Living-Deliberately.com

“All intensive purposes”?

or

“All intents and purposes”?

I’ve heard both. How do you use it?

My favorite treat: the Sunday NY Times read outside with sun and breeze.

Today’s best:

• term, and one for savoring whilst thinking about linear time (and the sometimes lack thereof): spatiotemporal dimension. As in, “Even an artist who likes to fool around with spatiotemporal dimensions can get stressed out by a deadline”, from the aritcle, “The Taste of Nothing, the Smell of Mars”, in the Art section.
• explanation of the devastating appraisal of my house this previous week (and I betcha the author didn’t imagine how tangible the reality he described would be for his readers), “If the housing boom was a manifestation of irrational exuberance, some say it has swung too far in the other direction, to irrational despondancy.” on the front page, above the fold.
• display of American gluttony: “Everyone wants to eat like an American on this globe, but if they do, we’re going to need another two or three globes to grow it all.”, on the front page.
• scary thought, “No one creates a new technology really understanding how it can be used or how it can change a society.”, from the Business section.

All three of the houses I’ve bought and lived in during my marriage sit vacant and on the housing market at the same time.

It’s as if my history, present, and future are one giant loose end, sitting silently and open, awaiting some kind of life-breathing inhabitation to direct their course.

“When I breathe, I hope.” ~ found on a map.

“Your hair is glorious.” ~heard while waiting in a very long line at the end of an exhausting day.

“When will we have a normal day again?” ~ said by one weary little boy.

“May better things come your way Dear.” ~said by a wee old man in a sherrif’s office.

“I’m the widow to a living man”,  ~sung by Ben Harper.

From “The Life and Adventures of Nicolas Nickelby” by Charles Dickens, more directly from the current issue of Real Simple Magazine:

When I speak of home, I speak of the place where- in default of a better- those I love are gathered together; and if that place were a gypsy’s tent, or a barn, I should call it the same notwithstanding.

So that’s why….

Awhile back I posted “What’s Grosser Than Gross: The Mommy Version“.  I followed every tag that I could and there were some hilarious responses!!! And Mrs. Ordinary Days didn’t mean this post of hers to count in that meme but it is fantastically and supurbly “Mommy Gross” and I had to link it! It was not really a contest, so there’s not really a prize…except for  the communal laugh and cringe we all share together. Enjoy!

“Lately I’ve really had an affection for mustard.”

As promised, here are the answers to the questions you asked! My thanks to those who participated!

Q: I’ve been wondering about the health of your boys lately – what is going on with the littlest redhead – before Wheaton had to go to the hospital you were posting about your fears of him possibly having a genetic condition; I’ve not seen an update and he is often in my thoughts while reading your blog. Also, how have things been for Wheaton since his diagnosis ? I hope they are both well and healthy.

On the genetic condition, I’m not sure which one you are referring to, so I’ll answer both. As a baby, Wheaton stopped growing from 4-7 months, and from 7-11, grew very little. After force feeding him with a g-tube (he got sicker) and putting him through every test known to man except for one (a muscel biopsy), it was guessed that, and successfully treated for what is known as a mitochondrial disorder. This is where the mitochondria, the part of the cell that takes food and turns it into energy, has a disorder and malfunctions. It is beleived to be genetic. At the time we skipped the test because the treatments worked, after so much had not.

Our “littlest redhead”, Rowan, was recently tested for Down’s Syndrome, for various reasons. He does not have it and has also more than made up for his developmental and speech “delays”. He is also proof that it’s possible to take photographs that look “Downs-ish” and in fact, not have it! Who’dve thunk?

Wheaton’s official diagnosis right now is Ulcerative Colitis. He finished his course of steriods last week, the day before his birthday, and we are very glad to be off of them! They caused rapid weight gain that was uncomfortable and *very radical and violent* mood swings. We are trying to manage the condition with diet for now and if that doesn’t work, will likely need to begin an infussion drug with an IV every 6 weeks or so to try to force it into remission. We are really, really, really hoping to avoid that! He feels much better and we are learning to live with the disease; meaning, we take very seriously his requests to know where the bathrooms are when we are out, we make sure he gets enough rest, watch his diet carefully, and watch for subtle changes (children with this disease will often try to downplay symptoms out of fear of a return to the doc/hospital).

Q. Living on a micro-farmstead, delaing with illnesses, and having four children and a husband to care for, not to mention all of your work on the internet, must make for incredibly busy days. What activities do you always make sure you have time for, no matter how overwhelming the rest of your day may be? And when days seem too full, what do you do to escape?

The days are indeed full! But we’ve also readjusted some things recently. For instance, I can micro-farmstead OR manage a major medical issue, but I can’t do BOTH so the farmstead ideas have been seriously scaled back. I still have my garden but I won’t be expanding it this year; there will be no goats, we gave the chickens away, and the cats and dogs have been reduced.

Things I ALWAYS do: make my bed. It may be the only bed in the house that gets made some days but it’s a MUST. I also do the Flylady routines somewhat so every day, at least once, the sink is shined and the laundry is rebooted. I’m picky about my teeth so they are always brushed twice a day and flossed once. Can’t sleep or eat until that’s done! Other things that happen on a mostly-daily ritual: yoga stretches, swept floors, and reading before bed.

When our cup runneth over, we unplug. Go for a walk (even it’s late at night and the only light is stars!). I read mindless drivel, like celebrity gossip magazines. I refuse to answer the phone and declare a day a “no bra” day. (Sorry if it’s TMI…but that is indeed what the day is called!). Sometimes I clean the house like a madwoman restoring order and sometimes we leave and go for a hike. Or to a picnic with friends. Some day I’ll take weekend retreats at a monastary or a night away with my husband, but that is neither our lifestyle nor income bracket at the moment.

Q. Is there one fictional book/book series that changed the way you see the world? If so, what is it?

Fiction! Oh I miss reading fiction! I usually take the summer and read only fiction but this year I started a business instead; the only fiction I’ve read this year was the last Harry book. I am very, very tempted to dive into book discussion right now because I have scads of beloved fiction “friends” on the shelf and I miss them! And non-fiction has been pretty darn revolutionary, especially in the last two years. But that is not what you asked my friend, so I’ll stick to the point!

I think I would have to say the Harry potter series. And not because of what it held in it’s pages, per se….but because the act of reading them signified a step on my part to decide for myself what I thought versus regurgitating what was being said about them in the circles I was spending my time in..by a bunch of people who’d never read them. My baby was born and grew in the years the first two books came out; there was so much controversy over them! And at the time, we were involved in a very fundamentalist group. Roles were very, very defined and materials were only chosen from “safe” resources; the world was getting smaller and I started to feel as if I were suffocating. At the fringe of my hearing I was picking up on discussions of what “beauty” was and what “christian” materials really were…it seemed to me that works done with integrity, with a real passion for excellence, were more in the pattern of emmulating our Maker than things that *only* came from certain publishing houses, thus bearing a “christian” stamp, even when their quality was banal. And then one day I heard of a vacation bible school curriculum being designed around the Harry books and it wasn’t so that they could warn little children of the evils of a boy’s story that happens to take place in an imaginary world! I decided to give it a try, getting the books on tape and listening to them in the car. It was a delicious, fantastic summer: high quality stories well told that drew me in and ultimately helped me hold a mirror up to an Idol of Another Kind that was in our lives: the idea that God could be put in a box so I could possess all the “right” answers.

Of course the stories have ended now, with redemption triumphing over evil, and I am a very different person than I was when the first book came out. I know and love people I would have never known had I not taken those first steps out of the sheltered cocoon we were building, finding evil all around. I serve a bigger God, one less of my own making, and His world is bigger too.

Thanks again for the questions Brian, Sarah, and Mary!

Just a reminder that I am offering answer any readers’  questions this week…email Tia AT sixredheads DOT com. Make sure “blog question” is in the subject line. At the end of the week I’ll compile the answers in a separate post.

• I’ve got a new blog! There are 2sides2everystory and purpose of the site will be to take controversial issues, present information from each side, and ask for feedback from those deciding for themselves which side they most relate to.
• I found a new social news aggregator/rating system: Mumdinger.com is “like digg with a feminine twist”. It seems like a fairly new place, still building it’s traffic, but I’ve already found some neat stories there as well as submitted a few of my own.
• Facebook has been toooooo much of a diversion, used mostly while I’m waiting for things to upload and download and otherwise, well, load. :-). My goal is to learn a new app a day.  Warning: if you find me there, my photo is not so hot…but I plan to soon get a better one taken. It will include a hair cut and makeup but this should NOT be taken as a step away from my hippie-mom-in-birks-full-time-momma self!
• I want to say a great big THANKS to you old readers who spoke up with such kindness and support this week, as well as a hearty WELCOME to you newcomers who joined in the discussion.
• Coming series: Raising a Child with Crohn’s/UC. We are learning a lot and one of those things is how to deal with steroid “step downs”…one reason why this post was written on Thursday and dated for friday: the mood swings require full attention.
• Around the web I’ve seen blogs have a “ask the host a question” day. I thought that might be fun, though I have no idea what kind of partipation I’ll get.  I’d like to try this next week: email me ANY question at Tia AT sixredheads DOT com and I’ll answer it next week, the 28th. Hopefully it will be a full post!

Green & Black has this out…and they flaunted the little tub of glory in a magazine I perused the other day. Alas, I’m not sure where to find it and even if I do, it won’t be in time for this rainy night. Autumn is hanging out over on the other side of the mountain and will blow in soon but it’s not here yet and the result is an environmental funk. The trees can’t seem to decide if there should be a breeze, the rain comes and goes, the crickets are half-hearted. I’m working late ‘else I’d be slicing fresh fries and crawling under my ancient blanket.

Madeleine L’Engle died last Thursday. This makes me want to reread the A Wrinkle in Time series and Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage (The Crosswicks Journal, Book 4) and all the others I have on the shelf that I haven’t delved into yet collected out of love for her. I imagine her walking in the fields of her farm in Conneticut though her last three years were spent in a nursing home. Over the past year I’d waited to hear this announcement of her passing, knowing it had to be close. She is a comfortable, intelligent, creative read; if you’ve never heard her read her books aloud, get a recording. It adds a new dimension to books that were already quite in another dimension.

This is a total gear shift but on one level, another “comfort” read of mine is People mag, so maybe within the realm of cozy-vegging it’s not such a shift: hot around the internet today was the building common head shaking over Britney Spears’s disasterous performance at the VMA’s. Say what you will about booty-shaking, half-dressed, sex-charged music, performing is Britney’s JOB. No one making her do it…presummably anyway; it would seem her “come back” is up to her. Who shows up on the job drunk and gets away with it? But that scene is scary. She’s glazed over and stoned looking, being steered around by dancers that were more in step than she was. I read somewhere that she looked nervous…I don’t think so. I think she looks disinterested and careless and lost and really, like a million red alarms over her health and well being should be screaming. It looked to me that rather than lip-syncing, “Gimme More”, she was saying, “Get me off this crazy thing….called life.”

The video, being posted all over the place, is also being pulled all over the place. Internet freedom is fading in whispers but that is a rant for another night.

While I’m posting tonight, let’s add a little “on topic” link love. A friend of mine had this delicious little clarifiying way to remember how to make the step from inaction towards action, from a Fortune Cookie of all sources! then Seth Godin had this post on the willingness to take little chances.

Maybe there’s some ice cream and Ancient Blanket Vegetation in my future after all; I’ll skip the fries and the mice who try to take over the world….this time.

• my dog eats his own crap but he won’t touch a chicken strip from Walmart’s deli. I found that to be quite profound yesterday…..
• the IRS tax audit soldiers on. The latest: I called the IRS to tell them I’d gotten their nice packet #2, certified mail, and their sage advice: “You need to look at your tax return”.  Ummm…yah. Kinda done that 50million times, tryin’ to figure out what went wrong. My response, “I see what is wrong but I can’t yet explain why it was reported the way it was. Do I need to contact Turbo Tax and ask them?” The sage advice again, “No Ma’am. You need to look at your tax return.” Well now. That’s progress! (really, if my eyes roll up any farther into my head they are going to stay up there!)
• Fall is coming All-of-a-Sudden.  From drought and the high 90’s and above to rain and highs in the 70’s, my maple started turning red this week and the tulip poplar has been going yellow for a week or so now. It feels a little like the second half of this year is going to pass by twice as quickly as the first half did. I wonder why that is……but I woke up feeling like we’d better nail down who is hosting Thanksgiving and put together a christmas budget.

I’m still on the warpath to change the tide around here though I’m tempted at times to just go with the flow and succumb to the madness :-).

I  went to bed  last night after a long night of creative work, discovery of a new pestilence, and woke to the dog chewing my cell phone (and only link out other than email) into shreds.  First order of the day annhilated the creative work I did the night before, kids all hated their breakfast, and dogs ate all the cat food. At this point, I’m non-reactive…just sort of wide-eyed and stunned that momentum can tumble in around me like this sometimes. Which led to….more one liners! So from yesterday:

“This ‘came to pass’ and did not ‘come to stay’ ”

“The only way out is through”

and more:

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

“Things always look different in three days.”

“Don’t sweat the small stuff.”

“Roll with the punches”.

Gimme s’more…”hit me with your best shot”

“Mom? How did president Garfield die?”

“I don’t know honey…I’ll look it up later okay?”

And when I did so, I found that Garfield died 80 days after being shot, likely due to infection from the medical care he recieved (the wounds should not have been fatal). I also found that Garfield that had a lifetime of  a “weak stomach” and a history of anal fisures that required surgery. Did Garfield have Crohn’s or UC? Why did my 6 year old think of him today? Spooky….

I was recently tagged/given two blog awards and I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to get them u .

Simple Reduce bestowed this one on me. Rules? I list 5 other blogs that make me think.  Here they are:

Julie Unplugged: long time friend and alway-challenging thinker.

Glory To God For All Things: my priest is also a stunning writer.

Crunchy Chicken: new read for me; energetic girl on a mission!

More Deliberate Every Day: I’m watching this one…more focused one area than I but variations on a theme. Neat blog!

Ah well…I’m out of time this afternoon. Thinking blog number 5, as well as the reward for positive global change, will have to wait for another day.