Author: jenzug

Signs of Change

lunchWhen Bryan was traveling to San Jose twice a month last year, I never had to make a lunch for him to take to work. He was either gone, or he was working from home and ate whatever we all ate.

Prior to his year of traveling when he commuted into Seattle, I HATED making his lunch. It wasn’t so much the task I hated as much as the nuisance I found it to be that I felt obligated to do it. I had a bad attitude, and was a very passive aggressive bitch about it. I would “forget” or complain or wait until he was putting on his coat then blame him for not having a lunch because he wouldn’t wait for it.

Yeah. Real nice.

(My memoir is going to be a “tell all” all right, but the only bitch getting outed will be ME.)

It just occurred to me tonight as I zipped up his lunch bag and stuck it in the fridge that I’ve actually found joy in sending Bryan off to work with a good lunch. Sure, sometimes I’m tired, or I’m sick of being in the kitchen, or it totally slips my mind – but my attitude is different about it now.

I love taking care of Bryan in this way.

I know about four of you who will totally get the significance of this, and the rest of you are probably like, Why can’t he make his own damn lunch?! But for me? And for him? And the needs and issues and insecurities we both have? And the road blocks we’ve faced in the past? Trust me that this is a huge heart change for me, and a huge blessing to Bryan that goes way beyond matching plastic containers filled with last night’s leftovers.

Two years ago Bryan and I were stuck in a very tight spot, and at the time I would have never imagined we would have the relationship we do now. It’s not perfect, and we still hit our road blocks, but we are no longer contending against one another. In tough situations we are listening to each other more, and working together toward the same end goal: reconciliation.

You may find yourself in your own “tight spot” with a spouse or friend or relative. DON’T GIVE UP. The Great Reconciler wants to see your relationship restored, and he is Able. I know, because I’ve seen it.

purpose

I went back to the gym today after a month long hiatus (kids were sick, my back went out, my mom was here, blah blah blah). I ran/walked 2.5 miles on the treadmill and the endorphins definitely kicked in. My soul and my body are very happy right now.

I’ve listened to Cloud Cult’s Meaning of 8 Album a hundred times, yet never noticed this song before. It became my soundtrack this morning as I hit the replay button over an over.

Purpose
There must be purpose here, cuz most of us keep waking up.
(Don’t you think it’s pretty here).
It’s so unexpectedly predictable, so sloppily intentional.
Does anyone know the punch-line yet?

There must be rhythm here, cuz all of us have a heartbeat.
(Don’t you see the music here).
Inside our ribs we tick an average of 60 beats a minute–
A-rum-pum-pum-pum——–
A-rum-pum-pum-pum-pum——–

There must be forgiveness here, cuz most of us have our weaknesses.
(Tell me what are your weaknesses).
I don’t know myself, and I’m afraid of you.
I’m happiest on chemicals.
The goings come and the comings go.
Forgive me I’m just an animal.

There must be healing here, cuz everybody here has been damaged.
And we’ll wear it like a tattoo, every scar is a smile.
To hell with the going down

There must be afterlife here, cuz we all pray for resurrection.
You see, the end comes quick as a bullet.

You can listen to it here: click on track ten, Purpose.

Music can be tricky. Sometimes it’s the aura of the song that speaks to me, sometimes the lyrics. Often times it’s both, and what I get from it is nothing at all what the writer intended.

Today I think I felt peace as I listened – peace that The Light penetrates the soul of those we love, even when they won’t or can’t listen to our words.

Dinner Tonight: Crock Pot Meat Balls

crock pot meatballsI can’t take credit for inventing this one. A friend recently moved, and someone brought this yummy dish over to feed all the helpers.

I bought the carton of soup on sale for $2, and the meatballs were on sale for $6 (in the frozen foods isle). I dumped them into the crockpot, and voila! – dinner prepared by 9am in about five minutes. I plan to add chopped broccoli toward the end, and will serve over rice and spinach, with a salad on the side.

What easy meal have you discovered lately?

Not so much a Food Blog, as it is an Organizational Blog.

Wow. It’s hard to believe how little I’ve been blogging lately, and even harder to believe I’m completely fine with it. I have a few drafts in the making, but mostly I’m just keeping up with Things and feeling very at peace about it.

I finished off my latest organizational project when my sorting bins arrived. I liked these because they are wooden and painted white, which fits in very well with the trim throughout our house. This was important to me because I don’t have a separate office, so I wanted my organizational system to blend in. I discovered them through The Clutter Diet Blog.

mail sorting bins

They look pretty full and cluttered at the moment, but that will change. I basically just took the piles of stuff I sorted, and dumped them in there to get them off my dining table. Bryan asked me why I got these when the gal on The Diet Clutter blog cautioned against them. I thought this was a great question, and one I thought out thoroughly. It’s why I decided to deconstruct my desk and map out what lands there before purchasing them. I wanted to make sure I knew exactly what they’d be used for, and that I had a plan for clearing them out on a regular basis.

All this stuff was piled up in one spot on my desk, and I could never find anything. I spent half a day looking for my kids’ immunization records last month when registering Thomas for preschool. I feel this is a system that will motivate me to overcome my procrastination, and keep up with Getting Things Done.

We also bought this wall-mounted charging station for our phones, camera, and iPods. We had a desk top charging station, but we really lack a lot of surface space, so this was perfect. It was expensive, though, and believe me that I googled and searched every major container slash organizing store in search of a comparable unit at a lower cost, and I couldn’t find one. Damn that over priced Pottery Barn for being so practical. And pretty.

charging station 2

hidden clutter

So that’s what I did last week.

My mom is still here, and my back is feeling better. She leaves tomorrow, and next week I will launch back into my routine of working out and Getting Things Done.

Hand Jive

We just got back from the Gymnastics studio where we threw a joint birthday party for Thomas and Ruthie. (Which is THE way to do winter birthdays, by the way. I walked in with my pizzas and walked out with my brain intact).

Bryan continued the party at home by putting on a Daft Punk album for our own little family dance party. It reminded me of this video of one of its songs, and how totally awesome it is, and how I meant to post this a long time ago.

Coming to you from an upright position!

Wow. Thank you all for your comments, emails, IM’s, and even phone calls regarding my back. My lower back still feels weak and tender, but definitely on the mend. I was able to get in to the chiropractor for the second time on Wednesday, and that adjustment went way better than the first. He was able to massage my muscles a bit before hand, and gave me some updated stretching to do every two hours at home.

Yesterday I was still feeling discomfort in the late morning and early afternoon, probably after overdoing it all morning. But I spent the evening on the couch, and felt better by the time I went to bed.

Today I am catching up on bills (haven’t been able to sit at my computer!), laundry, and party planning for my kids’ joint birthday party this weekend. Hope to catch up on blogging next week. Have a great weekend everyone, and thanks again for your prayers and well-wishes.

Coming to you from my couch.

My mom came to town on Monday, which also happened to be Ruthie’s birthday. I had big plans for her visit, and non of them included her doing my laundry, cleaning my kitchen, or taking out the trash. But because I am flat on my back, writhing in pain, this is exactly how she is spending her vacation – running my household.

I have minor back issues on and off, and visit the chiropractor every three months or so just to keep things in line. But this? This is a whole new issue in a whole new area of my back. I feel as if my vertibrae are grinding together. The muscles in my back are so tense they feel twitchy, and they are particularly tense around my lower lumbar region, which also makes me constipated.

I stretch. I twist. I flex. I take drugs. But I am never comfortable. I am most in pain when sitting or standing up, so lying down is what I do. I have never been so eager to accomplish mundane tasks in my life! I just want to put these towels away, for crying out loud, or fill the dishwasher and clean the kitchen. But in order to do those things I have to hold my breath and hunch over and grab a hold of something.

I can handle being sick, but I can not handle being in pain. I am highly discouraged and frustrated, and just want my normal life back where I can watch other people’s kids or help someone move. I don’t like this not getting anything done, this laying around while other people (like my 70+ year old mother) do my work for me.

I never thought I would say this, but I miss my job. Just goes to show you what a little perspective does to a natural born complainer.

Feeling Twitterific

Lee LeFever over at Common Craft posted a new tutorial on Twitter that’s entertaining to watch. In fact, I posted the video here:

I’ve been blogging a lot less, lately, in an effort to focus more on my responsibilities at home. This has been good for my family life, but being a Stay At Home Mom can be lonely at times. Twitter helps me feel connected to internet friends – both far away and close! – without investing the time or brain power a well-crafted blog post requires.

For instance, a couple weeks ago I twittered through the Oscars along with several other twitter friends. We shared snarky comments about tacky dresses and commentary on acceptance speeches.

Twitter has become a huge part of my blogging schtick. You can sign up for your own twitter account here, and you can sign up to follow me here. You can update and read from your twitter home page, or you can set it up to update through your regular IM client if you use one.

Diary of an Organizational Project

Don’t you just love post titles like that? It sounds so… interesting and…captivating and… yawn.

My babysitter is on hiatus for softball season, and I was thinking about postponing my weekly writing sessions anyway (that’s another post), so I’ve decided to spend that same chunk of time working on finishing some projects around here.

At the top of my list is the state of my desk. Well, it’s not a desk really, as much as it is a set of shelves from Ikea shoved up against the refrigerator in the entryway to my kitchen.

These are the shelves and desk top as I got started. Note the random crap. Everywhere. Those who visit my home know that as you round this corner into the kitchen you will inevitably knock something on the floor as you brush past my desk. If not knocked directly, something will at least blow off the desk in the breeze of your passing. Bryan is frequently heard sighing with furrowed brow as he passes by. Not that he’s one to judge when it comes to messy desks.

shelves before

This is the inside of the lower cabinet. Thank goodness it’s behind closed doors, because LOOK AT IT! Note the previous attempt at organization, using those cute little white drawers. I have no flippin idea what’s in those drawers.

cabinet before

This is the poor, unsuspecting table where I will sort piles of crap.

the sorting table

These are the shelves and cabinets once I cleared them all out. I should have removed all the stuff attached to the side of the refrigerator for a more dramatic affect – this still looks a little cluttered. Oh well.

shelves cleared out cabinet cleared out

Believe it or not, this is all sorted. I created the following piles: to be filed, to do, office supplies, receipts, cookbooks, gardening notes, to go downstairs, to go upstairs, pictures and cards, stickers, handyman items like screwdrivers and furniture pads, and CD’s.

crap sorted on sorting table

This is the part I often get stuck on, because when I see a pile of pictures – for example – I want to sort through them. Or at least look over them and reminisce. But I read this article on the Clutter Diet blog about macro vs micro organization. My first goal is to visually clear the space (my desk) of clutter (macro), it is not to sort and organize specific things in that space, such as photos (micro).

The final step in this phase of the process was to map out what gets dumped on my desk. I read this article, also on the Clutter Diet Blog, about working with known behavior instead of fighting it, policing it, and getting angry. In other words, if certain things continually get dumped on my desk, I should organize to accommodate that behavior, rather than trying to change it.

So here is where I got nerdy and pulled out my graph notebook, listing out all the categories of crap and making a plan for where it will go.

the plan

And this is where the project ends, for the time being. I threw out a bunch of stuff as I sorted, put misplaced items where they belong, and everything else that belongs back on the shelves or in the cabinet I put away. I am waiting on a few wall-mounted letter bins I ordered to sort To Be Filed, To Be Read, Bills, and To Do.

We also decided to buy a small cabinet – at the suggestion of one of my personal organizers friends – to put near the basement stairs where we can stash items that need to go down to the basement. Half the clutter on my desk and the piano comes from items that need to be taken down there, but I just don’t do it one item at a time. The cabinet will contain drawers to hide the clutter, and once the drawers are filled, I will take the items downstairs.

Here are the shelves and cabinet reorganized. The main change is that I cleared everything off my desk except my laptop, the phone, a cup of pens, and a bottle of lotion. Everything else has been put above or below. This will allow a workspace, which I never had before due to crap.

IMG_9039.JPGIMG_9040.JPGIMG_9041.JPG

Thanks for watching my kids, Cherie, so I could get this all done!

Book Review: Jesus Land

jesus landThis was a compelling read, but not at all delightful. It is sad, and tragic, and doesn’t really even have a hopeful ending. Yet for some reason, I still highly recommend it. Maybe because it’s not necessarily depressing, and there is humor to be found in it.

The Scheeres family adopted an African American boy, David, at the age of three. In the 70’s. While living in rural Indiana. As far as multi-racial adoptions go, this is probably as bad as it can get. Even his own adoptive parents despised his blackness, and did little to defend or protect him from Middle America (turn the other cheek!). How this boy got placed in this family I will never know. As far as I’m concerned, it should never have happened. And not because of the racial differences, but because they obviously didn’t want him.

He and Julia are the same age – merely four months apart. A few times in the book she refers to herself and David as twins. They are close, made closer by huddling together against a racist culture and a dysfunctional family. Because on top of everything else? Julia and David’s parents are Christians of the rediculous* kind – legalistic and… ridiculous. I don’t know better how to explain it. I’ve known this kind of ridiculousness, personally, and barely survived it with my faith intact (it should be noted my family was not the source of ridiculousness. I attended a ridiculous church for several years in my 20’s).

While Davita’s Harp was a novel that read like a memoir, Jesus Land, by Julia Scheeres, is a memoir that reads like a novel. It’s filled with dialog, and I often wondered how she could remember so vividly word for word. I’ve heard it said that memoirs are often embellished for the sake of narrative effect, and I wonder if that is the case here? Hopefully not, especially to the extreme of these authors (thanks for the link, Julie!).

At any rate, her narrative is good and compelling, and she tells her story well. As a potential memoir-ist, I found this style of memoir (narrative) to be an interesting contrast to Anne Lamott’s style (essay). I see myself as more of an essayist, and after reading this narrative (with all my suspicions of reasonable memory), I’m inclined to stick with my choice.

*Spell checker indicated I spelled this word wrong, but instead of clicking on the correct spelling of the word, I accidentally clicked on “add to dictionary.’ So not only is the incorrect spelling now a part of my blogging vernacular, I STILL don’t know how to properly spell it.

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(For ratings and other reviews on books I’ve read, visit my Shelfari page and my books category.)

Last Breaths & Connecting Dots

My Grandma – my mom’s mom – died on or around Valentine’s Day a few years ago. She was a sturdy, healthy woman, who simply grew too old for her body to carry her. She died peacefully in her own bed, with Gordy by her side.

My mom was getting her hair done at the time, which is so mom. When she’s old and not so independent, I’ll be taking her to the beauty shop every week to get her hair done. In heaven her hair will be thick and full of body – no beauty shops necessary there.

Gordy adored my Grandma, and she adored him, in her reserved, German kind of way. When my Grandpa died, her husband of more than 50 years, my Grandma collapsed from the exhaustion of caring for him, her body somehow understanding she was no longer on duty. She was in the hospital during his funeral, but Gordy sat with her, quietly holding her hand.

Then years later as she passed away, he was holding her hand again.

I didn’t consider at the time how prophetic this was, Gordy holding the hand of a dying woman, watching her take her last breath. It would be years later that he lay in a hospice bed in his own living room, in and out of awareness, his body giving way to cancer.

I wonder if he remembered that moment, the moment he was holding the hand of a woman when the life went out of her. I wonder if he remembered her last breath, the peaceful silence, the whisper of a soul floating away. I wonder if this memory brought him comfort. I wonder if this prepared him for his own passing.

Jesus knew what he was doing when he called my Grandma home just then, as Gordy held her hand.

When life feels out of control I try to remember that God sees the bigger picture. He doesn’t just see the moment, but he sees the moment in connection with an infinity of moments. In my panic I often run into the street, naked and screaming maniacally about the end of the world as we know it, when all I really need to do is sit and quietly allow the Holy Spirit to connect the dots from one moment to the next.

When life feels out of control I need to ask myself, Do I trust him to carry me from moment to moment, even into infinite?

Book Review: Davita’s Harp

davita's harp.JPGI finished Chaim Potok’s Davita’s Harp last weekend and loved it. I read it in less than a week, which is a big commitment to the 5% of free time I have left at the end of every day.

The entire book is from the perspective of Ilana Davita Chandal, who is around eight years old during The Depression when the story begins. Her father is Christian and her mother is Jewish, though neither practice their religions, and are actually very anti-religious. They find religion blinds people to the truth around them.

As the story unfolds, it’s fascinating to view world events and complex human relationships and emotions through the perspective of this girl. She is describing things as they are happening, but without the wisdom or experience to interpret them, which leaves the reader putting clues together as to what’s happening.

She tries to piece together her parents’ political views, their religious backgrounds, and their family history. At times her presence in the family takes a back seat to the ideologies of her parents, and always she feels different around other kids whose parents are more “normal.”

Davita is of strong character and asks tough questions (“But why aren’t girls aloud to pray the kaddish?”). I am drawn to stories of children with strong character, like the boy in Duma, and the girl in Pan’s Labyrinth. I did not have strength of character as a child. I did not ask tough questions. I did not cling to strong convictions.

I followed. I worried what people would think. I avoided confrontation.

My daughter has strength, and she asks really tough questions – the kind of questions that make me uncomfortable because I don’t always know the answers. It remains to be seen whether she will be a follower or a leader, but she is most definitely curious and exploring.

I love stories about children like my Ruthie, because it helps me to appreciate and cultivate her tenacity. In watching Duma I saw spunk in a different light. In watching Pan’s Labyrinth I saw bravery and sharp thinking in a different light. In reading Davita’s Harp, I saw questions in a different light.

Davita asks questions. She is curious about words and their meanings. She wants to know about things the grown-ups are talking about. She questions tradition, but not in a rebellious way. She truly wants to know why things are the way they are because she desires to participate.

As is usual for a Chaim Potok book, Davita’s Harp is rich with Jewish culture and tradition. I read The Chosen, In the Beginning, and My Name is Asher Lev in college, and this book did not disappoint my love for his writing and ability to see the world through the eyes of a child.

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(For ratings and other reviews on books I’ve read, visit my Shelfari page and my books category.)

Danger: hormonal surges in action. Enter at your own risk.

I’ve had a really shitty couple of days. I wake up cranky, I drink too much coffee, my house is a disaster, I yell at my kids, and I’m behind on everything.

Shitty.

And I can’t say that I have any circumstances to blame this on. Yes, Bryan has been working a lot, and yes, we have some personal stress brewing on the back burner, but in all honesty I can’t really blame it on those things.

I’m just being one mean bitch about everything.

You know how it goes when you’re in this mood: every wrong twitch of an eyebrow, every hesitation in response, every nuance of tone triggers you into a rampage. “WHAT?! WHAT WAS THAT LOOK FOR?! WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM?! WHAT DID I DO NOW?!”

And the person with the twitchy eyebrow runs for his ever-lovin life.

To punctuate my irrational mood, a bookshelf just fell on me. Yes, a bookshelf. And yes, JUST. All the books fell on me, the shelf hit me on the shoulder, and the lamp broke its fall on my back. It’s not a very big bookshelf, and the lamp didn’t break, and there were only a couple dozen books to clean up, but still.

Even my house is conspiring against my foul mood.

I quit what I was doing and went straight to my computer to complain to all of you about my day being so crappy that even a bookshelf fell on me. And you know what? I’m giggling just a little bit right now, because it’s all so silly, and I’m so incredibly dramatic. And spoiled.

I think I would do well to turn on some lights in this cave, put on some Jesus-is-my-boyfriend music, and pop some vitamin-B pills.

Laughing – even if at yourself – really is the best medicine.