Women are designed by God to be flexible, but that doesn’t mean it is always easy. Sometimes we have a little stiffness, a little resistance to change. It’s hard to give way when we are accustomed to things as they are. We can feel a little insecure about who we are or what we’re supposed to be doing. But there is no sin in “adjusting” to change. Though it can be uncomfortable initially to adapt and stretch into new circumstances, if we just catch our breath, we’ll be okay. This is just normal.
Though I’ve seen women go through times like this at just about every stage of life, it’s very predictable with women whose children have finished school and moved out and on. These women can feel very much at loose ends, with time on their hands. And it’s this group of women I’d like to address here.
It’s tempting to think that you ought to go get a job. But let me give you a few other suggestions. First of all, if you are a wife, your primary job as your husband’s helper has not changed. He still needs you, and it may be the first time in a long time he has your undivided attention. People have asked me if it’s weird having an “empty nest” now, and I have to say, no, not at all. Not because I didn’t adore having a full nest. But when we first Continue reading ‘Loose Ends’
I know, it does seem a little MacGyvor of me to recommend that you bake bread using your food processor. I am not kidding though, it is the best bread you will ever make at home. Continue reading ‘This is not a joke’
Howdy – do! I haven’t posted anything in absolute ages – and most of my excuses had to do with being busy and crazy and heaps of laundry and everything else . . . but today those excuses don’t apply. As a matter of fact, I’m actually in danger of starting to get a touch bored. Today my cousin Brooke is babysitting the kids and I’ve come into town with Ben. The Christ Church library has asked him to write something about their Hebrew collection for a publication of theirs, so he had to come down and look through the collection of 16th century Hebrew manuscripts. I came along for the ride and also for the coffee and croissant that we’ll grab together afterwards.
So here I sit, in the upper gallery of the Christ Church library. This is where they keep the rare manuscripts, and you can only really come in by appointment. The lady who oversees this library told us once that they have another huge collection somewhere else with 10,000 volumes that is completely un-cataloged and they have no idea what’s in it. She pulls things out for displays occasionally, and regularly finds things like first edition Copernicus . . . you know, trifling things like that. Continue reading ‘Library Day’
With all the encouragement we have been getting to celebrate Easter in a big way – to buy new clothes and dress up, make gorgeous meals, and fun activities for the kids, it occurs to me that something has been left out.
We are now officially into Easter weekend, and the time to shop for new clothes and lose weight has run out. Many of you are also recently post-partum and there is really nothing that compares to trying to dress up a body that is profoundly out of touch with itself. In my case, I believe that my stomach muscles may have lost their way in the world altogether, nevermore to rig it in.
Well, last night brought about something pretty hilarious at our house. I was sitting on the couch nursing the twins, and my husband and bigger girls were playing with balloons. Continue reading ‘A note of encouragement’
My life has been peppered with bad sugar cookie experiences. I love a good sugar cookie, but they seem like a holiday kind of cookie, so it took me many years of unsatisfactory holiday baking to come across my favorite sugar cookie. Usually it seems that they either break easily, puff too much to decorate well, run straight out of the shapes you cut and bake into one big blob-tag cookie party, or just don’t taste good.
This recipe is a combined two Christmas effort. Last Christmas I made cookies out of Gourmet magazine and hated the cookie, but loved the frosting. I saved the frosting recipe until this Christmas I combined it with a modified cookie from Country Living. Now I am happy. So happy that I make sugar cookies for all holidays now. For Valentine’s Day we made a batch of these and splatter painted them with neon pink and white frosting (we called them eighties revival cookies), and for Christmas I make half the dough red, and decorate them with a little more care. So… the moral of the story is that armed with a great recipe and a decent arsenal of paste food coloring you can achieve almost anything you set your mind to. Continue reading ‘Sugar cookie-o-rama’
Just when we thought we were hitting our stride, my daughter came across a blog post demonstrating that there are Easter parties out there that are way ahead of ours. One family has an wind-up Easter toy race every year, and it sounds like Mom saves the toys from year to year, so she has quite a collection. Now that is fantastic, don’t you think? I looked for some today, but all I found was a big hen that lays jelly-bean eggs as she moves along, which I’m betting will slow her down. Still, I bought a couple to get my collection started.
Let’s go girls!
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