Catch Up

We were supposed to go to the mountains this weekend. It's Fall Break at Our Fine School, a three day weekend for fun and frolic. It would be lovely weekend to go to the mountains; autumn is in the air, mornings are crisp, the sky seems be hanging from a higher peg. Up at the mountain house, the apples wait on the trees, ripe for the picking.

But man, we've just had two weeks that kicked our collective Fine Family tushy. Last week we were sick, and this week the Man was sick again, this time with a flu so bad he actually admitted he felt a touch under the weather. I've done two school visits this week, one locally, and one an hour away, and now I feel the need to spend long, quiet hours staring at a blank wall. The visits themselves were fun, but they drained the energy right out of me. Us introverts really shouldn't spend a lot of time in front of groups being entertaining. We can do it, but it comes at a cost.

And my house. Don't look! Don't even knock on my front door. What I want to know is, where did all these shoes come from? Apparently, if left alone for long periods of time in the mudroom, tennis shoes breed like frantic little rabbits.

So we can't go to the mountains because I need to deal with the shoe situation. And the refrigerator situation. And the tumbleweeds under the bed situation.

And, if I can grab a few spare minutes, I'm going to clean up the vegetable garden and do some fall planting. But that's for fun, my friends. That's what I always put off until all the other work is done.

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Thanks for all the encouragement for my undieting. So much of being an undieter is staying aware. It's a mindful approach to eating. Daydreamer that I am, it's hard for me to stay in the present moment, but I'm working on it. I've stopped reading while I eat, which is a biggie. I try to really pay attention to what I'm eating--so much food is quite aesthetic pleasing: who knew? But there are definitely days when I find a handful of food on its way to my mouth and I have no idea where it came from. I just picked it up somewhere--from a bowl on the counter, from an open box of crackers in the pantry--and started eating it.

One of the practices I'm trying to incorporate is sitting down at the table when I eat, even if it's just a snack. If I'm hungry and want a peanut butter cracker, I put the cracker on a plate and I sit down and I eat it slowly so the I actually taste it.

At first it felt like a lot of fuss for a little cracker. But I find now that I enjoy this little snack ritual of mine. I even say a blessing. Instead of feeling like I'm snagging a cracker on the sly and cramming into my mouth, snacktime feels more like a ritual. Peanut butter can be spiritual if you let it. Again: who knew?

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I wanted to give you an update on my mom. A month or so ago, I reported that she's been diagnosed with CLL--Chronic Lymphotic Leukemia. Since that time, she's been to see a specialist--in fact, one of the top CLL docs in the country, who lives several hours away from her home--who agreed to take her on as his patient. Two weeks ago she went for her second visit. The doctor told her that after studying her test results, he believes her CLL to be of the nonaggressive variety and that while she'll always have CLL, he doesn't believe that it will have a serious affect on her overall health--most importantly, he doesn't think she will die from it. She'll continue to have blood drawn every month for testing, since there is always the chance that the cancer will become more aggressive, but all indicators suggest that it won't.

So that's amazing good news! Thank you for all your prayers. God is good.

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One last chore for this weekend: I'm finally going to put up a clothes line! I'm tired of the dryer sucking all the life out of my clothes after a couple of tumbles, and it seems a waste of energy not to use the solar power available to me. My question is, can you still hang clothes out in the winter? Any clothes line tips appreciated!

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Have a great weekend! Eat the cake!