Organization

Give me any kind of store and I am usually in and out pretty quick....even shoe shopping. I am not one for long hours of trying on, longing looks and then back and forth dilemmas filled with drama. Usually, I have an idea of what I am looking for, and am in and out of a store in a few minutes. I am fairly efficient in how I go about getting what I need.

However....

There is a store that can bring me to my knees. One that I can stand around and fondle things, ogle, stare at prices, waffle back and forth worse than a line cook at IHOP. Any kind of stores that carry organizational containers, or office equipment. It is a weakness of mine. You see, I harbor this undying dream of being one of those Type A personalities whose house is effortlessly spotless, who knows where everything is, because everyone puts thing back where they belong..because they have a home and we all know where that is. Whose closets are never in disarray, whose laundry is always done, or just about to be done. Whose kitchen drawers just have a place for everything and.....well you know.

My mother was innately one of those beings. She was able to train my father to become one. But I was the lost cause. I was the poster child for ADHD long before they ever knew it existed and found myself, when sent to my room to clean sitting at my desk going through my year book....with no idea of how it happened. My mother would get furious, I was not working, I was being lazy. She would then stay with me and clean side by side, instructing me on what to do next. All this was done in the hopes that this would train me, teach me these innate rules my mother just knew.

Sadly, it never took. And an organized house is not something that someone else can do for another person. Sure, they can help here and there, but truth be told, it is a process that has to be gone through...it is a labor...almost like conceiving and giving birth. So in my first years of living alone...I struggled...boy did I struggle. And later on, once I was married, it was difficult also.

How does someone just know when it is time to clean the walls? When do you know it is time to wash windows? And when do you stand back and say to yourself, "Self, it is time to get out a rag and dust off every photo in the house to make sure none is clinging to the walls." How do you know these things? I mean do you wait until that unsightly gray web dangles from the side of your picture frame...one that you cannot even blame on a spider? Or do you do it every week so it never builds up? Or just every once in a while...but then...how do you remember? These are not things that I just "get". Art...I get. Cooking...I get. Sewing...I get. But this has always been something that I need prompts on.

And then there are all the organizational tools...boxes, cartons, jars, bottles, baskets, etc.....They make your living room/dining room/kitchen/bedroom/bathroom look so pretty...so fabulous...so neat. And I buy into the con...if I just had the 'open canvas bins in small, medium and large with adjacent label holders so that they can be used in either direction' my rooms would be stunningly spotless! THIS is what I have been missing!

And then I fall back. I begin to think of all the things I could place in the bins..where I could place them. How many I would need...and suddenly I have spent over $500 and my house would look like a warehouse.

So, I do not buy the open canvas bins....and I take a deep breath. I realize that yet again, my overwhelming desire to be what I am not.....innately organized...is not going to come with the purchase of canvas bins. It comes with my being diligent with myself. With slowly pacing myself to purge those things which are not being used. I try new systems to make myself and my family more organized...but no one system is going to fit all...it is trial and error. And I step away from the lavender scented drawer liners and drawer organizers....and realize that the system must come first....then I can buy the adorable organizers!

Cooooo-kies

If asked, "you can only have one food type for the rest of your life, what would you want it to be?" My answer, without question would be cookies.

I love cookies. Let me rephrase. I. Love. Cookies.
A good cookie to me has just the right amount of "dough" ratio to "stuff".

I choose cookies because they have that place that is not just for toddlers, but for adults, and the elderly. A cookie is always acceptable. A cookie is warmth, home, love and can be held in your hand.
And there are a gazillion flavors...I should never get bored.

However, there is an art to a good cookie. An overly packed cookie becomes too granola-candy bar like. And too little and it may as well be a cracker. Nope...it is a careful balance to reach that point where you have just the right chip/nut/special ingredient ratio to the dough. It is the nirvana of cookie-ness...it is that zen of mommieness.

This is important stuff. A good cookie also hangs on just the perfect texture. You must have a perfectly browned edge...that cookie should be crispy on the edges with the slightest crunch and still chewy in the middle. NOT RAW. Let me make that perfectly clear. Not Raw. I have known people who have pulled out cookies before they were close to even being brown, pronouncing them done because they wanted something still slightly akin to cookie dough.

Look, if you want cookie dough, by all means, eat the cookie dough. But if you are going to bake the cookie...bake the damn cookie.

So, here you have the perfect food in my opinion...you have crunchy, chewy, you have soft spots and then chunky spots. You can eat it in its raw state or cooked stated. And think of it..you can have anything from a shortbread to a whoopie pie...there are so many different kinds of cookies that you could be busy from now until the end of time eating cookies and still not try them all. Oh it is a good, good thing to know that you could always be the person allowed to eat the last cookie. That you could dunk in coffee, hot chocolate, milk....or hey...in a pinch hot tea. It is all so good and comforting.

It is the tao of cookie monster. Peace out dudes.

Autumn

I know I fall into a large crowd and it is a commonality to say that my two favorite seasons are spring and Autumn. But really, how can they not be? I do love summer as it warms up and you have those hot days, but a week of temperatures well into the 90s with 80+ humidity has me wishing for cooler, crisper days. And in the bleakness of winter, when the snow is not fresh on the ground...it is just cold, and the holidays are over, I long for the ground to sing out, and to plant and play in the dirt again. Perhaps it is the length of summer and winter that cause me not to favorite them. They are like family members who come, weighing in on your good favor and hospitality, and in the end, end up staying far beyond their welcome. As Ben Franklin said, "Guest and fish all begin to stink after three days." Also too, seasons, after 60 days have worn out their welcome. And to be honest...I think Ben was a little harsh on the relatives.

But the truly beautiful seasons, the ones that really leave you with the desire to be outside in their glory and enjoying the world...those are the ones that never overstay their welcome. And Autumn is one of them, he shyly slips in, tipping edges of leaves on tress that we might not even notice if we don't pay attention closely, are not looking for his coming. Then, all of a sudden we look up and there is a tree, in its glory, dressed in its best for the season before anyone else.

You know, everyone has seen that one tree, the one that turns before all the others, like the early arrival and over-dressed member of a party, but one by one all the others follow suit and it is a glory to marvel. And as soon as it happens, we begin. We begin this parade of fall sweaters, hoodies, scarves, barn jackets, little woolen caps and all the cute fall clothes come out from storage. We shake things out that have been packed away for the last 5 months and recall how much we like wearing them.

The fall decorations begin to make their way into the house, pumpkins on tables, candles in windows, wreaths on doors and apples in baskets in the kitchen. We think in scents rather than in seasons, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, heady warming spices that make us want to be part of hearth and home. Soup pots come out and get filled with warming stocks and stews that fill us with comfort.

The most wonderful thing about Autumn is that it is culminated in a final feast. What other season can say that? Just as we end out glorious season and begin the trek headfirst into winter and are blitzed with holiday after holiday, we end this comely little season with a feast that celebrates our family, our time together and how thankful we have all been for what we have had this past year. It is the Hallelujah Chorus to the end of the most visually stimulating seasons and we have our senses tingling as we end November on a crescendo of music, food, nature, and life.

And as if a tired old actor, in their final scene, the trees, who just a few weeks ago wore their glory like a red carpet array, now slowly draw up the darkness of a bed of dark brown leaves, nod their sleepy heads and tuck in for a long winters nap. We applaud their last efforts knowing they will be back again, and then....we wait.

macaroni and cheese

I love macaroni and cheese. Use to be that I loved the plain old box stuff....just throw it in a pan and in about 15 minutes you could fill your stomach for $.64 and not have to worry about much anything else. It was quick, simple and had enough calories that you could easily gain 10 pounds a month if you ate it too much.

It wasn't until my, then 5 year old son, and I were walking through the grocery store playing the game of "Where did this come from?" You know, "Where does milk come from?" His reply, "A cow!"
"And where do carrots come from?"
"A garden!" It wasn't until we reached the boxed food isle that I thought we could have some fun. I held up a box of macaroni and cheese and asked, "Where does this come from?" I figured he would get the cheese part, but maybe be a little stumped on the macaroni part. No. His answer was, "A box!"

It was a moment of clarity for me. My son believed that macaroni and cheese didn't have a real origin, didn't begin with flour, egg and a bit of oil, molded into dough and formed into small tubes to make pasta, that butter, flour, cream, cheese and some seasoning created a cheese sauce. He only knew that macaroni came from a box and orange powder came from the envelope inside. The moniker of macaroni and cheese just that...as there was no recognizable cheese in this box.

I stood there and had my epiphany. I put everything in my cart that was prepared back. It all went back. I began my grocery order all over again, this time with an eye that said, "if we want pizza, I will make pizza. If we want lasagna we will make lasagna. And if we want macaroni and cheese, we will make macaroni and cheese....from scratch." My cart now had fresh ingredients, nothing in boxes, cans or bags. And it was a good feeling for me.

I came home that night and made macaroni and cheese. From scratch. It was cheesy. It was filling, it was delicious. And my kids didn't know what it really was, I had to explain that this is what real macaroni and cheese is. They were perplexed.

Since that time I have become a sort of culinary purist. I believe that you use the best ingredients you can find. I believe that you respect what the earth gives you and choose local and seasonal as much as possible. I believe that you respect the life of the animal that gave up its life for you to cook it. I try to learn new techniques as often as possible. I try to learn every day. I try out new flavors on my kids and husband every chance I get.

The above meal? Macaroni and Cheese....but it is elevated to a new level. I added lump crab meat and sauteed portabello mushrooms. My family thought it to be one of the best things they have ever eaten.

Sin

Most who know me know that I am a religious person. I am not the type of person who claims their religion to attend only on Christmas and Easter and then have no one know me in the church. I am an active member of my church and attend most Sundays. Many would say that attending church does not make you religious, and they are right. However, I am not one to say I am a religious person and then spend my Sundays cleaning my house and doing laundry.
To that end, I am also a sinner. Many years ago I use to belong to a church that was non-denominational in belief. It encouraged you to constantly perfect yourself. Sermons were based on, "This is your sin, and here are the three steps to rid yourself of it." Morality was the measured by peers and watched by everyone. It was a constant, almost contest of who could one-up the next person. "I don't listen to secular music."
"Oh, well I don't listen to secular music, and I don't watch TV."
"I stopped doing that years ago, now I pray for an hour every day, and I no longer wear jewelry, makeup."
"Yes, I know how close that brings you to God! When I did that I also started to only wear skirts and began homeschooling my children."
"Homeschooling my children has changed my relationship with God, and since that time I have also started canning all my own food and grinding my own wheatberries to make bread....."

And on it went. It was insanity. It may seem as though I am mocking, but I actually did sit in on conversations with women like this....and I admired them...and worse, I envied them.

Here is the truth. I am a sinner. A flawed individual. I am loud, I talk too much. I tend to focus on myself too much. I am disorganized in my thoughts and many times in my actions. I get nervous very easily. I am argumentative. I swear like a sailor. I have never met a carb I didn't like...nor, for that matter a sweet. I am a procrastinator and I am not always very good at self motivation.

Now don't get me wrong...I have a lot of very good things about me too...but, above is me, laid out and truthful....you could probably find more, if you asked my family. But in the end we are all, every last one of us like this. Flawed, imperfect creatures.

Use to be I tried from the get go to fix all of those problems right here...right now. Be good, be perfect! It wasn't until I truly understood St. Paul that I truly understood sin. He bemoaned his desire to be rid of sin, to try to be perfect for God. God basically said, "That's nice son, that you want to do this, be all perfect and such...but, ah...no. Keep your sin for a while...it is what keeps you humble."

What? God wants us to sin? Get out? No, of course God does not want us to sin. He never desires for us to sin. But God also has a timeline...it is his timeline and not our timeline. We are like impatient 4 year olds wanting to go to the park, we want what we want and we want it now. On the other hand God, has goals in mind. We find that as we grow older, we grow closer to him, and those sins seem to fall away in their own time. We are being perfected in Christ. It is not a past tense sort of thing. It is a past/present/future sort of thing. I have been perfected in Christ. I am being perfected in Christ. I will be perfected in Christ.

So I wear my sin like an ugly dress. I hate it, I know what it is, and I wish it gone. I attempt to quell it and restrain it and to become more diligent day by day. But you know what? It is no longer something I use as a measuring stick with others, I need not strip my life down to a monastic existence to become more holy. God works with what he has.

He works with me...flawed as I am.

Integrity

We are all presented with choices in life. Sometimes those choices are easy; rice or mashed potatoes? Watch the game or the movie? Go out to eat of just grab the left overs?
But sometimes we are presented with complex issues that there are clear right and wrong answers to, and the right answer is the one that is difficult. The one that can cost us a friend, cost us a relationship, can cost us a job....those are the tough choices....but, while difficult, in the end they also allow us to sleep at night. Sure, we can talk our way out of the right thing to do, reasoning that we don't want to hurt the other person, cost our families money, or other thoughts, but in the end, if there is something we know we should do, and we don't do it, it weighs heavy on our very souls.
As we grow up we find ourselves in these predicaments that test us, the easy ones, but at the time they seem to encompass our entire worlds. "Do you know what happened to my vase? It is broken." In this moments as a child we are tested with questions like these, sure the easy path says, deny knowledge, pass the buck, turn the blind eye. And even if we, ourselves are not the guilty ones, being put on the defensive, having to decide, at a moment's notice what answer we are going to give is a choice that marks either a path that will lure us as we grow with its ease to deny guilt or knowledge or will mark us with an ability to accept life's happenings and their consequences.
I find that the child who can say, "Yes, I do know what happened." tends to be the child who faces little difficulty in making friends in life, who tends to have a self assurance about himself that understands that life is messy, and we all make mistakes....and accepts those flaws in others.
On the other hand, the child who tends to deny any knowledge tends to doubt themselves and their belief that others have faith that they can truly succeed. It is that lack of faith in themselves and in those around them that, in the end, causes them to lack the confidence to make the truthful statement, to choose integrity.

We are not able to instill in a child faith in himself, it is a great inner gift that he gives himself. But when it is given, when a child gives themselves permission to have faults, flaws and to actually believe that they can learn from them, it is then that the moral compass with the bearing of integrity takes the correct bearing, steering them on a course into maturity and adulthood.