States I've visited
Found at TulipGirl.

I've driven through or had layovers in several other states, but I only counted the states I've at least spent the night in. Of these, I've lived in Arkansas, Mississippi, Georgia, New York, Alabama, Virginia, and Texas.



create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide

Mama's linen closet
A voice floats down the hall saying, "There's a ghost in the linen closet!"

I investigate and find my 5-year-old daughter leaning against the linen closet door with her face pressed to the crack, crooning, "There's a ghost in the linen closet!"

"Wooooo!" says the ghost in the closet.

About to tell them not to mess up my linen closet, I open the door, and out tumbles into a blonde and laughing heap my 3-year-old son.

Only it's not my son John - suddenly it's more than 30 years ago and the laughing boy who tumbles out of the piles of blankets and outgrown clothes is my 3-year-old brother Johnny, and I'm the 5-year-old girl with the long brown hair.

Mommy's linen closet has a narrow door, but the closet is wide and there's a three foot deep space to the right of the door where Johnny and I play. First we are in a spaceship flying to the moon, then we're defending our castle from the enemies outside, next we're living in a treehouse, Swiss Family Robinson-style.

As I relive these games aloud, my daughter's eyes widen and sparkle, and my son's mouth draws into a perfect O.

Taking another look at the clothes that have fallen out of their bags and the twisted blankets in the floor of the linen closet, I leave my babies to their games. I can straighten up the closet some other time.

Work I Love
Just so y'all don't think I'm a lazy-bones, I thought I'd list a bit of work that I actually enjoy doing. So here it is, in no particular order:

-gardening - planning, building and putting in beds, digging, moving dirt, setting out plants...
-painting and wallpapering
-refinishing furniture
-hanging laundry on the clothesline, and taking it down and folding it when it's warm and crisp and smells sweet
-studying health and nutrition
-doctoring my family
-cutting hair
-fixing little girls' hair
-dusting and arranging my bookcases
-making my bed
-keeping my dresser pretty
-throwing parties - dinner, tea, birthday, or holiday
-reading to my children (can I count that as work?)
-rubbing Old English furniture oil into my piano
-planning just about anything
-drawing floor plans (I lost it during our second to last move, but I had a notebook full of various houseplans I'd drawn over the years ranging from tiny apartments to very large houses - anyway, I don't know if this counts as work, since drawing out floor plans is more like sketching or doodling than actually doing any work!)
-crochet (that counts as work if I'm making a baby afghan, right?)
-arranging flowers
-repotting houseplants
-studying history
-dressing and tickling the baby
-editing dh's and dd's stories

Some of those things don't seem fair to list as work, since they are just so much fun.

I'm thinking more about what Toni said, especially the part about monotony, and I've been letting the monotonous parts of being a housewife get me down so much that I had forgotten that there are things I enjoy doing that are important, too. I don't know why I always think that if I'm enjoying something then I must be goofing off - after all, work is supposed to be hard and unpleasant, right? ;-)

You know, I hope that Kuci-whatzit-guy doesn't become the next president. How are you supposed to respect a guy whose name you can't even pronounce, let alone spell?

Toni Cunningham is a woman of infinite purdiestness!
She gave me a most excellent and needed attitude adjustment in her comment to my post below, which I think deserves a post of its own.

My mother and most women I think (including myself) simply hate the monotony. There's so much I'd rather do! Theologically, when I'm doing an annoying housework task, I try to think of how God cleanses us over and over again in our sanctification. What if he left us filthy and just let us get worse and worse instead of forgiving us over and over? Our homes should be an extension of that biblical reality...

Isn't that great? It's just what I needed to hear.

Mr. Cunningham, you are indeed blessed. May God make your wife like Rachel and Leah, who together built the house of Israel.

Loving work
In a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, I once read that she loved to do housework. I don't know how you get that, but I sure wish I had it.

Housework is not something I enjoy; it's usually a duty, or at best, a means to an end - having a pretty place to sit and enjoy a cup of coffee and a good book, being able to invite someone home from church on the spur of the moment, knowing where things are so I don't have to look for them... I've never enjoyed the work itself.

Except for one thing: vacuuming. I love to vacuum. I guess it's because the noise sort of envelopes me and I don't have to keep my mind on the task so I can daydream or think about something Important, that I like doing it. And I've noticed something - vacuuming is the one job that the kids always ask me if they can have!

If any of you ladies can let me in on the secret to loving housework, please do so!

Wonderful advice!
Found this at the blog of Kolbi, ("The hilarious homeschooling snake lady," quoth Sora).

Put "eat chocolate" at the top of your list of things to do today. That way, at least you'll get one thing done.

I think I'll go do that right now! :-D

I had my suspicions and they've been confirmed. Last night I found out for sure why all the Matrix fans in the blogosphere neglected to comment on the latest installment. It was just a pointless movie.

Or rather, the point was that there is no point, there is only choice - and it doesn't really matter what your choice is, just so long as you choose. Classic existentialism neatly wrapped in eastern mysticism, schizophrenically beribboned with Biblical names.

Did you noticed the Yin/Yang earrings the Oracle was wearing? By the time she mentioned that everything was about balancing out the equation, we'd figured out the story would end. Or rather, where the movie would stop, since there was no end, only choice.

But thank God that his story has a point!

And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. (Matthew 28:18-20)

Now I ask you...
If you had not already heard from a reliable source that this is a good story, would you have paid 25 cents for this book?



Is that cheesy, or what? It's almost attains the cheese-level of Credenda's Jumpstart the Heart issue.

Actually, it may even out-cheese that one. What's up with those disembodied heads floating in the clouds?

A note to homemakers
When you're cooking chicken-fried steak and you have the floured pieces of meat sitting on a glass cutting board waiting to go into the skillet and you turn on a burner to cook your potatoes, don't turn on the burner under the cutting board.

You won't like it, and neither will the glass.