8 Days a Week

My sister lives right near the beach in Florida.  But she rarely goes there. It's such a hassle...swimsuit, grooming for the swimsuit, sunblock, fried chicken (um, yes, I discovered on my trip there that is strictly necessary), beach chair, water bottle, sunglasses, a good book, a place to hide your cell phone and keys, a blanket that doesn't bring back half the beach in sand....well, you get the picture.

But it's the beach.
It's good for your soul.
You feel so much better.
You are never sorry you went to the beach (...unless you forget sunscreen, I guess)

It's a little bit like married sex.

We people can be so dumb sometimes. We are always substituting the "good enough" for the great.  There are these wonderful, healthy options presented to us and we choose to sit on the couch and watch mindless tv instead.  Fresh, healthy food?  No thanks, I'll take a pizza delivered to my door instead.  Real live interaction with a human being that I love? No thanks, I'll take shallow interactions with people I barely like on Facebook, please.

So one day in church, I had this thought....

"We should 'go to the beach.'  Every day. For a week."

I went home from church and told my husband. And he said, "Ok."

So we did.

I thought it would require being super creative. Like fixing a fancy dinner. But it didn't.  You don't need recipe cards to make your favorite dinner.

When you know the plan, you get over if you feel like it or not.  Or if you feel pretty.  You slap on the sunscreen and get in the water and just enjoy the fact that you are at the beach!  It's awesome at the beach.  And HE gets over scheming about trying to "go to the beach."

He's not playing offense. You aren't playing defense. You are just having fun.

There are totally legit times to avoid the beach. Hurricane season for instance. Newborn baby. I'm mixing my metaphors, but you know what I'm saying. Maybe somebody in the relationship is just not well enough to go to the beach. But I'm talking about two healthy people with a typical relationship.  We should all make time and effort to the go the beach as often as possible.  We all make excuses for not going.  We get too busy. We're too tired. My legs look fat in my swimsuit. We can't find the beach chairs.  (Wait, is that a metaphor for something?)

I'm just saying...why not go to the beach more often?  It's right there. It's a big, beautiful ocean. And every time you go there, don't you think, "Dang. We should do this more often."

The Long Lenten Journey

It is 9 o'clock on the night before Easter and I am exhausted.  This morning, we got up early, and I sat in bed cutting out Muppet shaped heads and collars to decorate cupcakes for Charleigh's surprise birthday party in the park at 11.  We cleaned the house, did laundry and I finally fixed the broken curtain rod holder in the front window.  After the party, there was a baby shower at church.  And after that, we came home and colored eggs. And then back to church for Holy Saturday service. Home again to fold laundry, get the kids baths and sneak out the Easter baskets to hide when the kids finally fall asleep.

Lenten Rose

Lent is nearly over.  I didn't write here on the blog nearly as much I thought I would. But as I sat in silence in the customary dark of Holy Saturday, I knew that these past 40 days have been some of the most significant days I've known for a long time.

You get so frustrated sometimes, wondering if things will ever change. You go and cut your hair shorter than you ever have before, in the ache of wanting that change.  You plant a garden in the ache of wanting that change.  You sit and think and stew and cry and wonder what it will take.

And then, because nothing is hard for God, you change. Some cog inside your heart and mind turns by one tiny gear shift, and you are different. And it wasn't hard at all.

What did I give up for Lent?  How was I free? I wanted to give up being asleep in my own life. I wanted to be awake to things I had ignored.

Like my husband. When you are married for 15 years, you settle into a routine that you almost don't even think about. It gets dull.  So for a week of Lent, I paid attention to my husband. In the way husbands like the best.  8 days in a row.  I might write about that more later. Because it deserves it's own post.

For a week of Lent, I was blue. I gave up. I didn't want to pay attention to my life. I wanted to eat bad food and sit in bed and stop trying.  At which point, my husband put me on a plane and sent me to Florida for three days because he said, I needed a break. And he was right. I needed to walk away from work and routine and have-tos and have some adventure. I got sunburned and talked my sister's ear off and fell in love with her extremely doggy dog, Murphy and HIS cheeky Corgi, Eleanor Rigby. 

For a week of Lent, I realized that I hate some things about my life: how busy I am. How I never have enough time to do things that I want to do.  How I am always rushing. How my kids are growing up and I am not paying enough attention. How much time I spend looking for stuff I know I have, but can't find.  I purged. A carload of stuff. I organized my kitchen cupboards and my bathroom cupboards.  I came to truly believe that managing stuff takes time and the way to have more time is to have less stuff to manage.  This will be a process that keeps going, but I believe something different now about the stuff I have, so I am on a mission to simplify, give things I use a proper home and make things work.

For a week of Lent I did battle with God.  I pitched a fit.  I cried. I mourned. And in the end, I admitted that my long love affair with selling vintage was over.  I have felt it coming on for a long time now, but my days of selling old stuff on the internets are coming to an end. I have just some tiny inkling of what I might be doing instead, but I know that the trajectory of my business is about to take a whole different direction.  I closed one of my flea market booths already.  I don't know exactly what my actions steps will be, but I know that I want to do something different now.  For a long time, selling vintage was a good fit for me and for the family, but that is changing.

I am coming out of this 40 days firmer. I've spent a good amount of time at the gym and I can't imagine that changing.  It's weird to say that I enjoy it. That I went by myself when Robb was away.  That it has helped me.

So that has been Lent.  Tomorrow, we'll spend time with our friends, eating, laughing, singing, rejoicing, and knowing that change is possible....that our lives can be re-imagined, reborn and remade.  How freeing it has been!

Cedar Raised Garden Beds on the Cheap

Pinterest is not a total waste of time. So far, I have used at least three ideas for my own purposes and here is one that I am pretty proud of. 

The original idea came from a blogger in Alaska who used replacement cedar boards to make her raised beds. Somehow that translated in my head to a panel of cedar fencing. I'm not sure how that happened, but it was a happy accident because it ended up working pretty well.

I'm not doing a how to because I forgot to take "during" pictures.  Suffice it to say I special ordered one panel of cedar fencing (cedar, not treated which is poisoned or pine, which will rot).  It cost 89 dollars.  Looking for a pic today, I see they are on sale now for about 50. (facepalm).  The point is that it was a basic panel of fencing that looks like this on the back with three supports running horizontally.   Big thanks to our friend James who went to pick it up with Robb in his truck.

We pulled the supports off and cut some of the boards into two foot lengths for the sides of our boxes.  Then we cut the supports 16 inches long to be the corner pieces. We will bury the extra depth to keep them from blowing away in our weird Arkansas weather.

For our money, we got three 6 x 2 foot boxes that are 11 inches deep for about 30 dollars each. Compared to some of the kits we saw online (which were as much as 200 dollars a kit or more) I think it was a pretty worthwhile project. It took about three hours, but that was only really because our circular saw is sad and nearly unusable. If we had a more functional saw, I suspect they would have really only taken about 20 minutes each and also we would not be nearly as sore the next day....

I spent Tuesday gardening and got my first sun of the season.  I transplanted the blackberries and raspberries I had against the side of the house to make room for the raised beds. I moved two rosebushes and another bush from the front window where they don't get enough sun. I planted snapdragons, moved a section of chain-link fence, tried to work on our lousy front gate which is worthless, laid down weed-barrier under the new raised beds and around the air-conditioning units (no more weed-wacking the dang wires!) and mowed the back yard.  It was a thrill. 

Now we just have to plot with some of our garden friends to share a truck to get a load of compost for our raised beds.  And I just pinned a few other ideas I'm dying to try...