Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

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Humble Pansies, Happy Thoughts

Autumn blooms, bright and clean, facing the sun 
calmly, quietly, with perfect optimism.
Your freshness and vivid colors inspire me.
Despite the cold air, beneath the wind and mist, 
you sit patiently, needing very little.
Thank you for your simplicity. 
Thank you for reminding me
 that beauty resides in every little humble space.

Mama's Losin' It

Turkey Warning

   It hit me yesterday that we are on the brink of Holiday Season 2011. It hit me like a frozen turkey on the wiggly part of my kneecap, but in a surprisingly good way. Now listen, I am not really a fast-forward-to-Christmas type person. In fact I greatly prefer to savor each holiday and special event as it comes, making it last as long as possible. But I also like to be prepared, and we all know that once Thanksgiving hits, the winter sands fall fast and furious through December’s hourglass. And this year I have sworn to N-O-T wrap gifts in the back seat of the car while Handsome drives us to a Christmas party. Nor will I mix A-N-Y dough that has to rise and bake in the same half hour. So I have some planning to do. Care to join the madness?

This is Clark Kent, aka General Grievous (because of his fantastic running style).
He is our big Tom turkey. He knows nothing of the American tradition of eating turkey dinner,
and we would appreciate your help in keep things this way.
His sense of personal safety helps him focus on supervising the smaller birds, 
which is his self appointed farm duty.

   Okay. As of right now, twenty-one days stand between me and our first scheduled holiday dinner of the year. And of those twenty-one days, seven are devoted to weekend fun with friends and family, so really fourteen days are available to prepare for Thanksgiving, winterize the farm, sew up some sell-able aprons, and  keep the animals fat and happy. Hopefully I’ll be spending some time with my beautiful girls too!

   Oh, and about ninety seven minutes ago I broke my O-T-H-E-R front tooth, 
so there’s that added to the calendar.  I am not even kidding.

  Inspiration is in no short supply.  Here are a few of my faves:

  • The Taste of Home website, which is packed with wonderful, more traditional recipes and bits of planning advice. Their article about planning ahead throughout the month of November could not have  posted at a better time!
  • Pinterest, where I can feed voraciously off of the creativity of others and assemble boards of my own like this one.
  • Country Living magazine (the only periodical I still get in print.  Unless you count the Anthropologie and seed catalogs, which I do N-O-T but perhaps I should)
  • Martha Stewart, in every possible incarnation.
Pinned Image
Yes, I still pay attention to her.  And I always will.
But the best part of this photo is not her oak leaf cornucopia craft project
but rather that old, chippy table and the candlelight glow of the whole arrangement!
Wow.
I have the normal seasonal chores to do:
  • fiercely editing and scrubbing the fridge, freezer, and pantry 
  • organizing and restocking the spice rack 
  • taking inventory of table linens and mending, pressing, or adding to that as needed
  • setting up a really great baking station and a ready-for-anything food packaging drawer
  • shopping early and thoroughly to avoid the eleventh hour crowds
  • cleaning underneath the furniture and inside the closets forgotten over the long summer
I see a handful of special projects on the immediate horizon, too.
  • re-cushion and recover the seats of our dining room chairs (Been meaning to do this for a while. A long while. It’s embarrassing.) as well as two old church pews
  • repaint the interior doors and frames and a few baseboards
  • sew a few special aprons (Have I told you guys about Tie One On Day yet?)
  • lots of fun crafts as time permits
  • prepare for the chicken coop Christmas decorating contest we’re entering
A few lists would be good.
  • Which parties are we hosting? Which are we attending? What recipes? Write a master detailed cooking list.
  • What Christmas gifts are being handmade and which are being purchased? I had better be well underway by Thanksgiving! This means one project completed every two days or more.
  • What recipes can be prepared ahead of time and frozen, and when will I be home to do this?
  • Which projects can be worked on in the evenings, watching movies with Handsome?
  • I will need to make visible, tangible progress every single week day. Every day counts. Use a calendar.
   
Pinned Image
   I am under no illusion that everything will be done perfectly and ahead of schedule. I am honestly relieved just to have organized my thoughts and started some shopping. Whatever unseen force kick started me yesterday must have known that today I would break my tooth again, because had I not already cleared the cobwebs from my mind I would already be surrendering to anxiety.  Instead, I am truly happy to see the holiday season approach!  We have so many blessings to count, so much love to enjoy, no amount of cleaning, crafting, or cooking could really do it justice.
   Here’s wishing you an organized but festive month of preparation for Thanksgiving and beyond! Count the good things in your world. Especially your front teeth.
xoxoxo

The Help: a Book Review

   Yes indeed, this book is pretty much worth all the hype. It is also worth all the tears, guffaws, and warm fuzzies readers have been describing. Our world famous Oklahoma book club consumed The Help this past month, and at our recent discussion dinner we unanimously voted for its general brilliance. It offers a worthy array of poignant messages; it is concisely yet lightly written; and it leaves enough space between the interwoven stories to let the reader imagine some details and emotions on her own.

   In case you don’t know, The Help is about a group of both white and colored women in Mississippi in the 1960’s. Its stage is set just as the nation’s civil rights struggle was really heating up and right at its epicenter.  It follows events in the women’s private and connected lives, some mundane, others headline worthy, but all meaningful. The reader gets to see the inner workings of relationships between domestic help and their white employers, between mothers and children, and between the help and the children, as well as between different generations as the social climate begins to shift.  
   It’s all very touching and eye opening and, as our discussion dinner would prove, conversation worthy.  Author Kathryn Stockett proves herself skilled at evoking troubling thoughts without painting a picture too graphic for the average reader to endure. This is why I think The Help is probably appropriate for women of all ages. In fact, I might go so far as to say it’s important reading for women of all ages. After all, the 1960’s aren’t that far back in our cultural history, and seeing anything through a private lens, on a domestic level, can do wonders for driving home otherwise cold, impersonal facts.
This was the stand out line in the book for me.
And as it turns out, the author herself favors it too.
“You is Kind.  You is Smart.  You is Important.”
Some loving words spoken from a colored domestic 
to the white child for whom she cared.
   Since this book is so widely known and is currently so popular, I won’t waste a lot of time presuming to tell you everything about it. You really should consider spending a few days reading this yourself.  In the mean time, I’d like to share a few of the sharpest points that emerged from our book club discussion dinner and hopefully elicit some thoughtful responses.

  • Motherhood and domesticity: What would it have been like to share that territory with another woman? How does it compare to the modern practice of enlisting daycare to hold down a paying job?
  • How much does the instilling of hatred and bigotry into her family diminish the value of an otherwise loving mother? On the other hand, how much, if at all, does the  benign neglect of the issue of racism (or any other destructive tendency) excuse poor mothering?
  • What personal resources would have been needed for a woman in that era to shun an unhealthy romance in favor of her dreams? How does that compare to the present day? How important is it for  a married couple to agree on politics, etc?
  • Regarding ugly racist vernacular: How does it affect people, who can use it and be accepted, what are the implications? Are people okay with a double standard?
  • How much does the era in which one is raised underscore his or her values? How much are we as a society willing to tolerate racist undertones based on age group or geographic influence?
  • If we are in fact slowly rubbing out the worst stains of racism from our culture, then what is the next controversial territory? Where will we next seek to improve our collective attitude?
  • How far reaching can a child’s earliest moral education be?  
   At the end of the book, Stockett offers her own list of eleven discussion points for her novel. We intended to dive deeply into each one but only made it through three and a half of her questions before our conversation took on a life of its own, as is prone to happen with our lively bunch! Anyway, I think it’s a great jumping off place for a book club, a modern literature class, or even a Bible study group. These are all questions about social values, morality, the fabric of friendship and family, and personal determination to follow your heart despite the risk and despite the reward.
   As a little bonus, we learned from the two or three girls in our group who had also seen the movie that the screen adaptation follows the book closely. This is a nice surprise, because as all bibliophiles know, movies makers tend to take a lot of liberty with the printed word, and we are often disappointed.  Apparently not much is lost or distorted this time, so i am really looking forward to seeing it!

   Have you read The Help? 
Have you seen the movie?
 What are your thoughts?

Yoga for the Indecisive

   I dabble in things a lot. I dabble in lots of things. I dabble in lots of things a lot, all the time, with varying results. I dabble lightly way more than I devote strongly, making my list of Fresh Exciting First Time Experiencesa heckuva lot longer than my list of Things at Which I Possess Expert-Level Mad Ninja Skills. I am peace with this, most of the time. 
   So at the beginning of October when my ten-four-good-buddy splashed into her month-long writing binge on yoga, I decided to join her at least a little. I agreed to dabble in yoga alongside her succinct and inspirational blog posts, and I am so very, truly, cosmically glad I did. She let me share my first timer’s reflections then, and now at the end of the month, she has invited me to guest post about my overall experience with yoga so far. Check out my dorky remarks over there and read her blog a little, too. She’s cool.

Namaste!
xoxoxo

Just for a Season

   This past summer’s extreme heat and drought robbed us of so much greenery and lushness that Handsome and I truly did not expect to enjoy our usual colorful Oklahoma autumn. We kind of jokingly (insert bitterness here) thought that we would wake up one day to naked trees, just bark wrapped limbs that had surrendered to the dry, cold air. We had preemptively accepted one big, overnight leap from a brutal summer to a dismal winter.
   So imagine our surprise when we started noticing the alleys of brilliant reds, oranges, and golds, hundreds of trees glowing with life and quietly touched by the Creator’s hand.
   
What a wonderful gift of mercy and love, 
that when we actively expected the worst,
God gave us the best!

   Anyway, this really has my attention, because I know that the intense display of saturated color can only last so long. We should enjoy it daily, pressing it for every ounce of pleasure and awe these blessings are worth. Because the time will soon come when tree limbs cannot help but stand naked again. We will be shrouded in heavy coats and neutral landscapes, daydreaming of single blades of green grass.
“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it,
and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth
seeking the successive autumns.”
~George Elliot (19th century English novelist)
   The Bible uses the seasons metaphor prolifically, reminding us there is a natural rhythm to life. Regardless of who we are or what our unique circumstances are, change is inevitable. Growth, loss, conflict, bonding, new beginnings, revitalization, pain, and even decay are all ingredients of a full human experience.  Knowing that most things are only here for a season causes me to pay attention.  Understanding that the nature of most exposure is temporary reminds me to…
  • Genuinely enjoy passion and romance every single time it blooms.
  • Capitalize on my physical health and strength while I have it and work to maintain these gifts.
  • Make better use of swells of time and energy. Not all weekdays are created equal, after all!
  • Be patient in loneliness and learn to profit from silence.
  • See jealously for what it really is and grow from that.
  • Maintain a longer view in troubles, not living shortsighted and expecting problems to be resolved quickly. Do not take short cuts to a perceived solution because of emotional impatience. There is a reason for this trial, and it is not all about me.
  • Love, love, love the people who are in my life today, right now at this moment. Be fully present for them and appreciate them. Love them, love them, love them.
  • Redeem the time, every day, no matter what it brings you, no matter what the need.
  • Be conscious of pain and regret but do not wallow in it. Pain is a signal to be heeded, not something that always calls for escape and numbing. God, who is infinitely wiser and stronger than me, can use unpleasantness to improve me. He is the Master artist and engineer, able to redeem us out of sin and turn death literally into life. He can turn pain into joy.
  • Enjoy my blessings and abundance, not wasting them out of shame or false humility. 

   I watch these groves of maple, pear, oak, blackjack, and pecan trees pulse with life and color, undaunted by their cycles. I know that everything is bound to pass away, both the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the pleasant and the painful. If I were to live only in my memories of summertime or only in my dread of winter, then I would miss out on the astounding beauty of autumn, which is so brief.
   Whatever you’re going through right now, know that there is a purpose for it, probably many purposes at once. Every season brings with it the opportunity for both improvement and pleasure. Accept your mixed gifts with joy. Count your blessings. Keep your troubles in perspective and train yourself to profit from them. Be present in the moment. Open your eyes to beauty.  Breathe deeply and feel the rhythm of life. 
Happy Fall Ya’ll!
xoxoxoxo