Do you ever ask yourself rhetorical questions? Do you mutter under your breath and say things like, “What in the world is going on with you, Gladys?!” Or when you’re driving to the store to buy toilet paper and cottage cheese do you ever ask yourself out loud, “What do you think you’re doing?”

No? Oh come on, I’ll bet you do.

We’ve been packing up just a few items and putting them in just a few boxes, and hauling just a few things to our local Goodwill, all in preparation for our move to a different home on May 31st. Recently as I was going through our closet, I asked myself a rhetorical question.

I asked myself, “Hey! What’s with all the ugly brown shoes?”

And I didn’t have an answer for myself because it’s just way too deep of an enigma for me to figure out at this stage of my life.

Here is one pair of my ugly brown shoe collection. Guess how many times I’ve worn them? Zero. Zip. Yes, that’s right. I bought them in late 2006 because we had a trip to England, Scotland and Ireland planned, and Mr. Europe Through the Back Door Rick Steves said Eccos are really, really comfortable and good for a lot of travel walking. I did not think they were cute, but bought a pair anyway, and then didn’t wear them, because my dark blue Danskos felt better. So I walked all over the British Isles in those instead.

But I’ve kept these Eccos for all these years, and am not sure why.

Shoe comfort is important to me. My feet do an incredibly demanding job. They are long and narrow-ish (think “marsupial” as Ember would say), and must carry around more poundage than they would prefer. So when a friend told me these shoes below were comfy, I bought a pair. I wanted to be able to slip them on without tying laces, and I wanted a non-slip sole because we have snow and ice on the ground in Northeastern Minnesota for sometimes six months out of the year.

But these shoes weren’t very comfortable:

The arch hit my foot’s arch in the wrong place, and they ended up hurting my feet. So I don’t wear them anymore.

I love these ugly brown shoes below. Or boots, actually. They’re Mukluks, made in Minnesota, and are the warmest winter boots I’ve ever owned. And soooo comfortable. You can wear these outside in the snow when it’s twenty below zero and your feet will stay warm. So even though they’re not the most adorable looking boots you’ll find, I’m keeping these. (If I ever move to Costa Rica, I will give these to a deserving Minnesotan, but for now they’ll stay in my closet.)

And oohhh, don’t get me started on Birkenstocks. I love Birkenstock sandals. I have owned six pairs in my adult life, and worn them almost daily. They last at least five-six years, with frequent wear. I have a pair without the toe thing that I wear in the winter with warm socks too. When I put on my Birkenstocks, my feet and legs sigh loudly and say rapturously, “Aaahhhhh. Thank you.” I have friends who wouldn’t be caught dead in a pair of Birkenstocks because they’re sort of clunky, not exactly feminine and prissy looking. But my Birkenstocks and I will be together in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse, so long as we both shall live.

Why I still have these shoes pictured below is beyond me. I bought them for Sharon years ago when she was in college. She didn’t wear them much and gave them to me. I have worn them a time or two, but I think they look a little dated, don’t you? They’re fairly comfortable but since I haven’t worn them in at least five years, I think it’s time to give them to some nice woman who wears a size 9.5 shoe, so she can store them in her closet and not wear them too.

These taupe-ish brownish shoes are sort of dressy — what I might wear to a wedding or a fancy dinner at the White House. When I was young I used to wear very high heels even though I’m already 5′ 10″ tall, but when I turned 50 I decided to boycott high heels. It was one of my Turning Fifty Resolutions, and I’ve stuck to it quite well. These heels are about as high as I’ll go now that shoe comfort means more to me than style.

Two years ago I finally found a pair of very comfortable ugly brown shoes to wear for daily errands. They’re Merrells, and these feel good on my arch, and when it’s icy out they give me some traction. They have good soles. Do you have a good sole? Sometimes I think my sole isn’t so good and I need to spend some more time with the Lord to let Him work on my shriveled, selfish sole. Er, soul.

Okay now don’t laugh. It’s all about comfort, remember? Even Isaiah quoted, “Comfort, comfort my people!” (I know, that kind of comfort was about comfort for our souls, not our soles.)

These shoes are Earth Shoes, and are designed on the premise that when we walk on sand, our heels actually go deeper than the balls of our feet, so shoes should also follow suit. As you can see, the heels of the shoes are lower than the rest of the shoe. They look a little dorky (ugly might be too strong a word? Yes? No? What do you think?) but they are sooooo comfortable! If you don’t have a pair of Earth Shoes and you have feet issues, I would encourage you to get a pair of these.

However, if you have feet like mine that are size 9.5, these shoes do nothing for making your feet look smaller. If you’re into that. These shoes make your feet look so big it’s almost comical. When I got them home and put them on again, one thing immediately came to mind.

And what came to mind were the 1000-foot ore boats we see almost daily on Lake Superior, transporting iron ore from our port to various parts of the world through the Saint Lawrence Seaway.

Does this ore boat look like my Earth Shoes, or what?

I’m going to keep five pairs of my ugly brown shoes. The others I’ll give away in hopes that they’ll find some nice big feet to land on.

How about you? Do you buy your shoes based on the cuteness factor or the comfort factor? Do you have a favorite brand of shoe? Do you have any ugly brown shoes? Or ugly green shoes? Or ugly purple shoes?…….

O God of the open ear,

Teach me to live by prayer
as well as by providence,
for myself, soul, body, children, family, church;

Give me a heart frameable to thy will;
so might I live in prayer,
and honour thee,
being kept from evil, known and unknown.

Help me to see the sin that accompanies all I do,
and the good I can distil from everything.

Let me know that the work of prayer is to bring
my will to thine,
and that without this it is folly to pray;

When I try to bring thy will to mine it is
to command Christ,
to be above him, and wiser than he:
this is my sin and pride.

I can only succeed when I pray
according to thy precept and promise,
and to be done with as it pleases thee,
according to thy sovereign will.

When thou commandest me to pray
for pardon, peace, brokenness,
it is because thou wilt give me the thing promised,
for thy glory,
as well as for my good.

Help me not only to desire small things
but with holy boldness to desire great things
for they people, for myself,
that they and I might live to show thy glory.

Teach me
that it is wisdom for me to pray for all I have,
out of love, willingly, not of necessity;
that I may come to thee at any time,
to lay open my needs acceptably to thee;
that my great sin lies in my not keeping
the savour of thy ways;
that the remembrance of this truth is one way
to the sense of thy presence;
that there is no wrath like the wrath of being
governed by my own lusts for my own ends.

~~from The Valley of Vision

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Have I ever mentioned that I don’t care for the word busy? Well if I haven’t, I’ll say it now — these last weeks have been incredibly busy ones, and the next two months are bound to be even busier, and although my dislike of busyness is interspersed with much gratitude, I’m liking busy less and less.

When one moves a foster care home, there are so many things to address. Cable television has to be installed in our gals’ rooms. (I do not need cable and lived happily without it until we began doing foster care.) Phone lines have to be run in their rooms since they each want their own phone number. Hard-wired smoke detectors have to be installed rather than just the battery-powered kind. The State Fire Marshal has to go through the house before even one resident moves in. The county foster care licensor has to inspect the house. Many change of address forms have to be filed with the post office. And there’s more, but I just can’t think of them all right now.

I think once we move and have unpacked the last box and hung the last picture, I’ll feel better. But this year I will be 55 years old, and I’m pretty much feeling 55 years old. I crave time at home and quietness. I am already picturing myself in the new house, sitting in our master bedroom in the late mornings, with a cup of tea and my reading, and my ever-more-quiet husband by my side. Our new smaller house has a beautiful, close view of Lake Superior, and there’s nothing that soothes my soul like our big lake. Like Ember, I will be “looking at the blue” as often as possible. Our profession requires that we stay active with the women we care for, and I do enjoy that. I love to see them happy and excited to get out and do things. We are tentatively planning a trip to DisneyWorld within the next fifteen or twenty years and the thought of their glee and delight about that makes me glad. There are always many doctor’s appointments and various banking, haircut, out-to-dinner-and-a-movie type outings, and Michael and I enjoy doing this with them.

But when I come home….aahhh. I love to be home. I think I have the teensiest bit of agoraphobia or something. I’m not exactly afraid of wide open spaces, but sometimes after being out running errands for the better part of a day, the agoraphobic me kicks in and says, “Get home. Now!” And I usually obey.

This morning I got up at 5:30 and could still smell the onion and garlic from last night’s dinner. I make Chicken Tortilla Soup every few weeks and every time I hear everyone’s mumbly-yumbly sounds at the table I wonder why I don’t make it more often. It’s easy, uses just a little meat, has lots of vegetables, and is absolutely delicious. I like the smell of garlic and onions sauteing in olive oil when it’s time for dinner, but when I get up in the morning I prefer the scent of my favorite candle in all the world, a Thymes Frasier Fir that makes the whole house smell clean and nature-y in about ten minutes. I know the environmental engineers of the world would probably tell me I’m polluting my indoor air with a scented candle, but a girl has to choose her pollutants. And I choose this one.

If you look closely at the photo you can see that a few dishes were not done last night before I went to bed. Most were, but instead of cleaning up everything, Michael, Sara and I watched a movie together. We loved it. It’s called Arranged, and is about a young Jewish woman and a young Muslim woman who meet each other teaching at the same school, and who form a bond because they’re both facing arranged marriages.

As of yesterday, we have no car. My husband has an older truck so we do have transportation if the need arises, but the dealer where we got our Honda almost three years ago kept calling us, wanting to know if we would be willing to sell our car back. Apparently used Pilots are in demand and since ours didn’t have many miles on it, they wanted it. We finally decided to let them have it, and bought something just a little smaller. Something not a Honda. We still need a mid-size vehicle because we transport so many people, but the one we bought (which we will hopefully pick up later today) gets slightly better gas mileage than the Pilot did, and has a name I like better.

My mother told me years ago that she wasn’t sure she could vote for Gerald Ford for president of the United States because she didn’t like the shape of his forehead. Even back then, when I was nineteen years old, I knew there was something absolutely terrible about that kind of political reasoning. Can you imagine? So today when we bring home our new car, I’ll be careful about telling people that what swayed my vote regarding which vehicle to buy out of all the ones we test-drove, is that its name reminds me of my favorite place in Scotland, a country I love. If our new car had been named The Ukraine or The Inland Passage or even The Alpine, I couldn’t possibly have bought it. The car is nice and hopefully will meet our needs, but the name is what eventually made it stand out from the others. Any guesses on what we bought?  🙂

And yes, The Slippery Slope to Becoming Your Mother gets just a little steeper with every passing year. Sharon, Carolyn and Sara….don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I’ve been trying to pack three to four boxes per day, thinking that if I keep up with that, by the time we move in late May I’ll have most of the house done. So far I’m not too overwhelmed, but I know the last week will be hard. We’ll go to the real estate office on May 31st, will close on our house at 9:00 a.m., move into another conference room to close on the house we purchased at 10:00 a.m., exchange keys, and will not be able to go back to finish anything up in our old house because the new owners will be moving in right away. So every person and dog and jug of milk must be packed and ready to leave early that morning.

But….when we’re all done, I’d like to have you over for a cup of tea. Can you make it, do you think? Let me know when your schedule permits a leisurely visit on the deck of our new home, which looks out over the biggest freshwater lake in the world. If you’ve been needing negative ions for brain health in your life, we’ll have plenty to share.

Thank you so much for stopping by….I hope you have a blessed day!

If you visit this blog regularly you know that I joined Ember in committing to donate at least one item per day in the year 2012, resulting in 366 things gone from our home when it’s all said and done. It has been a wonderful exercise and has helped me clean some hidden clutter away that I’d long forgotten about. I’ve been taking pictures and posting each week’s seven things, ever since January.

I know. Be still your heart, right?

As we prepare to move to a new house at the end of May, I’ve been weeding through drawers and cupboards and closets, unwilling to move anything to the new place that I don’t plan on using there. In doing so, I’ve donated in just a few fell swoops, at least 60 or 70 things in the past two weeks. But I didn’t stop to take any pictures. I just piled the things in boxes and bags and my daughter Carolyn kindly drove them to the Goodwill for me.

So even though there’s nothing photographic on the blog to document it, I know I am covered in my one item per day until at least the end of June. Just today, many mugs, candle holders, scarves, mittens, movies, and plates left the building.

And it feels really good. It’s sort of pathetic what makes you feel happy when you get old, but I don’t mind admitting it at all.  🙂

Michael and I have been married for almost 31 years, and we’ve always slept on a queen-sized bed. We’ve owned one uncomfortable queen bed, one very comfortable soft-side queen water bed, and the mattress we sleep on now, which is like a dream, but also fifteen years old.

He has said at least one hundred times, “We need to buy a king-sized bed.” And I’ve never said much in response, because our sheets are queen-sized, our comforter and blankets are queen-sized, and when something is working for you, why change it?

Well, the master bedroom in the house we’re moving to is quite spacious, even though the house is smaller overall than this one. And since our current queen bed is pretty old and has two submarine-shaped dents in it where the owners sleep, we finally gave in and bought a king-sized bed. We went to the bed store and laid around for a while, and finally decided on one that will be delivered on June 1st, to the new address.

When we tried out the huge mattress at the bed store, we looked across the vast expanse at each other and I called, “Hallooo over there!” and Michael sort of half-grinned. But for probably different reasons than you might think. We can read each others’ minds, you see. And I knew exactly what Michael was thinking, and he knew my thoughts too.

He was thinking, “This bed will be just perfect for the four of us.”

Here are three of the four of us, resting on our current queen bed after a full day of errands and cleaning.

Michael is in the blue jeans, Mildred is in the blue collar, and Edith is wearing the red. The pooches don’t like to sleep at the foot of the bed. They crowd in as close as they can, making a Michael and Schnauzer sandwich whenever possible. Millie didn’t like the click of the camera and you can see the paranoia in her eyes. Before I took the photo she was quite relaxed, and stretched out as if she owned the bed and Michael.

Anyway, we will soon have possibly the last bed we’ll ever own, and it will be a king-sized beast…for the beasts.

Don’t judge.

“Are you born again?” he asked, as we taxied down the runway. He was rather prim and tense, maybe a little like David Eisenhower with a spastic colon. I did not know how to answer for a moment.

“Yes,” I said. “I am.”

My friends like to tell each other that I am not really a born-again Christian. They think of me more along the lines of that old Jonathan Miller routine, where he said, “I’m not really a Jew — I’m Jew-ish.” They think I am Christian-ish. But I’m not. I’m just a bad Christian. A bad born-again Christian. And certainly, like the apostle Peter, I am capable of denying it, of presenting myself as a sort of leftist liberation-theology enthusiast and maybe sort of a vaguely Jesusy bon vivant. But it’s not true. And I believe that when you get on a plane, if you start lying you are totally doomed. 

So I told the truth; that I am a believer, a convert. I’m probably about three months away from slapping an aluminum Jesus-fish on the back of my car, although I first want to see if the application or stickum in any way interferes with my lease agreement. And believe me, all this boggles even *my* mind. But it’s true. I could go to a gathering of foot-wash Baptists and, except for my dreadlocks, fit right in. I would wash their feet; I would let them wash mine.

Anne Lamott

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I posted this recipe a few years ago, but since we’ve been enjoying a fresh batch of yummy homemade granola lately, I thought I’d share the recipe again.

This granola recipe is for people who love granola, and for people who aren’t crazy about granola at all. If you love it already, you need to try this recipe. I’ve tried various store-bought granolas, and a few homemade recipes over the years, but have never found a granola better than this one.

If you’re not a granola fan, I encourage you to try this recipe too, because it’s just different. I got this recipe long ago and honestly can’t remember who gave it to me or I would gladly give him/her credit. I’ve very slightly altered a couple of things and just always call it granola. But since I like alliteration and needed a title for this post, I thought I’d call it Grandma’s Great Granola. Because I am a grandma. And because this granola is great.

I’ve baked huge batches at a time and given small bags of granola as Christmas gifts. Everyone always asks for the recipe. Try it and let me know if you like it!

Grandma’s Great Granola

Preheat oven to 250 degrees

Stir together in very large bowl:

2 cups whole wheat flour
6 cups rolled oats
1 cup raw sunflower meats
1/2 cup wheat germ
1 cup grated, unsweetened coconut
1 cup raw cashew pieces

Add:

1/2 cup warm water
1 cup oil (I like sunflower or safflower best but canola can be used too)
1 cup honey
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt

Stir well and spread out evenly over two large, greased cookie sheets (or even three sheets)

Bake for one hour at 250 degrees.

After thirty minutes I take out the cookie sheet, carefully turn the granola with a pancake turner so it browns evenly, then return it to the oven for the last half hour of baking.

Cool and store in air-tight container. This freezes well. This makes a lot and tastes wonderful with milk poured over it, or just eat it plain as a healthy snack.

Enjoy!

Yesterday was our youngest daughter Sara’s 30th birthday. I think that means I’m old now. Anyway, the whole family got together for dinner at the place of Sara’s choice, and we had a great meal. Sharon and I had Cobb salads, Sara had cedar plank-cooked salmon, Michael had a turkey dinner with smashed potatoes, Chris had a breakfast skillet with a huge buckwheat pancake, Carolyn had a burger called the Grand Royale, Jeremy had a bison burger, and the seven children had various mac-n-cheese like things off the kid’s menu, with fresh fruit and steamed broccoli.

We had a little surprise for Sara planned, and I tried to carry in our small CD player/stereo without her seeing, because we were going to sing. Over the years our family has rewritten famous songs, putting our own words in them and ridiculously performing them with a karaoke CD as accompaniment in the background. We did it at Sharon’s wedding shower, at Jeremy and Carolyn’s wedding reception, for Chris’s 50th birthday, and also for various friends over the years. It was Sara’s turn to have a song written for her.

If you aren’t familiar with music from the 1960s, you may not know the song. But most of you should remember it. I’ll wait quietly while you click here to see what song I’m talking about. Do you remember that one? And hasn’t popular music changed a bit since then? Yikes.

So before the server brought the fourteen meals we had ordered at the restaurant, we closed the doors to the private room where they seated us, plugged in the CD player, and sang “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” to Sara.

Only these were the words we used (since my name isn’t Mrs. Brown, and my husband’s name isn’t Mr. Brown, but our last name does begin with B):

Mr. B. you’ve got a lovely daughter
Girls as sharp as her are somethin’ rare
Yes, it’s true, with flowers she’s “white-hot”
Some day she might just have a business of her own

She was quite a picky little toddler
Her Osh-kosh cuffs had to be just so
When she was 12, she used to clean a lot
She had a business she called “Sara’s Spic and Span”

When she was young, Mom prayed for a cardinal
Now their whole house…is filled up with…red birds!

Mr. B. your daughter sure loves doggies
She lets Edith lick her on the lips
But her mom, she doesn’t like such things
But Sara’s 30 now, so nothing can be done

She’s workin’ out, she’s obsessed with fitness
Goes to the gym, kettlebells and squat jumps!

Mr. B. you’d better keep your doors locked
Guys from match.com are keen to call
Just so no! No to the pond cleaners!
No to the guys who think that bike repair is fun

Mr. B. you’ve got a lovely daughter (3x)

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So now you know why you would never go wrong by saying a prayer for our family. 🙂

There are a few little jokes in the song that our family would understand, and I don’t think Sara would mind me telling you about them, but I don’t want this blog to be a sedative, so I’ll think about that another time.  I am happy to say that Sara laughed at our performance and we had a nice dinner.

In other news, I have begun packing! Because on May 31st, we are moving to a new house. At the 11th hour, we found a place that might just suit us well, and a new (young) family of three will be moving into our house.

I will post photos of the new place once we get settled, of course, but the best two things about it that I’ll share right now are: 1) it is one block from Lake Superior and the view is gorgeous, and 2) it’s all on one level, which is what we need in this phase of our lives. We are very grateful, and I’m getting used to the idea of going, and am looking forward to the new place.

I decided that I would try to pack one room per day. Ha. I guess I have to lower the bar a little bit. Yesterday I packed the books just in our living room book cases, and here they are:

This is roughly one-third of our books, and I’m frankly stunned that one-third of our books fill twelve boxes. Another third are in the bookcases in the den, and the rest are in bookcases in our bedroom. I guess I had no idea that we have close to forty boxes of books. And I have already weeded them out, and given many away!

We have a welcome, soft rain falling as I sit here in my office and type this. The grass is finally turning green and big fat robins have returned to our area and are hopping around the yard, cocking their heads sideways, to hear the worms underground. At least that’s what I’ve always been told about robins. Maybe that’s a euphemism we need to add to our speech, you know, like “faster than a rabbit” and “slow as molasses in January”? We could now say something like this, “His hearing was sharper than a robin’s!”

Well, maybe not.

I am off to fix some dinner now, so will close this disjointed post with wishes for a blessed weekend to all of you. I’m running a little late, so I hope I’ll be faster than a muskrat!

For a change I don’t have many words swirling in my mind this morning. So I’ll post my photo of the fourteen things that are being donated (I didn’t put up last week’s seven) this week, as I part with at least 365 items during the year 2012.

There are fourteen CDs, all good works, but they haven’t been listened to in years, so I thought it was time for them to go someplace where they’d be enjoyed.

We had a really nice Easter with a wonderful message at church, sunshine in the sky, family present, and peace.

There are lots of changes coming in our lives…I hope to be able to write about them soon.

Have a wonderful week, and have I thanked you lately for stopping by?

Blessings,

When I got up this morning and came downstairs, this was the centerpiece on our kitchen table:

Sara made it as a surprise for us, and I love it. If you click to enlarge the photo, you can better see the stone rolled away from the empty tomb. It’s the One Thing that our lives hinge on.

From our home to yours, may you have a very blessed Easter.

He is risen!