Apologies

For Lack Of Better Words, it is Time For Apologies. And Confessions.

suspiciously chewy

Dearly Beloveds (those of you who hold our connection, or my words or pictures anyway, in High Enough Regard to check in occasionally, and have been more or less  disappointed by the lack of anything new):  I offer my humble and slightly embarrassed apologies. And since I can’t leave well enough alone with apologies, I will also make an attempt at crafting a confession. Because of course confessions are always much more entertaining than apologies.

I do apologize. Though I doubt anyone besides myself cries over my lack of anything new.  Maybe I’m just apologizing to myself here. I have grieved over the impossibility of posting lately (this is the most my blog has languished all year…even the loss of my toenail last spring didn’t affect my word and picture play quite like the last month or two have). I’m sorry, Dearly Beloveds.

Let’s move on from apologies to confession. Make all our hearts beat just a little bit faster. What do I confess to?

heartbeat brownies

Well, first of all, I confess to being clumsy at Project Management. My current project, getting our house ready for sale, has dragged a month and a half past my optimistic deadline. I’ve been tempted to put everything else (life as we know it) on hold while I paint and clean and sew curtains from the lint I’ve discovered in my closet (curtain funds…nonexistent). But even if I wanted to put life on hold, I couldn’t… life will not wait in the wings while I check off my To Do list. In the tedium of house painting, I’ve done some soul searching.. I realize that I’ve habitually embarked on endless projects (completing few), fearing that I’m not enough without a gleaming accomplishment to back me up.   As I write this, it occurs to me yet again that after all I say and do, after all my many attempts, my great beginnings, I’m happiest when I’m loving, and not thinking much about success or failure. Loving my kids, whether I think I’m a great mom or not. Loving the falling leaves, whether I think I can paint them well or not. Loving life, and myself in it, even—or especially—when it surprises me.

I suppose I could even love laundry. The smell of warm clean clothes lifted from the dryer? (disregarding the piles of dirty ones at my feet)…

Nah. Not today. I confess that today, I’m feeling cranky about how long it takes to Get Things Done. I’m pretty sure I’d rather get another root canal than don my painting clothes one more time. But I will don the painting clothes. This project I will finish. After I make an after school snack for Nora.  And catch up with the laundry.

Second Confession: I really do need another root canal. I’m taking antibiotics, prior to. Sigh. I brush. I floss. I mostly avoid sticky stuff. But if it weren’t for modern dentistry, I would be toothless. Or dead. So this is good. I’m not dead. I still have teeth. And last spring’s lost toenail has grown back. Life is good.

Third Confession: I don’t always avoid sticky stuff. There’s a story here. I will tell it.

My sister and her family visited on Sunday, because my mother was in town and it was a great opportunity for a gathering. It was delightful. Also a little hectic, mostly because there was cooking involved. Something about kitchens and gatherings. I made a cherry cornbread cobbler. It bubbled over in the oven. And came out…well, frankly, rock-like. After I’d cleaned up the charred cherry filling, Andrea concocted her own offering. She’d brought a brownie mix. She needed two eggs and some butter. Our chickens, shocked by the cold and the fact that we’re feeding them grain rather than their usual processed high protein chicken feed, have stopped laying. Sixteen chickens and we’re getting three eggs a week. On Sunday, we had a grand total of two eggs in the house. One precious egg sat waiting to be cleaned on the counter. Another, already cracked out of its shell earlier while I was making the cobbler, rested in a mason jar in the fridge. I’d decided not to use the egg in the cobbler…it was too precious (this may have been a factor in the intractable outcome). Andie cracked the first egg before she realized it hadn’t been cleaned yet. Down the garbage disposal it went. I offered my one egg in the jar, but we discovered an errant fly had drowned in it in the brief moments before I’d set it in the fridge. Down the garbage disposal it went. I wheezed several cleansing breaths. Mom suggested we melt gelatin in hot water as an egg substitute. I actually had gelatin…so. Good enough. In the oven, the brownies bubbled like the fantastical contents of a witch’s cauldron. Rather odd, I thought, so we cooked the brownies longer than usual, hoping they’d set up. They never did. I’m not sure if it was the gelatin, or if Andie snuck in extra butter, or whether mass-produced brownie mixes are filled with the residues of global disaster (oil spills, for instance), but. In the end, what we made turned out to be suspiciously plastic. Brownie taffy. When it was warm, it was gooey and fun to eat with a spoon. As it cooled, the butter rose to the top, congealing there, and the goo beneath the butter became smoothly elastic. Overly chewy. We could roll it like fruit leather. We could stretch it like taffy. On Monday, I scraped the butter away and cut hearts out of it. And pulled them, stretched them. They didn’t break; they became distorted. Scary. Broken hearts seem safer somehow than distorted ones.

But let’s not end on that note.   After Andrea left, Meisha discovered the upstairs toilet was plugged…with play-dough.  Courtesy of a cute little nephew.   It was relatively easy to plunge…and I thought, as I flushed, that I’d much rather unclog a toilet of play dough than the usual toilet fare.  Yes, life really is good.  And those hearts aren’t scary.  They’re…resilient.

taffy brownies hearts, distorted

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Deb @ LakeGirlPaints November 14, 2013, 1:18 pm

    So the actual living of life and raising a family will have to make the keyboard wait. : )
    I have the big “blog debate” many times “to blog or not to blog”. I have another blog friend who is taking a few months off too.
    One day at a time.
    I always get caught up in your writing style. So great,
    Deb
    Deb @ LakeGirlPaints recently posted…Making Old SignsMy Profile

    • Lynaea November 15, 2013, 7:47 am

      Thank you Deb. I hope you do keep blogging…I can’t imagine you’d stop creating, and it’s lovely that you share your creations. You’re on my Favorites list…I would miss you and your pretty things.

  • Diane | An Extraordinary Day November 2, 2013, 9:23 pm

    Oh girl…I do know this of which you speak. Our packing took way way way way longer than it ever should have…plus I procrastinated plenty before we even began.
    It’s interesting that when you let yourself just…”be” you feel most fulfilled. What’s even more interesting….I wrote quite a few posts on it in the 31days series. Hmmm.
    Hope your find your groove to wrap things up and I hope your root canal is smooth sailing…
    Blessings!
    Diane | An Extraordinary Day recently posted…Just Be… :: The Week at a Glance 11/02My Profile

    • Lynaea November 15, 2013, 7:42 am

      Thank you Diane! I remember reading posts along those lines in your series. And it’s somehow comforting to see that you refer to your endless packing in past tense… gives me hope. Thanks for stopping by and leaving your kind remarks.

  • Christa November 1, 2013, 2:24 pm

    It was so wonderful of you to stop by my corner of the world just to say Hello. Thank you, Lovely! Under normal circumstances I reply from there, but since I’m in the middle of writing a paper (obviously not).
    Let me start over…
    Since I’m supposed to be writing a paper, and I’m stealing a few minutes to read your blog instead, I thought I would pop in and say, Hello and THank You for your delightful comment, all rolled into one!
    Sort of like your brownie-ish fruit roll up thing you got going on up there… 😉
    I sure do love your blog! So real and honest.
    And by the way…
    I can’t even remember how many root canals I’ve had. Ask for the sleeping gas. Then pretend you are in Hawaii with Tom Selleck. Or whoever is cute these days. 😉

    And I’m completely with you on room re-do’s.
    Currently making (a.k.a. NOT making, but talking about it so people will think I am) curtains for our den.
    Cheap tip: Sheets. Split down the middle, add a little fabric to the to or bottom, and you have curtains.
    OR….hit up your local lower end department store for some curtains that are on clearance because no one else would take them. Poor babies.
    Take them home, add a panel or two of fabric and you have a new creation!
    Check out my Instagram for the pictures of the ones I just finished for the dining. 🙂
    Thinking it’s CDawnphotos
    Glad to see your posting again. You’ve inspired me. I just might post soon (as in sometime before Jan 1). 🙂
    Christa recently posted…slipping in unnoticed…My Profile

    • Lynaea November 15, 2013, 7:38 am

      Thank you Christa! A bunch of thank you’s…your reply made me smile. Hopefully your paper is done and you have sighed deep happy breaths of accomplishment. Ah, root canals, Hawaii, Tom Selleck. I know lots of perfectly decent people who’ve had root canals, but still, I can’t help feeling ashamed when I learn that not only do I have a bad cavity, it is threatening to take over the world. I’m thinking it’s because dental hygiene was so integrated into my childhood education. Along with good manners, perfect cursive, and Smoky the Bear (only You can Prevent Fires! Only You Can Fight Cavities!). Somehow a clean mouth became a moral necessity (pun intended). Is what I’m thinking. And it would hardly do to protest or get all rebellious about it in my middle age…because at least in my mouth, cavities really would take over the world. And I’d die, but not heroically. No Joan of Arc status for me.

      I like your curtain solutions…I will check them out!

  • Merribeth November 1, 2013, 6:53 am

    Lynaea, you are so fun to read. I have missed your writing and I have also missed you. Glad that you and Andy and your mom have been together. Have you found a lot yet?

    • Lynaea November 15, 2013, 7:24 am

      No we haven’t found a lot yet! We drive around every Sunday, looking. It doesn’t seem real, since we haven’t sold the house yet… or even gotten it on the market yet.

  • Andie October 31, 2013, 2:41 pm

    I’m so sorry! It’s a constant nightmare for me. What will my children destroy next.

    • Lynaea November 15, 2013, 7:22 am

      It doesn’t need to be a nightmare, darling. Gorillas in the mist was a nightmare. Your story is a little more quaint, a lot sweeter…more like “Where the Wild Things Are”. Your life is an endless series of great stories. I love your visits, wild things and all.

  • Terri Betz October 31, 2013, 10:03 am

    Everything does take too long! Except our children growing up! 🙂
    Hang in there!
    A tree fell on our house a little over 2 weeks ago, and they are here every day except Sunday, hammering and working. Glad it’s getting rebuilt, but it’s taking too long!
    Something wonderful is about to happen! Say it a lot! I think it helps!

    • Lynaea November 15, 2013, 7:19 am

      Yikes! It’s been years since I’ve lived in the vicinity of mature (big) trees…something I’ve mourned. But I guess I can be grateful that my diminutive pear trees would do no damage at all if they were to tip. And speaking of tips, thank you. I will say those words. They sound like good ones to say. Hopefully the hammering is done at your house and you’re snug and cosy…

  • Shari Woodbury October 31, 2013, 5:29 am

    Well I for one was beginning to worry. Knew something was up-glad it’s just (?) paint. May the project finish so you can enjoy some fall (or is it winter there now?)

    • Lynaea November 15, 2013, 7:16 am

      Thank you Shari…yes, may the project finish. Thought I was past the paint til yesterday, when the laundry room begged for brightening and I realized the little water closet in my bedroom was decked out in primer. I’m almost, almost to the curtains.

  • Tabetha October 30, 2013, 4:48 pm

    Oh hug, hug & hug again!! Life tends to get suspiciously like brownie taffy {or play dough stopped toilets} from time to time, I wholeheartedly commiserate. Hang in & hang on & hugs again from Tennessee!
    Tabetha recently posted…Making Lists Out of Possibilities~*My Profile

    • Lynaea October 30, 2013, 9:54 pm

      hugs right back at ya Taby! And I was so happy to see that you’re posting again too after your short sabbatical. I was missing you.

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