by jphilo | Mar 1, 2011 | Family
This morning I’m speaking to a MOPS group in River Falls, Wisconsin. It’s a “far piece” from Central Iowa, even a crazy investment of time and gas for a 45 minute talk. But, it’s not crazy to me, since my son and daughter-in-law live only an hour from River Falls, so I slept at their house last night.
That may not seem like a big deal, but spending time is something I don’t take for granted. A year after writing the blog post below, I am still mindful of God’s grace and restoration in our family. May the mindfulness never fade away.
Mindful – Recycled
I take so many things in life for granted: a warm home, a loving husband, more food than I need, education and job skills, freedom to travel, vacations, a functioning government, friends who stand by me, and the ability to pay our bills each month. These privileges are so commonplace I treat them as my due goes on and on.
But each time my children call, I’m reminded of a double privilege my husband and I never want to take for granted. We count it a blessing when they call, their voices full of confidence in our love for them, eager to talk about the events of the past week and dreams for the future. The blessing multiplies when they ask for our advice, consider our words seriously, and heed what we say.
I never dreamed of such a relationship with my adult children after growing up in the sixties watching the hippies and flower children denigrate and scoff the “establishment.” A bit young to participate in the rebellion, a bit of the ‘60s attitude managed to rub off on me. My parents’ advice was considered suspect until after our son was born, and we needed all the help we could get to survive his first five years.
So we never expected our children would value our advice before they became parents. And during Allen’s monastery years, we lost our easy relationship with him and believed it was gone forever.
God has blessed our family with restoration. We deserve this blessing no more than any other family. I fight back tears when our children, overwhelmed by the sweetness of God’s grace, acutely aware of families broken by strife, crippled by rebellion. I restrain the tears until after the good-byes and I love yous.
Then I let them flow as I pray, “Please God, make me mindful of your blessings. Don’t let me ever take them for granted.”
by jphilo | Feb 23, 2011 | Family
My mom discovered lasagna in the late 1960s, about the same time she discovered another Italian dish – pizza. We said I-talian with a long “i” and the accent on the first syllable, our pizza assistant was Chef Boyardee, and mom’s version of lasagna culminated with pouring cans of Campbell’s condensed cheddar cheese soup over ground beef and lasagna.
After those heady days as Iowa’s I-talian cultural ambassadors, I experimented with a number of lasagna recipes that didn’t have cheddar cheese soup in the ingredient list. Gradually, I perfected my recipe. Not too long ago, Anne asked for my recipe, which she refers to as “Mom’s Lasagna.”
In deference to Anne, here is the recipe for this mom’s lasagna. But if you have a good one, I’m willing to give it a try. Just type it in the comment box if you like. Unless cheddar cheese soup is one of the ingredients. I know what that one tastes like, thanks to my mom’s lasagna. It was way I-talian.
Mom’s Lasagna
1/2 pound ground beef
1/2 pound ground pork sausage
16 ounce can tomato sauce
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped green pepper
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
12 ounces cottage or ricotta cheese
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
8 ounces lasagna noodles
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Brown meat in a skillet. Drain and rinse to remove fat. Return to skillet and add onions and green pepper. Saute for 2-3 minutes. Add crushed garlic, Italian seasoning, salt, pepper, and tomato sauce. Stir well and bring to a boil, then turn down and simmer uncovered.
While meat sauce simmers, cook noodles according to package directions. Drain in a colander and rinse with cold water.
Spray a 9 x 13 pan with cooking spray. Arrange 1/3 of lasagna noodles in bottom of pan. Spread with 1/3 of meat mixture, 1/3 of cottage or ricotta cheese, and 1/3 of mozzarella. Repeat two more times. Bake uncovered for 1/2 hour.
(I always make a double or quadruple batch and freeze several pans.)
by jphilo | Feb 15, 2011 | Family
My, oh, my! This post from February 16, 2009 was a reminder of how much has happened in the last two years. My mother’s house sold 4 hours after it was put up for in March of 2009, during the worst housing market in decades. Our son now has a pick up, a job, a wife, a dog, and a bright future. Our daughter has a husband and will graduate from college in a few short months. Instead of cleaning a house this February, my sister and her husband went to London and Paris. The spare room is now Hiram’s office, and I’m busy with book rewrites.
But some things remain the same. My scrapbooking keeps getting pre-empted, God is faithful, life will look much different in two more years,and pride is a continual struggle in my life.
Pride Cometh Before the Mess – Recycled
Last Saturday morning, I felt pretty proud of myself. The house was back to normal after all our December excitement, and all the treasures bequeathed by Mom were in place. My schedule for the coming week was much clearer than normal, so I anticipated a highly productive writing week.
I was so pleased with my organizational ability, I was probably insufferable. But only lasted until my sister arrived around noon, and we went to Mom’s house to sort through her things so we can put the house on the market. By Sunday evening, Hiram had hauled several loads of new treasures to our house and put them in the spare bedroom. I was too bummed to climb the stairs and face the mess. On Monday morning, my sister’s parting advice was, “Don’t even look at it for a week.”
Good advice and I stuck to it, at least until Anne called before noon with a case of the February college blues and a great desire to come home this weekend. But she’s stranded because she loaned her car to Allen until he found a job and could afford his own set of wheels. I can’t pick her up Friday because we have a meeting about Mom’s finances scheduled that afternoon. So I called my son, who now has a job and will have his own truck by the end of the week.
About three or ten phone calls later, everything was arranged for him to pick her up and bring her home, leave her car in Iowa, and ride home with a friend who will also spend the weekend with us. Anne will sleep in her bedroom, Allen said he’ll take the couch.
This means I can’t take my sister’s advice. I have to clean the mess by the end of the week. It also means I won’t be scrapbooking this weekend as I planned. But it also means that by next Monday the spare room will be clean, Anne will have a way to get home for spring break, and I won’t be quite so insufferable.
by jphilo | Feb 7, 2011 | Family
This blog post is directed to the yahoo who buried the pig head carved from a coconut in my doll collection. Yes, it’s pathetic that I finally noticed if over a month after you “won” it in the white elephant gift exchange New Year’s weekend. In my own defense, the ploy worked when Elliot hid ET, surrounded by Drew Barrymore’s stuffed animals, in plain sight.
For your information, Hiram didn’t notice it either.
Of course, no one ever accused either of us of being particularly observant, and maybe that’s what you were counting on. How many of you were in on the subterfuge? Have you been calling each other up and sniggering about it? Did you have a betting pool going to see how long it would take us to find it? If so, whoever has February 7, 2011 at 6:00 AM is the winner. (That would be the day after the Packers won the Super Bowl, in case you’re wondering.)
Personally, I think it’s pretty pathetic that you didn’t take the gift I pawned off to your own home. After all, I sucked it up and carted home the elf fart I won last year. Not only that, I kept track of it for 12 months and rewrapped it so some other sucker could take it home for 2011.
For your information, this raises the stakes for next year’s white elephant gift exchange. You will see the coconut pig head again, along with the Bonanza Christmas CD I relocated the other day. If you win that puppy, it’ll come with headphones, and you’ll be forced to listen to it. All of it.
Start choosing your own white elephant weapons. Unless you want to appease me by forking over the squirrel underpants. Then I’ll forget the whole thing.
Otherwise,
this
is
war.
by jphilo | Feb 1, 2011 | Family
You may be surprised to see another recycled post, in light of Friday’s big news that the first draft of Different Dream Parenting is done. Really, truly, the recycled posts will end soon, but a grace period is needed until I catch up on all the things shoved into the “when the first draft is done” pile.
Perhaps this post from February 4, 2009 will put a smile on your face. The “yesterday’s worries” mentioned in the first line refer to the bitterly cold and snowy winter chronicled in the previous day’s post. Our weather’s a little better this winter (though as I write, snow is falling and a doozy of a storm is predicted for tonight), but Abby the dog remains unchanged. Her two constant, subliminal messages are “pet me, pet me” and “feed me, feed me.” She is as fickle as ever, as happy to live with my sister-in-law as ever, as demanding as ever, and a wonderful diversion in the middle of winter.
Pet Me, Pet Me
You’ll be glad to know that yesterday’s worries about driving elderly women around in the cold came to naught. By the time I picked them up, the car was toasty, and we found a perfect handicapped parking spot in the first lot we scoped out – six feet from the Applebee’s entrance. The pavement was dry, the sun was shining, and we talked the hours away.
It was the fickle dachshund we used to own that cast a pall on the afternoon. Normally, when I visit Mom, Abby tosses her hair over her shoulder, shrugs, and with her grey little nose in the air, turns away. If my sister-in-law, who is the love of Abby’s life is home, the dog doesn’t acknowledge me at all.
But yesterday, when I was working on Mom’s checkbook, a task which takes the coordinated effort of all my brain cells and absolutely no interruptions, Abby decided she loved me again. Of course, she didn’t really love me. She just wanted to use me, or at least my hand, which she decided should be petting her since she’s a whole lot cuter than Mom’s checkbook. At least that’s what she thinks, but the checkbook might have a different opinion.
Anyway, the dog hunkered down at my feet and stared at me, or rather at my hand, sending one of the two subliminal messages she knows. Pet me, pet me. In case you’re wondering, the second message is Feed me, feed me. The second subliminal message explains why Abby remained at my feet instead of on my lap. She’s gotten too fat to jump on the couch. So she stared and stared while I concentrated on recording deposits and withdrawals in the right column, something I routinely mess up in our checkbook, but not in Mom’s. I would never live it down.
Finally, the stare got to me, and I petted the dog. For a few minutes we were best friends again. She tried to make me feel like the center of her world, but I didn’t fall for the little scam. I reminded myself that the minute my sister-in-law walked through the door, the fickle, people-using dachshund would abandon me without a second thought. Having avoided a frigid lunch disaster, I wasn’t about to succumb to heartbreak at the paws of a cold-hearted canine.
I got home, heart intact, in time for supper with Hiram. I didn’t even mention our people-using ex-dog to him. Unlike me, he takes it personally.
by jphilo | Jan 31, 2011 | Family
Hiram and I ask the same question after every conversation with our kids. Can farmer genes lie dormant in one generation and then emerge full-blown in the next?
See, both our dads loved farming, but had to give up on their dreams – my dad due to multiple sclerosis and Hiram’s dad due to Alaska’s climate allowing farmers to grow more debt than crops. Still, Hiram grew up on the farm-turned-airstrip with the barn-turned-airplane hanger, so he knew enough about farming to know it wasn’t for him. And I grew up spending part of each summer with my cousins at their parents farms, enough to learn the following lessons:
- The back of a horse is too far from the ground. (Notice the girl wedged in front of her sister, reaching around her brother to get a death grip on the saddle. That’s me.)
- Gathering eggs is fun until the hens peck at you.
- Climbing a manure spreader makes you stinky.
- Falling down while climbing the machine that carries hay bales into the barn loft can result in nasty skinned knees.
- Hay is itchy.
- Barn kittens are cute until their claws dig into your shoulder.
- Farm animals smell.
- Weeds grow faster than crops.
The list could be longer, but suffice it to say that over the years, I’ve come to love the idea of farming more than the practice.
But our kids are a different matter. This weekend, Allen completed the fourth week of his ten week farrier school. After the first week, he was so tired he could barely talk. The second week was a little better. By the third week, he was pretty sure he’d made the right decision, and this past weekend he was positive. In the short term, it’s the training he needs to increase his income. in the short long term, its the next step in gaining skills required for life on an organic farm that uses work horses rather than motorized machinery. Of course, even his grandparents didn’t do that kind of farming. The horse-drawn farming gene goes back at least one more generation, maybe two.
But Allen isn’t the only one to inherit the farmer gene. His sister, Anne, who loves to sew and design clothes, is hoping to launch an internet sewing business soon. Her long term dream is to have a small farm where she can raise sheep and other critters, then spin her own yarn for weaving, knitting and who knows what.
So I ask you, how long can the farmer gene lie dormant? Can it mutate? How much is nature? How much is nurture? So many questions remain to be answered. But I can tell you this, watching dreams unfold is fascinating entertainment. And watching our kids evolve into adults who can attain them is an undeserved blessing for which we are grateful. When their dreams become reality, I will have only one request for the farmers.
Please, don’t make me ride a horse.
Cause the old gray mare’s back is still what she used to be.
Way too far off the ground.
