In my blog wanderings and perusals over the past three years, I've seen many lists of "Forty Things to do Before I Turn Forty." By the time I thought of composing my own, my time was seriously running out, and I was faced with either making a list of "Forty Things to Accomplish in the Next Nine Minutes" or of finding a creative alternative. (Allow me to offer a small bit of advice: given a choice between Lots of Potentially Emotionally Unhinging Work or a Creative Alternative, go for the latter.)
My alternative to the "Forty Things to do Before I Turn Forty" list? It needed to be something positive, something affirming, something that would help me appreciate the life I've had already and the one I have now rather than laying on the pressure to do more, accomplish more, be more. I needed not a list of things to do, but a list of wonderful things I have done in my first forty years, a list of appreciation and celebration. Therefore...
Forty Things I've Done Before Turning Forty
1. Learned to see God as a very real and compassionate Person rather than a Lurker with a Big Board.
2. Convinced my brother to willingly eat mud.
3. Slept in trees.
4. Jumped out of a barn loft.
5. Earned a writing degree, had success with creative pieces, publication, readings, two Pushcart nominations and served a week long term as Poet in Residence at Bryan College.
6. Been proposed to or seriously co-considered marriage five times.
7. Had a sixth man fall to his knees dramatically before me in a public place, spread his arms wide and sing loudly, "Besa me! Besa me mucho!"
8. Promptly married him.
9. Stayed married 17.5 years to date.
10. Gave birth to two children with a midwife presiding and no meds.
11. Learned to enjoy poetry. Learned to detest poetry. Learned I can't live without poetry.
12. Enjoyed mathematical theory.
13. Pieced and hand-quilted a quilt from dress scraps.
14. Found out what happens when one puts one end of an electrical cord in one's mouth while the other end is still in the outlet.
15. Learned to cook, yea, even unto a complete Thanksgiving meal for company.
16. Played the piano and the oboe.
17. Walked barefoot through snow.
18. Danced.
19. Put my brother in a tractor tire, rolled him down a hill and survived my mother's wrath afterward.
20. Attended wonderful Renaissance festivals.
21. Played the lead onstage in "Once Upon a Mattress."
22. Sang a solo in Handel's Messiah.
23. Learned to live without medication for an affective disorder--something a diagnosing doctor said I would never do.
24. Lived amid a passion for learning.
25. Discovered a passion for teaching.
26. Learned to live in the midst of prayer.
27. Made peace with an ongoing and difficult relationship from my past.
28. Learned where I fit in my family.
29. Read thousands of astounding, wonderful books.
30. Tutored and taught writing to amazing people.
31. Moderated for the beautiful ladies of LHM's Lighthouse and Covenant Women for several years.
32. Given up an addictive and self-destructive way of "coping."
33. Found the courage to keep/enforce my own boundaries while remaining unruffled.
34. Learned jewelry making.
35. Mentored some incredible young women.
36. Learned to recognize and name flowers, trees and other native plants.
37. Taken up yoga.
38. Kindled a love of books in two children.
39. Laughed nearly every day.
40. Been a student of grace.
Show us a photograph that makes you remember.
This picture makes me remember, all right. It was taken this week, but it reminds me of the time I put my little sister in my mother's dryer.
I don't think I turned it on, but I can't be sure. Maybe that was when I put in my brother.
She has fallen into a whole new world. We came back from the NJHS induction ceremony, and she'd unexpectedly and inexplicably become more grown up, as if she'd stepped across some invisible boundary line.
"How long have you known you like him like this?" I asked as the car rounded the curve before our turnoff.
She thought for a little bit. "Since yesterday afternoon," she replied.
Suddenly she wants to get up early to have time to do her hair and get to school early enough to maybe speak with him in the hallway, this child who would give her left leg to sleep late and whose hair normally resembles a haystack--a lshining, golden haystack, but a haystack, nonetheless--when she is finished "fixing" it, which until now has consisted of dragging a brush quickly through the thicket of her wild curls.
She came to the car after school yesterday so obviously happy that I was sure he had asked her to "go out" with him, the term used among Jr. High students, I am informed, for being someone's steady girlfriend of boyfriend. No. He had come to sit with her at lunch and give her his cinnamon roll, however, and he held the door for her, and he sat by or behind her in all the group pictures being taken that day, and he had a conversation with his pals about what a good friend she was, and he asked her to sit with him and his friends during lunch the next day.
She glowed, shimmered with happiness, the mirage of a beautiful young woman flickering and shifting with the face of my fourteen year old child as she told me of the day, her voice softer, gentler, brimming with a ripening richness I'd not heard in it before. Mystery, thy name is woman.
When did you really get to make a difference for someone else?
Submitted by bodhibound.
Today I took my grandmother to a doctor's appointment and then for an unexpected medical test in a town nearly an hour away. She has made an immeasurable difference in the lives of all of her children and grandchildren. Doing these little things for her now seems so small in comparison.
I've not posted on Refractions for a long time. Months, I believe. Probably this will happen again eventually, but for now I may pick up the pace a bit, which is to say, there may actually BE a pace again. "Why now?" you may well ask. "Because The Older Daughter now has her own blog and is reading my other, main blog," I reply, "thus limiting that about which her mother feels it prudent to write."
Yes, ratted out by the kids.
So here is the official, celebratory kid-free post...at least until she finds the link here from her father's non-Vox blog (might want to change that, Dear).
Yesterday I attended a parent-teacher conference with The Younger Daughter's teacher and was given the information that as a 4th grader last year, The Younger Daughter had the grade level equivalents of a graduating h.s. senior+ in her reading ability, a sophmore-junior level language arts ability, and a 7th grade math score. This is the child that is (unless the requirements have been recently changed) Mensa eligible. The thing that pleased me most, however, was that she made the A honor roll. Smarts she has in abundance, yes, scary smarts. Focus and discipline are another matter, and it's been a while since all those active little grey cells managed to stay on task long enough to pull straight A's. Her father and I are extremely proud of her, and more proud of her hard work than anything, as it will carry her farther than native but unfocused smarts ever would.
As for The Older Daughter, she brought her grades home and had made the A honor roll, as well, a feat she's not managed since early elementary years. She's bright, but she has to work at her studies, and work she has been doing. What's exciting about The Older Daughter's grades is that SHE was excited about them. "Let's celebrate!" she cried, doing a happy sort of dance and waving the report sheet over her head. So tonight we celebrate: pizza for all!
There are few feelings in the world like watching your kids work hard for something, accomplish it, and enjoy the results of their labors.
Do you buy products made locally? Is there anything made in your area that you love?
Oh, boy, is there! Grandpa Joe's Chocolates. They're made by some lovely people we've come to love who have a wonderful gift store, Rosewood Farms, just down the road. They use recipies from his grandfather, who went to professional candy making school in the early 1900's. The results are absolutely, mouthwateringly wonderful. Godiva doesn't come anywhere near these, people! :::pausing to gaze raptly into space while drool collects in small puddle on keyboard:::
One of my favorite things about buying Grandpa Joe's is that John and Melody and their children (grown, some working in the business) are all such good people. It's a pleasure to contribute to their business.
And, yes, they take online orders. :)
If you were stranded on a desert island, what five people would you eat first?
Submitted by James Poling.
1. The one who talked incessantly.
2. The one who would not share his/her chocolate stash (but only when we were alone, and I'd bury the stash so no one else would know where it was).
3. The one who did not acknowledge my obvious intellectual superiority.
4. The one who was mean to children and animals and thought it was funny.
5. The one who bathed regularly.
Randy has put out a call for pictures of the journals we use for our more personal, non-blogging type of thoughts. Below you'll find the one I begin in the morning, having just finished the one I've been using since July. This one's cover is from the Book of Kells' Prelude to the Gospels. I've been nearly drooling over the thought of beginning to use it, especially as it's the first in a set of four. The pens are fountain pens: Pelikan M200s. Pelikan blue ink in the blue one (fine point). Noodler's Sequoia in the green (extra fine point). Tomorrow begins the adventure!!!!
This weekend the girls made turkey cookies--happy little turkey cookies like this:
I was helping and taking pictures when I noticed a strange aberation among the happy little turkey cookies. One of them had three eyes.
"What is this?" I asked.
"That one," replied The Younger Daughter sweetly, "is a mutant. You don't have to worry about him, though. He's nice. It's the devil turkeys I'm making with the red M&M's that you have to watch out for."
We ate the devil turkeys promptly, lest they slay us. Thus, sadly, no pictures.
It is hard when an editor to whom you have sent five pieces for consideration sends you back rejection emails for two of the pieces but no word concerning the others. It's probably good news, yes, since it means the other three are being kept for closer scrutiny. It's also a bit... aaahhhrrrrgggh!
The woodwork down here by the floor is very tasty, in case you're wondering.
Terrific list! Thanks for the info on yoyo quilts! That's exactly what I had:)) read more
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