feel what she is feeling while cooking and start with the tears that come. So she cries while making her ramen, the tears fall in the cooking pot, and everyone who tries the ramen starts weeping. 😆
If you see us all crying over dinner, you’ll know what happened. 😉
I know I’m getting old, because all this “website stuff” is so much harder than I remember it being a few years ago. All the updates and integrations are supposed to make everything easier, but to me it all seems foreign and overly complicated.
Case in point there used to be a widget to gather email addresses of people who wanted to get notified of new posts, that I could put in my sidebar (LOL I almost said “sideboard” – I’ve been doing too much furniture shopping lately). Now, I’m supposed to give my credit card to get a free integrated system that will do everything but wash our dishes at night. Except all I want is a box that people can put their emails in that will automatically send them new posts (and someone to wash our dishes at night 🙂 ). And NOT give someone my credit card.
I used to be so techie. I went to a college that was one of the first to give everyone a personal computer and then these cool for the time room phones that could forward messages, etc. I was the one teaching all my friends. I usually surprised people because I didn’t come across as a computer nerd, I was just a biology major that picked it up easily and enjoyed learning about it. Email was instrumental to my long distance relationship with my now husband, and BBSes were a fun “pre-internet” way to spend my time. Fast forward a bit and I enjoyed learning enough code to crash my blog, LOL.
But now my kids talk about stuff and I’m lost. My blog wants some huge system of plugins and widgets and I sigh. Its “visual editor” makes me twitch. Can I admit that this bothers me more than the other symptoms of aging? Like having to hold my phone at arms length to read it and the fact that I have more gray hair than brown now? I was hoping to be the first old lady in the nursing home riding her flying combo scooter/cell phone/personal assistant around the place and teaching all the other old ladies about it.
I could blame my Lyme disease, and that may be a small part of it. But if I can learn Chinese (NÄ hăo!) I think I should be able to keep up with the tech world.
Alas, ’tis not to be. Anyone want to join me on the porch swing while my kids explain Tik Tok to me? 🙂
In Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, he talks about “The Hero’s Journey,” a ubiquitous story structure in which the protagonist or “hero” receives a call to action — the “call to adventure” — that takes him out of his comfortable life on a quest to a region unknown. According to Campbell, this is often represented by:
a distant land, a forest, a kingdom underground, beneath the waves, or above the sky, a secret island, lofty mountaintop, or profound dream state; but it is always a place of strangely fluid and polymorphous beings, unimaginable torments, superhuman deeds, and impossible delight. The hero can go forth of their own volition to accomplish the adventure… or they may be carried or sent abroad by some benign or malignant agent…. The adventure may begin as a mere blunder… or still, again, one may be only casually strolling when some passing phenomenon catches the wandering eye and lures one away from the frequented paths of man. Examples might be multiplied, ad infinitum from every corner of the world.
Decades ago (I can’t believe I can say “decades ago”, but yes, it was 20 years) – the hero’s journey reminded me so much of my life with baby after blessed baby coming and diagnosis after diagnosis being given. We left our comfortable childless life for the grand adventure of welcoming children, homeschooling, and trying, and often failing, to do God’s will. This was most definitely His call, and He was the supernatural being helping me along the way.
So I named my first blog “A Call to Adventure,” and writing about those often crazy years helped me make sense of it all and make a few friends along the way. As an aside, can I tell you how thrilled I was when I found out my “late discovery” half-uncle is named Joseph Campbell? It’s so prophetic, but in a hindsight kind of way, LOL.
Things are very different now, with the kids no longer being babies. My oldest is 23 and engaged. My youngest is taller than me! But the adventures continue. We are so blessed to be journeying together!
…beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. ~Rom 1:7
Pressure, pressure! So hard to start with that blank page. So… here I am.
I’ve heard multiple people talk of missing the good old days of blogging, where it seemed to be more of a community of people who would visit each other’s virtual houses for a cup of tea and some chit chat. I miss it too. I’ve resurrected a favorite old blog title to help me along, and I’m going to try to recreate the feel of the old days on my blog here. A random though, some deep ideas, maybe a recipe, a haiku, or heaven forbid a “mom joke” 😀 . All the things you might hear if you stopped by for a visit over cookies and hot chocolate.
If you like grammatically incorrect writing with way too many dashes and parentheses (and large font because I’m old now), pull up a chair and stay awhile!
