My Cropped Out Life

In a post on her exemplary blog, Meredith mentioned that her brother, with some derision, I think, once asked her what she was going to do when people read her blog, and then they met her and saw the part of her life she had cropped out. As a new blogger, that got me to thinking about my own cropped out life. I am very aware that this blog is only a carefully-edited slice of my existence. Recorded in heaven, I know, are the entries in my tear-stained, prayed-over, hand-written daily journal, the rantings vented to my patient husband, and conversations with friends who know the gritty details of my life. But a blog, such as this blog, is a cropped presentation of reality, to be sure.

And why not.

I got to thinking, as I was musing on this subject, of my dad. I knew my dad very well by the time he died. He would not mind my saying that he was a flawed individual, for he would be the first to admit it. But, when he passed away, I was stunned by how his life suddenly became, in my heart and mind, like a series of clarified snapshot photos. Cropped photos, to be sure. They were all about the essence of who he was and what his life meant: a snapshot of a conversation that left me feeling like my opinions mattered; a snapshot of a time he shared a reverence for God's creations; a snapshot of a time he was generous with his possessions; a snapshot of him being considerate for his aged mother. Everything else about him was cropped away and dropped away, and that was because these snapshots were of the essence of his life, and nothing else showed up for me any more. And so he has remained in my heart ever since.

And so I find the appeal in blogs like Meredith's. She has posted enough that I think I know the essence of who she is, and it is good. I think, when all is said and done, that this is all that there will be of any of us. I think that blogging is enabling us to capture something in an unprecedented way: the extraordinary value of an individual's day-to-day life. Perhaps, after all, cropping is just a preview of an Eternity to come.

Keep Moving

A big thank you to Amy at happythings for this reminder to keep moving. On days like this one, when hormones are contorted and energy levels sinking, I am tempted to sit down and never get up again. But, should I do that, I could end up like this truck in her grandparent's pasture! Keep moving, Dallan, keep moving!

A Sound Mind

"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."
--2 Timothy 1:7

I have this scripture handy, so that I can read it every day.
Those words mean a lot to me, especially as I struggle with attention deficit disorder. Today I looked up the word "sound" in my Roget's Thesaurus, to get a better understanding of what a sound mind is. Now I see more clearly what Timothy's declaration means.

God has not given me the anxiety and low self-worth and mental confusion I experience with ADD. He gives me all about my mind that is "whole, undamaged, healthy, robust, logical, true, valid, reliable, honorable, trustworthy, solvent, strong, firm, thorough," and, last, but not-at-all least, "unbroken."

There are things I like about having ADD. For the parts not-so-nice, I can remember what God wants for my mind to be, and look to Him for healing.

Clams!

On Monday FarmBoy walked in the door at 3:15 with clams! They were in the shell, bagged in ice-water, fresh and ready to cook. After our daily walk, we steamed them for about five minutes until the shells popped open, and ate them with butter until we didn't want any more. What a treat! A co-worker who lives at the beach had brought them and shared his bounty.

On Tuesday we had chowder for dinner. It was delicious, too.

Humanitarian Doll

Here is a photo of the Humanitarian Doll I made over the weekend. The pattern for these simple little dolls is most ingenious. You can see it for yourself here. And the address for one place where a person can contribute humanitarian aid items can be found here. On that page you will also find a link to patterns and instructions for many other things to make and share.

Hoe to the End of the Row

FarmBoy is the real deal. He calls himself FarmBoy because he was a real farm boy once upon a time, and he had a great mentor, Mr Draben. Mr Draben was a philosopher/farmer, and passed along many maxims to FarmBoy, such as this one, which stuck best: Always Hoe to the End of the Row. This FarmBoy lives by. He always hoes to the end of whatever row he is assigned, whether it be a row of tax-filing paperwork or a row of service to a widow or a row of . . . I don't know. . . dirt under the house that has to be removed so that there is uniform space between the floor-joists and the ground, by lying on his back in the dark, day after day, sending buckets of soil out on a rope. You get the picture? I am ever-grateful to FarmBoy for his example in this area, and for taking such good care of our family, mostly through living by that maxim.

I, too, worked for Mr Draben, for a brief time. Here is a story of something that happened with Mr Draben and me. One morning, Mr Draben drove me out to a beet field in the middle of nowhere and dropped me off . Before he pulled away in his truck, he pointed to a long row of beets which were being choked by horsetails and instructed me to weed the row. (No hoes involved, but same sort of thing.) I diligently did so. I got down on my knees and weeded to the end of the row, which took a considerable length of time, then I sat down for a few minutes to wait for Mr Draben's return. When Mr Draben did not return, I weeded another row of beets, tugging out all the tough, pesky horsetails until the row was clean. Still no Mr Draben. Although parched and exhausted, I weeded another row. Then another. I did this all day. Finally, after many long hours, Mr Draben drove up, jumped out of his truck and exclaimed, "What? Did you weed out all those horsetails by yourself?! I forgot you were out here! "

So, here is my maxim: Hoe to the end of the row, but don't go all crazy, you nut!

Thanks, Mr Draben.

Movie Guide

I love movies! I love stories, and films are my favorite genre for storytelling. Since I love movies, and since there are so few of them currently released which do not contain content offensive to me, I am very thankful for the Kids-in-Mind website. Kids-in-Mind rates the movies for content, giving visitors an item-by-item account of movie content in three areas: sex, violence, and language, as well as drug and alcohol usage depicted. You can read the details of the production in which you are interested, and know if there will be anything in it which is objectionable to you, according to your own personal standards. The problem with the MPAA rating system is it does not give much information as to the reason a film receives a certain rating. Kids-in-Mind does just that. Visit it here.

Yogurt

This is the Salton Yogurt Maker. It is a mainstay of my existence. I eat yogurt every day, so I make yogurt in this once or twice a week. Here is how I do it: I mix up 3 cups of warmish water with 2 cups of nonfat dry milk in a recycled 1 -quart yogurt container. I stir about 1/4 cup of plain yogurt into this, and then fill the container to the top with water. I then put the filled yogurt container into the yogurt maker and plug it in. Twelve hours later I take the container out and put it into the refrigerator. It is yummy and healthy and very inexpensive!

Immobilization

I have been battling migraines for years now, and they have been getting worse and worse. I recently visited an allergist, hoping to find that allergies were to blame. The determination of a single allergy, to cats, might explain why two of my worst migraine episodes were after visits to my mom's house and to the home of another cat-owning friend. But, that being the only allergy that showed up in testing, my hopes for eliminating foods or other factors, in order to prevent migraines, were dashed.

The physician who administered the tests, however, was very sympathetic to my plight. His wife has migraines, and he did not take my suffering lightly. He very enthusiastically recommended that I go on a prescription of a beta blocker, and wrote it up.

I started the beta blocker right away, and I was immediately relieved of any and all migraines. It's been six weeks now, and I haven't had to reach for my Imitrex (migraine pain-reliever) a single time. It is wonderful!

However, I am not sleeping well. I am having bad dreams. And I am experiencing bouts of depression. These are all familiar old ailments with which I have not had to deal for a while. For now, I'm sticking with the beta blocker, even though it may be to blame, because the migraine-free life is such a treat. But these other problems are immobilizing me somewhat, just as the migraines did.

Homemade Soy Milk

"What?" you say. "Why in the world would you make that?" Well, because soy is really healthy, and, with a 25-pound bag of dried soybeans in my pantry, I cannot justify buying soy milk. Homemade soy milk is so inexpensive that it hardly registers on the cost scale.
(This is a graphic illustration of homemade soy milk hardly registering on the cost scale. I know, it doesn't really fit, but it got my family-heirloom scale pictured on my site, and that's good.)

For bean consumption in general, I put a handful of beans into my smallest crock pot every night before bed, along with a half-teaspoon of salt and a quart of water, and have the beans with lunch the following day (no pre-soaking necessary). On the days when it's soybeans in the crock pot, I have soy milk with my lunch. Here is how it is made:

Put one cup of cooked soybeans into the blender.
Add two cups of ice cubes,
two cups of water,
one tablespoon of sugar,
and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla.
Whir it around on the blend setting for at least a minute.
Pour it into a glass, plug your nose, and drink. Okay, I don't really plug my nose, but it really doesn't have a pleasant aroma. More sugar makes it taste better, as does chocolate, which also makes it smell good, but I'm giving you the healthiest version. A banana is also a great addition. Just toss it into the blender with everything else. Much tastier.

Doing the Laundry

I'm doing three loads of laundry today. Not an unusual thing to do. But a good thing to do. Life is made up such loads of laundry, and I am happy to do it. I love the water showering into the wash tub, the rhythmic plodding of the machines, the quiet clicking of buttons on the walls of the dryer cylinder. I love the colors of the fabrics, their wet heaviness, and the warm softness of the laundry just dried. And I love the result: clean clothes and towels ready for use. It is no small thing to me to be blessed with lovely laundry to do. For me, it is one of the simple pleasures of life.

Homemade Crunchy Wheat Cereal

I am so happy to have found a simple way to eat home ground wheat regularly. This homemade crunchy wheat cereal is very good for you, and is great mixed with yogurt. To make it yourself grind two cups of wheat berries in your mill (or use 3-1/2 cups of purchased whole-wheat flour) and stir into it a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of soda and a tablespoon of sugar. Then pour into this two cups of sour milk (which is just two cups of regular milk with a tablespoon of vinegar added to make it curdley). Stir it all up.

Spread the resulting dough in a greased cookie sheet with sides (aka jelly roll pan), or on your cast iron griddle, and bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes. It will come out of the oven looking like a big flat cake. Cool it completely.

Now break the cake into pieces and toss them a few at a time into your blender and whir them (I use a pulse setting) until they are little nuggets. Spread all the nuggets onto two cookie sheets with sides (or two cast iron griddles) and bake them at 300 degrees for one hour, stirring every 15 minutes.

This is more steps than I usually take for anything, but well worth the effort for a very nutritious and inexpensive snack and day-starter.

Grinding Flax Seeds

Having read of the marvelous benefits of flax seed meal, I have incorporated it into my daily diet. I buy the seeds in bulk, because they keep well, which the meal doesn't, and I grind them into meal in my blender. I do a couple of cups at a time and the blender does a splendid job. The only inconvenience has been transferring the meal into a jar for storage in the refrigerator. Until yesterday. Yesterday I went into my pantry and got a jar which was sized so that the blender blades and screw top apparatus screwed perfectly onto the top of the jar. I then simply poured a couple of cups of flax seeds into the jar, screwed the blender blades securely to the jar top, and flipped the jar and placed it on the blender. The blades turned the seeds to meal right in the very jar in which they were to be stored. I just had to shake the blades off a bit as I pulled them out of the jar. Very simple. (And I really like simple!)

The Bookcase Bench

This was a great makeover. I had wanted a bench for a long time. I had the top of a hutch that I had been using for pantry storage, and one day realized that the top half of it could become a bench--and a bookcase. FarmBoy sliced it in half lengthwise, and I painted it. Here is the result.

More Recycled Furniture

Below is a photo of the coffee table FarmBoy made for me when we moved into CloudCover Cottage. We had needed a large butcher-block for a pre-sale repair in our old house's kitchen, and I got the idea to use a top from one of those oh-so-common dining tables of the 90's, and drove up to the thrift store to see if they might have one for sale. I walked in, and there it was! It had white legs and a natural butcher-block top, just as I had envisioned

Back at the old home, FarmBoy dismantled the table and cut a big piece out of the top for the repair project. He set the remaining pieces aside, and we brought them in our move to the new house. Once we were settled, FarmBoy went to work recycling the remaining pieces of the once- dining-room table. He cut a piece of the top into a coffee-table size, then cut the legs shorter.
He then reassembled the pieces, which I painted. It is very sturdy and a treasure because of its history.
I love it.

Welcome

Here at CloudCover Cottage, life reminds me of the 1938 Frank Capra movie, "You Can't Take it With You." We don't have a Lionel Barrymore character, exactly, but FarmBoy goes off to work every day to support all the rest of us, who are not as many as we once were, but still plenty. The Artist likes to spend a lot of time in her room, drawing, drawing, drawing Japanese-influenced art on her computer. Once in a while she emerges and bounces into the kitchen and cooks something fabulous. No "Love Dreams" to sell door to door yet (see the movie), but she makes us lots of gooooood stuff. Stan The Musician goes off to college every day to sing and play his trombone. He is our portal into the world of jazz. And me, I'm kinda like those guys in the basement (see the movie), except no explosions, just creations and messes. And I'm kinda like that ditzy lady with the kitten for a paperweight (see the movie), except I write with a pencil into a journal of unlined paper, instead of on a typewriter, and it's poems instead of plays. The FarmBoy is like the Jean Arthur character, the sane one in the bunch, who, nevertheless, just might be caught sliding down a banister when you least expect it. We are lilies, and, so far, taken care of very, very well. Glad you could drop by.--Dallan