A New Ironing Board Cover

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A Word About My Newly Organized Cabinets

First, we are no longer annoying each other in our efforts to get dinner on the table. So, I correctly imagined a functional arrangement. However, I can’t always remember where I relocated every thing. So, I have spent the past few days searching for glasses and silverware in the wrong places.

 Morever, I can’t remember where I put the meat platters to conserve storage. Maybe that’s why I still leave my kitchen cupboard doors open rather than shutting them?

Oh wait – I put all the serving pieces in the dining room side board.

Well, leaving doors and drawers open is a habit that’s starting to drive me nuts – it’s driven my family nuts for years.

Why do I do this? I hope I discover it’s a more compelling reason than laziness.

I like the word "indolence." It makes my laziness seem classy.  ~Bern Williams

My Coffee Mugs

None but two of my coffee mugs match.  I brought these two back from our most recent trip to Maryland. They were twenty-nine years old early  this May. Made in Japan, their shape is unusual and their pattern is  cheery but restrained, and singular;  I’ve never seen them anywhere, ever again.  Their  plump shape and  whimsical dollops of color  have impressed almost everyone who used them, too:  their weight, shape, and colors – they even hold the right amount of coffee.

So, now they are in Texas, matching mugs that match  none of our other ones. Could the potter who threw them, the painter who embellished them, ever have imagined how priceless their little creations would become? For, when I open my kitchen cabinet and see them, they match so many memories – priceless memories. They  remind me of so many treasures – and just how far God has led me. ( 2 Samuel 7:12)

When I experience the unique “joys” age brings or,  when I wrestle with what faith in Christ means, Dallas doesn’t have many hills that challenge me to consider the source of my help. Amidst so many clamoring voices that bring me the news of local, national and international disaster – not to mention church failures –  my funny little mugs remind me of the wide places into which God has led me; they recall the loving kindness of so many people, and His unfailing help, as the memories they evoke awaken. (Psalm 16:5, 113:9)

I lift up my eyes to the hills--
      where does my help come from?
  My help comes from the LORD,
      the Maker of heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot slip--
   he who watches over you will not slumber;
       indeed, he who watches over Israel
          will neither slumber nor sleep.

 The LORD watches over you--
      the LORD is your shade at your right hand;
         the sun will not harm you by day,
              nor the moon by night.

  The LORD will keep you from all harm--
          he will watch over your life;
             the LORD will watch over your coming and going
               both now and forevermore. (Psalm 121)

H.A.D.D.: Housework Attention Deficit Disorder

 This is the new home for H.A.D.D. Please visit!

https://autumns-garden.com/yesterdays-cleaners-are-more-useful-than-yesterdays-attitude/

The Blessing of SKYPE

Though I didn’t know my grandmother well, I knew she lived in a small town in Jonesville South Carolina. This morning I learned where my little grandson thinks I live. His dad pulled out his laptop, and Jack started pointing at it, squealing, “Mimi! Yea Mimi!”

Could my grandmother have imagined the technology – like skype – I take for granted? 

She enjoyed several fruits of technology, early 20th century.  My grandmother’s children saw to it that her home had indoor plumbing, a washing machine, and a brand spanking new electric range; she had used a privy, boiled her sheets in a large black cauldron, and fried chicken on a wood stove.

Could she have imagined the whirlpool in my bathtub, albeit two decades old? What would she have thought of my  washer and dryer that does a load of  sheets in less than one hour? Having watched her catch, kill and clean a chicken which she then floured and plopped into Crisco, how would she like the local carry-out that makes the guilty pleasure, fried chicken, a breeze? And what would she think of a microwave – or a coffee pot that turns itself on and off?

I knew where she lived, and I saw her occasionally – but I never had a conversation with her about what she thought. She played the piano, though, and I remember her playing “The Old Rugged Cross.” Perhaps that’s the closest we came to a conversation – but it is a memory that goes very deep.
   

        “. . . One generation shall praise Thy works to another,
    And shall declare Thy mighty acts.
    On the glorious splendor of Thy majesty,
    And on Thy wonderful works, I will meditate.
    And men shall speak of the power of Thine awesome acts;
    And I will tell of Thy greatness.” (Psalm 145:4-6)

Lois told Timothy what she knew – (2 Timothy 1:5) Grandmothers are still useful purveyors of truth – especially in the age of instant communication. The blessing of technology is that I can have conversations with my grandchildren! Jack may think I live in a computer for now – although he has been to Texas – but we talk. 

How can I use it to tell them what I know about God?

Stuff

Another move looms . . . Less than forty-eight hours until we settle in to our next home . . . Boxes, empty cabinets, empty walls – and rooms that echo slightly because the curtains are at the cleaners. Yep, I've moved a bunch . . .

My first move -- just a couple of suitcases: I left  Baltimore for Ocean City – to work for the summer before moving to a college dorm, then, into two different apartments in the same building, before I moved two more times around the College Park area – acquiring stuff, discarding stuff –  never having enough of what the next living space required.

Next, I moved into an apartment near the zoo in DC; within a year I moved onto Capitol Hill, NE. From there I moved to Ecuador for a year – moving around the country, twice.  Illness and revolution sent me back to South Carolina, with little more than what I had in a suitcase to recover before returning to DC – the outskirts of Capitol Hill, this time in SE. Then I moved to Georgetown . . . from whence I married and moved to Annapolis. I left most all my stuff for others to use.

In Annapolis, we moved seven times in twenty-four years; we accumulated stuff.  Lots of it was other people’s downsizing. God gave us children, and our stuff really multiplied! The moves became more complicated – and we needed storage lockers.

We’ve moved three times so far in Texas, each time acquiring stuff – and now we are fixing to move the fourth time. We have let go of a great deal of stuff; photographs remind of us of our real treasures: people and places.  An assortment of images, freezing in time people, who are no longer precious babies, toddlers – or teens; of people who now know what is on the other side of this life; rooms we loved in, argued and cried in; holidays, vacations – I see the colors, smell the smells and hear their voices. They all go with me -- 

So, I am  used to moving . . . and the sadness and excitement that fill the minutes and hours of moving day.   Forty-eight hours until we settle into our next home . . . Boxes, empty cabinets, empty walls – and rooms that echo slightly because the curtains are at the cleaners. And in the upcoming abode – the scenario is the same . . . packing up, sorting, tossing, saving for another time to dispose of, . . . my life is still in moving boxes?