by jphilo | Apr 25, 2016 | Daily Life
A week ago last Saturday, Katie Wetherbee and I were at the Accessibility Summit at McLean Bible Church near Washington, DC. In the morning we put on our fancy duds and facilitated a workshop called How to Become a Special Needs Ministry Master Chef, based on our book Every Child Welcome. After that we hung out at our book table.
Which turned out to be the party table in our part of the Exhibition Hall.
I can’t speak for Katie, but for the first time in my life I knew what it was like to sit at the popular table in the high school lunch room. People visited our table all day long. They signed up for the email newsletter, asked to take pictures with us, and bought books. Lots and lots of books. So many that several titles sold out, and I only had to lug home 5 of the 60+ books I lugged to DC.
It was pretty heady stuff.
Then I came home on Monday, put on yoga pants and a sweatshirt, and spent the rest of the week doing every day stuff. Unpacked and started the laundry. Cleaned the kitchen. Caught a cold. Got a haircut. Paid the bills. Grocery shopped. Started a diet. Cooked low fat meals.
Then another Saturday arrived.
There wasn’t a party table in sight. Just Creeping Charlie in the rhubarb to pull and quack grass in the flower beds to hoe. Cilantro to sow. House plants to move to the sun porch. Grass to mow. Three pans of buttermilk brownies to bake and Rice Krispie Treats to make for Sunday’s fundraiser for my mission trip to Latvia. Just me and the Man of Steel working side by side. He didn’t ask for a picture with me. But I didn’t ask for a picture with him either.
Such a come down from the Accessibility Summit.
To be honest, this author’s life is pretty mundane. Lots and lots of weeks of solitary writing, waiting for those rare moments when the right words combine to say exactly what you want. Doing housework alone and yard work with the Man of Steel. Dotted with those unexpected weekend stints at the party table. But I’m in good company.
After all, Erma Bombeck did all her own housework, too.
by jphilo | Apr 12, 2012 | Three Thoughts for Thursday
Hiram and I spent the week running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to stay ahead of spring chores. With all the lawn mowing, porch cleaning, and flower bed weeding, I’ve hardly had time to think of three thoughts for Thursday. That said, here’s my best shot:
- The onslaught of spring chores makes me very, very grateful for the innovation hailed by Target in their pre-Easter ad. How did I get anything done before ready-to-cook eggs came on the scene?
- My husband runs several times a week. I walk miles each morning. Still, our day spent weeding flower beds left us gimpy and slow. Is this a sign of advancing age of of the intricate, cunning, and sadistic nature of the human body?
- Despite hard frosts the past three nights, the rhubarb survived and is almost ready to pick. I can hardly wait to bake some rhubarb desserts again. My fave is strawberry-rhubarb crisp. Yours?
by jphilo | Oct 2, 2008 | Daily Life
Over a week ago, I scheduled an appointment with my husband, “Next Wednesday,” I proclaimed fiercely, “I get three hours of your time.” He looked slightly wild-eyed as I exacted a promise from him.
Wednesday is his day off, and he usually fills it with middle school youth group work, guitar-making, lawn mowing, whatever. Since it’s the only day when the two off us can do yard work, most years I don’t think ahead and nab a spot on his calendar before his time is committed elsewhere. Then, about mid-November, I kick myself because I didn’t salvage the Grandma Newell heritage geranium or bring any other plants inside before a killing frost.
Normally, it’s not such a big deal because Mom took cuttings from her Grandma Newell geraniums in the fall and gave me new ones in the spring. But not this year. With her at my brother’s for the winter, it’s up to me to tend the geraniums. Hence, my overbearing attitude when scheduling yard work with my hubby.
Yesterday was a great day for yard work – sunny, no wind, cool. We started at nine o’clock, weeding the flower beds which have been sadly neglected since Anne left for college. I found a sack of daffodil bulbs Mom gave me earlier in the summer, so Hiram dug a trench and I planted them, too. Finally, we took down the hanging pots and transplanted asparagus fern, vinca vine and the heritage geraniums. For now they’re all on the porch, adjusting to semi-indoor conditions before they come inside for the winter.
By noon we were done. Hiram thought the fence and all the other places where the pots had been hanging looked bare. But I focused more on the flower beds which look so much better, I can quit closing my eyes every time I walk by them.
Yesterday was a good day, but a sad day, too. I can’t deny the approaching winter or the change in Mom’s health which don’t allow me to rely on her anymore. But as we got in the car to go out to lunch, as a sort of celebration, the fall mum by the fence caught my eye. It’s the only mum of its kind that survived a late frost two springs ago. It not only survived, it’s thriving, spectacular.
The sight of it cheered me and gave me hope. If it could make it in spite of the killing frost, maybe the Grandma Newell geraniums will survive my erratic care. Maybe they’ll bloom for another generation or more when I entrust them to Anne’s flower and beauty-loving hands. Mom, I know, would like that.
