From The Pages of My Lately Life

“Life finds its balance. Children grow up. Second chances come along. In the meantime, I could choose to savor this moment. What good would it do to allow annoyance to interfere with gratitude?” 
― Katrina Kenison, The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir

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The refrigerator repair guy just now left. 

I remembered how pleasant this owner of a small business had been two years ago when our freezer drain became clogged (as it had again), so last night I dug (literally) through our Important Receipts Drawer for his number, called him this morning, and within 20 minutes he knocked on our backdoor.

Again, we had just as friendly a conversation while he worked. And because I'd emptied our freezer ahead of time and hadn't waited as long for the problem to build up, the cost was ten dollars less.

And just think! Today we will reach 60+ degrees for the first time this year, the sun is brilliantly shining so I'll open windows, wipe down the patio furniture then sit outside and read and then late Monday night, Tom will arrive home after being gone 8 weeks.

So much to celebrate!

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But oh, the temptation to bash-in my printer.

I've fiddled with it for days and the darn thing won't print my coupons correctly and Tom's not here to fix it and it's a new month which means new coupons and our local Facebook coupon page is bursting with fantastic deals, all of which I am missing.

Oooo ... what a huge test for this coupon queen!

But I mustn't forget this: on Tuesday when I shopped, I found three sets of 'peelies' , you know, coupons stuck onto the fronts of products. So that meant I was able to use 5 coupons I'd not planned on using--and I was giddy-ly grateful, as though God had opened my eyes to see those little coupons waiting for me there (probably because He felt sorry for me regarding the whole printer fiasco).



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Something better? I'm working on a new writing project.

See, every blue moon, kind souls email me that you're re-reading my entire blog. Oh dear. To slog through over 3,000 of my posts, many of which seriously need deeper, now-that-I-know-better editing!

You brave people.

So to give you a break, here's what I'm doing: I'm creating a new blog, one with just 300 (or less?) of my 'best of' posts from As I See It Now, posts up to only the day we moved away from the farm. It'll have chapters so you can read forward rather than backward (as you 're-readers' do now). The posts will be better proof-read, edited and more to the point. Well, we can dream, anyway.

I'm giving myself another month to complete this task and ok, it's still not a 'real book' as some of you have asked me to write. But it's a project which comes closer to that reality.

So there you go.


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This week I watched Into The Woods and surprised myself by thoroughly enjoying it.



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“One thing we've learned this summer is that a house is not an end in itself, any more than "home" is just one geographic location where things feel safe and familiar. Home can be anyplace in which we create our own sense of rest and peace as we tend to the spaces in which we eat and sleep and play. It is a place that we create and re-create in every moment, at every stage of our lives, a place where the plain and common becomes cherished and the ordinary becomes sacred.” 
― Katrina Kenison, The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir


“I know I can't make time slow down, can't hold our life as it is in a freeze frame or slow my children's inexorable journeys into adulthood and lives of their own. But I can celebrate those journeys by bearing witness to them, by paying attention, and, perhaps most of all, by carrying on with my own growth and becoming. Now it dawns on me that the only way I can figure out what I'm meant to be doing is to try to understand who I'm meant to be...I will not waste this life, not one hour, not one minute. I will not take for granted the blessing of our being here...I will give thanks...” 
― Katrina Kenison, The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir



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Free Kindle books:



With Every Letter

The Curtain

Georgia on Her Mind

Strength in Strangers