Excavating Treasures

My week has had a strange rhythm. Household tasks (cleaning, organizing), lesson planning and trying to figure out the shape of my fall, lots of Penderwicks on audio (the sweet girl has fallen head over heels for the entire series), with VBS happening in the evenings. No other week this summer will look or feel quite like this one.

The organizing in our laundry room ~ which doubles as a sort of attic space/catch-all ~ has been interesting. I found a stash of papers that I clearly pulled from boxes a long time ago, probably during some other organizing season in my life, with the intention of doing something with them. I still haven't done much with them, beyond sorting through to see what's mine, what's D's, what needs to be filed for practical purposes (if anything at this late date) and what can go straight to recycling. It's an odd bunch of papers, ranging from receipts and other bits and pieces of ephemera to articles printed from the internet, snippets of poems I worked on a few years back, and scribbled drawings by the sweet girl at different ages.

It feels a little bit like excavating your life to come across things like this. I had a similar feeling earlier this summer when I went through some boxes of things I'd stored in my sister's attic during college, twenty plus years ago. Only that was a even stranger feeling since the layers went so much deeper.

Except for a few pages that seemed to have tumbled out of a very old writing file and gotten lost, the farthest this pile stretched back was four years. I know it's four years, because I found this little poem I wrote when the sweet girl was in kindergarten and learning to write her letters:

Learning to Write an "S"

I'm sketching a snake
who likes to skate
across my slate.

I also found essays by Kathleen Norris, poems by Li Young Lee, obituaries of and tributes to Madeleine L'Engle, annotated pages on John Granger's thoughts on postmodernism, and recipes for winter squash.

Tired and ear-achey as I am (and that's part of this week's rhythm too) I had to smile over all these treasures.

Literary Parents

I'm having "one of those weeks" where I figure I may as well clean house. When you know in advance that a week is going to be filled with stressful things you can't control (like your loss of health insurance or your kid's difficult morning at the dentist) it helps to dive into a simple, practical project where you can see satisfying results almost right away. At least it helps me! (I'm reminded of the fact that I used to love...weirdly, many people thought...shelf-reading books at the library. But what could be more satisfying than seeing that things are put in their proper places, the places where people can really find what they're looking for?)

I spent much of the morning (following the sweet girl's brave survival at the dentist...first novacaine, first laughing gas) cleaning out my laundry area. The sweet girl lay on the couch nursing her sore mouth with a milkshake and the solace of Charlie and Lola episodes and I cleaned. And I do mean cleaned. Our laundry area is essentially a hallway that functions as a sort of attic. We throw stuff there whenever we can't find room for it somewhere else, and it had been months since I'd done a good digging out. There were the piles of clothes that need to be hand washed and the ones that need sorting for give away or mending. Bags with miscellaneous craft supplies and stuff from one of the last cleaning out of the small junk drawers and a box filled with S's outgrown shoes. Plastic bottles and paper towel rolls we'd saved for D's puppet making ventures. And so on...

As I sorted, tossed, dusted, scrubbed and started loads of laundry, I remembered an idea I had once for sprucing up my laundry room. It seems to be a place where I spend a lot of time doing the routine kinds of drudgery that aren't much fun and yet are necessary if the house is to keep running. So despite the fact that I sometimes begrudge how much time I spend washing, folding and sorting, I know deep down that it's a labor of love.

So here's the idea I had: to create a montage of some of my favorite pictures of literary moms and dads that I can put up on the wall. So many of the wonderful children's books I read have terrific parental characters. They're not usually central to the story, but they're there, nonetheless, often working busily and cheerfully to make home a good place for their kids to grow.

I thought I would copy a picture of Ma Ingalls (from the Garth Williams illustrations in the Little House book) washing clothes or cooking or one of the many other chores we usually see her doing. I also want to copy a Vera Neville illustration from one of the high school Betsy books, the one of her papa, Bob Ray, wearing an apron and making onion sandwiches for the family's traditional Sunday night lunch. A picture of Sal's mother, in Blueberries for Sal, either collecting berries or canning.

Those are the ones I've thought of so far. I know there are lots more I'm not thinking of right away. Can you think of beloved or iconic illustrations, from picture books or longer books, of creative literary parents who loved their kids? My laundry room awaits your ideas!

Deep Breath

"If we are feeling the ill effects of being spread half an inch thick and going a million miles an hour, the solution is not to go ever faster and be spread ever thinner. The solution is to take a deep breath, identify what really matters, and do more of that and less of other things." ~Margaret Kim Peterson, Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life

Feeling Sheepish

I've not had time to blog for a while, for all sorts of reasons. August has turned out to be incredibly busy, especially as I slide the slippery slope toward school. The sweet girl and I begin first grade (year 2 of our homeschooling journey) on the 25th, and that's also the week the seminary class I'm teaching (Anglican Essentials) goes online.

In the meantime, I'm trying to coordinate the craft projects for our church's upcoming VBS, which will run next week. We're doing the Good Shepherd (Psalm 23) as the week's theme. Who knew how many lame lamb crafts were online? :-)

Seriously, I'm having fun but feeling a tad bit overwhelmed as I try to find "sheep" crafts that will work for various ages from pre-k on up to rising 6th graders. I've learned to felt wool this week (and the sweet girl had a lot of fun helping me with that) and I'm finding various types of coloring pages, puppets, paper plate crafts, etc. For the third day we'll be focusing on the shepherd becoming a sheep, so we'll focus on the birth of Jesus. It's been very interesting looking for manger crafts in August. I'm sure I'm throwing off all sorts of search engine statistics!

If anyone knows of any good sheep-y crafts, let me know...

Excavation of Creative Layers

For the past several days I've been going through old boxes and files, some of which I haven't opened in years. I am fairly certain that some of the things I'm going through I haven't looked at since we moved to this area almost eleven years ago. Other files I stuffed into cabinets and crates during the seminary years (as we now refer to them fondly).

Finding so many of my old papers has been eye-opening. By papers, I mean all sorts of things: papers I wrote during seminary, articles I clipped from newspapers or printed copies of from online sources, rough drafts of poems and short stories (some I spent long hours on and never went back to), notes and cards from friends, journals, favorite quotes and prayers. Seeing all of these things spill out of their haphazardly organized spaces (which I'm now trying to make sense of and really organize) has been a delight, but a bit overwhelming. It's a bit like excavating things in an archaeological dig, only the layers I'm discovering are layers of myself: my older (but younger!) self.

I'm beginning to notice certain trends in things I collected, kept, or wrote during certain seasons. My 20s and 30s were both very full decades, my 30s especially so, since those years included graduate school (seminary) and motherhood. The changing seasons of my life are easy for me to spot, like gradually changing colors in the layers.

And the one thing that stands out to me, with awe-filled gratitude, is that I've never lost my deep love for the written word. All those quotes and poems and articles and prayers I've collected, other people's words that inspire me, comfort me, challenge me...like a colorful bouquet of ribbons, like lifelines. And finding my own words has been eye-opening too, looking back on what I've written and what I've cared about over the years, and discovering afresh how deeply certain themes run in my life.

And then there's the surprise: I've written a lot. More than I realized, more than I remembered. Even seasons of my life when I thought I wasn't writing much, when time with the pen or the computer was precious and spare, I've still written. I almost cried re-reading some of the old short stories: some of these characters were near and dear to my heart, and still are (I'm thinking of making a creative return to a few of my unfinished projects). All these words I've spilled out over the years, even the acreage of rough drafts (and that's mostly what I find) are testament to how much I've needed and wanted to write, even during lean periods when all I could manage was writing in the cracks and crevices of seasons filled with other important and worthy things.

Some of the quotations and prayers I've re-found have spoken to me so deeply again. In weeks to come, some of them may pop up here. I think I'll likely title them "excavation quotations"!

New Year's Lists

I've got a plethora of new year's grading and writing deadlines, so these few days of supposed "down time" are actually some of the busiest I've had in a while! In the midst of all that, however, I'm contemplating some new year's lists.

I'm not a big new year's resolver. I don't make huge resolutions or very detailed ones. I do sometimes find this is a good time, however, to look again at my priorities and how I spend my time, and to try to set some goals and get a bit more organized. This year I seem to be in a bit of a list-making frenzy.

Here are some of the lists I'm currently making (mentally and/or soon-to-be on paper). Some of them, as you can see, lend themselves to larger organizational projects...in other words, the lists aren't just an end unto themselves!

Short-term lists:

*** My year-end list of books I've read or am in the process of reading. I usually compile that list based on my notes here and on the reviews I've written for epinions. Last year in early January I posted a list of my favorites (in various, self-appointed categories) for the year, and I hope to do that again this year. Usually that list helps me think about what kinds of reading I hope to accomplish in the new year.

*** Spring term kindergarten list. I need time to sit down and plan out (at least in broad sweeps) the next few months of school time for the sweet girl. I have a general idea of where I'm going and what books and other resources we'll be using, but I need some more time to pull all that together.

Short-to-medium-term lists:

*** First Grade book list. Lord willing, we'll be able to continue our homeschool journey in the fall (we are trusting God to continue to provide a way!). I'm already working on my book list for the coming year and thinking about ways I can find and utilize different resources (purchases, libraries, loans, downloads) in order to keep costs down. I love making this list because it excites me no end to think of the wonderful things the sweet girl and I will be studying and exploring together.

Please pray that I will not get bogged down in worries about how our continued commitment to homeschooling is actually going to happen. God continues to provide me work from home as we need it, often right when we need it, and it's no good fretting in advance even when I feel clueless about how he's going to do it the next time around. We're manna-gatherers for sure! Pray also that I can find ways to save toward some of the book and curriculum purchases we do need to make. I've been hanging onto my epi-earnings (helped immeasurably by their generous end-of-year bonus) in the hopes that I can use them for that this year, and not have to spend them on creditors, car or health insurance.

*** Money-saving ideas. With the preceding paragraph in mind, you're no doubt not surprised to see this here. Our debt burden and increasing out-of-pocket health care costs, combined with our less than lucrative (at least monetarily...we are so rich in every other way that counts!) vocational choices means that we have to get really creative this year about tightening our belts even further. I have been trying to come up with a list of ideas to save us money each week and month, in the hopes we can begin to chip more at debt and be freed up to give more as we're called. If you've got good, creative tips or web resources on saving money, generating needed income, or budgeting, pass em' on!

*** Address list. This sounds silly...after all, we live in the information age and I'm supposed to have this kind of data all handy somewhere, right? But we don't. My mad scramble to find email and/or postal addresses for a number of people this Christmas made me realize just how unorganized our personal address list is. A lot of that is due to the fact that the last time we did a full-scale organized list, it was on a computer that now sits almost unused in our bedroom (an old computer that has no way of "talking to" this computer). This is the year for me to get old stuff OFF that computer and to re-organize a contact list for what we like to call our "life community" -- people we've known and loved during so many different seasons and places.

Medium-long-term lists:

*** Genealogical information. This one is related to the above. About a decade ago, D. and I did a lot of research into our families' histories, some of which bore great fruit. We organized some of the info. in hard copies (charts, pictures, etc.) and those boxes are sitting in our closet, awaiting further organization. Some of the data made it onto a budget software program on our old computer, once again, "non-transferrable." Eventually we'd like to get a better program, but in the meantime, I'd be satisfied with just getting the information we have into accessible and easy to find formats in binders and plastic folders.

*** My writing files. Ah, the never ending project. I haven't organized my writing files in so long it's embarrassing. It's also embarrassing how often I can't find a story, poem or other piece I've written, or a project I started and would like to re-visit and work on again. This really needs to happen. One reason I realized that anew is because D. and I worked on a series of narrative monologue and poems several years ago, which were presented (in rough form) as an advent program at the seminary. Seven years later, this advent, we got to thinking about them again and began talking about ways we could revise them, add to them, and perhaps even think about submitting them somewhere for publication...only to discover we can't find the file anywhere. Still looking! I hope to really dive into some writing projects this year, both old and new, so this organizational goal feels important.

*** Birthday and Christmas scrapbooks for the sweet girl. I keep promising myself these will get done. I really want to work on them this year!

Well, I'm sure there are more lists I could think of...and have thought of...but these are the ones coming to mind for now.

How about you? Do you make lists and plan organizational projects for the new year?

Getting Organized

Last week's illness has finally given way...to this week's illness. I managed to recover from the awful intestinal bug only to get whammed by sinus congestion and a nasty cough. So I've been dragging around now for the better part of seven days! I guess winter is going out with a bang!

Speaking of seasons "going out" or "coming in," the sweet girl's preschool class has been talking about the expression "March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb." S. thinks this is a very fun expression and she's been trying out various variations. The other day she informed me that "we've had three warm, sunny lamb days in a row." But then yesterday she announced "I like lion weather better!"

Missing a couple of days of work recently has made me feel a little overwhelmed -- both at the office, where I'm behind, and here at home, where I've had more time to notice the general clutter and mess. I'm trying to get myself somewhat organized here at home. The spring light and at least some spots of spring weather have given me the urge to spring clean, despite the fact that I've not had much energy to tackle the piles of clutter. I'm trying to set myself a small organizing task each day, with a couple of larger projects each week. That makes for slow progress, but slow progress is better than no progress.

I'm also trying to organize my thoughts for this Friday's upcoming meeting at S's school -- our annual evaluation meeting with the added twist of being the 'transition to kindergarten' meeting. Pray for us. We're going to be explaining our desire to homeschool, and since my daughter has an IEP and we'll be in a room full of education professionals (including a rep. from the school district) I'm trying hard not to expect the worst. I keep reminding myself that her teachers have always been helpful, supportive and encouraging, and that there's no reason why they shouldn't continue to be, but given the odd looks we've been given by supervisors/evaluators in the past when we've brought up homeschooling, we're prepared to have to defend the decision. I want to do it graciously and confidently and not at all defensively. We are grateful beyond words for the help S. has been given at the preschool, especially with speech therapy and in learning new socialization skills, but we also feel like the time has come for us to transition to this new season. I'm not sure if our case will be helped or hindered by the excellent scores on her recent evaluation. I am still feeling so amazed and thankful for that report.

As I think about organizing for more formal homeschooling, I've begun poking around for some ideas about record-keeping during the kindergarten year -- ways to keep track of the things that S. is learning and doing, her projects and activities. I found a wonderful website called Small Meadow Press. The woman who runs the site makes gorgeous papers and journals, and I downloaded a set of what she calls "Home Learning Notes." These are simple and lovely -- well-designed sheets for organizing weekly pages, monthly pages, thoughts & plans, projects, books read, community/contact list, outings and field trips, activities & classes, and general memorandum. A homeschooler's dream (at least my dream!) and I think probably quite useful even for folks who aren't homeschooling but who still want to have some beautiful pages on which to organize their thoughts. I printed a set on regular white paper but will likely make copies on slightly heavier paper (she suggests recycled, an earth-friendly idea) and put them in a binder. Just finding them made me feel more organized. Imagine how I'll feel when I actually begin using them!