September is for Preserving

We chose to go without a vegetable garden this year, so all of the crops that usually keep me busy in Summer were blessedly not around to occupy my time. A relief, in hindsight, because my injured back would have made much of those chores impossible.

But now, September, and the ripening of plums and apples in abundance. Our orchard is still young enough that the other fruit trees only produce enough for fresh eating.

But this year, for the first time, the Italian Prunes and all of the apples were enough that we decided to dust off and refurbish our old hand-me-down fruit dryer. It's the same dryer that young me used to have to check on every few hours in the Summer.

I can't remember where my parents got it, but it was constantly running in late August into September, full of prunes and apples and pears and sometimes bananas. Back in our early years of marriage, my parents were downsizing and we adopted it into our family. A little scrubbing and re-wiring, a new fan and bulbs, and that baby was humming again, so happy to be once again serving a hard-working family of wannabe homesteaders.

A little later in the month, together with my cider-pressing expert of a Mother-in-Law, we joined her abundance with ours and put our new/old press to the test.

This cider press has an even longer and perhaps more special history than the fruit dryer, having traveled the Pacific Northwest with some dear friends of ours for decades. Back before kids came along, we had a chance to make cider for the first time with a group from church on this very press, and the stories unfolded of all of the people that had borrowed it; some we knew, most we didn't; of the time it sat for years under a tree in someone's orchard that had borrowed it and neglected to return it and our kind mentor had opted to not nag. And yet it survived. These friend/mentors of ours lived well into their 80's, but recently both passed away. When I was helping at their estate sale, I made sure this priceless antique came home with me. Not to be put on a shelf and admired, but to continue using it and hopefully passing it along to our kiddos in turn.

When all was said and done, we made a total of 8 gallons of cider that day, and had a tractor bucket full of scraps that we split between the chickens and our local forest-dwelling wildlife.

And that isn't all the cider press was used for this year. Oh no; we fully intend on getting our money's worth out of that beautiful machine. So, when the time came to clean off the grape arbor, we piled all of our bounty together into one bucket and pressed those grapes for jelly. I know I broke a million rules by pressing grapes for jelly rather steaming them then letting them slowly drip through cheesecloth. But you know what? My jelly turned out pretty darn good anyway.

Once we were in full harvesting steam, we just couldn't seem to stop, so we picked apples at our neighbor's house (he claims he doesn't like them, silly man) and made a zillion more batches of dried apples and two beautiful pies. One for the neighbor and one for us.

With the pies comes one last story.

You see, the day we harvested the apples and I made the pies, I was in a bit of a grumpy mood. I'm usually pretty even-keeled, but this day, for whatever reason, I just wanted to relax with a book or some stitching and spent most of the pie-making time having a mental dialogue that wasn't very happy.

If you did a rewind to that morning, you would have seen me sitting in the church pew listening to a sermon about being compassionate. It was a good sermon, but I was going through the motions of making an extra pie, thus doubling the labor, as a way of saying thank you to the neighbor for letting us pick his apples, but I wasn't going to be excited about it.

I knew he would enjoy the pie, but what I didn't know was that his adult son's pregnant girlfriend, who also lives next door and that I had yet to meet, had just posted that very day on facebook, just how much she was craving apple pie. If you've been pregnant you know how strong and controlling those food cravings can be. So this wasn't just "apple pie sounds good right now" it was "IF I DON'T GET AN APPLE PIE SOON I MIGHT DIE".

I kid you not. I couldn't make this up if I tried.

The expression on her face when I walked up with a steaming pie straight from the oven was unforgettable. And I looked like a total hero even though I certainly didn't deserve it. God has a way of bringing us up short sometimes. I like it when He does so in such a gentle and humorous way.

The sermon the next week was on Humility, by the way. I learned my lesson in advance.

Forward

So much of this past year has been hard, uncertain, left unfinished. Dreams yet to be fulfilled, goals put off for yet another year, visions of peace marred by the incursions of sadness, anxiety, frustration. I found myself this past week, as I lay on the couch fighting a fever that lasted for days, wishing I could have just one more month to get everything in order before the New Year started. As if the turning of a digit cared one whit for my to-do list.

I wanted to feel closure, accomplishment, a happy resolution to 2013.

Then I read this post on Ann Voskamp's blog (go ahead, click the link and go read it, I'll wait right here).

"How in the world do you step hopeful into the next year when you tripped messy through the last year? How do you stand brave with all the smiling rest and ring in the new year when the old year still feels a bit like a millstone around the neck? What if everyone else is making New Year’s resolutions and you just want New You solutions?"

And so, I let it all go. All of it.
I breathe, long and slow and deep, and with the exhale,
all the things that I've been holding over my own head,
they fly free into the atmosphere.

I'm starting fresh today, with a clean slate, asking with an open heart,
"what do You, who holds the world, hold for me this year?"

"And there’s the utter release of being more grateful for what is than feeling guilty for what isn’t — The moving forward always happening in the relief that all the guilt is covered by His grace."

A Happy, Fresh, Clean-Slate New Year to you all!

And so it Begins...

It had apparently been quite a long time since I stitched on a piece of Weeks' 40 count linen. So when I picked up my newest project, started up my needle, and my eyeballs kept getting crossed instead of the threads, I thought I needed a new lightbulb in my lamp.

The new lightbulb did not help.

Sitting in a different chair with a different lamp helped only slightly.

Stitching by daylight helped only slightly more than slightly.

So I did what any intelligent woman would do.

I bought my first pair of stitching glasses.

I thought stitching glasses were at least a decade in my future.

But the glasses did the trick, so I'm just going to have to admit it...
this Spring chicken is all grown up.

But I'm Not that Old Yet

I graduated from a tiny little private Christian school in Southern Oregon. My graduating class was even smaller than the average in our high school by at least half. Yes, you counted right... ten of us (aren't we cute?).

I read recently that 20 to 30 percent attendance at a high school reunion is average, and anything above that 30 percent is considered a great success. So I guess I should be pretty proud of the 40 percent of my class that showed up for our 20th reunion.

Here we are with our families (and Bailey!), not feeling a day over 28, and yet somehow we are... how did that happen?

We made a promise to each other to not let another 10 years go by before we meet again. I honestly think we'll keep that promise.

A Different Kind of String

Speaking of bucket lists, and not waiting to have fun... wanna meet my new love?

An Ibanez SR500PB with Bartolini pickups... yes, its still a little Greek to me too, but I can't begin to tell you how much fun I'm having learning to play him/it/her.

Apparently, in any language that assigns gender to words, standard guitars are female and bass guitars are male. So there are people out there that have written page after page of comments in guitar forums stating their opinions on what type of names are appropriate to give your stringed instrument.

Yes, I do plan on naming my guitar.

My car is named "The Smoke Monster" (not because it smokes, but as a tip-of-the-hat to one of my all-time favorite TV shows), and I used to name all of my houseplants, so why not name my bass as well?

For now, I'm referring to it as "My Precious".

Who knows, that name might stick. Although I'm also considering "Mabel", contrary to the opinions of the guitar-gender-police, as well as a short list of a few other names.

I'm still a total beginner, but had so much fun with the borrowed bass that I just knew I needed to take the next step and get my own gear. I walked into the Guitar Center that day thinking I was just going to look around but make no decisions. I should have known. It was love at first sight.

I completely avoided getting it down because it was in a different price bracket than I had anticipated, but when the store employee came over to help and suggested that very one (I swear I wasn't even looking in that direction, so he had no clue), then proceeded to tell me all the reasons he would buy it himself if he was in the market... well, it was all the nudging I needed.

Now I have to work really hard to become a bassist worthy of her instrument.

P.S. that great guitar strap was found on etsy.

Finding Inspiration in Coffee

An artist friend of mine (we go all the way back to high school) hosts an art journaling blog.

Now, I am not an art journalist. Yes, I do keep a journal, and have off and on for years, but its pretty much about writing, and not art. So when my friend asked if I would be a guest host for this year, I was completely confused and unsure what I could possibly contribute.

I think perhaps I've started to "get" it, though, and am thankful that she has made allowances for those of us that prefer to let our cameras capture the art in life.

Twice monthly, she asks for us to either journal or photograph in response to a specific theme, the year's overall theme being in collaboration with Monday Mugshots, so the posts also need to incorporate mugs or coffee in some way.

In response to the theme "What if..." this is what I posted:

 What if... about a year into my tenure at Boyd Coffee Company...

What if... I had taken that job offer in Colorado...

Would he have hunted me down as he says?

Would my last name start with a "T"?

Would my interest in antiques, papercutting, stitching have been encouraged?

Would those two Littles (see their silhouettes on the mantle) be mine?

Would I be ever grateful to a coffee company for playing matchmaker?

What if...

Some Days

Most days anymore, I find myself looking at my computer, thinking about this blog, and coming up with nothing to say. The ideas used to flow out of me like water, posting every day was a breeze. While in most ways, I'm improved greatly in my health over what I felt a few moths ago, it seems the inspiration and free-flow of ideas are stopped right up.

Bloggers block, I guess.

So I sit here, this morning, with photos of my lovely spring flowers to show you, and nothing really to say. I've heard that the best way to overcome writers' block is to just start writing and see what comes out. Perhaps the same applies in my situation.

So, I sit down, and I just start to type whatever comes to my brain.

How are you all? What are your days full of? I hope lots of joy and peace and inspiration... I find my days full of laundry and vitamins and thinking about food.

Its pretty hard to not think about food when you have to change so many components of what you usually eat. We're at the end of week 6 with no dairy, eggs or gluten for the First Grader. We've settled into a bit of a rhythm, but there are many moments of missing foods that are now impossible to concoct. Two more weeks and we can start experimenting with bringing those foods back. We're all praying that he'll be able to tolerate small quantities of the now forbidden foods.

As for me, while I'm much, much better, there are still plenty of days when I'm just not myself. Still trying to get the whole progesterone deficiency taken care of. Perhaps that's where the lack of inspiration lies. I feel tired a lot, and boy-howdy, when my monthly cycle starts, good grief! The emotional swings are a bit hard to take for someone who's always been the picture of even-keel.

All these Spring flowers are helping to brighten up my horizon, along with the newly crossed-off-my-bucket-list dream I've achieved.

Want to know what it is?

I'm now officially a bass-guitar player.

Yep! After nearly 20 years of on-again, off-again, fiddling with an acoustic guitar, and faint voice in my brain wishing to learn bass, I've finally been given the opportunity. A borrowed bass and amp have been in my studio for months, but it wasn't until I was given a song list and deadline that I finally stepped up and gave it a real try. Easter Sunday was my debut at church, playing with the worship team. I usually just sing, but this time it was vocals and bass at the same time, and it was so very fun!

If I could sum this post up with one wish for you, it would be that you would also find the gumption to cross something off of your bucket list. Let go of whatever is getting in your way, and just do it! And when you do, be sure to let me in on the story.

And that's all I've got for you today.