Think Pink

Simplicity NOW!

You had to know that I was going to have to write more about organizing and getting settled, right?  It's inevitably going to be uppermost on my mind this month (though at the moment whether or not I will actually throttle the children with their own toothbrushes is pretty high as well). Earlier this year the lovely and talented producer of uncommonly cute girls Stephanie shared a "Decluttering Calendar" with me, and I fell in love.  One thing to do everyday.  I can do one thing, right? Yep. I can. I have a handy dandy highlighter and I mark them right off and I feel goo-ood! YAY! So I signed up for the little e-news letter and got this questions.  Some are a wee bit touchy-feely I'm-ok-you're-ok.  But that's ok.  They're helpful:

1. How do you want to feel this week? What is one action you can take?

Not rushed.  Plan my time. Look ahead and DO NOT procrastinate

2. Identify one time waster you can decrease.

Dang it--it's the computer.

3. You are enough. Write down 5 accomplishments from today.

• helped a friend
• started back to school
• prepared, served and cleaned up after a family dinner
• folded almost ALL the clean laundry
• went to the library

4. Calm yourself down with deep breathing during stressful situations.

5. Make a list of things you would like to finish up from last year.

• Organize the garage
• all closets decluttered and cleaned
• a place for everything
• paint the kid's rooms
• increase flower gardens

6. Do one task that has been on your to do list since 2007

I'll get back to you at the end of the week--I hope to conquer at least one closet, maybe two this week.

7. Do something you are passionate about

OH all RIGHT I'll read; twist my arm! Heh.  I hope to draw a little too.

Mission Organization

Sometimes I ask myself,"Self, why are we always cleaning and organizing?"  Maybe it's time I took the time to really answer that question as I set out to face my new year. I tried to break it down into a simple statement, a mission statement to narrow my focus:

I want to live my life the following ways:

• Do the things that need to be done quickly, efficiently, thoroughly and happily so that
• I can do the things that bring me joy more often, and without neglecting the necessary

I think that that statement fully explains what I want to do this year.  There will always be necessary things, laundry, cleaning, housework, mowing, home repair, but the faster and more efficiently I can accomplish these things every day, the more time is freed for the things I wish to do.  I am tired of feeling guilty for "stealing a a few hours" for me. Whether it be to read a book, to walk the beach, to draw or just to think, it seems that in the back of my mind is always the nagging reminder that I have other things that really need doing. NO MORE! I know my God is a God of order, making just enough hours in each and every day to accomplish everything that needs doing if I only I can order my time His way and not my way.I don't want to always be thinking about what is undone.  I want to rest and enjoy my life, my home, my family knowing that all things will be done in their proper time. 

I have many friends to thank for helping me get launched on this new adventure.  However, in order to get all things done in their proper time today, I must prepare to leave the house for the evening.  Be watching for some helpful links and happy hat tips to those who led me there tomorrow.

 

Fall-ish

This is about the only time of year when I really think of living somewhere else.  A time that if the hunky hubby said, "Let's move to...[insert somewhere with seasons here]", I would jump up and race about throwing my one sweater and jacket into a duffel and hit the road rather than cringing and whining about the beach and windows open seven months a year and how nice the hammock is in February while everyone else is having a blizzard.  We don't really have fall here, we have fall-ish.  I am happy to say that fall-ish has graced us with it's presence a bit earlier this year.  Oh sure, we're still in the low 90's most day with a humidity that is practically visible, and afternoon thunderstorms rolling in off the ocean, but there is a gentler, more caressing quality to the air in the afternoon.  The breeze is pleasant.  It cools the brow rather than blasting like heat from the just-opened oven.  The ground doesn't soak up the sun and blast it back up in a form of sun worship until long after sundown. Fall-ish.  It gives me hope that soon, soon my season of open windows will come and air that is sea salt tangy will waft me off to sleep each evening to the serenade of the back-yard owls. 

Unfortunately with fall-ish comes an actually fall (no ish) schedule which has rolled over me like dark clouds off the ocean.  It tosses me this way and that with fits of rain and moments of glorious sunshine slantings as I try to determine the space of time to the next downpour and if I should even bother putting on dry clothes or just keep squishing around in the old ones until late-at-night when I pull on an old t-shirt, and read until sleep claims me--sometimes hours, sometimes moments.

All the while inside of me there is a changing that has no "ish" to it.  If it were a season it would be written in all caps with italics: CHANGE. Things are rearranging, realigning purging and organizing (call it spiritual housekeeping, now if I only I could find time to mirror it in the physical), which is never comfortable and often seems never ending.  Though being allowed a fallow season this summer, I feel I should have seen this one coming. In the never-ending-ness of it all, I wonder sometimes if I am truly effecting change, within or without, or if I merely make myself busy with tedium, and if so....?

These are all the things that come to me in my fall-ish season, a spiritual season which works it's way toward redemption in the form of Rosh Hashanah, a natural season which works it's way towards harvest, a physical season which works it's way toward instituting a new set of behaviors and activities, and through them all the common thread of of old things becoming new and better.  I have hope.

I Have a Plan

It's not as inspiring as having a dream, but I DO love a plan.  Oh I do! and I have one for this week involving menu's, several projects, more organization and watering the lawn as it is never going to rain again, EVER (all my Texan friends are shaking their soggy fists at me right now).  It is now one week until Disciple class starts,  and my heart is all a-flutter.  Public school started today which means we now enter a nine month period where syrupy sweet smiling mouths will ask us "No school today?" everywhere we go during school hours.  I also will have to listen to the endless string of excuses why people "could never do what I do." Really.  It's OK.  I won't judge you, and you don't have to explain.

We are going to continue on with edumacation.  Without thinking about it being school time I agreed to letting Lindsay be away Weds-Sun this week, so I am going to have to do some alteration to the week's plans.  That is the one drawback of having us all do the same study plan, when one is gone, it's hard to maintain with the others.  But I will figure something out. 

We had a never-to-be-repeated moment this week when my oldest wailed "MOOOO-OOOOOM I have too many clothes!!!" Unfortunately, she is right.  The closets and dressers have gone out of control over the summer months so this week will feature the Great-Portwood-Hand-Me-Down Festival and while we are at it, The Wearing of the Pants.  Luckily, I am feeling pretty good about not actually needing to buy many things to get us though the winter months.  Though I am going to have to demand that Lindsay stop growing longer and taller because it is truly a miraculous moment that we can get ankles, wrists and stomach all completely covered by fitting clothes. She's like a tall quadrapus.

Having finally decluttered my desk top this weekend, I will be cleaning up all my files this week, deleting the detritus and finding a place for everything so that we can write all my content onto disks and reformat this poor ailing beast at which I am typing.  All in all it still serve me quite well, but it needs a tune up and to do that effectively, I've got to get my cyber-clutter under control.

A bit later today I will be posting my menu plan for the week.  I did it for a few weeks this summer and it was delightfully freeing, then vacation came and I let it lapse.  But I want that freedom again, of not thinking "Oh CRAP what are we going to eat!" at 5:30 pm.  I may be anal, but it leaves me time to read.

Speaking of reading, I am also performing a MAJOR overhaul on my book blog this week.  It needs it, and unless I do it soon, I am going to be hopelessly and forever lost and behind in my reading schedule for the rest of the year.  I just can't have that.

On my calendar for this week is Girl's night, worship team practice, Wednesday night church kicks back in, kid's worship team practice, 5 services and dinner with some good friends.

I think that covers this week in a nutshell. If you stayed with me, more power to you.  I missed exciting somewhere about the second sentence.   

Quiet Moments of Joy

I have this feeling. I call it my "joy bubble".  There are times when I just get stopped in my tracks and I look around and think, "My life just couldn't get any better than this."  That joy, the contentment, that completeness wells up in my like a bubble, hence the term joy bubble. It happens at the most mundane moments: walking out onto the backporch with my coffee, sitting in bed late at night reading with my husband sleeping beside me, snuggling my babies with morning dragon breath.  It creeps up on me unexpectedly and overwhelms me with contentment that I carry with me the rest of the way.

I'm having a hard time finding that bubble lately.

Today I feel all jumbled up and quirky.  I feel like cleaning to work things out.  I think I shall.

See you on the shiny clean flip-side.

Simply Peaceful

The view from my hammock in the back yard.  Yes Sir, that is a whole lotta nothin' behind us.

We spent the day at the river and then came home to the hammock.  It's hard work, this relaxing.

More pictures over at Flickr

Simply Held

It's rained the past three days here in Paradise. This is a good thing. We need the rain. I like to sit on the back porch when this happens.  At first the heat is weighty and oppressive but then little gusts of wind flirt with the trees, and then you hear it coming...the wind gusting, the rain sheeting at the wake of the storm.  Inevitably there is then a loud crash that I hear in my head and feel in my feet.  Concussive, like a shove.

I like to hear the rain pounding on the tin roof and cascading out of the gutters.  I like to watch the flowers droop, droop as the weight of the water makes the petals and leaves too heavy to stand upright anymore.  I like to feel the mist of it as it comes through the screen. 

And then in an hour, the clouds roll away, the flowers reach up again to the sky, the sunlight slants through the leaves with a green underwater feel. Far off thunders gently grumble over the ocean and I can imagine the little white wavelets calming, ceasing quieting.

I am reading a lot, averaging a book every day and a half.  There's wine in my cup at night when I listen to the tree frog symphony on the back porch. I sip it slowly and close my eyes and just be for a moment when the kids are quiet and the house is dark.  I don't use lights, but light candles in each room and move like a swimmer barely making ripples in the dark.

I laugh and cry and sing and cook and wash and fold and think and email and read and shower and exercise and eat and sleep and do all the things that the rest of the world is doing everyday.  I am living.  I'm raising my petals to the sun again after the weight of the storm.

This is what it means to be held.

Simply Natalie

Natalie

I don't remember when I met Natalie.  All I know is suddenly, she was an irreplacable part of my heart. What is there to say about Natalie?

She sparkles and shines. 

To be smiled at by Natalie was to catch a glimpse of a rare and transcendant beauty.

She wore purple nailpolish

and tiaras

and do-rags

all with impeccable unmatchable style.

She lived and loved simply, abundantly, deeply, sparkly.

She loved Friends. "How YOU doin'?

She took pictures of her stacks of books from the library and sent them to me.

She made me read and love Anne of Green Gables.

God is her husband, and I am merely a friend.

It is right that a bride should be with her husband, even if it leaves me empty handed, for awhile.

She loved her children. She fought for her children.  She adored her children.  She didn't have enough time with her children.

One of the last things she did was brag to me that she could finally turn a row and crochet more than a chain.

She dyed her hair pink once for me. then orange, then brown then blond again, but only the pink was voluntary.

She loved me, an often times monumental task.

She honored me, for what I'll never understand.

She was my best friend, one of the best friends I will ever have in my life. One of my special group of women that aren't supposed to die.

But then, Natalie was never one to follow the rules.

She lived in a hobbit hole and was a hopeless romantic.

She had books stacked to the ceiling.

She was determined, faithful, gentle, wonderful, funny, silly, unique, creative, generous, beautiful, inspiring, encouraging, did I mention beautiful?

She made me laugh.

She made me cry.

She didn't want to die, but she was ready to go home.

She loved british comedy

and British tragedy

and British literature.

Natalie loved all things British.

She had Bible verses hanging up all over her house.

She shared her bed with a child almost every night.

She loved chocolate and daisies and praise music, and funky rhythms and dancing and blue.

Her eyes were blue.

I rarely heard her say a mean word about the person who broke her heart.

I wish I had the words to share Natalie.  All these words are just....small things.  Little snippets of a heart and life so large that it touched every person who came in contact with it, with her, with my Natalie Rose.

Thank you God, for my friend.  I wanted longer with her, but even a tiny portion of her life is worth the grief of her leaving.  I am blessed; I am changed; I am better for having known Natalie. I will miss her always, and I will never forget.

Onward and Upward, Nat. I love you!!!11.

Simply Resting

I forgot that there are hurts that heal, and hurts that change you forever.  It's been awhile since I have taken one of those wounds, the permanent kind.  I keep waiting for the pain to be less, and then I remembered; it doesn't work that way.  Loss like this doesn't go away.  It just becomes less surprising. 

Tomorrow is Natalie's memorial service, which I cannot attend, but which Joanne is attending in my stead.  She is repaying me with sobbing, incoherent phonecalls which really aren't doing much for my current state of bipolar hysteria and melancholy. Since I can't be there, I will have to remember Natalie here.

An oddly unusual lack of events is what this week holds for me, and I am taking full advantage of it.  Hubby is gone on a youth trip.  My Bible Study is over for the summer.  I have the week off of worship team, so no practice and no Wednesday night services for the summer.  What that means is, I have nothing on my calendar.  No where I have to go.  Nothing I have to do. I am calling it a little mini-vacation for me.  A time to rest.  A time to heal. A time to attempt to sleep without the use of major narcotics (in times of emotional stress, I simply stop sleeping.).

I called this summer the summer of simplicity, so for the next few days, in my limited computer time, I will be writing a SImple Series. I am tired and sad.  This life is wearing my down as is the weight of my heart.  I won't waste these moments of introspection. Life is too short.

My Summer November

  It's the first day of the new month. June.  My summer November.  At the end of this month I will think to myself "This year is half over.  Where did it go, and what have I done with it."  That is what I will say.  By the end of this month, my kids will have been to camp and back, an event for which they have waited breathlessly since this time last year.  My husband will have been gone over half the time that he is scheduled to be away this summer.  And what about me?   What will be said of me at the close of half the year.  I thought about that as I sat here sipping coffee and hearing my children begin to wake and stretch in their beds.  We have finally closed the windows for the heat of summer and at this moment I can literally hear the sound of a stretch from east wing. But returning to my question, what will be said of me?  I read some books; I sang some songs; I cooked, fixed, and served over 300 meals; I cleaned the house 26 times; I washed, dried, folded and put away some 200 loads of laundry. I traveled to Washington DC and Arizona. I got a cell phone, and fell in love with my ipod.  All of these things make up my life so far in the year 2007.  I look at them and think, "It's not so much, really.  There isn't a lot there to impress."

I find my self oddly contented in that last thought.  There isn't much about my life that would impress anyone by its grandeur, its scope, its adventure or its magnitude and yet somehow, looking back over the last year, I find myself replete. I have not made a mark in this world, or one that will last more than a moment, like the faint swirl of an oar when the canoe passes by, and yet I don't mind my own anonymity.

I am Known. I have a Purpose and a Part to play. They are mine and mine alone to be enjoyed until they are complete.  And then, Home.