I am taking a day off school to organize my house a little. Jamey threatened to burn it down if I don't reduce the piles of junk that are covering every flat surface in here. Where does it all come from? I submitted a video application to Hoarders in the hope that someone would come and tell me where to start.
Sometimes I think Jamey's standards are too high. If there isn't pee on the walls and no one is stuck to the floor in the kitchen, then I am pretty pleased. Jamey, on the other hand, is bothered by the dust bunnies in far corners and Playmobil pieces under the couch.
Who even looks under the couch? The dust bunnies just want to live their peaceful lives in remote crevices. They have never caused a moment's trouble. In fact, I think they are there to watch over us with their kind, little, fuzzy eyes. Like watch dogs, but smaller and quieter. And cheaper.
As for toys under the couch, since that is where they end up all the time, why not just have the kids put them there on purpose? How much easier it would be to say, "Kids! Daddy's home! Kick your cars under the couch, throw your shoes behind any random door, and shove your Playmobil pieces into the southwest corner of the living room. It's OK! The dust bunnies will watch them for you."
I should have my own show. I would put cameras in a home for one week, watch where everyone naturally puts their stuff down, and then I could just come in and put labels on it.
As in, "See how Mr. Blandford drops his wallet and keys in the middle of the kitchen island every night? I have made a little sticker and put it right there so that Mrs. Blandford will not constantly move them to the basket by the door when she is trying to cook and serve food to her family at the island.
And little Buford Blandford is prone to leaving his train tracks on the stairs, so you see how I have labelled the fourth stair from the bottom as his "Train Tread", so that people can plan ahead to step over that particular board."
So practical! And it follows Oprah's--and Lady Gaga's--excellent advice to love yourself exactly the way you are. Embrace your squalid self and throw aside those pesky twinges of conscience that tell you to improve your habits to the point that others can actually stand being around you. Because out of the 7 billion people on the planet, the universe is only concerned with YOU and your constant contentment.
Um. Now that I have followed my idea to it's natural end, I am in total agreement with Jamey. The dust bunnies have got to go, and Playmobil needs to get re-acquainted with Rubbermaid.
I am going to round up my children and set them to work. Oprah and Lady Gaga have handlers to clean up their messes, both physical and emotional, but the rest of us had better learn change our natural inclinations toward selfishness and sin, and learn to serve one another.
6.10.2011
5.18.2011
Hello everyone, this is Rebekah reporting! Seeing as how nothing has happened since last year, it should be no problem updating you, right? (sarcasm) Okay, let's see. I hope you like to read because this might take a while. We just got back from visiting family in Vermont! The drive was about seventeen hours in total including stops because we weren't able to drive through Canada. Everyone did okay, including our two foster kids, Kaiden and Keira. The weather was beautiful and we spent as much time outside as possible. My uncle has sheep, fourteen lambs and ducklings. Christina and I enjoyed helping take care of them (feeding, moving to new pasture, etc.) We are looking forward to seeing them again when they come down in June.
On a more personal note, I finished my school year in early May. I have to say this year has been my favorite high school year yet and I just completed my sophomore year. For my main subjects, I took Challenge I with an awesome teacher named Dawn Knott. Besides having a cool name, she was extremely patient with my class. I was one of seven students and the rest were boys. To make it worse, they were all (excepting one) over six feet to my astonishing five three and a quarter. As I recently told my dad, when you're as short as I am, you know exactly how tall you are since you claim every centimeter. Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. My subjects included Latin, Physical Science, Literature, and Debate to name the subjects we did both semesters.
One of my other favorites was Drama, which we did first semester. We read Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew and for our assignment, we acted the last act of the play where the shrew is finally tamed. If you must know, I was the shrew, Katherine, and got to memorize and give a three minute speech. My mom said she's going to post the video she got of it but I'll try and talk her out of it. It's actually quite funny. Outside of Challenge, I took Chemistry and Algebra.
As for my musical studies, I have been continuing my harp and loving every minute of it. My cousin even asked me to play in her wedding!!!! Christina will be playing her viola with me. In total, we probably have an hour and half worth of music. I asked my cousin some details about where it would be and it's going to be over a lake. When I told my teacher, she started laughing and said I will be getting quite an experience for my first wedding. If it's windy, the sound will be blown away and the humidity will change the tuning. Needless to say, I have a couple things to work out with my cousin before the rehearsal.
Anyway, I am looking forward to my summer and have many plans before Challenge II starts in September.
Oh! I just remembered! I'm taking Driver's Ed. in June at the high school down the road. I'm so excited. I will be taking it with two of my friends so that will make it fun. Okay, I'm done now. :) We'll write more next year!
On a more personal note, I finished my school year in early May. I have to say this year has been my favorite high school year yet and I just completed my sophomore year. For my main subjects, I took Challenge I with an awesome teacher named Dawn Knott. Besides having a cool name, she was extremely patient with my class. I was one of seven students and the rest were boys. To make it worse, they were all (excepting one) over six feet to my astonishing five three and a quarter. As I recently told my dad, when you're as short as I am, you know exactly how tall you are since you claim every centimeter. Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. My subjects included Latin, Physical Science, Literature, and Debate to name the subjects we did both semesters.
One of my other favorites was Drama, which we did first semester. We read Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew and for our assignment, we acted the last act of the play where the shrew is finally tamed. If you must know, I was the shrew, Katherine, and got to memorize and give a three minute speech. My mom said she's going to post the video she got of it but I'll try and talk her out of it. It's actually quite funny. Outside of Challenge, I took Chemistry and Algebra.
As for my musical studies, I have been continuing my harp and loving every minute of it. My cousin even asked me to play in her wedding!!!! Christina will be playing her viola with me. In total, we probably have an hour and half worth of music. I asked my cousin some details about where it would be and it's going to be over a lake. When I told my teacher, she started laughing and said I will be getting quite an experience for my first wedding. If it's windy, the sound will be blown away and the humidity will change the tuning. Needless to say, I have a couple things to work out with my cousin before the rehearsal.
Anyway, I am looking forward to my summer and have many plans before Challenge II starts in September.
Oh! I just remembered! I'm taking Driver's Ed. in June at the high school down the road. I'm so excited. I will be taking it with two of my friends so that will make it fun. Okay, I'm done now. :) We'll write more next year!
3.24.2010
Midnight Musings
As I was finishing the last of my four thousand nightly chores this evening, I had a sudden revelation of the horrible kind--the sort that makes your throat tighten and stops you mid-movement.
I realized that I have been burning days, possibly YEARS on things that are not really necessary, squandering thousands of precious evenings which could have been spent in conversations, tickle fights, poetry reading, star gazing, music making, hand-holding, puzzles, quiet contemplation--the list is endless.
And sickening.
I have willingly traded hours of relationship building with my family for a parade of upper middle class STUFF and the obligations that go with it. I spend more time changing the filters on my pile of gadgets, cleaning grumph out of the crevices of my shower doors, moving piles of paper from one stack to another, and de-scaling kitchen appliances than I spend really basking in the delights of my family.
I realize that this may sound strange since, as a homeschooling mom, I am face to face with children all day long. I am not discounting those hours, but most of the time they are structured hours, very task oriented, often rushed or interrupted. Purpose driven, boxed up, and checked off.
What I am lamenting is the loss of the those long, languorous evenings, where minutes drip slowly off the clock, and there is time to let the children come out with all beautiful wonderings that were born in their minds that day.
I want them to have time to be bored--and Jamey and me along with them--and then someone could say, "Let's make up a play!" and we would have time to actually do it. Or we could all just sit on the floor and build towers with Jude while Rebekah read to us. Or we could sit and look through old pictures. Or...or...or...
We do have those evenings sometimes--and I have to say that Jamey is better at dropping everything and living in the moment--but more often I stay at a dead run all the way up until 11 or 12 o'clock, still checking things off my list. (Dinner, dishes, baths, laundry, prayers, kids in bed, lunch packed, more laundry, tidy up, trash out, papers shuffled, crumbs swept, counters wiped, shirts ironed, papers corrected, snack, shower, bed.)
Oh! And then I fall into bed with this smug sense of my own efficiency. "Look what an outstanding manager I am. What a well-run household! I checked everything off my list, and put tomorrow's dinner in the crock-pot! Yay Me!")
Shame, shame, shame! It just burst over me tonight, and I had a sudden loathing for this enormous house and all these THINGS. Or at least for the way I have been putting the stupid things first. I have these little souls living in my home for such a brief time. These future men and women, potential philosophers and artists, theologians, engineers, musicians--who knows? A sacred trust! A joy! A divine mandate! And here I have chosen to burden myself with a thousand inanimate objects which clamor incessantly for maintenance and attention--sly, tiny slices of my limited time, and meanwhile I don't even know what is in my childrens' hearts.
I am so glad I came to this while I still have all my whole family here! I hereby commit to a purposeful restructuring of my evenings.
I will ignore the appliances and focus on the humans.
I will leave things undone in order to play and read stories.
I will not accomplish that "one more thing" each night because in 100 years no one will remember that my bathroom grout was free of hard water deposits.
I will eventually live in filth and squalor--oops! A little fear spilling out there.
I will try to find a good balance!
I had precious conversations this week (during school hours) with two of my children about why we are doing what we are doing. I told them that I don't care about anything more than shaping their souls to love God and serve Him however He wants them to. Nothing else matters to me because nothing else is eternal. I told them I pray over them at night while they are sleeping and grieve over the ways I fail them in my example every day.
I saw their eyes tear up and was so hopeful that they caught a glimpse of my passion, but I realized tonight that the passion I have been showing them is the one where I have a house and children that "show well"--shiny and presentable and running on schedule. That is not relationship or discipleship and I don't want it to be my legacy.
How I could be content for so long to throw my evening efforts to the wind, I don't know. I am just glad to have had this little epiphany before my last child left home.
"Remind me of this with every decision:
Generations will reap what I sow.
I can pass on a curse or a blessing,
To those I may never know."
--Sara Groves
I realized that I have been burning days, possibly YEARS on things that are not really necessary, squandering thousands of precious evenings which could have been spent in conversations, tickle fights, poetry reading, star gazing, music making, hand-holding, puzzles, quiet contemplation--the list is endless.
And sickening.
I have willingly traded hours of relationship building with my family for a parade of upper middle class STUFF and the obligations that go with it. I spend more time changing the filters on my pile of gadgets, cleaning grumph out of the crevices of my shower doors, moving piles of paper from one stack to another, and de-scaling kitchen appliances than I spend really basking in the delights of my family.
I realize that this may sound strange since, as a homeschooling mom, I am face to face with children all day long. I am not discounting those hours, but most of the time they are structured hours, very task oriented, often rushed or interrupted. Purpose driven, boxed up, and checked off.
What I am lamenting is the loss of the those long, languorous evenings, where minutes drip slowly off the clock, and there is time to let the children come out with all beautiful wonderings that were born in their minds that day.
I want them to have time to be bored--and Jamey and me along with them--and then someone could say, "Let's make up a play!" and we would have time to actually do it. Or we could all just sit on the floor and build towers with Jude while Rebekah read to us. Or we could sit and look through old pictures. Or...or...or...
We do have those evenings sometimes--and I have to say that Jamey is better at dropping everything and living in the moment--but more often I stay at a dead run all the way up until 11 or 12 o'clock, still checking things off my list. (Dinner, dishes, baths, laundry, prayers, kids in bed, lunch packed, more laundry, tidy up, trash out, papers shuffled, crumbs swept, counters wiped, shirts ironed, papers corrected, snack, shower, bed.)
Oh! And then I fall into bed with this smug sense of my own efficiency. "Look what an outstanding manager I am. What a well-run household! I checked everything off my list, and put tomorrow's dinner in the crock-pot! Yay Me!")
Shame, shame, shame! It just burst over me tonight, and I had a sudden loathing for this enormous house and all these THINGS. Or at least for the way I have been putting the stupid things first. I have these little souls living in my home for such a brief time. These future men and women, potential philosophers and artists, theologians, engineers, musicians--who knows? A sacred trust! A joy! A divine mandate! And here I have chosen to burden myself with a thousand inanimate objects which clamor incessantly for maintenance and attention--sly, tiny slices of my limited time, and meanwhile I don't even know what is in my childrens' hearts.
I am so glad I came to this while I still have all my whole family here! I hereby commit to a purposeful restructuring of my evenings.
I will ignore the appliances and focus on the humans.
I will leave things undone in order to play and read stories.
I will not accomplish that "one more thing" each night because in 100 years no one will remember that my bathroom grout was free of hard water deposits.
I will eventually live in filth and squalor--oops! A little fear spilling out there.
I will try to find a good balance!
I had precious conversations this week (during school hours) with two of my children about why we are doing what we are doing. I told them that I don't care about anything more than shaping their souls to love God and serve Him however He wants them to. Nothing else matters to me because nothing else is eternal. I told them I pray over them at night while they are sleeping and grieve over the ways I fail them in my example every day.
I saw their eyes tear up and was so hopeful that they caught a glimpse of my passion, but I realized tonight that the passion I have been showing them is the one where I have a house and children that "show well"--shiny and presentable and running on schedule. That is not relationship or discipleship and I don't want it to be my legacy.
How I could be content for so long to throw my evening efforts to the wind, I don't know. I am just glad to have had this little epiphany before my last child left home.
"Remind me of this with every decision:
Generations will reap what I sow.
I can pass on a curse or a blessing,
To those I may never know."
--Sara Groves
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