The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.\par
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George Bernard Shaw\par
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I don’t know much about G.B. Shaw, but isn’t that a great quote? I think it applies to thinking about how one feels all the time. If you go around asking yourself “how do I feel today?” you can always find\’c3\’82\’c2\~something wrong, but if\’c3\’82\’c2\~you’re busy enough you might not think about yourself and your feelings at all! Of course, busi-ness can be used a refuge from uncomfortable truths, but so many of my introspective and “how do I feel” moments are just a segue into a\’c3\’82\’c2\~ridiculous pity party!

Yesterday I accomplished a task that had been on my mental (and sometimes paper) to-do lists for about 4 years: I fixed the wallpaper in the nursery. No, I’m not talking about floor to ceiling wall paper, I’m talking about a simple, classic pooh wallpaper border, about waist-high around the room. No ladder work required. See, with the help of my friend Lydia (who has since moved to Alabama), I put up a wallpaper border around the wall of the room with the wall below it painted a bright cheerful yellow. This was about 4 months before Judah was born in 2003. Somewhere around that time I also got a kitten. The kitten grew, and got big enough to sit on the windowsill in the baby’s room. Before Judah had even moved into his nursery the cat decided to jump down from the windowsill, using her claws to slow her decent, incidentally catching the new wallpaper border and tearing it. Unfortunately, this was not in an unseen corner, but smack on the part of the wall that one sees first when looking into the room. If I’d fixed it right then, it probably would’ve been a simple glue job, but I didn’t. And eventually the boys got big enough and tall enough to start tearing at the already torn part themselves, eventually making a 3-foot-long stretch of the most visible part of the wallpaper look absolutely terrible. All of this time of course I kept thinking “I need to fix the wallpaper in the nursery. I should do that soon. It won’t be that hard. etc..” and not\’c3\’82\’c2\~being able to enjoy the most decorated room in the house because of the obvious wallpaper snaffu.\’c3\’82\’c2\~So, 4 years later, and 6 months after I’d bought some new wallpaper border adhesive for the job, I finally did it! It probably took about 40 minutes, maybe an hour. 4 years of procrastination and 40 minutes of effort. Why do I never learn?!!

Two chores that I do often enough (for me):\par
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Vacuuming\par
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Cleaning the Bathroom.\par
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Two chores that I wish I did more often:\par
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Wiping down the refrigerator.\par
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Cleaning my smoothtop stovetop.\par
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\’c3\’82\’c2\~\par
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What are your 2 and 2?

Do not, for any reason, initiate fingerpainting with a 3 1/2 year old and an almost 2 year old. It works like this:\par
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Preparation (finding paints, paper, protective/old clothing, location set-up): 15 minutes\par
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Opening paints and explaining rules: 3 minutes\par
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Painting by boys, during which time they turn beautiful pots of paint into slimy mult-colored messes, and cover their clothing, fingers and some of their faces with paint, having no doubt a wonderful time, until they get tired of it: 5 minutes\par
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Cleanup, including cleaning off paints, sponges, table, moving papers to a different location to dry, removing paint-covered clothes, washing off arms, faces, hands, legs, etc., then wiping off wall against which little appendages must’ve bumped: 20 minutes.\par
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Sheer madness.

“The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it.”\par
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Words put into the mouth of Jonathan Swift in The Rebels of Ireland by Edward Rutherford.

I feel like my blog has been kind of lifeless lately. I’d like to write deep thoughts from time to time, and yet my days are largely made up of the mundane thoughts that are so unimportant, yet so necessary (i.e. Is there milk in the refrigerator? How long has that sippy cup been sitting out? Where’s Ezra? What was that loud bang?) So, eventually, when a deep thought hits, I’ll be sure to run down and type it up really quick so that my entire readership (all 4 or 5 of them!) will know that every once in a while “Elly has a deep thought.” In the meantime, I guess we’ll have to stick with the stories of my beautiful ordinary life happenings.\par
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However, I just read the article in World magazine by the author of Hank the Cowdog, regarding his mother and motherhood in general. He quoted the old phrase: “The hand that rocks the cradle, rules the world.” I like that. I think I’ll make that into a caligraphy and hang it on the nursery wall as a motivational reminder.

I feel like I haven’t posted pictures in quite a while. But I really haven’t taken many recently, either, so I haven’t felt the desire to come down and download them off my camera. Sometimes it just seems like nothing is particularly picture-worthy. Not because the kids aren’t cute… just for some reason I don’t find myself saying “Oh, that’d be a cute picture” and racing to try to take it before the situation changes (which it almost always does). I did take a picture of the look on Ezra’s face as he squashed the tomato last week, though. I’ll have to try to remember to post that sometime.\par
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We went to a new homeschooler meeting today: Honeycomb Kids. The idea is that people with little kids (say, under 10) can have a time and a place to perform the things that they’re memorizing. They’re hoping to meet every 7 weeks. There were only about 6 maybe that were old enough, so the reciting bit went quickly (which was good because their younger siblings can only sit quietly for so long), and afterwards there was a lovely, noisy, confusing playdate for all of the kids. My boys sure had a great time! And I did too, listening to all of the triumphs and disasters of the other moms. Made me think that perhaps waiting for a little while longer to get started on baby #3 was a good idea.\par
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The playdate\’c3\’82\’c2\~was also good for Judah ,especially, to have an opportunity to learn the proper way in which to interract with other kids (sharing and cooperation) and to be corrected for improper ways of interracting with other kids (whacking and kicking). Initially one feels rather shamefaced that one’s child is misbehaving, and then I realized – “no, this is exactly what we’re here for! How else is he going to learn these things?!” So it was all around a good experience, hopefully one which we’ll be able to repeat regularly.

That ceramic stove-top cleaner can scrub off that annoying sticky residue on cookie sheets?

If you like to keep track of other people’s blogs, but don’t want to have to check them every day only to be disappointed if they haven’t written, perhaps a subscription to http://www.bloglines.com is just what you need? You can subscribe to the blogs that you read, and sometimes to comments on those blogs, and instead of of checking them when you remember, you’ll just check your personalized page. On the page, if there’s a new comment you haven’t seen, it’ll show that there’s a post you haven’t read yet and you can read it right there or follow the link to the blog and read it there. I’ve found it helpful, and maybe even time-saving?

While I was living with my grandmother for a year I had the opportunity to think long and hard about where and whom I wanted to be when I reach my autumn years. I wrote down a long list of Dos and Don’ts, some of which were directly demonstrated (or not) by my grandmother, but some of which I came up with little outside inspiration. I want to write them in caligraphy and hang them somewhere where I can read them from time and where I CAN’T misplace them. But, in the meantime, since my sister-in-law, Emeth, said that she puts things on the internet that she doesn’t want to lose, I thought perhaps I’d post them – and maybe get even more suggestions for added dos and don’ts!\par

Things to Remember

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(When I’m Old)

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PLEASE

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Do – lend a sympathetic ear to other’s troubles with a mind to ways you can help.

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Do Not – make other’s troubles your own. “There’s a kind of woman who lives for others – you can identify those others by their hunted expressions.”

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Do – tell stories from your past when asked, especially to children – unless there seems to be a LOT of interest, shoot for brevity.

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Do Not -\’c3\’82\’c2\~take any opportunity to talk of people or situations that your audience does not know or care about (i.e. your cousins grandson’s wife’s first husband)

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Do – knit, crochet, or do other handicrafts – especially baby gifts and children’s sweaters!!

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Do Not – (or very rarely) give advice without being asked, except in extreme situations.

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Do Not – complain of other young people’s busy lives & schedules – they’re just as busy as you once were.

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Do\’c3\’82\’c2\~- be thankful for the time and help you receive from your younger relatives.

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Do – always have food to offer unexpected guests (my grandmother was GREAT at this!)

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Do Not – attempt to force people to eat when they’re not interested. (ditto )

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Do – treat your grown children & grandchildren as adults, even when they’re decades younger than you.

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Do Not – give orders to those mentioned above, especially about things that you have no authority over (i.e. their kids).

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Do Not – cling to your driving privileges any more than you cling to a smooth face or youthful figure.

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Do – ask your children to evaluate your driving skills every year past __ and stop driving unconditionally whey they recommend you do so (give your car to your primary driver, maybe?)

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Do Not – insist that you can do things (ex: babysit your great-grandchildren) when the decision-makers are clearly uncomfortable with the idea.

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Do\’c3\’82\’c2\~- gracefully accept people’s polite refusals of your offers to help.

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Do – strictly adhere to the parents wishes when caring for your grandchildren or great-grandchildren.

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Do – keep an organized record of your medications so that if someone needs to assume control of your meds they’re not too confusing.

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Do – keep a list of things your relatives can do to help.

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Do Not – make up little jobs for your relatives just so that they have the privilege of doing something for you. Nobody sits around wishing they could do some useless and unnecessary thing for somebody else – they’d probably be happy to do something actually helpful though.

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Do Not – expect anyone to read your\’c3\’82\’c2\~ mind as to what you need from them.

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Do – buy real-estate with a mind to handicapped accessibility – nobody wants to be an invalid but that doesn’t prevent them from becoming one.

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Do Not – be morbid.

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Do – make (realistic) plans for your near future, and keep your home looking like one.

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Do – cultivate your own interests – a busy person about her OWN business is less likely to be busy about OTHER’S!

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Do – carefully examine what you spend your time doing – is it what you would want to spend the last year of your life doing?

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Do – be content in all situations (obviously something to work on now)

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Do – volunteer help either at home or with volunteer organizations. There’s always something to be done.

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If – you are living with relatives who are caring for you full-time, and can afford of it – frequently offer to pay for someone to come in to help you, so that your caretakers can go away or just have an uninterrupted day to themselves.

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Do Not – be always losing things – cultivate habits about where exactly to put things away. If necessary, ask someone to help you get organized so this is possible.

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Do Not -\’c3\’82\’c2\~comment on the appears of a new double-chin on a pregnant relative (or anyone else). Comment NOT appreciated.

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Never, never, never go shopping at Winco with two small children – during their nap time -\’c3\’82\’c2\~again. Ever.