On Making a Menu, Making Soap, And Artisan Bread - Sort of......

I'm not a domestic diva.

It is a fact.

However, I'm a believer in doing 

what I can to keep this house going in a 

positive direction.

Keeping this house going in a positive

direction means that we have to be 

healthy and relatively happy.

I feel that the last several years have stolen 

much from my desire to be proactive in my 

domestic abilities.

Rather I have been holding on by my 

fingernails as I fought desperately for my daughter's life.

Before that I was scrapping to get our mothers 

settled in our neighborhood and dealing with 

the grief of many.

Myself included....but mostly others.

This might be the year that my grief gets dealt with.

A friend and I touched on it this morning 

as I asked her how her grief process was coming 

since the loss of her father. 

She described so perfectly what I feel.

She said she pretty much felt she had put the grief

in a drawer until a time she feels better able to deal with it.

Oh yeah!

Do I ever know about that.

Mom went to Grief Share.

I couldn't.

I felt no right to feel the intense pain.

He wasn't my husband.

He was my father.

When it came to Warren's Dad....

well, he was Georgia's husband.

We had much to do.

There was no time to feel.

We had to act.

More than not feeling the right to pain

I didn't want to feel it.

Desperately!

Sure, things would make me cry.

But as soon as possible I would 

move on.

To fall apart meant that I might 

never be put back together

and that was not acceptable.

Then, like I said, we went right into 

dealing with 

Anorexia.  

Days, weeks, hours.....

meant nothing.

Housework?

Not up there on the list of important things to do.

We were literally dealing with life and death.

But now we find ourselves on the other side of crisis.

So.much.crisis.

I actually have days when I can breathe.

I am so thankful for how things have settled out.

Chelsea is strong.

The Moms are in as good a place as they can be

without the Dads.

For a while I thought the next thing on my agenda 

should be getting a full time job.

After all, 

did I really think I could slow down

and let the thoughts and pain in?

However, I've been once again finding joy

in my home.

Joy in serving my family.

I've made a menu for the first two weeks of May.

We will go out and purchase the ingredients sometime 

in the next 24 hours.

I've begun to attack the clutter in my home that has 

gathered and I think even had babies in the corners.

Chelsea and I pulled out the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day Book

so we could choose some recipes to start with.

My Aunt has shared her liquid laundry detergent recipe.

I prefer liquid detergent.

Those ingredients are to be purchased at the same time

as the groceries.

Life moves on.

There may be some truth to the saying that you 

can tell the health and happiness of a family 

by the condition of their home

if I am any indication of that.

The pit was pretty deep.

While the surface was smooth....

the current ran strong.

These days I find myself quick to tears.

I think often of my Dad.

I miss him.

We miss Warren's Dad.

Immensely.

But we will be o.k.

We have survived.

All of us.