I like Mondays

Especially now that I can start them at home with coffee and cinnamon buns and music and a cute baby as company.  When they began at 8 am under fluorescent lights that was no good.  That was mega, horrible, awful depressing.  But NOW it means making lists and getting things done and taking Lulu to get shots (and weighed!) and cleaning!  My bedroom ceiling fan looks completely different this afternoon. Gulp.  I made my own dusting solution and put it in a spray bottle:

½ tsp. light olive oil   

¼ cup white vinegar 

a few drops of lavender essential oil  

water

I wish I could post a picture of the SMELL because it's awesome.  Fresh, clean, beautiful.  My love affair with vinegar is really possibly getting out of hand.

And update on the juice fast: Day 3 and Samm has lost 4 lbs, looks...fresher... and is starting to feel better.  First two days without coffee or the joy of eating were pretty rough.  I guess that's when your body releases a lot of toxins.  I thought he smelled rather strange, so, must be true.  Anyways, proud of him and... meanwhile, I need to go reheat my coffee... ehem.

This morning while I enjoyed my Monday not being at a job I read about N.T. Wright's series called Christian Origins and the Question of God. I now really want to read them. I've read some of his shorter works, but I need to bite off something more solid these days...  He essentially is covering all the basics (6 volumes, first three are out:  Jesus, God's People, and the Resurrection) in a way that acknowledges the current discussions in academia but kind of takes aim and fires at those who would say Christianity has been disproved.  He is one those people who makes me think it might be intellectually plausible to be a Christian after all.  He doesn't ignore philosophy and history and modern scholarship, writing it all off... yet he doesn't bow to it either.  He engages it.  

	The New Testament and the People of God Volume 1  (Christian Origins and the Question of God) by N. T. Wright (Paperback) 4.7 out of 5 stars   (34)	Added July 18, 2011 Add comments, quantity & priority
	Jesus and the Victory of God  (Christian Origins and the Question of God, Volume 2) by N. T. Wright (Paperback) 4.7 out of 5 stars   (41)	Added July 18, 2011 Add comments, quantity & priority
	The Resurrection of the Son of God  (Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol. 3) by N. T. Wright (Paperback) 4.7 out of 5 stars   (50)	Added July 18, 2011 Add comments, quantity & priority

 He finds (and presents) very compelling reasons to believe the Christian story is true.  And at the end, he acknowledges that it's a story, one of many, to explain the mysteries of life.  Something about this attitude, his confidence in God and His revelation but his humility also is really, really appealing to me.

Anyways, Mondays are like Do-Over buttons.  A fresh start is nice.  New lists.  New goals.  I like them.

One of those days where I'm high

You know those days (like the last several) where you are under too many florescent lights and too much pressure from work and you are hearing too many voices in your head telling you things you ought to be doing (print programs! clean house! do laundry!  pay bills! sell your stupid car already!  do something about the ridiculous pile of dirt and weeds in the backyard!) .  And so you rush manically about trying to obey the voices, all the while lugging a nearly 20lb cutie pie around who is incredibly distracting and adorable and demanding.  Especially when you're ignoring her to try to work.   You know those days?  

Well, something broke somewhere and suddenly the light rushed in (as it does for me, from time to time) and we are back on the high road.  Voldemort is dead, you know??  Hopefully you knew.  Oops.

My deadline at work is done.  I had to be a bad Mom and a bad Shabbat host in order to be a part of an evening event last night.  Stress.full.  But now it's over.  

And Phin has made huge progress in the backyard/pile of rubble so that NOW it is beginning to look like a place that happy plants might like to live and grow and produce wonderful colors and smells and even foods!  

And very soon, Lulu will get to start eating foods (maybe ones I grow, hypothetically).  And Samm is doing a juice fast for 10 days and then we are both going to integrate green juice into our lives.  Here is Samm with his new juicer.  (And Phin behind him, working on those new garden beds!)

WORD TO THE WISE.  When juicing, do not include onion or garlic.  Ohhh gosh.  My eyes are watering from drinking it, seriously.  I had two sips.  We had to throw away the first juice batch.  You live and you learn.   Or, I guess you could look up recipes...  Here are the good parts that got drowned out by the onion :(

So my list of things to do today is:

1. Figure out what I can still plant this late in the year.  My gardens beds will be ready in about an hour. (!)  Thank you, Phin Hodges!!!  Especially, what can I plant that Lulu can eat and we can juice!  Cucumber, Zucchini (already growing), parsely... Any other suggestions?  Easy perennials that smell nice?  Or look nice?  
2. Figure out how to start a human on solids.  (want to make yogurt!  want to make yummy concoctions with avocado and peaches and sweet potato and spinach, oh my!) (separately, and definitely no onion.)
3. Encourage Samm in his veggie eating/drinking. Join him occasionally. Watched a juicing documentary "sick, fat and almost dead"... very inspiring.  Run!  Eat veggies!  Yay! I won't be juice fasting though.  Right now I have to eat A LOT.  Breastfeeding is insane:  I am under 120 lbs. for the first time in YEARS.  I need food.  It's wonderful.  I will cry for several reasons when she weans.  But that is far away.  
4. Maybe do laundry.  
5. Go to the strip farmers market with Samm and Lulu.

Can I avoid the stressful weeks?  No.  Can I make them easier by having better boundaries?  Probably. Do they make the highs better?  Absolutely.  

Lulu is working now

I put her a closet by my cubicle (a very big closet) to nap and sometimes she comes to meetings and adds her opinion.  She squeals a lot now, very high pitched.  And growls.  Like a monster.  But it's a happy growl. We call it the t rex growl.  Her hands clutch like tiny dinosaur claws.  She likes feeling textures and can sit up for a while on her own.  Like 30 seconds.  And she grabs her toes a lot.

I dont know how much I ought be amusing her, showing her things, talking to her vs letting her amuse herself.  A mixture, right?

I dont know how much more ...or less I should be working.  To be happy, to have sanity, to feel like a grown up, to have time for living.

This morning I started rereading my current journal.  This one starts in 2006 after I got engaged.  What a crazy journey from being at Moody single to being married living in Pittsburgh with a little one and a house and a cat.  My politics, my ideas about church, my ambitions, my tastes, my relationships have all changed so much.  But the entries sound almost the same.  The hunger for rest.  The confusion about God's silence.  The consistency of coffee and good moments.  Good things DO happen over coffee.

Castle living

one time I lived in a castle. No, seriously. And I vacuumed and scrubbed and worked in a cafe that served milkshakes and tiny French presses. Since I didn't know anyone else on staff and I didn't stay long, I did whatever I wanted. I wore skirts everyday. I stuck daisies in my hair. I wandered the castle grounds with a guitar in one hand and an ice-cream cone in the other.
I was desperately broken hearted. I have never since managed to feel that free and that loved by God and that calm in my being. Why? Why on days like today when bills tap their foot and forms sigh at me impatiently from the kitchen table and there's a car to be towed and a demolitioned backyard ticking off the neighbors ... Why can't I find a way to live in that kind of abandoned peace?

I did blast classical music for Mary Lou while we drove to trader joes. That was pretty zen. But I think driving anywhere prevents the kind of holy silence that exists in those beautiful far away places we go to escape life. To actually live. I want to live. I feel choked by grownupness. By the so called luxuries in my life.

Castle life wasn't about pleasing other people. And it wasn't complicated. And it entailed very little technology. And lots of tea and flowers and walks and books.

Surely I can carry some of that into my life now.