Living-Deliberately.com

I confess I haven’t been too involved in the latest/greatest/breakingest Political News lately…. but I have been glancing at the Primaries here and there. There is still only ONE candidate that talks about a “big enough” level of change for me and the only one who interests me enough to move me from an apolitical status to one where I actually may care enough to vote this time and be involved. So Ron it is. But I was disturbed lately to hear a rumor on the wind about some racists comments he may or may not have made. In true disclosure I have NOT heard the comments directly that are in question, nor do I have the time to go looking for them these days. But I am on his mailing list and I got this response in my inbox, that may be helpful to anyone interested in what he had to say about it all:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Jesse Benton

January 8, 2008 703-248-9115

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA – In response to an article published by The New Republic, Ron Paul issued the following statement:

“The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.

“In fact, I have always agreed with Martin Luther King, Jr. that we should only be concerned with the content of a person’s character, not the color of their skin. As I stated on the floor of the U.S. House on April 20, 1999: ‘I rise in great respect for the courage and high ideals of Rosa Parks who stood steadfastly for the rights of individuals against unjust laws and oppressive governmental policies.’

“This story is old news and has been rehashed for over a decade. It’s once again being resurrected for obvious political reasons on the day of the New Hampshire primary.

“When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine full-time, a newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have publically taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.”

Should Ron not get the R. nomination, I will set my sites on Obama next, the one who had my interest before I heard of Ron. But he doesn’t excite me enough to do what Ron did, which was to get signs for my yard and stickers for my car. Oh and…hope for our future, which I hadn’t done in the political realm for a very long time.

is to get you alone.

“Meet me in the back of the bus.”

“Be at the back of the school at 3:30 or you’re toast.”

“Can’t we just meet somewhere and talk about this?” (accompanied by no break in the insults, invalidations, and interupptions….)

Their second greatest tactic is to get you to believe you are broken, wrong, ugly, etc.

Recently there was a major case in the news involving online bullying on a Myspace page that resulted in a teen’s suicide. A quick search of the words “online bully” and in the first set of results there is the headline, “Schoolyard bullies get nastier online…“. Why is that? Because they have more autonomy. Getting their victim alone is the primary goal because then they are free to do what they are most confident they can…manipulate and intimidate.

When they can’t gain access to their target, they get a sidekick to do their work for them. We sometimes call them “enablers”.  They think their bully-boss is the coolest, the “right” one, the champion. They do the bidding so they can get what they most want…love and appreciation. These enablers fear they won’t get it if they don’t do the work, so they turn a blind eye to any wrongdoing and proceed. In the abense of a sidekick, bullies often turn to stalking…leaving anonymous notes, prank calls, hit-and-run type attacks.

These are people who don’t respond well to boundaries because they’ve never had any set for them. And yet, the only defense against them IS boundaries. It can run the gamut from refusing to discuss certain topics, to staying away from their stomping ground, to getting a police order so they leave *you* alone. Their lack of restraint and personal responsibility is what one is up against and without it, external forces are necessary to end the abuse.

The town grieving the loss of Megan has made cyber-bullying against the law. Hopefully, that is an “external force” that will speak the language loudly enough to would-be bullies. I wish them well. By setting boundaries the world tells bullies that we won’t be their doormats; that they can take their toxic behavior elsewhere. Terrorists can’t be negotiated with.

I can hear windchimes and I know I’m standing on a porch. The tree nearby is green and I’m not wearing long sleeves. I know the porch is mine and that I feel calm. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see children and primary-colored paint on sheets of paper.

I’ve had that dream about five times now. It gives me hope…like it’s a little premonition, something to envision for the tomorrows, when the hardest part of this will be over.

Often I’ve heard the definition of insantity to be “doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting a different result every time”. A friend recently told me that she respected me because I try lots of things, and when they don’t work, I move on, instead of trying to wrestle a different result out of something that will never be successful. I get to enjoy The Trying, having not been too afraid to taste, but with the freedom of not locking myself into it forever.

I’ve tried to remember those words as I’ve had to let so much go. My motto of, “hold all things loosley” seems strained to the point of extreme. But things are only things…. Will I ever garden again? Have an address? See those baby spoons again? Store my clothes in a dresser, rather than a suitcase? Over christmas I spent time on a real working farm…and found out once and for all that while I have a deep passion for urban homesteading, knowing where one’s food comes from, and how it’s raised, I am not a real farmer at all. I have raised chickens, enjoyed fresh eggs, and served up my own rooster but I know my personal line is with the hens and eggs and garden of herbs. I’d rather give my support to those really up for the task of pig castration, goat birthing, and butchering-day. They have CSA’s for people like me :-). And there’s freedom in that you know? I can still eat with a conscience, support my neighbor, and know my own limitations at the same time.

Still, letting go of ideals, and ideas, that I so hoped would work is not easy. I paint on my grief like black nail polish….long, strokes that I hope remain contained and do not spill over, so that some portion of life can be unstained. But of course, sometimes that’s impossible because more than ideals, more than ideas, more than experiments, sometimes we have to let go of people…and their mark is indelible upon our souls.

Retaining sanity is at the heart of it, more than we’d like to admit I think. Knowing what is irrevocably broken, what has died, what simply does not fit or does not work, has to either lead to giving the up the body, ending The Trying, or admitting failure, or one can not move on. Stagnancy, or worse….stuck in an endless cycle of the doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting a different result, is not really living.

Once, when my daughter had been in the CICU for 6 weeks and we waited every day for her lungs to get stronger, I asked the doctor if she was living or dying. He didn’t know and there was nothing any of us could do but wait. It was the most stagnant time of life… one long held breath, and in some ways, her eventual death was a sort of relief. We had no power to change that place inbetween where she lie and we could not move on from it. That “Land of If” is still a place I loathe going, and when I can effect change, I will. It seems to be a part of my sanctification to learn how to live in times where I have no such power, where all I can do is “be still and know”.

And so I am. Sometimes the most deliberate thing to do is to let go. When there is nothing else to be done….just breathe. And when I’m quiet, I hear windchimes in the stillness and know.

Though I’ve used a laptop as my personal computer for well over a year now, until now I’ve only used my wireless portability within the various rooms of my house. I liked having the option of working at desk, kitchen table, bed, or front porch. When I left the house, it was almost always with all four kids in tow, with a list of errands to run and stuff to obtain, so sitting around in coffee shops and internet cafes was simply not part of my wireless environment.

One of the best luxuries of high-speed, wireless capability, I’m finding, is that business and communication need not come to a stand-still though the rest of my world may be uncertain and constantly changing. And this, makes it so much less of a luxury and more a necessity in order to accomplish certain tasks. What a blessing my laptop and wireless card have been! I can grab a cup of caffinated-courage and keep up with email, get the news, take care of book-keeping changes and when I’m done, move onto the next deadline or location-to-be. Not as portable as my Blackberry-using friends but a world away from having to “get back to the office”, freaking out that things were going down the proverbial toilet in my absense. As I write today, a daughter is doing school work at the table with me as we uber-multi-task through a day that will no doubt hold many, many redirects. Technology can almost seem like a grace sometimes with the freedom and flexibilty it affords.

And so a new challenge has become part of my travels: finding the free wi-fi. Others who’ve gone before me gave a little list of who’s got it and who doesn’t. And someone pray tell why Starbucks can charge BOTH 4.50 for a latte and 10.00/day for internet, when Krystal next door offers admittedly poor coffee but free wi-fi? This has confounded me on more than one morning, when coffee cravings assault (I get just the brew, not the latte) and drive over to find the free wireless. So much better to be lounging in dusty sunshine amid the boxes of christmas french presses and chocolate covered coffee beans….but I digress.

Anyway, one day this week had me jaunting down to a major city in the south and then back again before nightfall. The chosen rendevoux was an Olive Garden parking lot in what they called, “a shopping area”. And HOW. What it really was, of course, was a vomitous ode to commercialism and gaseous emmissions due to extreme traffic, that could only slightly be blamed on the coming holiday. I decided the best way to handle it was to pick the shopping pod closest to the restaurant, stay on that one side of the gridlock, and ferheavensakes stay out of any stores! And then I remembered I needed to check my email….

A call to a local provided a tip to find a McDonald’s….yessirree, McD’s also offeres free Wi-fi, and I found them…BUT they do not have a single power cord in the entire dining room! This was after I bought their fake-food, promising myself that it could be my one-annual McD’s “meal”. That was also after watching 10 minutes of the most profound inefficiency possible, in an empty restaurant utterly overstaffed with clueless teenagers and an even more clueless manager, who could not understand why I’d ask for a power outlet. If you have to ask then…..

A sympathetic listener directed me to a panera in the mall. Malls are kinda devil-playgrounds in my pov but I steered my car in that direction and we circled twice, not finding any such bread company. What WAS there was, you probably guessed it, a sunny, warm, Starbucks with a brick patio and smart people all about. With resignation, I parked.

45 mintues, one tech call, and one intelligent and helpful student nearby later, I was on. Thankfully that day pass is good for 24 hours and I used it three other times in other locations before it expired. What’s more is that I was soon back in familiar territory, where panera has it for free AND good coffee to boot. Oh, and they are neither overstaffed, nor under, and quite efficient from the looks of things.

And so I offer my plain-coffee-one-cream in salute to panera bread company…you get it right. Thanks a bunch.

Dear friends and readers~

Just to clear a little controversy up…. maybe it occurrs to regular readers that this blog has not generally had negative comments left attacking the blog writer, yet lately there has been a series of “hit and runs”.  Some of these are people I know, who have assumed a false identity in order to leave something hurtful on the blog.  Thanks to Ip addresses, and email, and real contact with people, I know who is real and who is not.

More than that though, this blog will not be the stage for side taking, debate about what is going on in my life, accusation, or implication. It is where I write, where I work, where I share, and at that, in limitation. I have deleted that chain of comments because they were part of a direction that is not what this blog is for.

To my loved friends, family, and supporters, thank you for all you are. To those who only show up when there is some kind of drama, move on. There are other places online to better spend your energy.

Today Forward~

This is a hard post to write and I’ve put it off for as long as I could. In my mind, I’ve gone over probably a hundred ways to say and handle how to approach what’s going on in my life right now, on this blog, in a way that both respects privacy and is congruent with my primary content here, keeping in mind that a good deal of my readership enjoys following the characters of my family and the way the changes we make work their way out in real time.

But so it goes that there is no easy way to say it. With friends and family, all those I had the strength to tell, I’ve just been saying it: “We’re getting divorced”. And it’s true. The paperwork is filed, the lawyers hired, the process of purging well on it’s way. What am I purging? There’s an ocean more beneath the surface of a statement like that that is not appropriate or necessary on a blog (such a tiny window of a person’s life). But what is absolutely germaine to the content on this site, “Living Deliberately”, is that there was a secret, yet very high, level of disfunction I’ve been propping up and supporting and it’s not something I can do anymore.

Looking inside, trying to take thing by thing, in order to become as authentic as possible, has a way of strengthening a person to see what they tried to ignore. And maybe I’m not so guilty of ignoring it but rather, of taking something ugly and trying to make it seem pretty, when all the while it was ugly to the core and quite harmful. Harm has a ripple effect and the only way to stop a cycle like that is to reach the source.

Life is going to be full of changes; I’m sure more than I now know. But there’s a funny thing about purging and cleansing and confession…it heals. I’m looking forward to it.

* note to readers: this post had been pulled over the previous month but I’ve decided to reinsert it into the archives, as it marks an important change and is ultimately, part of the fabric of this site. Comments are closed.

Shout out to Dalissa who found Ron’s “Election 08″ add on for her facebook page and made me have to have one too!

Go Ron!! The only candidate really talking about CHANGE!!!!!

We’re mostly DONE. Mom and Dad rolled out of here this morning; all that is left is a lot of clean up, touch up, and organization. The baby wrapped up what is hopefully the last of the stomach bug around here for awhile yesterday and today I am finding my way back to Life As We Live It. Here’s the pictures:

Celia’s room was done first; here it is before we set her mattress. For all the kids’ beds, Mom is doing their quilts at home and mailing them. Celia’s is bright  pink, green, and black.  She spent hours arranging her dolls, her pictures, and her papers.

The colors downstairs are “Glowing Ember” and “Baroque”, which is the color of butterscotch. We now have actual couches and no more beds in the living room! Feels good.

We got the colors from our rug:

The hallway:

It was time to take down Baby’s Crib….and he was NOT so excited about that idea!

The boys’ room…..

The view from Andrew’s “cave” end towards the closet; all the beds will get these curtains but Mom will send them as we ran out of fabric.

He stayed in his big-boy bed all night!

Thanks for following the saga! We went through over 3500 staples, 12 gallons of paint, 10 days of labor, 1 major stomach virus, $2800, 7 trips to hardware stores, 2 big bottles of wine, 32 homecooked meals, 4 trips to the dump, 1 visit by the police, and much, much more! The best part…everywhere I look is a memory, and most of it, a happy one!

onward!

I’m behind on posting updates only because we’ve been pumping all we have into this project + the curve balls. I underestimated this on every single level and that thought stuns me anew regularly. It has taken more money, more time, more effort, more mess, more everything than I could have imagined. What’s inane about that is that I am the daughter of a builder; no home we’ve ever lived in has ever been “finished”, and EVERY project comes with hidden surprises. But really…who would have thought we’d get a family stomach virus on top of this?! Yes, we all stand there with our paint brushes, with audibly gurgling intestines, not complaining as much as we can, while we get the next coat on, build the boxes, lift the items upstairs, make meals, referree arguing children… it makes for an interesting pace. I’d started the week intending to maintain my work week in the twilight hours; the virus did that in. We need our hours of sleep and while others take vacations, I’m taking time off to work my tail off with my parents and to concentrate on not concentrating on what it feels like to be nauseated 24/7. And yet I feel guilty about this…. someone tell me why?

So, to catch those following this saga up, I’ll back up to Wednesday. Mom and I had to shop for 3 mattresses and 1 bed set, which was fascinating because I do not understand HOW one mile of commercial district space can support 5 or more different mattress stores. They seem to be everywhere and all have cars in the parking lot…..someone tell me why?

We did find a great deal at Beds For Less; good mattresses with mismatched fabric (like I care?) right at our budget.

After mattresses we had to find Celia a headboard/footboard, which we did, for a beatuful $25 at the Habitat for Humanity Store. The finials are solid brass and it’s old, which I love. We are painting it black to match the fabric we got for her quilt. Speaking of her quilt, and the boys’, we got most of the fabric from the mecca of quilt stores: Mammaw’s Thimble. This place was decadently organized by color; Mom isn’t going to have time to make the quilts until she gets home but we had a lot of fun getting the stuff. Well, I say, “we”, but maybe not so much the youngest among us!

Wednesday also brought the start of box construction for the boys’ berths! Into Thursday we got pink paint on Celia’s walls, “Glowing Ember” on the stairwell, brown on the hall and closet floors…I forget what else.

Today, Friday, everything that needed it still got primed. The painting has spread into the living room, as “Glowing Ember” looks atrocious next to the olive in there, and they touch. Unfortunately, the color I had mixed looks more like calamine lotion, so tomorrow it’s back for another shot. Dad got the berths fully constructed, save for the drawers, which will get done tomorrow. David heads back to the city to pick up the mattresses and Celia will likely move into her very pink room! The list of details is piling up; the fun outings we had planned along the way are getting cut in order to

finish closer on time (they may have to stay an extra day as it is).

I may not post it until this is all done but several times I’ve been reminded of how GREAT a crock pot can be when cooking for a crowd with little time to actually cook! I started this week with a written meal plan and it was one of the smartest things I did. I also am compiling a mental note of what I didn’t do, that I’ve learned the hard way from, that will likely become a separate post, such is the length of the list!

With no TV and the living room Full.Of.Stuff, this is where we have “break time”. We also sit chatting after dark out here.

The weather finally checked the calendar and it’s chilly! We even had to start the wood stove to not affect dry-time.

The evidence is everywhere:

Sewing the new futon cover:

First time with a roller:

When I was loading the images, I saw that Andrew had taken my camera and gotten a shot of his dog. Good job!

The pace has changed around  here a bit! This makeover will not emcompass so much of the house after all and we are confronting the age of this house in many ways. It is, after all, over 110 years old, and has had many makovers in that time, some of them with very, very shoddy workmanship and materials. It’s never good taking apart anyone’s work; one always find the zits and pimples and corners they cut and thought they could hide. We’ve made a few of those ourselves and in 10 or so years, someone else may uncover what we’ve done.

So yesterday’s work:

It was all yellow…. this is the color we chose for the hallway walls:

I was wondering how we were going to get that spot….

Starting Celia’s floors:

Which made her ecstatic!

“Break Time” is a frequent refrain.

and in the rain, we got a second coat on the baseboards:

Lots of Father-Son time; Andrew using the nail gun:

David showing W how the saw works:

Today is more floor installation, floor painting, plaster re-coats, and shopping for mattresses, bedding, and quilt fabric.

What the boy had, turned out NOT to be a flare up of his disease, but rather was just the first of us all to fall for a bit of a stomach bug. Oh fun, fun ‘eh?  I’m on hour 22 of what had better be a 24 flu! What misery contant queasiness can be.

Yesterday was weird, project wise. With Andrew down with the bug, papa had a quiet morning of getting the patch work done with the drywall and got the wiring going. Mom and I had the kids in town for my bone scan and quilt-fabric shopping for the kids’ beds. Indeed the bone scan was stunningly easy though there is something quite distrubing when the tech says, “well the radiation is coming from you and the machine simply measures it.” Incidentally, the purpose of the test is to discover if the pain I’ve been having since July is a broken back or not. I tend to think I’d KNOW something like that, as in, have memorable impact or something, but apparently fractures and such can happen in a variety of ways. We’ll see…we’re waiting on results.

When we got home it was to work: we are still undecided if we are going to include the porch enclosure or not in this week but it’s looking less and less like we will. The kitchen lighting needs to be redone, since we’re in the floor upstairs and can get to it, AND it went out this very week! The hallway is an extension of the bedrooms and needed a bunch of work, so we are bleeding over into it and making changes. Mom and I primed the baseboards and dresser and half of the hall floor; Dad and David plastered and wired. Today will be more mud, the AC work, and the beginning of box constuction for the beds and drawers.

Working after dark:

The trailer and job site:

Meanwhile…

Let there be light!

Oh boy. On the plus side, we HAVE gotten a lot accomplished this weekend. Both rooms have all their drywall up and look like actual rooms again. On the bad side, we spent most of Saturday redesigning due to size issues and Sunday, which should have been a complete day of worship and rest, instead was fraught with complications like bad neighbor issues, broken pipes, and a sick boy. It’s quite possible that with rain, doctor visits, and sheer human limitations that we will be scaling back our “to do” list a bit. Time will tell.  In the meantime, here’s a photo diary of what we’ve done so far:

Celia’s room “before”:

The boys’ room “before”:

Scraping popcorn is NOT FUN:

Hanging down from the attic, getting the AC work done:

Do my kids join in the work? You tell me!

“My name is Tia and my 6th Grader taught me to use this saw.” Not really! But he did know how to use it before I did!

Why oh why can’t toiliet installation EVER go smoothly?????

I also learned a new trick: when screwing on drywall, put “pairs” of screws every 12-18 inches. They can get hit with one swipe with the plaster knife, which will speed that up later.

“Momma’s…don’t let your bay-bees grow up to be….toolmen?”

Train them in the way they should go and when they are old…

Back to the store!

Next up: more pictures taken by daylight of the progress so far, plaster, door installation, floors, and set up for the drawer construction…..

The changes we are making in the house are “extreme” only because of the impact they will have on the flow of our household. First up on the list is getting the wall built between the kids’ rooms, the boys’ bed berths constructed, and the new flooring installed. The budget for the WHOLE list of projects is just under 3k so today Dad and I set out to spend no more than half of that on this first stage. This meant, Grandma babysat the kiddos and I had my first “date with dad” in about 13 years!

On the list to buy:

• plywood for the drawers, bases, and shelves of the berths
• a new toilet for the upstairs bathroom
• hardwood flooring for both kids’ bedrooms
• misc. hardware
• 2 closet doors and 1 bedroom door, plus knobs
• lighting
• primer
• enamel paint
• plaster compound
• trim
• a new toilet seat for the downstairs bath
• AC duct stuff and insulation

It took 5 hours, lots of math, and 4 “floats” to get all the goods and we came just under budget with deals like a surprise discount that basically covered sales tax and discarded paint the exact color I was going to have mixed sitting there on sale.

I’m really excited about the boys’ berths. Each boy will have four large drawers, a book shelf at the foot of their bed, individual lighting, and a curtain for privacy. We’ve eliminated dressers and I think these beds will afford the most personal space possible for three boys sharing one room, ages 3-12. After mattresses, we’ll also have gotten 3 beds/clothing storage systems for $600 total. The plan right now is to paint all the wood work a khaki enamel. The floor is a honey oak color and the bedding is going to be shades of blue, tan, and green I *think*. Celia has finally settled on pink and bright green for her room.

Saturday brings the “before” pictures, the toilet install, the electric/AC wiring and hopefully the drywall and plaster. If we get it mostly done by Wednesday, we can shop for/begin the back porch enclosure. The item most likely to get cut from the list? Refinishing the floors downstairs because we can do that later, after Grandpa goes. We shall see….

And so it was that seven years ago today, just after midnight, a little red-faced man-child was born into the water in the tub we’d set up in our living room. He was the first birth after a death and his first breaths did not just fill his lungs; they signified the turning of grief into joy. As soon as he was on my chest, we put on Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World, and we marveled at his serious and deep blue eyes; an old midwife once said that the newly-born can see into your soul and indeed, the intensity of their gaze feels exactly like that.

An hour later we sat in bed: Dad, Mom, baby, and the midwife and ate large wedges of chocolate cake with cocoa frosting and glasses of milk near dawn, all of us feeling as if we’d completed a journey and knew this baby would bring happiness and healing.  And so it is with a profound gratefulness  and wonder that this boy has such a developed and keen sense of humor, that he has always, from his first moments, inhabited a wise knowing of sorts that runs deep but can scarecely be described. I’ve grown used to people commenting that they recognize something “special” about him and have placed him in a nook within their hearts….and yet, not used to it because how can he be really be different than any other boy?

When he was growing within I had dreams of him being “born in the caul”. This is when a baby is born with the bag of waters intact. It’s legendary among midwives. As it was, my water was broken artificially, beginning a pattern of much in his life being interfered with by external forces. We’ve watched and prayed as he’s endured what is at times, an unenviable path, and have been left amazed as he’s done so with such candor and calm; his spirit seems indefatigable.

And why so persevering? Because he can burp with the best of boys! Tell gross jokes! Run until utterly spent and sweaty until he drops into a heap of happy. He gets mad like a red-head and fights with his brothers and loves to ride his bike. He can find a friend in anyone. His adversity is something I rarely see him question; it just *is* and he moves on and deals, and I usually feel like he’s teaching me so much.

So  happy birthday baby! We will watch Louis and eat chocolate cake with cocoa frosting, go see cowboys and have friends. We will laugh and remember again that promises are kept:  weeping endured for a night, but joy came in the morning, and the world is better for it.

Great video from a guy in his own words, on *why* Ron is such a breath of fresh air.