A Simple Woman's Daybook. 3.25.13

It feels like a Daybook kind of night. So I'm linking up here:  A Simple Woman's Daybook.

FOR TODAY

Outside my window... we are waiting for the predicted "dusting to an inch of snow."  However,  considering the track record of professional weather forecasters here in Maryland, we probably should have bought a generator today.

I am thinking...about all the things on my DIY project list.  Yesterday I posted a biggie (framed pegboard) that I'm eager to start. But, on a much smaller scale--with a higher priority--is a sewing project.  Today my future daughter-in-law brought me the fabric to make the  pillow that the 3-year-old ringbearer will carry. Oh, my goodness, he is going to be so cute with this little 7x7 thing! (For the record, no, he will not be carrying the actual rings!)

I am thankful...that I have not been sick for the entire winter.

In the kitchen... on the table, is a bouquet of flowers I bought myself for my son's 25th birthday. After all, if it weren't for mothers, how would children be born??

I am wearing...a plum-colored cotton V-neck tee from Lands' End.  So comfy I ordered two more--one in white, one in royal blue, and I wear all three QUITE a bit. I also am wearing some black pants and red indoor/outdoor slippers.

I am creating... a new craft/guest room, and having so much fun.

I am going...to show you the shields that my art class created for the school play. The director "commissioned" us to produce eight shields, each to fit a 20x20" space, with heraldry, Maryland colors, our school logo, a likeness of our county's seal, and a cross/tree combination. Here's how they turned out. Sorry for the poor  photo quality. I couldn't get a good angle, didn't have the right setting, and was surrounded by a crowd.  I created one of the shields. See if you can guess which.

 

I am wondering...if a heel spur is what I have. Terrible pain in my left heel and it's been like that for going on two months or more. I've kept thinking it would get better, but it's gotten worse. It affects my gait, my posture, my productivity, and my mood. I think it's time to see a podiatrist and hope he doesn't tell me bad news.

  

I am reading... a few different books:  Power Thoughts, by Joyce Meyer; Followed, by Elaine Dauber Thornton,  Simple Secrets of a Beautiful Home, by Emilie Barnes.

I am hoping...that April is as warm as March has been cold.

I am looking forward to... the "seaside ladies' retreat" in early May.  It's been many years since I've been on a retreat, and my soul is thirsty for a spiritual lift, fellowshiping with other women
(I only know a few from the church we've been attending since Christmas).  And I can't think of a better place than on the Chesapeake Bay.

I am learning...that letting go of children as adults is its own kind of labor pain. 

Around the house... is much less clutter, thanks to my giving up "stuff" for Lent. Feels good!

I am pondering...getting involved with a particular "homeless" ministry of sorts. It's called Samaritan Women and is a home for young women, a beautifully restored Victorian mansion on 23 acres. The women,  who have been rescued from sex trafficking, suffering from PTSD from combat, or physical abuse, find hope and healing at this Christian farm. They are also taught to grow their own food, as well as how to prepare nutritious meals from it.   This place has all sorts of needs and ways to offer help. I would like to volunteer to teach a six-week, once-a-week art class. Creating beauty is a big part of the healing process.

A favorite quote for today...

Acts 4:12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved."  (NIV)

One of my favorite things... is finding notes like this, written by my 11-year-old boy.

A few plans for the rest of the week:

 -Monday : wash mountains of laundry, finish an mixed-media art project, build a snowman snowbunny?
-Tuesday : attend Passover seder  (anyone got a good recipe for a carrot dish--no leaven, not a dessert?)
-Wednesday:  teach a class
- Thursday : work on my craft room
-Friday: attend a Good Friday service


A peek into my day...  for lunch we ordered the second thing from the top on the right of this menu. My daughter likes to call them Hoochie Mamas. 

Had I Really Believed: Thoughts after Hurricane Irene

The tree that made me nervous.

"The bigger they are, the harder they

fall."

Hurricane Irene posed a bigger threat than she actually delivered to our neck of the woods. (My husband thinks the government hypes it so that we will become more dependent on them. Obama, did you notice, was making sure we knew he'd do a better job with FEMA than Bush did. But I won't wax political; just sayin'.)



Mind you, Irene was not a just a sneeze either. She took out power to much of our state, and some people still don't have power. We lost it for about 15 hours in our neighborhood, but there were still a lot of major traffic intersections that aren't working yesterday, so they are treated as 4-way stops. I am proud of my fellow drivers for how we all looked out for one another (or ourselves), politely and carefully.



Many Maryland schools which were supposed to open Monday are still closed. That includes my daughter's school where she was to start student teaching this week. She's fine with the delayed opening because, once she starts, they're not allowed to take off for anything except death.



Before Irene hit, I did most of the prep work in the family because I was the most concerned Not hyperventilating, but wishing the rest of the family felt equally concerned so as to help me. (Yes, you detect a whining Martha here.) My son Steve helped me secure our outdoor furniture. He also corraled three little flashlights. I brought my beloved potted plants indoors and left the rest outside that I was either not afraid to lose or were too heavy to blow in 50 mph wind . (Actually it was an experiment on my part. "Will it stay or will it blow?" Report at 11.)




I bottled water for drinking but didn't fill the tub. Had I really believed we'd not be able to get showers for days, I would've taken the extra step. I also packed all the snack food from the pantry into grocery bags and had them ready to carry to the basement. I also packed candles with matches with the food bags.



I put tennis shoes into a bag for a couple of us in case we had to escape through the walk-out basement. Had I really believed that would be our only escape route, I would have packed sturdy waterproof shoes for everyone.



As of Saturday 10:30, right after my hubby and son had been there for music practice, the pastors decided to cancel Sunday church. At least the practice is a worship experience; it's not like it was waste of time. Had I really believed this was going to be The Big One, I would have asked them to stay home. Knowing them, they would have gone anyway.



Saturday afternoon into evening we got a lot of rain. The winds starting really picking up around 10 pm , so hard that I feared our 100-foot-tall, 2-foot wide, dead maple would crack and topple onto the house. After all, the ground was also saturated and the earthquake a week prior had surely shaken the roots, no?





I was absolutely convinced we'd have a power outage, at the very least. By God's providence, I happened to check the bottom drawer of the fridge where I had put some thick steaks and forgot about!! Horrors!! But they were still fine, so I quickly cooked all of them in the oven. If nothing else, we could eat cold roast beast by candlelight for three days.



By 11:00 pm my hubby was concerned enough about the wind and trees to consent to having us bring twin mattresses to the basement. Snack bags and bottled water, too. Dee exclaimed, "Woo-HOO! A family sleepover!' Ironically, Paul did not bodily go down there; he kept watch in front of the TV on the main level while alternating between guitar and Sudoku playing . If he "frets," it's on the guitar. Teehee. But he was not really fretting or he would have taken his guitar and the dog downstairs. (Reilly is not allowed on the basement carpet since he treated it like a Spot-a-Pot upon his arrival to our home.)





Tornadoes were being spotted within two hours of us. Sarah, Joel, and I went bodily down to the basement. (I grew up in Kansas and lived through tornadoes. I don't mess around.) Had I really believed a tornado would rip through our immediate area, I would have dragged everyone by the ankles down the steps. I decided to leave their whereabout in God's hands. They're adults, after all, and get annoyed with my control freakishness.



At midnight the winds had subsided, and the mattress got hauled to the family room for Paul . But the wind picked up into gusts at 12;30 and I was nervous. Really nervous. Okay, I was scared and anxious. Near tears. Begged the older kids to at least move to the front of the upstairs to sleep, away from the woods. Nope, they declared themselves "fine." Their peace was annoying to me, until I realized, "Their faith is bigger than yours, Zo! You raised them to trust God, and now they do, in this very real storm. What about you? Go to bed and pray, woman!"



So I did. I lay down, alone, in my bed. Texted my sisters of my worry, asked them to pray, and closed my eyes. The Lord showed me I was being like Peter in the boat, saying "Do you not care that we are perishing?" You would have thought we had 200 mph winds and a tsunami at our door the way I was shaking inside. Finally, I surrended. "Okay, Lord, I choose to trust You. You love us more than we love ourselves, and that's a heck of a lot." (Yes, I say "heck" to God in private prayer.) "You won't let anything happen to us that You won't hold us through . If we die, we're all meeting You face-to-face. If we don't, we'll suffer in Your hands, but at least we won't suffer out of Your hands. Please calm the storm outside and the one inside of me and let me sleep."



Just like that, like a whisper, I was asleep.



Next day, very little damage. A few branches down, and seven inches of rainwater in the bucket. No power. But that was okay. There was daylight, and we had snack food. We kept the fridge shut to preserve food. Five people took hot showers. By 5pm I wondered about the fridge food and I also needed a shower, so I took one and then drove to Steve's girlfriend's house. He was helping them clean up fallen limbs. They did not lose power. And they graciously offered us their generator. So praise the Lord, when we brought it home and plugged in the fridge, we discovered eveything was still semi-frozen. No food lost whatsoever, and our water was still hot so Joel and I got hot showers.



Our power came back on at 7:30 . Cheers!!! High fives!!! Light all around. No more toileting by candlelight, although it was a nice ambience while it lasted. The power came on while Ben was out getting more gas for the generator. Meanwhile I heated up cold steak, boxed mashed potatoes and garden green beans. Even popped open a bottle of wine to celebrate power (both natural and supernatural!) . I prayed a prayer of thanks, half choked up, for God's protection and peace (even though my peace swayed like the trees at times) and that this hurricane provided a semi-boot camp for how to prepare for the next one.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Earthquake! for Real! Right Here!

It happened on Tuesday, August 23, just two days ago. My nine-year-old son and I were standing in the foyer of our house at about 1:55 pm. He was holding his piano lesson books, and I was holding the keys and my purse. We were arguing about piano books. I thought he only had been given two and he was insisting on three. It was only his second lesson, and since the first one was here, we had never been to the teacher's home. She lives on the nearby military base and we had agreed she'd meet us near the gate and escort us in with her ID. We were supposed to be there at 2:10. I was yelling at Joel, "Now is not the time to be thinking of a missing book!"

In a split second, my first thought was, "Reilly must really be upset about me yelling. He's rattling his crate!" Then I noticed the large picture in the foyer trembling. Then it felt like the whole house was shaking, so my second thought was, "Loud thunder on a sunny day?!" Thunder under our feet, not just the walls? Living close to the proving ground, I had a third thought, "They're really testing a big one today!" and in a fourth thought, "Terrorism!" and in a fifth thought, "Earthquake?!" It happened so fast and Joel got a really scared look on his face.

"Let's get out of here, Mom!" So we did. Neighbors were on their front lawns. We all said the same thing, "What was THAT?" and all concluded an earthquake. How weird! On the East Coast!

The cell phones were jammed. I couldn't get through to my husband or kids, so I texted. That went through! Sarah was in a meeting for student teachers, and the menfolk were at work. Paul's office building shook so badly the fire alarm went off and everyone made a beeline for the exit. Things were falling off shelves there. The shaking at his office lasted a good 30 seconds, and got more violent as it went on. Steve didn't feel anything where he was, but doesn't know why. Sarah said one teacher had just been told by a fellow teacher to please stop shaking her leg, so she did, and yet the shaking continued.

We got to what I thought was the correct entry gate on post. It was closed. I told Joel, "This close to DC, I bet they're on high alert." Come to find out, I had my directions wrong. The teacher's mom (and good friend of mine) came and met us at the correct place. A previous student's mom had been there during the quake and she started yelling, "Jesus is coming! Jesus is coming!"

You know, that thought crossed my mind, too. But scientists confirmed it was indeed an earthquake whose epicenter was in southern Virginia but whose effects were felt as far south as the Carolinas and as far north as New Jersey. For me, I always thought I'd be super scared during an earthquake. I wasn't. I was uneasy, unsettled, because it just felt weird. We live in Maryland, not California! We have other natural phenomena here often, but this was our first earthquake ever. Weird.

A funny email I received the next day said the quake was "our founding fathers rolling over in their graves." I heard things like "Obama's Fault" who said no, Bush's Fault, or the sound of a 14.6 billion dollar check bouncing. Gotta love the humorists in the crowd, keeping it light.

And now that a Category 3 hurricane (Irene) is threatening the East Coast in the next few days, I am wondering. Am I ready? I don't mean materially or mentally, but spiritually. Am I prepared to meet my Maker? Absolutely! My faith is not shaken by these natural "disasters" or threats thereof.

Am I prepared for a flood? Not really. Power outages? Sort of. Am I worried about either? No. Call me naive or too trusting, but I believe God is going to shelter us and provide for our every need. He always does. Even if He leads us all the way Home while our earthly home crumbles or washes out to sea, we will be safe in His arms.

Besides, I have a birthday to celebrate Friday and, if nothing else, we have cupcakes and bottled water to survive on.

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