Torn

I feel like my life is torn in half.  There is half that I spend with my family doing things that matter and there is the half I spend at work where I spend the day sitting at a desk doing things of marginal importance and wondering what is happening out in the world where things matter.  The latter half feels like the larger of the two.

I actually like to work.  I am very good at what I do, though recently I have been frustrated because I am capable of a lot more than my job currently requires.  The problem is that I hesitate to find a better job because I don't want to work.  No matter how important my work happens to be, I feel like it is so much more important to be with my children teaching them how to live in the world.  It is very necessary for me to work; if I didn't we wouldn't have food to eat or a place to live.  I know the work I do provides the essentials of life for my family but I wish it didn't have to be so. 

I am glad that I can provide for my family and I am glad that the littles at least have their Daddy with them instead of a stranger. However, I watch Izzy have such a hard time with them and I want to trade places because while I know it wouldn't be easy for me, it would be easier that it is for him. 

For now, I am praying for contentment.  It is always clear to me in hindsight that God knows better what I need than I do.  My children are walking proof of this.  I keep looking for ways to find Izzy a job or find job that would allow me to support the family while working less or from home.  But this is where I am right now and I don't want to ruin it by spending all my time pining for what I don't have. 

Goal Setting for the New Year

I can't remember the last time I made a New Years' resolution.  I really don't like the idea of making them because they feel more like wishes that probably won't come true.  If I'm calling things what they are, I made several resolutions this year, however I am talking to myself about them in terms of goal setting.  Even though setting goals and making resolutions are the same thing, using the term "goal setting" helps me feel like I will achieve them rather hope I might be able to stick to through February. I'm pretty sure February is when most people let go of their New Years' resolutions.  I think there is a study or something. 

Winter is a good time for me to set goals because I do a lot less.  I don't tend to do much or add much to my life when going outside is less of an option.  Instead, I make plans for what I will do when it is warm and light out again.  I am very lucky to live somewhere with a short winter.  Here is my schedule: I wake up and go to work, I go home and spend time with the children until bedtime, and then I go to sleep.  Every other Tuesday I go to a Bible study and every Sunday I go to church.  There is a lot lacking in this schedule. 

As I was thinking about what I want to change, I read this article, which helped me solidify my goals.  Here is what I plan and why:

1. Pray in the morning.  Right now, I pray at night.  I pray with the children when I put them to bed, I pray when I go to bed, and I pray when I can't sleep.  The truth is, that I really need help in the morning before my day starts.  When I went through the inventory Jennifer described, many of the areas in which I desire change will be affected by seeking help in the morning.  Prayer in the morning is the first step in improving my relationships with my family, with God, and putting myself in a place where I have the strenth and discipline to change other areas of my life. 

Accomplishing this goal will require me to develop new habits.  First, waking up at a fixed and early enough time to do this, and second, remembering to pray without charging off into my day.  My first step to achieving this goal is to set an alarm.

2. Read the whole Bible this year.  I like reading the Bible, but I haven't read the whole thing in a long time, and my study over the past few years has be sporadic and only occasionally helpful.  I plan to mostly follow a chronological schedule with one exception; I am skipping Genesis for now.  I started reading Genesis a few days ago to give myself a "head start" for the year and I realize Genesis is the reason I rarely get very far when I pick up a Bible and plan to read from the beginning to the end.  Call me strange, because there are several books that are less interesting to me, but I was looking at the schedule and realized that if I can get to Leviticus, I'll be engaged enough to finish and the biggest hurdle to being that engaged was Genesis.  So I'll read it in last as part of my sprint to the finish.  The funny thing is that if I stick to it, I will probably finish long before December. 

3. Take a specific action to improve my relationship with my husband at least once a week.  Is that vague enough?  Don't worry, I actually have a more specific plan, but I have reasons for not publically sharing exactly what I plan to do just now. 

Neither Izzy nor I have reguarly done anything intentional about improving or maintaining our relationship for a long time.  Things are by no means bad, but I had hoped for a higher bar for my marriage than "not awful".  So I plan to do something.

4.  Intentionally pursue friendship twice a month.  I am lonely.  I have good friends, but none of them live nearby anymore and they are all also working moms.  This means I don't see them or talk to them often.  As a working mom, I don't get nearly as much time with my children as I would like, and it is hard for me to give up time to pursue other relationships, but the truth is, I need friends who I see somewhat regularly. 

In the last year, I haven't had much opportunity to spend time with people outside my family and I realized that I forgot how to make friends.  I have met a few women who I would love to be friends with, but I am out of practice when it comes to making friends of the people I meet when I'm not thrown together with them by circumstance.  For only the second time in my life, I find if I want friends, I need to make an effort to go out and get some.  I'm going to try and do that twice a month starting this month. 

5.  Build a built-in bookshelf/cabinet in the living room.  I have been talking about doing this since we moved into our house.  Our house is a three bedroom, two bathroom home that used to be a one bedroom, one bathroom home.  The original bedroom is now the living room and there is a large space in the wall where the closet used to be.  This spring I plan to make it a bookshelf/cabinet. 

Depending on the success of this project, I have been inspired to consider building furniture.  After the built-in comes this printers' cabinet:

http://ana-white.com/2012/10/plans/printers-triple-console-cabinet

6.  Replace my dishwasher with a cabinet and paint my kitchen walls and cabinets.  We only used our dish washer for about a month.  For the last four years, it has served as an inefficient storage area.  It is past time to replace it.  Our cabinets are also faded and need to be treated and I am tired of orange walls in the kitchen.  June sounds like a nice time for this project.  I even got gift cards for Christmas to make it happen. 

Things I'm Glad I Did This Year

Its the last day of 2012 and it has been an eventful year.  On the first day of the year, we said goodbye to Midtown Friends Community after we decided that we were to small to continue meeting as our own church and the changes kept on coming.  Here are some of the best changes:

Became part of a new church.  Even though Sacramento Friends was one of the parent churches of Midtown Friends, in many ways it couldn't be more different.  While there are so many things we loved and miss about Midtown Friends, we found new things to love in our new community.  I appreciate being a part of an intergenerational community again and it has been interesting path to accept the authenticity of the formal, yet remarkably informal style of worship. 

Ezra was born!  Need I say more?

I started reading again.  All it took was an iPad.  I read more books this year than I have since I finished school.  I didn't want an e-reader, I like real books with real pages, but my life is such that I don't finish reading real books and I incur library fines.  I do finish ebooks.  Unless they aren't good.  Here are some of the books I read in the order I remember them:

• The Count of Monte Cristo
• The Discipline Book
• Breakfast at Tiffany's
• Fifth Avenue, 4 A.M.: Audrey Heburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and The Dawn of the Modern Woman
• The Three Musketeers
• How to Raise an Amazing Child the Montessori Way
• Perelandra
• Montessori From the Start: The Child at Home from Birth to Age Three
• Little Women
• Pollyanna
• The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why
• Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice
• Grow Great Grub: Organic Food for Small Spaces

The list might grow once I consult my iPad. 

Making my own stuff.  I know how to make lots of things, I just don't always find time to do it when buying things is faster, but I started this year and hope to expand my DIY endeavors next year. This year I made:

•  bedding for Ezra and curtains for the kids room.  
• I knitted and croched tons of things, mostly hats, blankets, and headbands.  It was something to do for the two months I spent sitting with a sleeping baby on my chest. Next year I am thinking about making a sweater.
• condiments - jam, fruit butter, sauerkraut, mayonaise, salsa, pesto
• baby food
• herbal tea (grown in the garden), homebrewed ginger ale, and the beginnings of kombucha (it will be finished in another week)
• beauty products - I've done this for a while.  This is the first year I made anything for others.
• laundry soap - been doing this for a while also

I am most proud that I made at least one Christmas gift for everyone in my family except Izzy (because I ran out of time).  One day, I hope to not buy any gifts for Christmas because I can make things that everyone wants or needs.   

She's Three!

My little princess spent a lot of time playing in the mud in the garden at Fairytale Town

My first little baby turned three today.  I took the day off to throw her a party at Fairytale Town, her favorite place in the world these days.  We let her wear her Halloween costume early because it was the best way I could find to throw a princess party that had mostly boys for guests.  One of the great things about living in the city is being close to so many great parks and museums.  Fairytale Town is the perfect place for toddlers with so many things to climb on as well as interactive learning areas like the vegetable garden.

I am so proud of my little girl.  Even though she has been acting out since the arrival of her brother, she is such a good girl.  She is truly full of sugar and spice.  She is really sweet and compassionate, but she's also a little fighter.  While she is mostly a happy child, she generally end up doing most things the hard way just because she once she makes up her mind about how she is going to do something, she doesn't consider whether there is a better way when obstacles arise. 

This picture above captures her perfectly.  She wants to be a little princess and wear fancy dresses, but she isn't going to let that stop her from climbing, rolling on the ground, or playing in the mud. 

She is so smart and curious about the world around her.  I am continually surprised by the things she says and what she knows about the world without anyone instructing her.  I am so excited to see how she continues to learn and grow this year. 

Confession

I am having a bit of a meltdown this week. For most of my life I have never wanted to be an at-home mom. It sounded boring and awful and I was afraid it might happen to me. I got what I wanted.

When Bee was born, I was the only one with a job and I was excited to go back to work. Over the past two years something changed. At first, I wanted to go home and home school someday in the future, but slowly I have been wanting to be with my children more and more. After Ezra was born, I wanted that time to be now.

However, I am still the only one with a job with no end to that in sight. Izzy has been out of work for almost four years, isn't applying to too many jobs, and has yet to even have an interview. I spend a good part of my days looking for jobs for him and reading mommy blogs and wishing those people were me. It has become my own brand of porn. I am discouraged and afraid that things are never going to change. I want to be with my kids so bad it hurts.

Last night when i was reading Psalm 16, I realized last night that my focus is in the wrong place. I am so lucky to have my children, I am so lucky that they are healthy, and I am lucky they spend their days with family who love them, even if tat family isn't me. Their needs are provided for and they are happy even though they miss me. God does not want me fixating on the life I wish I had, but on the life He has given me.

It wrong for me to spend so much time focusing on what I want and not on what I have. I have a good life. God has given me so many blessings and so far He has arranged things better than I would have. I have always said that my children are living proof that I have no idea what is good for me. I wouldn't have either of them if I had arranged things.

So I will try to be faithful to live the life I was given, read fewer mommy blogs, and enjoy my babies. For now, it still hurts.

Lessons in Gardening

I have been gardening for three years now and I still have a lot to learn. I get so overwhelmed by trying to learn how to do things well by reading. I am more of a trial-and-error person. That has made for quite a few errors.

The lone pear on our tree. It will be baby food whenever it is ready.

This year was a bad year for most plants in Sacramento. Everyone's tomatoes did well, and I had good luck with eggplant but not much else.

I learned a lot about organic pest control. I already learned to plant marigolds and basil with the tomatoes to control aphids. I lost my cucumbers and melons to cucumber mosaic virus early on. We got some cukes and one melon. Next year I will plant nasturtium and calendula to keep the cucumber beetles away. I also learned that coffee grounds will keep whatever was devouring my eggplant away.

Before next year I want to figure out what to do to keep my bell peppers from getting sunburnt and how to attract enough bees to adequately pollenate my squash. I also want to figure out when to plant things for an adequate fall crop.

Here is a sample of my tomatoes before I made them into golden marinara

Izzy's hand next to two tomatoes - they were huge!

I roasted them on the grill outside so I didn't bring unnecessary heat into the house.

Tomatoes ready to be roasted.  The smallest was about the size you find at the grocery store.  

Then I cooked them down with roasted onions and garlic, also from the garden in the crockpot.

My marinara sauce simmering in the crockpot

Bundles of Joy

Phoebe loves to dance and entertain her brother.  He finds her hilarious.  

Changes

Back in July, I fooled people and made it appear like I was going to blog regularly.  Then several things happened. 

1.  I got pregnant.  If you couldn't already tell by the pregnancy ticker on top, I am having another baby.  In my world, this means that I spent the last three months asleep.  My waking hours were consumed with making fairly regular appearances at work and trying to be consciously present for my little girl. 

Sorry blog world, there was not energy for you.  I thought of you often and even composed several posts that I was never able to be upright long enough to write down.  Perhaps this will change now that I feel better. 

2.  I took a second job.  I don't get paid much. In fact, I have yet to be paid anything, but in August, my husband and I became pastors of our church.  I am excited for this new and interesting challenge, but it means that I work six days a week and devote much of my non-gainfully employed, little girl free time to being with or  doing things for our little community. 

This is what I have been doing.  I am sorry I have been neglecting anyone who read this before, it may happen again.