New House, Old Fashioned Amenities

Hey-oh! No, I’m not back entirely yet, but I am beginning to live in hope again. I have surgery on Friday to remove one of the screws in my ankle (a long, nasty one). After that, I’ll be able gradually to start bearing weight on my ankle and getting my life back.

To celebrate my impending recovery, I’m sharing a few photos of the house-that-has-not-yet-been-named-because-five-adults-and-three-children-can-never-really-agree-on-anything.

(NB: I could put up picture of bedrooms and bathrooms, but who wants to see that? Instead, these feature some of my favorite old fashioned, family-friendly amenities.)

Playhouse.

Playhouse (rear view).

Snack bar. (Yes, those are blackberry brambles!)

Path to the bog. (AKA "entrance to the mine.")

Outdoor kitchen.

View of the neighbors.

Future garden plot / mud pie bakery.

Jungle gym.

Settin' porch.

Keep me in your prayers as I bring my long convalescence to a close this weekend. The next time I post here, I hope to be walking again!

Why I’ve Been Away . . .

My New Year’s resolution to post two entries a week seems to have worn a little thin lately. I’m sure you’ve noticed. I expect to be back — stronger, better, and more old fashioned than ever — in a few weeks, but I thought that, in the meantime, you might enjoy knowing some of the reasons why I’ve been away.

1. I’ve spent next to no time on my computer at home lately. It generally stays downstairs; I’ve been spending most of my evening free time upstairs — usually elevating my ankle in bed and reading after I’ve kissed the children good night. (Getting from upstairs to downstairs and back with a broken ankle in a big house is no mean feat — and not a project that I tackle without good reason.)

2. I have no time. You might think that with a broken ankle, I’d have tons of time to sit around and blog. Not really. Everything little thing I do — from getting dressed to getting a cup of coffee — requires twice as much time and three times as much effort and ingenuity as usual. Combine that with the fact that I’ve been back at work full time for the last three weeks, and I find I actually have much less “sit on my bum and write” time now than I did before.

3. I don’t write well or easily when I’m not happy — and lately, I just haven’t been all that happy. Some people can — and do — write better when they’re depressed. I can’t and don’t. Although I know that my spirits (and my will to write) will no doubt rebound quickly once my recovery is complete, in the meantime, well . . . you likely won’t hear from me quite as often.

Thanks for understanding.

Adventure 18: Dear Diary

Dear Everybody,

Thanks for your patience with me as I have been learning to live with an immobilized left ankle over the last two weeks. I haven’t been much in the mood to start in on a new Old Fashioned Adventure until now. Life has been enough of an adventure lately without my adding any others into the mix.

But my sweet mother (and one of this blog’s #1 fans) has very sweetly hinted to me that “it’s time.” Perhaps she’s hoping that writing will help me climb out of the mini-funk I’ve been in.

It might. Writing does often have a very uplifting effect on me. I have found that there’s something profoundly therapeutic about letting my thoughts spill out onto paper. Paper is always ready to listen. Paper never judges, though it does often allow me to judge myself more rightly. Paper is the closest thing I’ve found to a mirror for the mind.

This week’s adventure, then, will require a double dose of writing. One part of it – the part where I write this introduction and the recap that will follow at the end of the week – will be public and electronic. The other part of it, however – the core of the adventure – will be private and, for lack of a better descriptor (can there be a better descriptor than this?) old fashioned.

My family bought our first computer with an Internet modem in 1997, just as I was starting my senior year of high school. Before that time of household revolution I’d done reams and reams of writing – much of it in private journals – all by hand. I had a deep and pronounced writer’s callous on the middle finger of my right hand – and I was deeply proud of it.

I wrote down not just accounts of my days, observations on life, and (of course) musings on my teenage crushes, but also poems, stories, songs – even mini religious and philosophical treatises. I had wild fantasies that my diaries and other assorted writings would one day be discovered, appreciated, and published (perhaps posthumously, like those of Emily Dickinson and Dorothy Wordsworth), but that secret hope of fame and glory didn’t prevent me from keeping my writing an intensely private affair. I very rarely shared any of my work even with close family members, and for my most private journals I devised a series of elaborate hiding places to keep my scribbles away from the prying eyes of parents and siblings.

My, how times have changed.

Now, I blog. You probably blog, too. Let’s face it: whether on WordPress or Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, or Pinterest, almost all of us blog or microblog in some way or another nearly every day.

Almost every piece of my writing – whether it is something long and polished like a blog post or something short and spontaneous like a tweet or a status update – somehow manages to find its way into the public sphere online (though whether anyone reads it once it gets there is sometimes a little hard to tell). My inner life has become an open book – or, more aptly, perhaps, an open netbook.

What’s more, although I still style myself a “writer,” I do so with the awareness that “typer” might now be a much more fitting title. I compose almost every sentence I write on a computer. I’m not sure my mind even still remembers how to partner with pen and paper to express itself. And although I can still make out the barest impression of that dear old writer’s callous, I’m probably the only who knows it was ever there – it has almost completely faded away with the passage of time.

It is time, though, I think, to start getting my callous back. To remember the feel and sound of a pen scratching on paper. To write words freely, openly, and with no expectation that another human being will ever read them.

That’s right, folks: it’s “Dear Diary” time.

For my adventure this week, I intend to write in a journal the old fashioned way – by hand, on paper  – at least once a day for seven days.

This diary writing will likely be random in topic. It will probably be rough, disorganized, clumsy, and stilted compared to the sort of work I usually do. The penmanship will almost certainly be sloppy and barely legible. But none of this will matter, because my diary will, above all, be private. Although I may share one or two representative snippets in my recap next week, I truly intend, by and large, to keep whatever writing I do this week mostly to myself.

Wish me luck!

Yours sincerely,
Rachel

P.S. Since this adventure is a little more easy to replicate than some of my more recent ones (no broken bones, major moves, or weddings this week!), I am hereby officially encouraging any of you who are as intrigued by this adventure as I am to try it out with me. If you do, be sure to leave me a comment describing your experience, and I’ll try to weave your observations into next week’s recap post.

Adventure 17: Fast (recap)

Oh, what an adventure this last week has been. When last I wrote, I was serenely mulling over in my head which day of the week I should make my fast day. Tuesday, perhaps? Wednesday? Thursday?

As it turns out, my fast took place on Thursday, and I had absolutely no say in the matter.

It happened this way: Saturday, while doing the “Hokey Pokey” at a school roller skating party with my children, I fell and broke my left ankle in two places. I spent Saturday night in the emergency room and Tuesday morning in the orthopedic surgeon’s office, where the good Dr. Pack informed me that he would be doing plate-and-screw surgery Thursday afternoon to stabilize the wobblier of my two fractures.

“Be sure to keep that ankle elevated and iced as much as possible,” he said. “We’ve got to get the swelling under control before we operate.

“Oh — and don’t forget: no solid food after midnight the night before the surgery, and no clear liquids after 8:30 the morning of.”

So it was settled: my fast would be on Thursday.

Wednesday night, Mom made me a last meal (a ham and cheese sandwich with lettuce, tomato, and pickles) at 10:30 p.m. I woke up early on Thursday to have one last glass of water and a cup of black tea. (Who would have thought it? Coffee with cream is considered by medical professionals to be “solid food”!) Then I began my fast.

By the middle of the morning, I began to get thirsty. Normally, I drink a substantial amount of water throughout each day, and it didn’t take long for my throat to start noticing its relative dryness. I also found myself longing for my ritual morning cuppa. (And by this I don’t mean black tea!)

Around 9:30, Ken announced that he was running to McDonald’s for coffee and a snack — and did I want anything? I gave him a look. He said, “Oh . . . right. Sorry.”

In fact, though, the hunger pangs didn’t really hit me until I was at the hospital waiting for the surgeon to arrive — but when they did hit, they hit hard. I was passing the time leafing through a Martha Stewart Living magazine, when it suddenly seemed to me that nearly every page featured full-color pictures of delicious, gourmet FOOD.

“Ooh. An avocado and sliced radish open-faced sandwich . . . doesn’t that sound delicious?” I asked Ken, my tummy rumbling.

“Ew. Not really,” he said.

“What about this butter-mint asparagus? Yum, no?”

“Um, no,” he said, helpfully replacing the glossy magazine with a broadsheet of comics from the local newspaper. Not long after that, the surgeon arrived, and I was wheeled into the operating room and anesthetized for surgery. The rest of my twenty-four hour fast is a little hazy, to tell the truth.

What I do remember, though, is possessing a certain clearheadedness — a crispness of mind — in the hours leading up to my surgery. It doesn’t surprise me at all, when I think back to this mental clarity, to know that so many religious people around the world find fasting such an aid to spiritual focus and devotion.

Now, four days later, I’m back to eating three square meals a day (thanks, Mom!), but I find that my ankle-driven fasting is still going on — and that it will continue to go on in oh-so-many other ways for the next eight weeks or more.

I’m still fasting from walking, running, dancing, and putting any weight at all on my left ankle.

I’m fasting from cleaning up after myself and my family, from doing my own laundry, and from preparing my own food.

I’m fasting from driving a car and from climbing stairs without fear.

I’m fasting from wearing anything on my feet fancier than a single sturdy sneaker.

I’m fasting from sleeping on my side or my stomach (at least until one side or the other side of my broken ankle starts to heal).

I’m fasting from dressing myself and from showering without a plastic bag, a roll of duct tape, and a chaperone handy.

I’m fasting from caring for my own children unless I have another, properly competent adult present. (This last one is really, really hard.)

It is only that little word, “fast,” that turns this list from a simple “woe is me” pity party into something more. It is fasting — intentionally dedicating a time of temporary discomfort to God — that sanctifies the scratchy sackcloth and dirty ashes and turns the wearing of them into a source of blessing and growth.

So I dedicate this awful, unplanned Lenten fast to God — and I pray that He will bless me by it and use it to make me a better person. For my part, I hope to use the time off my feet to do a lot of praying, a lot of thinking, and a lot of writing. And I dearly hope not to use the time as I have mostly used it so far: to watch mediocre DVDs and to stalk everyone I know on Facebook. (Really: ya’ll’s online lives aren’t nearly interesting enough to justify my checking in there ten times an hour just to see “what’s new.”)

Pray for me. The adventure continues.

Adventure 17: Fast

Lent has begun this week here in my little corner of liturgical Luther-land. It’s the time of year the alt Germans call Fastenzeit: the fasting time.

Around this great globe, Christians belonging to any one of several older church traditions are even now foregoing various worldly comforts in order to focus on repentance and spiritual growth.

I love Lent (though perhaps appreciate is a better word here than love), and I’ve regularly observed the season since I was a teenager by temporarily “giving up” or “adding in” various vices or virtues. One year I gave up sweets. Another year I gave up television. I’ve given up pop and alcohol and biting my nails; I’ve added in exercise and water drinking and Bible reading. One year I even resolved to floss my teeth daily throughout the forty days of Lent. (Don’t ask.)

Lent has become a kind of “New Year’s Resolution — Take Two”  for me. As I wrote last year in an EerdWord post describing our TV-turnoff Lent:

Lent is an ideal time to engage in a little self-improvement, for practical as well as spiritual reasons. It falls in a gray time of year (at least in Michigan), at the end of a long, stagnant winter. By the time the snow mostly melts and Lent begins, we’re in the mood to see some real growth — some change for the better — both in the weather and in our lives.

What’s more, Lent begins approximately one month after we’ve finally ditched the last of our New Year’s resolutions, and it presents us with a convenient opportunity to go about improving ourselves on a holier and yet more modest scale: since Lent is only six weeks long, a Lenten fast feels much more manageable than those “forever-and-always” New Year’s promises we make to ourselves.

All that still rings true nearly twelve months later, but I have lately begun to wonder if, even so, I might be missing out on something — something that used to be considered an essential part of Fastenzeit. You know: the fasting part.

As Terry Mattingly points out in his Get Religion post “Where did this American Lent come from?”:

While it is true that “many people” give up “one thing” during Lent, this is not a fasting tradition that is — as far as I have been able to discover — found in the teachings of any particular church.

Terry goes on to describe the increasingly popular “giving up stuff for Lent” thing as a “Tradition Lite” – lite on history, lite on tradition, and lite on real theological significance to most of the churches that care about Lent the most.

Paul McCain over at the Cyberbrethren blog has also done some heavy thinking about Lent and fasting recently. His article “When You Fast” provides some excellent Christian reflections about the Bible’s (and the Lutheran Confessions’, if you happen to be into that kind of thing) teaching on fasting. Most interesting to me at the moment, though, is a point he makes in his post “Fastenzeit is Here!”:

While “giving up something for Lent” has become a popular substitute for fasting, let’s be sure we are clear on what fasting is. Fasting means not to eat as much. To forego a meal, or a portion of a meal, and to do so with intentionality and to let that time of hunger pain remind us to watch and pray, to remind us that our hunger should not be for bread alone, but every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Fasting is simply to be an aid for our devotional life in the Word and prayer.

(So, help me get this straight: is Rev. McCain trying to tell me that my flossing every day throughout Lent ’06 shouldn’t technically be considered fasting? Yeah, that’s kind of what it sounds like to me, too. Huh.)

The point both bloggers want to make is this: American Christians (myself included) have, as we have in so many other ways, tried to personalize and tailor Lenten fasting to our own tastes — and to our own desires for personal self-fulfillment.

Yet however we may contort it to fit our own life experience, the word fasting still means exactly what is always has: “willingly abstaining from some or all food, drink, or both, for a period of time.” (Gee, thanks for that, Wikipedia!)

The Wikipedia page on fasting, you’ll note, also includes a rather long list of religious traditions (both within and beyond my beloved Christian faith) that encourage or even require religious fasting (according to this more traditional definition) in some way or another.

Each of those faiths has a longstanding (dare I say it?: old fashioned) tradition of “willingly abstaining from some or all food, drink, or both, for a period of time.” Not one that I know of has a “give up biting your nails for forty days” tradition.

This is not to say I’m planning to give up giving things up for Lent any time soon. It’s been too useful a spiritual practice in my life for me to lay it aside entirely.

However, in addition to this year’s batch of specialized Lenten disciplines I’ll be adding at least one proper fast (according to the old fashioned sense of the word). One day not long from now, I’m planning to abstain from food for twenty-four hours — and I plan chronicle my experience here.

I know that those of you familiar with the Bible will now be tempted to throw Matthew 6:16-18 at me:

¹⁶ “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. ¹⁷ But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, ¹⁸ that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Fair enough, Bible scholars: you’ve got me. Fasting is, of course, best done privately, at least according to Christian teaching. It may help you to know, however, that this single day of semi-public fasting is intended primarily for journalistic purposes. Anything else I may or may not do to observe Lent this year, I intend to keep pretty much between me and God. (Would it be weird to insert a cheeky cybergrin here? Probably.)

I’ll be back in a few days to let you know how it went.

Oh, and if you missed my post on Three Square Meals (and with it, a discussion of exactly how much I like to eat food) check it out. You’ll understanding immediately why this week’s adventure may not be all that fun or easy for me.

Adventure 16: She’ll Have to Sleep with Grandma When She Comes

Last weekend, we moved into my parents’ new house.

I know what you’re thinking: “WHA???????”

I know you’re thinking this because I’m thinking exactly the same thing. Life has been a little surreal lately, to tell the truth. But since we so far seem to be on the same mental wavelength, let me quickly answer some of the other questions that I suspect are now swirling through your heads:

No, no one in our family has lost their job or their home. No one is broke. No one is going through a divorce. No one is suffering from cancer or dementia or chronic failure to launch.

My husband, my parents, my sister, and I are all fine, healthy, happy, stable, responsible, well-adjusted adults . . . who have together decided that sharing a home is the most sensible and satisfying course of action for all of us.

I suppose you’d like to hear how this came to pass. I understand your curiosity and will oblige.

This story begins nearly a year ago. After my parents sold their house on the other side of the state last spring, they eagerly began looking for another home. With a(n almost) fully-functional vacation home in a beach town an hour away from us, they weren’t exactly homeless, but they never stopped dreaming of purchasing a more substantial home – someplace with a garage, a basement, laundry facilities, and lots of room for a growing garden outside and a growing extended family inside.

We spent many fun Saturdays throughout the summer and fall going along with them on house-hunting trips (both for moral support and to get out and see the world a little).

Meanwhile, Ken and I had for some time been feeling increasingly sure that the home we had so enthusiastically purchased as first-time homebuyers three and a half years before wasn’t a good long-term fit for us. Its compactness (less troublesome) and its awkward floor plan (more troublesome) were getting harder and harder to live around as our small ones got bigger and bigger. What’s more, even though we had been steadily plugging away on renovations throughout our time in residence there, there was a lot we still felt we needed to do in order to make it a good “forever” home for our growing family – including several major renovations that we seemed always to lack either the time or the money to pull off. (When I wasn’t working, we had a little spare time, but absolutely no money. After I started working, we had a little spare money, but absolutely no time.)

Then, one Sunday afternoon in December, we met “the house.”

"the house"

How we met “the house” is a story for another day, but let it suffice for me to say that, together with Mom, Dad, and my two sisters, Ken and I and the kids did meet “the house” — and that we all pretty instantly fell in love with it. Here at last was the sturdily constructed, spacious home with boatloads of personality nestled in five acres of gorgeous countryside surrounded by rolling apple orchards — the home that Mom and Dad (and all the rest of us with them) had been dreaming of. Our feelings upon seeing it for the first time brought to my mind Elizabeth Bennett’s initial reaction to Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice:

Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen a place where nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste. They were all of them warm in her admiration; and at that moment she felt that to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!

We nicknamed the house Pemberley (a working title that has since been dropped) and began a brief but intense process of discernment.

Mom and Dad had been house-hunting for months, and this home both ticked off all their boxes and tickled their imaginations — and, in Michigan’s depressed housing market, it was a bargain besides.

They had wanted a big house in the country, and they had found it (and loved it). But what they had also, half by accident, found (and loved) was a big, big house in a part of the country that was conveniently close to our (Ken’s, the children’s, and my) daily life activities.

Mom and Dad sensed, moreover, that the house, ideal as it was for company, was a bit too big for two (or three, since my youngest sister is currently living at home) people to bounce around in by themselves — especially since my dad works out of state and travels often on business and my mom spends a lot of time at the beach house when the weather’s fine.

So they asked us to live there with them — to help them fill out the nooks and crannies, we suppose, and to keep things from being too,too quiet and echo-y.

As you can see from this rear view, there are lots of nooks and crannies to fill out.

It didn’t take us long to say yes. If you know my wonderful, warm-hearted, fairly easy-to-live-with parents personally — and if you get a chance to see the house (and we do hope you’ll all come visit us here) — you’ll understand why. The arrangement made sense on all levels: by taking up residence together, we could avoid redundancy in our homes and streamline expenses while enjoying the opportunity to spend time together regularly (something we had been doing anyway, albeit with quite a bit of trouble and travel for everyone involved).

The hardest part about making the decision, in fact, was anticipating (dreading, really) what I’m doing now: telling people.

It’s considered pretty normal nowadays for unemployed twenty-somethings to move back in with their parents temporarily while they get their feet under them professionally. It’s also become increasingly ordinary for old folks to move in with their middle-aged children when their twilight time comes and they require daily care.

But what we’re doing now admittedly feels really out of place — downright weird, to tell the truth — in relation to contemporary American cultural norms. Young adults in their prime of life are supposed to desire independence above all things, aren’t they? Aren’t they supposed to leap eagerly from the nest to follow their dreams and make their fortunes, no matter how far away those dreams and fortunes may be? Returning home is a sure sign of failure or inadequacy. Living a thousand miles away from parents is considered vastly more respectable (and vastly less pathetic) than living in their basements or over their garages.

But is this always for the best? Is this kind of disconnectivity from the people we should hold dearest always the holiest, healthiest, happiest course for families to take? I’m not so sure.

As this is an old fashioned blog, after all, I’ll take a peek backwards to see if others might help me discover whether our new lifestyle does, in fact, have the sweet ring of timelessness to it.

Bill and June Cleaver of Leave It to Beaver are, admittedly, no help to me in this. With their affluent, orderly, 1950s nuclear family, their impossibly neat-and-tidy lives, their two well-groomed boys – and no extended family in sight – they don’t have much insight to offer here. Perhaps the Beverly Hillbillies would have slightly more to say on the subject.

My pal Laura Ingalls Wilder (usually such a friend to this blog!) isn’t much help either, to be honest. Her family’s pioneer spirit drove them out of civilized society and away from all extended family ties when they left the Big Woods for the Prairie. (I can’t help wondering, though, if Laura looked back in later years on her family’s lively community life before the move — expressed in the dances and sugarings and threshings depicted so warmly and vividly in Little House in the Big Woods — and longed for the life she left behind as a young girl.)

Anne Shirley? No help. Jo March? Not much.

Jane Austen? Suddenly we’re getting warmer. Remember the multifamily/multigenerational households of the Bingleys in Pride and Prejudice or the Middletons in Sense and Sensibility? And what about dear Emma Woodhouse and Mr. Knightley?

The impossibility of her quitting her father, Mr. Knightley felt as strongly as herself; but the inadmissibility of any other change, he could not agree to. He had been thinking it over most deeply, most intently; he had at first hoped to induce Mr. Woodhouse to remove with her to Donwell; he had wanted to believe it feasible, but his knowledge of Mr. Woodhouse would not suffer him to deceive himself long; and now he confessed his persuasion, that such a transplantation would be a risk of her father’s comfort, perhaps even of his life, which must not be hazarded. Mr. Woodhouse taken from Hartfield!–No, he felt that it ought not to be attempted. But the plan which had arisen on the sacrifice of this, he trusted his dearest Emma would not find in any respect objectionable; it was, that he should be received at Hartfield; that so long as her father’s happiness in other words his life–required Hartfield to continue her home, it should be his likewise. . . .

This proposal of his, this plan of marrying and continuing at Hartfield– the more she contemplated it, the more pleasing it became. His evils seemed to lessen, her own advantages to increase, their mutual good to outweigh every drawback. Such a companion for herself in the periods of anxiety and cheerlessness before her!– Such a partner in all those duties and cares to which time must be giving increase of melancholy!

Now we’re finally getting somewhere! Think of Squire Allworthy in Tom Jones, whose home at one point houses (not including servants) the good squire, his ward Tom, his sister, her husband, her son, and several moochy houseguests whose residences seem to be of indefinite duration. Think of Shakespeare’s plays, in which whole clans of grown-up people, including parents and children, siblings and cousins, aunts and uncles, fill the lively (if occasionally murderous) multigenerational households of Verona and Messina, Elsinore and the Forest of Arden.

Going back even further still, think last of one of Jesus’ sayings on the cross, as recorded in John 19:

²⁶When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! ²⁷Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.

I don’t know about you, but that’s good enough for me.

P.S. You may be wondering where Ken’s parents fit in all of this. No, we haven’t forgotten them, and yes (weird as it may sound) we wish it were possible for us to live with them, too. We have high hopes that our new living arrangements will allow us (a.) to welcome them for longer and more comfortable visits here (visits in which we aren’t all crammed in like sardines) and (b.) to maximize efficient use of our finances and our vacation time so that we will have longer and more frequent opportunities to fly out and see them.

P.P.S. We’re still looking for a proper name for the house. A home like this deserves a name, we think. Below is a list of names we’ve come up with so far. (Most of these have already been decided against, but we thought you might enjoy them anyway.)

Pemberley
Fruitopia
Rivendell
Fort Wesche
Apple Haven
Bethany House
Emily (courtesy of Ela and Eva)
The Big House

Do you have suggestions to add to this list? Leave me a comment. We’ll consider them all!

Adventure 15: Old Fashioned Wedding (photo album)

Saying their vows.

They're getting married!

Bride and Groom

An ordained minister: one thing no Christian wedding should be without! (This one had three in attendance, for good measure.)

Look at all those happy parents!

The bride and her in-laws.

The groom and his in-laws.

Siblings 4ever!

Update: More pictures!

A lovely bridal updo.

Lighting the unity candle.

Bride and groom with nephew and nieces.

It's us!

And us again! (After spending nearly an hour taking a curling iron to two heads of thick, thick hair, I wasn't about to miss this rare opportunity for a decent family photo!)

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Adventure 14: Old Fashioned Slumber Party (mini adventure + recap)

One more post, then I’m off into the chaos again. And please do pardon the cheesy title. I’m sorely lacking in inspiration at the moment.

I knew, given the general craziness of the present, that we needed Adventure 14 to be something short in duration and light in intensity. Fortunately, old fashioned adventures come in all shapes and sizes.

Our adventure for this past week, then, was to spend a night sharing a room and sleeping on the floor — a slumber party, to explain it in words that a fourth-grade girl might understand.

For long ages, soft beds and private bedrooms were luxuries of the rich and powerful. Much more common was for families to share bedroom space, with as many as could fit crammed into whatever beds were available, and all the rest sleeping as snugly as possible in other furniture or on the floor.

I’m here recalling once again my good chum Laura Ingalls, who, in Little House on the Big Woods, remembered sleeping with Mary on a trundle bed that slid underneath her parents’ bed during the day. (Baby Carrie slept with Ma and Pa, of course.)

I’m also bringing to mind a scene that has become family legend among my mother’s kin: my Grandma and Grandpa Mac, newly married at the ripe old ages of 16 and 20, spent their wedding night on the kitchen floor of a relative’s house, while his mother and uncle sat up talking theology into the wee hours of the morning just feet away from where the two were bedded down for the night.

So, in honor of all them and all the hardy souls who have gone before us, our family spent last Friday night all together on the living room floor of my parents’ new house.

We let the children sleep on an air mattress if they wanted to.

It's like sleeping on a moon bounce. Of course they wanted to.

But Ken and I braved it out with nothing but a couple of blankets and a bit of carpet between us the and the cold, hard floor.

Our bed.

It got a bit chilly toward dawn, and I was a little stiff in the hips and shoulders when I got up, but otherwise, we all slept fairly well. The kids really enjoyed this adventure — especially the part where, when they started to wake up in the morning, Mama and Daddy were right there, in plain sight, ready to be climbed in bed with and viciously snuggled into consciousness.

Good night. Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite!

As a family, we spend so much of our time apart: the kids at school and daycare, me at work, Ken at church. We have a few hours together in the evening, but then we split up once again to go our separate ways at bedtime. Most of the time, I think, this is a good thing. Children (ours at least) need the quiet of their own spaces to fall asleep at a reasonable hour. Parents (us, at least) need a little space, too.

Still, though, it was good horizon-broadening family fun for us to forego the luxury of beds and bedrooms for a night and camp out all together. We’ll definitely want to try this one again sometime!

Adventure 13: Three Square Meals (recap)

Greetings and salutations, dear Old Fashionistas! (Do you like that? I just thought it up, and I’m pretty proud of it.)

Life has been crazy here lately, and it’s about to get crazier still. While I’m sitting for a moment in the eye of the hurricane, I’m quickly going to throw together two blog posts this evening before the storm of chaos moves in again in all its fury. I don’t know when I’ll next get the chance, to be honest.

My Three Square Meals week ended over a week ago now. (Really? Can it possibly have been that long? I guess so . . . ) It’s all getting a little hazy at this point. Four observations from my week of gastronomic restraint, however, remain firmly stuck in my memory:

1. At the beginning of the week, I spent a lot of time being hungry, especially in the afternoons. That time between my simple sack lunch and dinner seemed like an eternity, and I was feeling distinct hunger pangs by the time I got myself home from work and my supper on the table. Heaven help the husband or child who dawdled on their way to the table once the meal was prepared — Mama was starving, doggone it! Thankfully, the late-afternoon hunger pangs gradually began to subside as the week went on, leading me to believe that their presence in the first place was a result of my pernicious snacking habit, not malnutrition after all.

2. Cutting back to only three meals wasn’t that hard mentally for me to do, nor was aiming for a healthy, balanced diet. Keeping myself to only one modest portion per meal was, however, insanely difficult. I cannot deny that I fudged on this a little here and there, mostly at dinner time.

3. Over the course of the week, something began to change in me. Not only did I not miss the snacks as much, but I was noticed that I was less inclined to overeat in general. What’s more (perhaps because my stomach enjoyed regular intervals of being rather more empty than usual) I felt much more physically uncomfortable when I did let my guard down and overeat. On those few occasions that I cheated badly on my portion restrictions, I immediately (and for some time after) regretted my transgression.

4. I want to keep eating this way  – maybe not all the time, but at least most of the time. I don’t know if I have the strength or the will power, but I mean to try. I liked having large chunks of the day in which I was not in the slightest preoccupied with what I was next going to put in mouth. I liked feeling like I was at last moderately in control of an area of my life that I have long regarded as hopelessly uncontrollable. I even liked feeling hungry now and again.

I can’t say whether my x + 2y weight gain problem has been at all affected by my week of moderation — I haven’t had the courage to weigh myself recently, to be honest — but I do know that I have felt trimmer, healthier, and generally less sluggish lately. That’s something, anyway.