Unloading

I have a lot of yarn. When I say I have a lot of yarn, I don't mean that I have more yarn than I have projects in mind. I mean I have more yarn than two people have projects in mind - about a hundred years' worth - because I inherited almost all of it from my grandmother when she died.

I don't know if she meant for me to take it all. I think it was the logical answer for the people who were cleaning out her things to bring it all to me because I do like to do yarn crafts, and because it was the easiest thing to do since I live in the same state, and I'm sure it was one big item to check off their to-do lists. I am telling myself that that is the way it was because right now, nearly five years after my grandmother's death, I know that I do not wish to use a lot of it. First, because it's not the kind of yarn that fits my taste, and second, it's tangled up with cat hair that makes me sneezy and drippy when I work with it.

I do feel some guilt about this. I have to tell myself that keeping her yarn doesn't keep her close to me. She's gone. She isn't coming back for it. I don't believe, way down deep in my heart, that keeping it safe in a drawer for the rest of my life and bequeathing it on to future generations the way she did is what she expects or wishes me to do with it. I don't believe that she expects me to knit the same kind of sweaters that she did for that reason only. At some point someone in the family has to say, "The diligent keeping of hundreds of scraps of yarn stops here." It may as well be me.

I have made multiple blankets and dozens and dozens of mittens with her yarn in an attempt to use it up. I recently came across a pattern that will use up a few more of the hundreds of "leftover" small balls of yarn that I have from her.

I have decided that when this blanket is finished I will gift it to a lonely widower in a VA nursing home. And then I will donate however much of her yarn is left to the "craft room" at the first nursing home I can find that has one.

If anyone is not happy with this, this is your official notice. If me keeping Grammy's yarn at my house keeps her close to you, I have to tell you that I've done as much as I can for you. You can come by anytime in the next three months and take all this yarn into your own home.

A closer look

A cross-section, so to speak, of my brain.

There are a few things rattling around in here and I want to get them out.

I had a bit of vertigo for about an hour last night. I sat/laid/sprawled out in front of the toilet (in case of the unholy puking that comes with vertigo) until I passed out from exhaustion. Somehow during the 5 or 30 minutes I was asleep I hurt my toe. It feels better today, but I feel sort of washed out and hazy. I sent a lot of ESP messages to my good Mr. Dub that I was upstairs dying on the bathroom floor but he didn't hear them. Probably because the football game was on SO LOUD.

A handful of spinach leaves got thrown away today. There are also about 1 1/2 cups of red seedless grapes that are going out with the trash tomorrow. I feel bad about this. The good news is that I made the most delicious pizza ever tonight wherein I used the homemade tomato sauce that saved the tomatoes last week. I have also been using up any stale bread in French toast for breakfast in the mornings. (Tomorrow morning we will have a bit of bacon too, before that goes bad.) I have been baking bread for the last couple of weeks and I think I'm getting into a groove with it, but that is where all the stale bread is coming from. I have some chopped onions, some corn tortillas, and some "nacho/taco" shredded cheese that all need to be used up. Sounds like enchiladas on the menu tomorrow night. Sort of like these, but with chicken and green enchilada sauce. Tomorrow afternoon I am making pie dough, and an apple pie for my good Mr. Dub to use up some apples that have been in the crisper bin for...well...for a while now. I have thrown a rapidly degrading banana in the freezer but I don't have high hopes for it. It may just be delaying the inevitable, but maybe I'll make banana bread with it and some of its overripe brothers that are sure to come along?

My granddaughter was especially adorable today. Maybe because I wasn't feeling well? She says things to me like, "I sure love you, Grammy" and "Wait for me, Grammy!". She is such a love.

I finally got around today to taking care of some school nurse paperwork/cafeteria business that had to be done for Jake at his school. It is so nice to have it out of the way. I'm not sure why I hadn't done it before today, and when I try to analyze it what I feel like is overwhelmed and that nobody ever helps me - I always help everybody else. Which is stupid because of course other people help me. But that's my initial reaction to guilty feelings of inadequacy and procrastination. Is that lame and immature?

While Avery napped today I read a book. Pictures of Hollis Woods, by Patricia Reilly Giff. It's a Newberry Award winning book that I've had for awhile but never picked out of the bookcase until today. So sad, but the most satisfying ending! I found out today that it has been made into a TVmovie so maybe someday I'll get to watch it.

I am not ready for my scrapbooking adventure this weekend and I am running out of time to prepare for it. I might end up "getting ready for it" while I'm there. Which will not be the end of the world. It will just mean that I won't get as many pages done and I will have to take all of my scrapbooking supplies with me, instead of the more manageable amount of stuff I would only have to take had I been more diligent over the last few weeks. Is it okay that I've outgrown scrapbooking? Probably. I only have a few more pictures that were taken with film to scrapbook before I run into having to choose from digital pics on SD cards. I don't know if I'll continue with it at that point.

Because of some things I have seen and heard I have had a look at some of the stuff inside my head and heart the last week or so that I'm still trying to come to terms with. I have had an opportunity to wonder if I am a ultra-sensitive person who takes things in very deeply and feels them all. Because of things that have happened in my life I have always felt like I had to have a stiff upper lip, a thick skin, a rock solid shell. That I have to let things just roll off my back, never thinking about them too much or feeling them too intimately because I can sense that incurable heartbreak and insanity wait for me down that road, and, well, I have things to do that require a clear head and some sensibility. It's not fun or easy or lighthearted to be broken and crazy and I don't want to be there. It's a miracle to me that I was raised to stay away from drugs and alcohol because if I hadn't I would surely be a drunken, addicted, sorry, hopeless piece of humanity. I feel great sorrow for the people who have been through the things I have experienced and have turned to chemicals to escape their pain. I can see that it has only made their problems worse. I'm glad that I don't have to personally live through some things to learn from them.

That's enough.

My shame

I looked up some numbers. In the United States in 2010 approximately one in seven households were "food insecure". Meaning that those homes lacked the resources to provide enough food for themselves. On my side of the street on my neighborhood block there are eight homes. So statistically at least one house full of my immediate neighbors regularly went hungry in 2010. Globally the statistics are about the same - one in seven people are hungry.

Here is my confession: I throw away food. Pretty regularly, and much to my horror - without even thinking twice about it.

It is a shameful and entitled and thoughtless and cruel thing. I am trying to change that, beginning by reducing the amount of food we regularly waste in our home. I occasionally read a frugal-living blog and every Friday this blogger posts a picture of food that she wasted that week in an effort to publicly expose herself to the shame and embarrassment that should accompany such a practice. It has inspired me to do the same thing.

In the last two days I've thrown away about a cupful of spinach leaves that I let get soggy before we ate them. Also a squishy, rotting tomato, 1/4 of apple that had become brown and wrinkled, and a hard-boiled egg that was hidden in the depths of the fridge. I can't even remember the last time I boiled eggs. And why in the world would I eat 3/4 of an apple and put the rest in the refrigerator to never again see the light of day?

Nutrition facts:
1 cup spinach has 10 calories,  80% RDA of vitamin A and 20% RDA of vitamin C.
1 roma tomato has 22 calories, 20% vitamin A and 26% vitamin C.
1/4 of a really big granny smith apple has 20 calories and 5% vitamin C.
1 egg has 78 calories and more than 6 grams of protein.

That would have made an awesome, healthful and nutritious omelet with a side of sliced apple for some hungry person. Or for me. It's disgusting that this food has been wasted. Disgusting because I spent money to buy it in the first place, money that Mr. Dub earned and handed over to me without question. Disgusting also because there are people in our country, maybe even in my own neighborhood - men, women, and children - who went to bed hungry every night before that food went bad, while it was still edible.

Thinking about this for the last couple days has shown me there are some things I do without thinking that contribute to this waste. Last night we had spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, and while cleaning up the kitchen I saw that there were 6 meatballs left in the pan. I was all set to throw them away before I came to my senses and tried to think about it for one second. My thought process went like this:

"There aren't any noodles left in the pan. I'd have to make a whole new batch of spaghetti again before we will eat these meatballs. We don't like to eat spaghetti two nights in a row. What could I make with just six meatballs, anyway? This is ridiculous. It's not that big of a deal. It's only six freaking meatballs. But I am not throwing them away."

They went into the refrigerator and I chopped them up into a quiche that I made for dinner tonight. Also into the quiche went the spinach leaves that were still good. While rummaging through my veggie bin looking for salad ingredients I came across a number of tomatoes, the one which was too far gone and had to be tossed, but the others, while not exactly fresh and perfect were still on the good side of okay. But barely. So I simmered them in some water, put them through my food mill, and made them into fresh tomato sauce which will be stashed in the freezer until the next time I make soup.  I'm ashamed to say that previously I would have found it "easier" to throw away the whole bagful of tomatoes rather than pick through them to find any that might still be good.

While cleaning up the kitchen last night I also came across 3/4 of a graham cracker that I immediately went to throw away, because for heaven's sake it was the last graham cracker in the box (I had broken off a piece of it to give to Avery for a snack) and I'm not going to put one partial cracker back inside an otherwise empty box, am I? My newfound awareness stopped me in time and I wrapped it back up in its wax-paper wrapper and she had it again for a snack today.

It's the worst sort of entitlement. "These things are mine and I can throw them away in the trash if I want to, la de da."

I know I have a long way to go and there is a whole 'nother part to this that I'm not even going to go into right now which is that me figuring out how to not throw away food from my own refrigerator helps exactly zero hungry people.

But it's a starting point, and I'm on it.

Mess

Isn't it amazing how stuff makes itself into a mess? Last week I went on a search and rescue mission to the very back of a kitchen cupboard looking for my Food Saver. I knew it was back there, and it was, but on my way there I found ever so many things:

• A little slip of paper with my neighbor's email address on it. She gave it to me months ago and I was supposed to send her a link to the Bountiful Baskets website. But I set it on the counter by the phone and then it disappeared. Apparently it went to the very back and bottom of a cabinet that is across the kitchen from the counter by the phone.
• A post-it pad.
• An opened package of "purse packs" of Kleenex. I knew I had them...somewhere.
• A small piece of adhesive plastic that you would use to repair a hole in a pool floaty. Which thing I don't happen to currently possess, and therefore makes me wonder how many years has it been since I really cleaned out this cabinet?
• A padlock with its prongs (prongs? What is the right word?*) threaded through a pair of child's safety scissors. This object could be the focus of a whole post all by itself. It raises some questions like "Who?" and "Why?"**, and  "Where is the key to this padlock?" and "Are you sure this is the kind of 'safe' we're worried about with this particular pair of scissors?". Without a key these scissors are so safe they are virtually worthless.
• The operating instructions to my new handheld mixer. The mixer is in another cabinet, and the directions to all my other things like that are upstairs in a file drawer.
• Some other similarly random flotsam.

All that belongs in the cabinet where I found all this stuff is some bottles of water and a variety of small kitchen appliances like my Food Saver that I don't use very often. Sometimes I think there must be mini tornadoes whirling through my kitchen while I'm sleeping at night. I have no other plausible explanation for how these messes happen.

*I googled "parts of a padlock". Those prongs are called the shackle. I find that, in this instance in particular, to be both fitting and hilarious.
**I suspect the answer to "Why?" is "My children are bored and looking for trouble because they don't have enough chores to do". Which is a totally solvable problem.

Am I a minimalist?

Or, What Do I Really Want and How Much Will Ever Be Enough?

I've been reading lots of blogs and articles written by and for minimalists, and trying to figure out some stuff about myself. I am fortunate enough to be born into a country where I can be, do, and to a large extent have (where "have" means obtain or afford or both) pretty much whatever I want.

I don't know if I'm a real minimalist. I think I have a natural, in-born tendency to say enough is enough ( I would be more likely to phrase it as "Why do we have to have so much crap in this house?"), but I don't feel like I have to be able to fit every last one of my belongings into a backpack or the trunk of my car, or sleep on a mattress on the floor and have bare, white walls, or have only 57 or some other arbitrary number of items that I possess in the whole world. If you have to live by those requirements to be a real minimalist, then I'm not one.

I do have my own evolving list of "rules to live by" about what I have and what I do, and how that reflects who I am and who I am striving to become, and here is a list of some of them in no particular order of importance:

• I want What I Want to be firmly and squarely contained in the category of What I Need. Mindlessly and thoughtlessly buying, acquiring, and consuming isn't good for me. If I need something I'll get it, but filling up a shopping cart with stuff that I don't need, one little impulse at a time, in order to ease feelings of boredom or dissatisfaction isn't going to make me happy no matter how awesome the stuff is.
• Good enough is fine for me. I don't have to be constantly searching out and trying to acquire the best of anything. Trying to compete with other people's possessions or comply with their expectations or recommendations is too exhausting and doesn't make me happy.
• My home is not for show. It is where people live, and although people do need things, the stuff in my house has to be for the keeping of the people, not the other way around. Homes are containers for people and although homes also contain people's stuff, the actual people shouldn't have to be shoe-horned into whatever space is left after the stuff is moved in.
• A certain degree of sparseness and bareness do give feelings of calmness and serenity for me. My eyes have be able to find a place to rest, and crowded, cluttered surfaces, closets, and floors make me feel claustrophobic and anxious and overwrought.
• I want my home to be comfortable. I want my family and friends to feel like they can wear their shoes, or not, whichever is more comfortable for them. If you want to cook something, or take a nap, or make a craft, or watch a movie, or read a book, or play a game, you can do that in my house. We're set up for that.
• When we're ready to do any of those things, I can find what we need. There is sufficient, but not so much that I spend all my available time digging through closets and drawers for supplies and then have a giant mess created by the search that must now be cleaned up.
• Abundance and excess aren't the same thing.
• Spending money to solve problems or fill needs when creativity and ingenuity would suffice is kind of lazy.
• My good Mr. Dub shouldn't have to spend decades of his life working to provide for me things that I don't need and don't, in reality and all honesty, even actually want. He deserves more respect than that.

Decluttering is a big part of a minimalist's life. It's a big part of my life, too. I was reading an article about keeping like things together, and how that makes it possible to make decisions about how much is enough for you. The example that was used is that if you relocate all your pens and pencils into one place in your house, only then will you be able to see that you have 63 ballpoint pens, and are you the kind of person who needs 63 pens?

I immediately thought of my pencil cup. I do have all my pens in the house contained into, well, two pencil cups, (one upstairs on the desk and one downstairs by the phone. A real minimalist would have only one pencil cup and would run up and down the stairs everytime she wanted to write something. An extremely real minimalist might not have a pencil cup at all, but own only one pen.) and they were both too full. At least once per day but usually many times per day I was struggling to jam a pen back into the pencil cup. Why have I mindlessly fought with my pencil cup every single day without ever realizing even one time that I could and should do something about it? It's ridiculous! And that is a big part of what this post is meant to be about: I want to live and breathe and work and do the things that make me myself in my house without a struggle at every turn.

So I decluttered my pencil cup. I picked out a few pens, a couple of pencils, and a pair of scissors, and now there is plenty of room in the cup to take one out and put it back without any sort of hassle at all. The extra pens went into the school/office supply shoebox that lives on a shelf in a kitchen cupboard. I know we will need them eventually - I mean, pens do run out of ink- but I don't have to have to deal with them while I'm waiting to need them.

While I was thinking about the pencil cup, I washed out an empty green bean can (we had green beans with our dinner last night) and spray-painted it. Then I added some cherry blossom stickers that I had on hand. No overwhelming mess was created while searching for spray paint or stickers. It's not the best/prettiest/most awesome pencil cup in the whole world, but it keeps my pencils contained on the counter by my phone. And when I'm tired of looking at it, I'll throw it out. It's a green bean can with some stickers on it, for goodness sake, and we already ate the beans.

 

40 Bags - bag #19

I'm starting to get a little bit worried that I won't have 40 bags to get rid of. I'm getting down to the harder stuff. Stuff I have to make a decision about, or that is already overwhelming to me. I've felt a little bit resentful the last two days because I feel like I have to get rid of stuff I still want just to make it to 40 bags. I feel like I'm being punished because I am a responsible person who routinely takes out the trash and donates extra stuff. If I wasn't, then it would count if I took 20 bags of old newspapers out of here, or if I had 15 years worth of worn out kid's clothes to clear out, but since those things are part of my regular chores routine I don't have them piled up around here, and so I can't count them as part of my 40 bags. I feel inclined to say, "That's not fair!". I've also felt an inexplicable desire to go shopping.

I do recognize on an intellectual level that that is ridiculous.

No one has set me down and tried to make me see the error of my ways. No one is calling me a hoarder. No one (except me) says we have too much stuff in the house. All of this purging and de-cluttering and desire to organize and simplify is coming from within me. And if I want to quit purging at 20 bags, no one is going to care or notice. But I think that working through these feelings might be a part of the process of learning to live a different kind of life, and I'm trying to understand it and embrace it as such.

While I've had a bit of a cold in the last week I've been doing a little bit of reading around the Internet and watching Hoarders and it's helped me see that there is clutter even in:

1. the pantry
2. the craft room
3. the garage

Okay, the garage was no surprise to me. I just don't want to go out there. But the pantry? That's where I keep my food storage! And the craft room? That's where I keep my own special stuff that's just mine and doesn't belong to anybody else. Which is something that a oldest of 8 children and long-time married mother of 4 needs.

Or so I've been telling myself.

There were these crazy ladies on Hoarders that had old, expired, unusable food, and too, too many crafting supplies. One crazy hoarding lady even said, "I make jewelry, I scrapbook, I knit, I crochet. I do it all." It was like she had been spying on me. My craft supplies aren't messy or disorganized or dirty or covered in rat feces, but there are far too many of them. It's like I can't decide what I do for fun and relaxation.

So here's my rationalization. As I finish my projects and give them away, that will count as de-cluttering. I will be clearing out drawers, bins and cabinets and not refilling them. Clutter isn't just stuff that is in piles stacked in corners and heaped on tabletops because it has no real place to go; clutter lives in bins and drawers and cabinets, too. Clutter is the stuff that diminishes your quality of life by its presence in your home. If I feel guilty or overwhelmed by the number of unstarted or unfinished craft projects, then it can be called clutter.

"Material blessings, when they pay beyond the category of need, are weirdly fruitful of headache." ~Philip Wylie

None of the hard decisions today, though. Tonight I needed an easy spot to work on so I cleaned out the game closet. One 18" high stack (= 1 bag) of puzzles going to Goodwill. My Little Prince and I have already done these puzzles together. Just because the puzzles still have all the pieces doesn't mean I have to keep them - it means someone else will have fun doing them too. And I'm not getting rid of the memories or the puzzle-night tradition, just the puzzles we've already done.

Books and covers and judging

I was watching one of those "hoarders" shows a week ago and the lady on there had been through some pretty horrible stuff - a violent rape and the death of her child. Those two traumatic events triggered something in her to start hoarding.

While I was watching her talk about these things I realized something - I do the opposite thing for the exact same reasons.

I feel so much anxiety when things at home are grubby and disorganized because:

• how will the cops get good fingerprints if everything is dirty?
  
• how will I know if something is missing if all my possessions are in chaos or if I have so many that I don't even know what I have?
  
• if I force myself to purge things on a regular basis then I will desensitize myself to loss and when I am forced to lose something it won't hurt so much.

If I have to suffer trauma and violence and tragic loss and then nothing can be done for me - no perpetrators identified or captured or brought to justice - because of the way I keep house then the pain and devastation become partly my fault.

I know that these messages are tricks my head plays on me. They aren't true, but they feel good to me. Just like a hoarder.

The relationship between people and their things is so complex. And just because someone looks and behaves in a way that looks "normal" and good and healthy, you never can tell what the psychology behind a person's actions really is. When they see me getting rid of things other people will make comments to me about how they really need to do that too, or that I am so good and responsible and hard-working, or something along those lines. When people respond like this it makes me feel like a poser and a fraud. I would like to respond that throwing out unnecessary things and living an organized and tidy life is natural for me, and that I am good and clean through and through. The real truth is that there is a lot of darkness and fear that motivates my behavior. I've noticed that making decisions about my possessions while I'm doing this '40 bags in 40 days' project is bringing up to the surface a lot of stuff that I usually keep deep. I have tears at the ready and a lump in my throat these days.

Even though this is my truth, and there is a little crazy behind it, I do actually love and truly prefer things clean and sparse and uncomplicated but still decorated. I love the way this pantry looks (and you can see all of her awesomeness at her blog here):

I'll tell you a secret

Well, maybe it's not a secret. Maybe it's quite obvious to everybody by the look on my face when I am confronted with the source of my fear.

I'm afraid of little dogs.

Actually quite terrified by them. Big dogs make me nervous but seem gentler and more predictable than little dogs. Big dogs go on about their business. If a big dog is walking down the street, it doesn't get up in your face just because you happen to be walking down the street too. They settle down when there's nothing to be excited about. If you are dumb enough to get up in its business, sure, a big dog will take you down. But generally a big dog doesn't want to kill you if he doesn't have to. I think it's because generally people treat their big dogs like dogs.

People treat their little dogs like babies, though. I think that messes up the minds of the little dogs. It makes them psycho. Little dogs are mean. Bitey. Growly. Snarly. Little dogs totally freak out over what seems to be nothing, or maybe it's just that those things are invisible to humans. You can't walk by a little dog, or the home of a little dog, without it going all crazy/psycho/nuts on you. It'll try to kill you if it can.

Little dogs are scary. People who own little dogs say that they are sweet and lovable and gentle. And maybe those dogs are exactly that to those people. To everyone else though, you can see it in their little beady eyes - "I'll kill you if I can".

I love my blog.

I really do.

One thing I like to do with my blog is check the site meter. This little gadget lets me know what pages people are visiting. When I go to check out that page to see what my visitors are looking at, I get to read what I once wrote.

It's good for my self-esteem. I like me.

I have the usual number of faults and bad characteristics, just like everybody. It's true that I do try to focus on the good and the pleasant and the happy and peaceful when I'm writing my blog. It's true that there are lots of times in my real life when people make me feel small or stupid or unsure of myself. It's true that sometimes I am small and stupid and unsure of myself all on my own, without any help from anybody.

But when it's just me and I'm left to myself, I like me. My blog reminds me of that.

yeasted cornbread

I found this recipe, sort of, on allrecipes.com. The online recipe is geared toward a bread machine which is something I don't have.

I used to have one but then I got rid of it.

It was given to me by an old lady from church. She (and her husband) were moving out of their lovely home and in with one of their children and were consequently unburdening themselves of most of their possessions. She was so generous with me, I think because I had been kind to her, and I have a few of her kitchen things. They aren't marked in any way, but they are known to me. I remember her with fondness and gratitude every time I use one of them.

So there wasn't any guilt in getting rid of the bread machine. I wanted it at first, but then after I had it for awhile I realized that it was too big to live on my kitchen counter, and took up a lot of real estate in a cabinet. And because I rarely used it - it made only one loaf at a time - I sent it back out into the universe. I hope someone somewhere has it and loves it.

(The nice thing about having my own blog is that I can write all the random thoughts and back-story about anything at all and I don't have to get to "it" immediately. "It" being a bread recipe, in this particular instance. The recipe follows. Eventually. Feel free to skip down to the bottom and bypass completely the drivel and endless explanations.)

I was looking online for a bread recipe that uses cornmeal. I have popcorn kernels in my food storage, and although I like regular popped popcorn that you eat out of a bowl while watching a movie, making it once or twice a year like I do doesn't exactly justify having 200 lbs. of kernels sitting in my spare room. I ground some into cornmeal to make cornbread, but again, even though that's the express purpose for which it was purchased, cornbread isn't something that I make so often. Usually just when we are having homemade soup or chili. I may have gotten a little carried away when I bought all that corn but it's ours now, and I wanted a recipe that would help us eat all this corn in my own lifetime.

So here it is. I have tweaked it from the original to suit it to my own needs - no bread machine, and preferences - no trans fats or fresh milk. Feel free to change it around to suit yours.

Yeasted cornbread

In a large mixing bowl combine:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 1/4 cup dry milk
• 5 teaspoons dry yeast

In a microwave-safe dish combine:

• 2 1/4 cups water
• 6 tablespoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 6 tablespoons butter

and microwave on high power for a minute or two until butter is starting to melt and water is about 115 degrees F. How long exactly depends on how cold your water and butter are when you start, right? The mixture should feel warm but not hot. Pour it into the dry ingredients and beat for 30 seconds. Add:

• 2 eggs

Beat on medium-high speed for 3 minutes. At this point I change the paddle attachment to the dough hook on my stand mixer. Then slowly add:

• 4-5 cups all-purpose flour, one cup at a time

and knead for 5-8 minutes until dough is smooth and elastic, and cleans the side of the bowl. Pull dough out of the bowl, knead it by hand on a floured surface for a minute or two to refresh your hand-kneading skills and to revel in the experience, then oil the bowl, put the dough back into the bowl, and turn the dough over inside the bowl so that the top side is oiled. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest for an hour or so until it has doubled in size. Punch dough down, divide and shape into 4 loaves. Cover the loaves and let rise until dough has doubled again. Bake at 375 degrees F for 25-30 minutes. Loaves are done with they are a deep golden brown color and sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. I have 8x4x4 pans, so they are on the small side. If I was using 9x5x4 pans I would divide the dough into only three loaves and bake them a bit longer.

I like this bread because it has the slightly gritty texture of the corn. The flavor and crumb are very good. It slices well for toast or sandwiches. My Pretty Girl says she likes this bread better than my other bread. Which is plain ol' Honey Wheat Bread. Which I may go on and on about on my blog at some other time.

Rubber band, anyone?

Have you ever heard the advice to keep a rubber band around your wrist and snap yourself when you realize you're having negative thoughts? I guess it's supposed to make you associate physical pain with those thoughts and unconsciously train your brain to stay away from that line of thinking. Is that right? I don't know. Behavior modification techniques always seem kind of silly to me.

Anyway, remember one of my new year's resolutions to have as the foundation of my interaction with other people to be that they are smart, kind and important? I remember it. I do. I am remembering it when I am actually talking to other people, and when I'm considering saying "hello" to someone that I know and happen to see accidentally, like in the grocery store or something (which is a thing I find very hard to do).

And yet these are the kinds of things I find myself thinking about strangers throughout the day:

• Dolt!
• Dork!
• Idiot!
• Putz!
• Shmuck!
• Moron!

Most of the time these smart, kind and important strangers are guilty only of being in front of me, or are in some way blocking or delaying my left turn, merge, or attempt at parking. Or causing me some other sort of inconvenience.

(But seriously, people, is it SO hard to have your things ready to go before it's your turn in the bank's drive-thru lane? Why do you wait until you're in the #1 position to find a pen, endorse your paycheck, and fill out a deposit slip?)

While I do catch myself thinking these unjust, road-ragey thoughts, I haven't yet figured out how to stop them from coming. Snapping my wrist with a rubber band seems painful and unpleasant.

There must be a better way. I do want to change my thoughts about other people. I know it can be done. Probably my heart has to change before my thoughts will.

I will work on figuring out how to love and respect strangers who get in my way or annoy me for no good or apparent reason. So far, it's very hard.

What I think about Suze

I recorded, and subsequently watched, Suze Orman's new show "Money Class".

I was less than impressed.

She makes a big deal about what she calls "standing in your truth". About how what you have - the brand of your clothing, your cars, furniture, vacations, etc. - doesn't have anything to do with who you really are. Who you really are is manifested in your kindness, your courage, your integrity, your good heart, your artistic soul, your whatever. And so forth.

Which sounds all great and everything. But then she goes on to tell people that the last thing you should pay when money is tight are your credit card bills. The most important debt that you should pay off is your student loan debt. Why? Because you can't get rid of student loan debt by declaring bankruptcy. You still have to pay it off. Next in the order of importance is mortgage and car loans because the lien holders can take those things away from you if you don't make your payments. And you still have to put gas in the gas tank and food in your belly. You have to keep the electricity and other utilities going. Credit card bills are "unsecured" debt so nothing can happen to you if you don't pay them.

One lady Suze interviewed had made a deal with the bank that held her mortgage. She needed to reduce her payments because she had lost her job and her bank cooperated with her and she was able to stay in her home. Because she remained unemployed for a long time she was now having trouble making even the drastically reduced payment. Her bank was now talking about foreclosure, and this, understandably, was a great sorrow to the lady. Suze asked her what her original loan amount was - $209,000. She asked what other condos in her building were currently going for - $100-150,000. (Hello, real estate bust!) Suze advised her that her best bet was to let the bank foreclose on her, "repair" her credit, and come back in a few years and buy another condo at half price.

What in the world do these things have to do with "standing in your truth"? How are you truthful or integrous when you buy merchandise on credit or sign a loan with a bank, and then decide it's in your best interest to un-shoulder these burdens? People realize that these debts don't just disappear, right? They get passed on to everybody else. Maybe you are feeling a great burden lifted off your shoulders, but everyone else's burden just got a little more weighty. But hey, as long as you feel better, right?

What's the moral difference between government bailouts of big corporations and people defaulting on their mortgages, car notes, and unsecured debts?

You is kind.

You is smart. You is important.

I watched the movie "The Help" last week. One of the main characters in the book is Aibileen, a black maid who tends the children of the white families she works for. In spite of the hideous way she is treated by the white, female mother, Aibileen gently and insistently tells her child this: You is kind. You is smart. You is important.

I gave a talk in church on New Year's Day. My assignment was to give "a leader's message for the new year" to the ward. Which made me feel a lot of anxiety and pressure. I mean, I am a leader in the congregation - it says so right in the church bulletin every Sunday - but to me that means that I have extra responsibility, not additional insight or skills. And certainly not an agenda or anything like that. So coming up with "a message for the new year" for everyone else felt like a hardship. After a night spent tossing and turning and praying for guidance I did come up with one, and it is to have love as your motivation for the things you do in your life. In everything from setting new year's resolutions to repenting of your sins to interacting with other people.

"You is kind. You is smart. You is important." What would be different in my life if I started with that as the truth about everyone I interact with each day? And then added love for them from my side? Although the most obvious message in the book and the movie is that Aibileen is a wonderful and selfless person who is loving and generous in spite of the persecution and fear present in her life, the underlying message, for me at least, is that love and unselfishness is the only way to eliminate persecution and violence in the world.

So even though it is unselfish to offer love in return for unkindness, it's really the only way to change the world for the better for yourself. It's like Minny says in The Help, "You think they gonna make a law that say you gotta be nice to your maid?"

Mother Teresa said, "Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier."

Starting with the idea that people are kind, smart, and important. Having love as my motivation to make the world better. Making it real, and not just an ideal. Believing that I can do all things, even these things, through Christ, which strengthens me. It's going to be a big year.

Thoughts on changes for a New Year

The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost.

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Happy Halloween

And all that jazz. I'm over Halloween. It used to be fun for me when my kids were little. I decorated, we had a traditional Halloween dinner (sloppy joes and tater tots), I sewed costumes for the kids, we trick-or-treated around the neighborhood.

I just don't care about it anymore. Avery did look adorable in her fairy ballerina costume, and hopefully she'll bring home a peanut butter cup for her Grammie, but I just wish people would stop ringing my doorbell. Is it possible to be a scrooge about Halloween? That's how I feel this year. Hopefully next year will be better.

(Did I ever mention that I left my camera in Sweden? Yeah, I have no picture-taking capabilities. Maybe I'll get a new one for Christmas? Mr. Dub?)

Next week?

My bff D told me the other day that the Houston quilt show is next week. Next week! Last year when I went to the quilt show I made great plans - I was going to save up a million dollars (or some other amount of money) and buy lots of cool fabric and patterns and tools at the quilt show in 2011. So that I could make things and be the kind of person who has interests and skills and maybe even develop some talent.

That hasn't happened. My life has got in my way again.

My life has been doing that a lot lately. Every single week I say to myself that "as soon as this week is over and things settle down, THEN I'll be able to get to it", where "it" is anything from painting rooms and hallways, to making over closets or flower beds or the budget, to writing fun notes to old friends, to getting a handle (finally!) on the visiting teaching and other intricacies of my church job, to having the money both for savings AND a pedicure, to finally and definitively finishing up any of the number of unfinished craft projects I have going on at all times.

Why do I keep telling myself that things will ever settle down? Why do I always believe that one magical day will ever come when I have the time (not to mention the skill set) to actually accomplish something? Additionally I have come to fear that when that blessed, settled-down day is plucked from the future and plunked down in front of today, I will no longer have the inclination or the energy to do anything at all.

People tell me that that day will, in fact, come. I believe them. I know lots of elderly people who have no one who ever calls them, no one who ever needs them, no one who cares what they do with their time or their money. That the day will come when I will have all the time in the world to myself. That I will look back to these over-busy, over-filled, chaotic, crazy and hassle-filled days and long for them again in my life.

I read in a blog the other day about something similar. It was someone that I don't know lamenting that her small child was screaming at her that she hates her. And that people would tell her to enjoy these brief moments because one day - presumably when her kids are grown - she'll miss them. And she said something that really resonated with me: "It's like, I lose now and I lose later."

It's been a whole year since I went to the quilt show with my mom and realized some of the possibilities that are out there for a person like me. And here I am, a whole year later, telling myself that it's not time yet, that things will settle down, that someday I'll do them. Some day. Some day that is later than now.

I fear that "later" will never come for me. I realize that what I'm going through right now today will most certainly change into something else, but I'm afraid that things will only be different, not better. The kids will never be completely raised or independent or happy all at the same time; the house will never be or stay completely clean, decorated, and maintained; the part of the world that I'm responsible for will never be sufficiently organized; all so that I can enjoy some free time to think. Just to think! I need something good to look forward to that is 100% or I might lose my freakin' mind.

Even though all this is not truly about the quilt show or quilting, I guess I will go to the quilt show next week and contemplate my possibilities. I will try to not think about how they are realities for other people.

Other people. That's a whole 'nother post!

What is it now?

That's what I say to myself when the phone rings.

A friend called me today and told me a few things that have me thinking. One of the things she told me was that I hadn't written on my blog for a long time.

There are any number of good reasons for that. I may go into all that at a later date. And then when I logged into Blogger it told me I could redesign my blog.

That made me think even more.

I need to freshen up my blog's design. I think I probably need to freshen up my whole life. On that note, the dryer is calling my name.

There might be changes coming soon to the ol' AmyDubDub.

But don't hold your breath. I'm taking my time.

Escapism

I've recently been overwhelmed with a desire to escape my reality. It's not been fun for me (or anyone else, either) and it's not been pretty (have you ever peered into your own dissatisfied soul? Ugh. Lame.). I have never been one to handle change and transition with any kind of grace, and I'm currently bombarded with change and transition.

I've realized that I have to have some coping mechanisms or I'm going to lose it and make everyone unhappy. Here's what I'm doing to manage my stress:

Movies: I used to love movies. I liked that about myself. I've lost that and I'm going to get it back. I watched The Bucket List for the first time the other day. I recorded it on my DVR several weeks ago and finally decided this week that it was time for me to check out for a while. I enjoyed the movie very much, and although it fed my temporary and seemingly desperate need to enact a complete and arbitrary do-over of my ENTIRE life, it was a fun movie. I'd like to make a bucket list. I think a bucket list is something I need in my life.

Books: I used to love to read. I liked that about myself. I've lost that and I'm going to get it back. In the last two weeks I finally finished the second half of The Half-Blood Prince which I started for the second time earlier this spring, and then re-read The Deathly Hallows in its entirety. I went to HP7II a couple weeks ago with my Mr. Dub, and having the scenes from the movie freshly in my mind helped me focus on the details in the book amidst the chaos. I went to the public library today and checked out a couple of novels that look promising. Can I say that leisurely wandering through the aisles of a library is good for what ails you? It has to be leisurely, though. Hurriedly won't do it. Currently on tap is Kaye Gibbon's A Virtuous Woman. So far, so good. I might read all day tomorrow. If my little Butter Butter will let me. : )

Crafts: I'm thisclose to finishing a knitted, pleated skirt for Buttercup that I've been working on for a few weeks. It's a self-patterning yarn in bright blue with small orange flowers - the flowers didn't quite turn out how they were supposed to but it still looks cute. All that's left is to sew down the waistband and insert some elastic and it will be done. On the needles now is an orange cardi to go with the skirt. The yarn is super soft and a bit shiny; the color is "Mango". It looks good enough to eat. I'm chomping at the bit and making lots of plans for other projects that will begin/continue when I'm not in sole charge of my beautiful little Buttercup.

Cooking: Because of my mostly grown and ever more expensive children, (Hello, college tuition and books. Hello, whole new post-mission wardrobe. Hello, moving van+gas and storage unit. Hello, horde of hungry adults. Hello, back-to-school clothes, shoes, and supplies. Hello, TWO new -used- cars+gas+insurance this summer.) because of all that, my grocery budget cannot be exceeded. I've been experimenting with all the food in my storage to come up with good, tasty food to eat every day. Because if it doesn't taste good I don't want to eat it. It's been a creative outlet for me and I'm happy and proud that we're eating well without going over my budget. Even though it's more work, cooking is something I enjoy if I make time to do it properly and I think I'm a little good at it. It's been fun to clean out the fridge and the pantry and turn that all into supper.

I have also been counting my blessings, which are numerous. That helps tremendously. I do know that I have much to be thankful for. I have a healthy, happy family who love me. They don't always appreciate me like they should, but they're perhaps still a little too young to realize that. I have a loving husband who cares about me and hangs in there with me with patience and love no matter how crazy and unbalanced I happen to be at any given moment. I have a home, security, assets. I'm fine, which is practically a miracle when so many people in our nation and our world are not.

I've realized that I don't need a do-over so much as I need to gain a perspective that allows me to see past the next five minutes or so of difficulty. Taking breaks from my work and responsibilities, and doing things for myself are also something that has to happen.

Be true

Being true is part of the belief system I adhere to, and some of the rich loveliness of being true is so elegantly described by Mr. Irving:

There is in every true woman's heart, a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity. ~ Washington Irving

It's a quality worth striving for.

A little bit of this and that

When I was a teenager I was cast in the chorus of our small town's community theater's production of Fiddler on the Roof. It was a memorable experience for me, and included many members of my immediate family as well as some good friends. I have a picture somewhere of the whole cast and crew. I should look for it and post it here.

My Mr. Dub came home from Kuwait yesterday. I don't think he enjoyed this trip very much. Usually he comes home with interesting stories and things to talk about. This time he has only mentioned a couple of the other guys he worked with, and a bit about the weather. One other interesting thing he said was that Kuwaitis go camping in the months of January through March 31st and when they return to their homes they leave their furniture out in the desert. As in, couches, love seats, chairs, end tables, and the like. He said that driving from the airport to the camp where he was staying there was furniture everywhere along the side of the road. That's odd, don't you think? We guess that maybe when you go camping for three months you take your furniture because you don't want to sit on folding camping chairs the whole time. But when you're ready to go home, you don't want the furniture that's been outside in the desert back inside your house.

Today I made some apple preserves with the rest of the apples I bought on sale at Kroger this week. They are canned in a cinnamon-sugar sauce, and the author of the cookbook recommends using the apples in apple tarts. That sounds good to me today. I think they will also be good stirred into oatmeal or with abelskivers.

Abelskivers are a type of Danish pancake thing. We always have them on Christmas morning, and occasionally on a random Sunday morning. Mr. Dub likes his abelskivers with apple pie filling, because the "abel" in abelskivers means "apple" in Danish. I've tried to tell him that real Danes (i.e. my family) eat their abelskivers with jam or pancake syrup but he's not deterred. I like them with butter and plum jam.

Plum jam is something I'd like to try making this year.

Today I finished sewing together all the mittens I've knitted to this point. Did you forget about my mitten project? Did you think I had forgotten about it? I sort of lost interest in it for awhile, but someone at Church encouraged me to finish them and helped me out with some of the sewing and I've been hard at it for the past week or so. Tonight I finished the last two pairs, and I think it comes to about 30 pairs total. I've lost track of the exact count, but I've decided to start counting again at 30 pairs. I know it's at least that many. I still have a way to go to reach 100 pairs, but that's okay - it's not a race. We've been sending them in to Humanitarian Services as I finish them. Somewhere there are cold little children putting on a pair of warm, hand-knitted mittens that I made. That makes me feel good. And I'm grateful for the nudge I got to finish them.

I'm trying to get in the habit, again, of using my time more wisely and productively in hopes that I will be so tired at night that I'll be able to fall asleep. So projects are getting done, and I think I could can something every day for the next little while at least, and enjoy it. For now I'm out of anything to can, but I did see a recipe that makes grape jelly out of bottled Welch's grape juice and there just happens to be some of that in my pantry...but I already have grape jelly. I don't need any more.

Too bad.