Now and Soon and Later
Spent yesterday baking, completing my to-do list. Apple-Apple is my new bread dough kneader. She’s amazing and strong and loves to do it All By Herself. Together, we’re turning out these gorgeous loaves (four at a time). Next, I mixed up oatmeal cookies in my Grandma King’s electric mixing bowl. Fooey arrived in time to place a few pats upon the tray, then decided it would be more fun to lick her hands. She also stirred the granola, to which we added a few surprise elements: maple syrup and ground pumpkin seeds. By this point, I was going a bit frantic from the pile of dirty dishes and the relentless call of the oven timer, and it was lunchtime. Somehow, Fooey managed to exist almost entirely on cookies yesterday, but Kev whipped up some omelettes for the rest of us. I started a lentil barley soup for supper, using one of the last jars of canned tomatoes. (That was a canning project worth the effort. Must remind myself when tomato season is once again upon us.) Lastly, I baked two loaves of a breakfast bread for my upcoming girls’ weekend away … and left out not one but TWO important ingredients. Seriously. Luckily butter wasn’t one of them, and the loaves turned out tasty enough to inflict on friends.
The question is: where am I putting my energies? Now. And soon. And later. Now being the most important to determine, though Now leads to Soon and Later; that’s where planning comes in, and lists. Housework. Cooking. Baking. Laundry. Food-Gathering. Mothering. Reading. Writing. Doula’ing? Re-schooling?
Front Yard Veggie Garden
Handful of Stories
(Nice? Sorry, as a writer, I should definitely come up with a better word for the feeling, but that’s as good as it gets. In platitudes, may many layers be found.)
Today’s To-Do List
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Soccer in the park. Baking cookies, granola, and bread. Hamburgers and asparagus for supper. Family night (Bananagrams?).There’s been an interesting conversation going on about how a blog’s tone develops, especially these mommy-blogs, in which stay-at-home parents reflect on their daily lives; and I’ve noticed this blog has really changed since its inception. More photos. Less text. But also less complaining? Less detail, perhaps. I’ve begun to treat this space more as a scrapbook than a diary. But is it painting a picture of our daily lives that is too idealized? Does it look like we spend our days cavorting in puddles, our fronts dusted in flour, our minds peacefully occupied? Well, that’s ’cause we do.
Or, wait …
Blogland is nothing if not selective. And I like selecting the good stuff. Tantrums? Siblings whacking siblings? Last-minute-supper-prep-madness? Bathtime resistance? “I’m so bored.” Disturbed nights? Late-night glass of wine? Too much coffee? Warts, snot, burping, dirty diapers? Yup, we’ve got ’em, too. But I haven’t started photographing that stuff yet. Maybe I will. Or at least slip in a few views of the darker side of this lifelong adventure, just to balance things out. No promises, however.
It’s Raining, It’s Pouring
Tropical downpours turn our sidewalks into raging creeks. After supper, the older kids strip down and head out to do some puddle-jumping. Across the street, a fellow watching the rain from his front porch shouts, “Used to do the same thing when I was a kid in Newfoundland!”