My Baby’s Gone n’ Done It

Continuing with the Bible citing from my last post, I will add . . .

King James Version – Genesis 2:2-3:

² And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

³ And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

 

All this repetition makes me think God really, really (!) wanted to make a point about all the work he had made and how he needed a rest.

Suddenly we two are back in sync. I needed a rest too! Of course, me living 6000 years later in a more modern period after the Great Flood and the invention of weekends, I took both the sixth and the seventh day off to rest. And then I added on the eighth for good measure, because . . . heck! Why not? It’s summer!

On the Ninth Day, however, I was fully back with The Plan – the one exception was the blogging part.

And my elder daughter was to blame for that.

It pains me to say this but she . . . but she . . . she had the AUDACITY  to . . . to . . . TURN 18!!  And to add insult to injury, she is . . . she is . . . TAKING HER DRIVING TEST TOMORROW!!

There. I have said it.

I hope you will all understand why, when it comes to blogging, I am just phoning it in today. All I will add are the links to earlier posts which should suffice to explain everything about my state of mind:

Fritz the Sheep  and Driver’s Education.

 

P.S. My daughter loved the box of treasures I had been saving since her babyhood (mentioned in the post above). At the end of the evening she asked me where I thought she should keep it. I offered to keep storing it in my closet for her and she immediately thought that was a good idea. She may be 18 now, but she still likes the idea that Mom will take care of certain things for her. That was a gift from her to me today.

 

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And God Saw That It Was Not Good.

(Summer Vacation – Day Five)

I did something today that I haven’t done in ages. I opened up a bible and read a bit. Full disclosure: the morning had started badly, slowly got worse, and by early evening, I was having trouble writing the day’s post. I did not turn to the bible for comfort, but out of a weird sort of curiosity: when God was creating the world, how did His fifth day go?

Here is the King James Version of Genesis 1: 20-21:

²⁰ And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

²¹ And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Oh, the irony! This is how my day went:

In the morning I went to feed the animals and found my German Reich’s chicken looking decidedly . . . un-imperialistic. He seemed an unmoving creature that hath little life.

In the afternoon, I began my house project (“clean porches”) by bringing some pans into the kitchen that my husband had used in a barbecuing competition a few weeks back. As I pried them apart, I discovered a colony of maggots living between them. I scalded them to death and washed them down the drain. The waters sent them forth abundantly.

Later in the day, I buried another fowl.

²³ And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

Forgive me for skipping out on the blog reading today.

Four and Forty-Two

 

Today – on Day Four of “The Plan” – I am honored to say that I have my first official convert. Joan of “Just Joan 42 – Poetry and Stories about Life, the Universe and Everything” fame (or simply “42” as I call her, since she calls me “227”) has recognized the awesome simplicity and feasibility of the plan and has gotten with the program. (Although . . . I am not sure that she truly grasps the spirit of it all – but more on that later . . .)

In honor of this development, I am making 42 the next Blog Friend of the Day to catch up with. I also figure she will be as funny and inspirational as usual.  There has been a poem or two flowing from my fingertips over these past years in an attempt to try out some new form she introduced us readers to. And she is the one that got me to try black-out poetry, resulting in this first try (of which I am quite proud). It is Twump’s inaugural tirade:

But as I said, now the tables are turned – the master and apprentice have traded places. Despite her enthusiasm, there are some . . . shall we say “deficiencies”? . . . in her initial attempts. Firstly, being retired, she seems to think that three columns are sufficient. So, no “Work” requirement. This trend continues. Is “making a comment” enough to fulfill one’s blogging duties? Does “chasing the cat” qualify as exercise? And as for her house project . . . “changing the sheets”? Seriously??

I’ll tell you what a house project is! A house project is turning laundry day into a complete closet cleaning and reorganization, including a quest to find, wash and pair up every single loose sock under the roof and then banish permanently those who remain single. Now everyone knows the mystery of magically disappearing socks. I was determined to solve it. I checked every clothes drawer; I looked in the corners of fitted sheets. I checked boots and shoes and pant legs. And still there were so many lonely socks!

Later, my cleaning fit led me to pull all the storage boxes out from under my bed with the idea of dusting and vacuuming under there. And . . . wahlah! There they were. About 15 runaway sock partners in a dusty row on the floor, running from headboard to foot under the middle of the bed. All of them had been pushed back by a storage bin unnoticed. Mystery solved.

So, 42, I hope you are getting the picture. If not, Lesson#2 will begin promptly after I post this (and may spill over into tomorrow.) It’s pretty late and I am getting tired. It’s the socks’ fault.

 

Day Ten Thousand, Five Hundred and Ninety-three

Actually it is only Day Number 3 of my

Summer Vacation Plan

which went something like this:

Up at 5:30 am, coffee and some news watching. Answered emails. Went back to bed and slept for two wonderful hours. Then it was laundry, some general administrative work stuff, and more laundry. Then laundry, some house cleaning and laundry. Some dog walking and some more laundry. Cooked dinner, transferred the young chickens from the duck stall to the chicken stall. Scattered a trail of feed for the dumb ducks to lure them into their now empty house. If they opt to stay outside again, that is their choice. Now I am going to do one more load of laundry and then continue catching up on blog friends . . .

It is also Day Number 10,593 of my married life*. 29 years ago today I got married to a man who is currently on a 10-day fishing trip in Sweden.** Even so, roses mysteriously appeared this morning. They were in my favorite Christmas present from said man this year – a very silly vase which I just love. Yes, that is a picture of me holding my favorite chicken, Winnie. Ly took it.

 

* That is 29 x 365 + 7 (leap year days) + 1 (today).

**  They say “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and you will get a whole weekend to yourself.” In my case, it is a bit longer. But then, it is probably better that he is NOT here while I am executing The Plan . . .

Day (of) Two and Ly

The plan is working out pretty well. I checked off not one but two (!) things from the first three columns today and am now off to catch up on the last four months of posts by my very first blog friend . . .

(And by the way – “Ly” is pronounced like “Lou” so my title today rhymes.)

 

Grape Silver Candle

It is officially summer vacation. In fact, it is . . .

Summer Vacation – Day One

. . . and I am NOT (!) on the couch with the pukey bowl, a glass of water, aspirin and the remote control, suffering through a post-traumatic system collapse. No, instead I am feeling energetic. I have done some laundry and took care of our animals and chauffeured my daughter and talked to my sister for an hour and a half on the phone, and had coffee with a great friend and honed my plan for the summer and am now writing the Post of the Day . . .

Wait! Back up a sec! What was that about honing a plan?

Oh yes. I have a one. And it is deceptively simple.

I took a piece of paper and drew three vertical lines. In Column One I listed the few work-related things I still have to finish up. Column Two is a list of household projects I have been wanting to get to. Column Three is a list of healthy activities – anything from “bike ride” to “eat a vegetable”. Column Four is a list of my favorite blog people whom I want to catch up with.

Here’s the plan: between now and the arrival of my sister two weeks from now, I will cross off at least one thing from each column every day.

And then I will post about some part of it. Whatever inspires me.

Today, the work thing (Column One) was deleting emails. It may not sound like much, but when you have allowed your Inbox to grow to 2000 mails with 600+ of them still marked “Unread” – it is something of task. The house project (C2) was the first three of what will likely be about 16 loads of laundry. In Column Four, I did not start with my first/ur- blog friend, Ly (she will be tomorrow), but with Quirkyone – because I learned what mistakes to avoid when devising a plan from her hysterically over-ambitious New Year’s Resolutions. That leaves Column Three. What I did today for my mental health was call my sister. What I did for my physical health was taking my Black Cohosh tablet.

Black Cohosh. Aka “snakeroot”. Aka “bugbane”. Genus “actaea racemose” or “cumicifuga racemose”. In German, called both “Wanzenkraut” or “Traubensilberkerze” which, translated literally, is grape silver candle.

Now I am emphatically not advising anyone to take it, but I will tell you that after five years of hot flashes and bizarre anxieties and, lately, insomnia, I finally decided a few months ago that “powering through” menopause was not a good plan. Being a hater of pharmaceuticals, I started trying all sorts of natural remedies. This bugbane, this snakeroot, this “Traubensilberkerze” was the first thing that has worked. It might just be a post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc thing (meaning: the symptoms were about to go away anyway – the timing was merely coincidental), but if it is . . . I don’t care.

I feel better.

So on this Day One of summer vacation, I say thanks to Grape Silver Candle and Quirkyone and Whirlpool and Thunderbird.

See y’all tomorrow.

 

The Final Four (Times Four)

1

If you live anywhere in the world outside of the United States, then the Number One thing on your mind is probably not the pwesident’s latest outrage; it is the world soccer championship. It’s all anyone talks about around here. I would love to dive into that wonderful distraction, but, unfortunately, I don’t give a flying (insert your word of choice) about soccer. All I know is that there are four rounds of finales and we are halfway through the first of those. In German it’s the “Achtelfinale” – in English, it is the one that comes before the quarter-finals. (The translator tells me that is “the final 16” – i.e. the final 4 x 4).

2

I have also just finished the “Final Four” weeks of the teaching year, during which all non-work aspects of a normal life are suspended as one spends 24/7 on school-related activities. In my case, that included helping to organize and execute the sports week, three field trips, the school festival, the graduation ceremony and poster, the year-in-review slideshow, and the practice tests and university exams (written and oral). In the middle of all that I invited my 11 Sekundaria kids to a sleepover at my house, and, oh yeah, I wrote 24 individual “this was your school year” letters – which is our alternative to report cards.

3

So now the students are all set free and I just have the final “Post-readying Week” to get through – four more days and my summer vacation will officially begin!

4

Finally, and tragically, I am now down to the final four of my original chicken flock (of eight). After successfully re-homing my rooster, three of my original hens – the hatching ones – all died on the same day. It took us a while to figure out why. It was mites. Millions of them, infesting our henhouse. We have got it mostly under control now, but I still blame myself for not figuring out that we had a problem sooner.  I no longer call myself a chicken whisperer.

 

But I don’t want to end on a depressing note. So I will add that the number four comes up a fifth time in this post. Starting four days from now, on July 5^th, (the same day the school year is over for real) the second half of my fourth year of blogging will officially begin. And I have a plan to find my way back to regular posting and reading.

I have approximately 16 special, loyal blog friends  – the kind where communication goes both ways – or it did until I went on my blog-hiatus. I want to find my way back and part of that is the need and want to catch up on these particular people.

I am going to do one a day. Read everything he or she has written. Do some liking and commenting. Maybe dedicate my own post of the day to this person. With some of the more prolific ones, this might take quite a while (Hi, Kate!). Others will be done quite quickly (Hi, Quirkyone – you really should post more often!) In any case, if I do one a day, I should be done exactly the day before my sister plus hubby arrive for their visit and four days before we all take off for Ireland. Clearly, it is all meant to be.

It feels great to have a life again. And a plan.

And if you happen to be one of those 16 blog friends, I can only shout out a virtual warning . . . prepare for incoming! Or to put it another way . . .

“Fore!!”