Sunday Afternoon

I should never read someone else's blog before I write an entry in mine. That very act has prevented me from writing over and over. My own writing never feel interesting enough. Then I have all these nostalgic pangs as I read blogs of the folks who post and photograph their young children with such delight (while I now photograph my tomatoes or my gourds...). That was such a wonderful time of life. It seems so long in the past, that the kids were always saying the funniest things and we were doing our weird interesting homeschool stuff... before the existence of blogs.

Of course, some people with small children would probably like to be able to do what I often do now after church. I sit on the couch and read and think, listening to the clocks tick. I call friends or family that I haven't seen for a while, and catch up. I often get in a walk with a friend. Then I go fix whatever I want to eat -- like spinach-artichoke dip, or graham-cracker crust eaten in a bowl like cereal -- and I eat it in the living room (Not much done when the kids were itty bitty. They wanted to do it too, but they were too messy.) It makes a wonderful, if not very exciting, day of rest before going back to work on Monday morning. Or sometimes I go get sweaty working in the yard, if that's what I feel like. Digging and planting refreshes my psychi like few other activities. But today, I am recovering from being sick so I will mostly sit on the couch and think.

I liked today's sermon, especially a few tidbits I will record and comment on here:

• Theology from beneath (determining whether I think God is favorable or hostile according to affairs around me) versus theology from above (connecting with what is real through the word of God, the greatest single tool to let us know who He is and who we are). I do too much of the former, and way too little of the latter.
• Alternate translation "God, the joy of my rejoicing" from Psalm 43:4
• The way that music both expresses and enlarges our joy in the Lord, and the fact that the Bible mentions it so often as an appropriate way to praise God. This is certainly something I experience all the time. It is one of the big reasons I am in choir and like to sing with the children. Some weeks, an uplifting anthem or hymn gets stuck in my mind and turns me to worship over and over.
• God is committed to his glory and my joy. He will accomplish all of his intentions. This takes so much pressure off of me, to know that God is at work.

Enough couch time. I need to go look at my little gourd seedlings.

Home?

For some reason I named this blog Home with Gail. I guess it was nostalgia, since home is not where I am most of the time any more. This transition from homemaker to outside-worker is not an easy one. for me. There are so many things that I just plain long for and miss that used to be part of my life when I was 'at home'. Being able to get up and spend a whole day on a project of my own choosing is one of them. I could sew or garden or work on the house or build something with/for the kids or start several big recipes at once, knowing I had time to make significant progress before I had to clean up the mess or go to bed. I could start in on a project in the morning and know I could come back to it again and again in between household chores and homeschool lessons. I could flex my schedule around whichever way seemed to work the best each day. And then there was the school year schedule -- the holidays and summer vacation. My best energy -- for me, the morning hours -- could be devoted to the work of my choosing. Now it feels as if home gets the leftovers and work sucks the creativity right out of me. By the time I am ready to start doing 'something' in the evening, it is too late for me to accomplish much of anything and still go to bed at a decent hour to be ready for -- you guessed it -- work -- in the morning. I don't like my life being defined this way.

This sounds so grumpy. Probably I SHOULD be noticing how this job is a pretty good fit for my skills and personality, how it has room in it for a fair bit of creativity, and how it also is more flexible than many other types of work. I SHOULD be grateful for a good boss, a compatible co-worker, an office close to home, a chance to help children and mothers and get paid for it. I should be grateful that I had the chance to spend 20+ years as my own boss, and that I was able to enjoy a great deal more time with my children than many women have opportunity for. I probably should think this way, but really I just don't. Really I just feel this longing to be free of my work responsibility and be able to say yes again to my self.

Warty Gourds

I'm obsessed with gourds lately. I had this idea to grow gourds and let the vines climb our old, unused swingset so they would be hanging in the air. The first summer I grew 'warty gourds' -- they sort of remind you of the peasants working in the field in a Monty Python movie. One year later, I have a big basket of warty gourds that I have de-mildewed with bleach and a scrub brush, and I'm trying to think of things to make with them. In the meantime, this year I grew bottle gourds that now hang from the swingset and the crab-apple tree... those vines really love to climb. They have taken over the languishing tomato plants and infiltrated the ivy, many feet of vine supporting about 18 curvy green fruits. My gourd fantasies are running wild. I can make bird houses, bowls, baskets. I can carve and burn and paint designs into them. And I've got a whole year, while they dry, to lay out my plans.

Brigadier

Brigadier, the big blonde dog in the picture, disappeared from the yard well over a year ago. I still start thinking of him sometimes and wonder where he is now.

Brigadier

Brigadier, our scruffy bounder
Huge and skinny fifty-pounder
Blanketed with tangled fur
Streaking past us in a blur
Chasing squirrels with careless glee
Full of happy energy
Rolling over in the dust
Tempted once with wanderlust.

That day Brig did not come back;
Disappeared without a track.
How we looked, but never found him,
Calling, searching, looking 'round.
Brigadier, our precious pup,
It's just so hard to give you up.
It pains to wonder where you are,
Alive or dead, near or far.

I hope, somewhere, you live it up,
Brigadier, our precious pup.

twenty-something tomatoes

There are twenty-something tomatoes on the kitchen counter. What to do with them all? One time I froze some tomatoes -- whole -- just put them in the freezer in a bag. They were like balls of ice, and sounded like pool balls when they clunked into each other. Turned mushy when thawed out... but still good for cooking.