Shanspirations

Dishwasher Detergent has seemed expensive to me compared to many other household cleaning products.  One day I wondered if I could use less expensive household cleaners such as Borax to make my own.  Borax is versatile and I use it for many things already, so I thought it might work for dish-washing cleaner, too.  A quick google search revealed that, yes! you could use Borax to make dish-washing soap.  I read bunches of sites and the basic recipe and tips I settled on boiled down to this:

1.) Add 1 part Borax to 1 part washing soda (which is different than baking soda),

2.) Then add a little bit of store-bought dish-washing powder (I added about a quarter cup of Seventh Generation Free and Clear Automatic Dishwashing Detergent).  (This step is optional).

3.) Use this “homemade” mixture in your dishwasher’s pre-rinse spot.  In the place you’d normally put detergent, fill with plain vinegar.

(The vinegar is necessary for the product to rinse fully with no residue.)

I’ve been using this method for about 8 months and I’m so pleased with how much I’ve saved in purchasing dishwasher detergent.  I still have the same box of Seventh Generation that I had when I started and it’s still more than half full.  Borax and washing soda are significantly cheaper per pound than commercial dishwasher detergent.  And I just feel better about mixing up my own every now and then and no longer whipping through commercial products.

Felt so good about it today as I started a dishwasher load that I decided to post on it.  For the past year I’ve had a dishwasher again after living a year before that in a place without one.  That year I had learned it really wasn’t that bad sans dishwasher and that washing dishes by hand is perfectly do-able.  But this past year when I got to have one again?  I learned I really do like having a dishwasher (very much) after all!

My darling and I went on a family vacation recently (with our little girl, of course).  It involved a lot of driving and camping in lovely places southward, and visiting many of our friends and family.  One of the things we did while we drove was sing.

I have always loved group singing, the old-fashioned kind where no one is a professional and everyone is just having a good time.  (And I never could understand the appeal of karaoke compared to singing naturally with friends and family at home.  In some cases, it seems like an attempt to replace something meaningful that people are missing…only they probably don’t know what.)

Jacob and I were lamenting that so few people get to enjoy singing with loved ones the way we do.  We had thought singing together daily was just normal, but as we’ve had more experience, we realize we have something special.  Jacob grew up in a home where his mother played the piano and the whole large family (9 of them!) used to have family sing-a-longs.  As they grew up and various siblings married, the sing-a-longs didn’t stop; there were just more of us to join in.  I didn’t grow up in a family that sang together at home, but because I grew up in a faithful church-going tradition, I learned Christian songs, hymns, and choruses from earliest childhood.  I think I know verses from thousands of songs by heart.

As we sang on our trip, I thought about how wonderful it had been to marry a man who grew up learning many of the same songs I did—and how lovely to learn more songs together over the years and forever be having music in our home—not with overdone, professional voices, but merry imperfect ones!

“Why don’t more people get to enjoy this?,”  I asked him, between songs.

“I think people have gotten used to music as entertainment, as something that has to sound professional,” he said.  “They can’t even appreciate singing any other way.”

That thought of his compelled me to write.  For I am passionate about this.  Every child should know what it is to sit around the living room or fire, piano or kitchen table and sing with his or her family!  If all the unity children ever get to find in activities with their families is through watching TV and movies, or having their parents attend their sporting events, how impoverished they are—and never even knowing it.

For these activities are not the same as finding harmony together in song.  Where voices blend, hearts do, too.  On days when my voice is off and I sound like a warbling duck trying to blend with my family, I am still working at finding my place with them; and that symbolizes something of the effort to find unity, even—especially—in our imperfections.

Group singing, amidst all the merry noise, in a barely heard strain, cries, “We belong to each other—and we’ll never stop working to fit our lives more closely together in harmony.”  Divorce and strife are far away when people are singing together. Love and laughter move a little closer.

I am thankful we had a vacation full of song.

I stepped into the world of Little House on the Prairie as an 8 year old in a Tennessee library one school day when a kind librarian offered to help me find new books.  When she learned I had never read the “little house” books (nor known they existed), she led me to a low shelf where I first glimpsed the colorful covers illustrated by Garth Williams.  The pictures were so appealing I could hardly wait to look inside and begin.  The librarian smiled.  She said I was going to love these books.

As I started reading, I remember being amazed by the librarian’s wisdom—how had she known I was just the type of little girl for whom these books would be just right?  Now I know that “Little House” books have been “just right” for countless children generation after generation.  My husband loves them every bit as much as I do.  He can hardly  believe I didn’t learn about them until I was eight!  His mother read through the series aloud repeatedly as her seven children grew up; and once married, he and I began to do the same, reading aloud to each other.  Now we have a four year old and we are reading the series again.  It only grows more wonderful.

In the Spring 2007 issue of a magazine I receive called The Old Schoolhouse there was an interview with Stephen Hines about some newly published collections of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s writings for a Missouri newspaper (written years before she began writing her books for children).  I had not known that there had long been unfound writings and that Hines had later searched them out and compiled books of them.  I made mental note to look these books up when I had chance (Writings to Young Women series published in 2006).  But first I have started with Hines’ Little house in the Ozarks: A Laura Ingalls Wilder Sampler—The Rediscovered Writings (1993).

And I love these essays!  I keep thinking that Laura was a woman after my own heart;  I have to remind myself that she makes many people feel this way and that I am surely not unique.  But it’s hard to fully convince myself!  I am inspired and uplifted as I read.  I am amazed by how many of her essays seem fresh and nowhere near as dated as they should be.  And I wish her commonsense wisdom with deep value held for joys of family life and community and creative work were more widespread with people today.

I hoped to find glimpses of her faith—whatever it was—in these writings; but glimpses is all they are, in my opinion.  Either she was too reserved to write in a deeper way of her faith in these public writings or she possessed a different sort of faith than than I hoped to find—one rooted more in a general Christian tradition of her upbringing than one tending toward intense appreciation for Christ as God-man who came to earth and made for Himself a whole new people.

I love sleep.  One of the most pleasurable daily gifts God gave, I think, is good, happy sleep.  I love to snuggle in layers of warmth on a crisp morning and feel the delightful tug of autumn luring me from bed.  I feel a sense of celebration for the wonderful night of sleep I had and when I get up, it is a pleasure.

Over two years ago, I first wrote The Finale: Becoming the Morning Person I Always Wanted to Be, an article in a series about my transition from living as a night owl who went to bed around 2 p.m. to acting like a morning person who consistently gets up and goes to bed early.

That change has stuck.  This was the sleep plan that worked for me when every sleep tip I’d tried—and there were many—failed. Except for a 2-3 month stress-filled period when I abandoned my sleep plan, we have continued it ever since.  And in that short period when I wasn’t following it, I felt awful.  I hated slipping back into night owl ways.  My husband missed our new life, too.  We both realized how much the sleep plan had added to our lives and couldn’t wait to return to sweet calm and order.

Yesterday, I edited the original Finale post so it would be shorter and easier to read.  You can find it here.  In cutting things from the post, I found some things worth keeping, but since I had crammed too much information in the original, I decided to move them. What follows is a summation of the material I cut.

Before we started our candlelight sleep plan, my husband didn’t have sleep problems to speak of; I was the one with trouble.  Yet, once we started it, he began to tell me how much more rested he felt mornings, that getting up was easier, and that he no longer felt as tired during the day as he often had. For both of us this was a nicer way to live. In addition to candlelight (which I wrote about in Finale), here are some of the other changes we made two years ago:

1.) We stopped using artificial light at night besides our candlelight. A TV counts as artificial light. So do blue LED lights on computers and glowing computer screens. Instead of using my cell phone, I preferred to use my land phone by evening. We turned off our refrigerator light that popped on every time we opened the door. Why? I read that in some animal experiments, a sudden bright light after dusk was the equivalent of early morning sun to the circadian clock. In other words, bright light, once your body thinks it is after dark and melatonin has been picking up, can possibly shut the melatonin tap and keep it from increasing for a while. Maybe there is even a component apart from melatonin that causes an increase in alertness with bright light. Whatever the case, I am sensitive to it.

I’ve also read that if you get up at night to go to the bathroom and turn on the light, the light’s effects on melatonin will cause your sleep to be less effective for the rest of the night. This could help explain some of those mornings when you slept all night, yet you wake feeling like you had only half a night’s sleep.

2.) We used blackout curtains over all our windows, including our bedroom, and covered our alarm clock to make the bedroom as dark as possible.

3.) We bought an inexpensive dawn simulator to have light in the morning.  We thought it was nice, but not entirely necessary.  For me and my husband, the dimness at night seemed to reset our bodies’ light sensitivity. I began to find that just a tad bit of window light poking through was all it took to get me wide awake when we’d had total darkness except for candlelight the night before. On the other hand, my husband really liked the dawn simulator.  He would wake to the dawn simulator and then when he rose, he would throw open the window blinds, illuminating the room for me to wake by. I prefer waking to outdoors light; it invigorates me better than a dawn simulator.

However, even without extra light, in following this plan, I just naturally wake up when I’ve had enough sleep. It’s not as much fun to wake in the dark, but I think the key to making it easier is going to bed early enough to get enough sleep.  In times when I rise before dawn, rather than turn the house lights on, I love to light a candle and watch the sunrise through the window, experiencing the growing brilliance of morning more fully.

Summary

We have made modifications over time as I wrote in my newly edited Finale post and sometimes I miss pure candlelit evenings, but we have kept the gist of it.  It has made our lives better.  Good sleep is good.

My husband and I have been having a lively discussion about Harriet the Spy. (see last post) Since my last post, I have read this childhood favorite of mine for the first time since I was in 5th grade. I enjoyed it very much, but now I could see the negative side of the book as well. I could see that if you were already feeling distant from your parents as a child, this book might encourage disrespect and further distance.

Yet I found the book so perceptive of the emotional needs of children and of the ways they may cope. I have been reading Amazon reviews of the book with interest and, admidst many very positive reviews, came across this one:

17 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

Serious worldview problems amidst good writing, December 2, 2003

By A Customer

I just finished listening to this book with our two sons age 8 and 9. The writing style was very descriptive and well developed (with the exception of the conclusion), however the book overall has serious problems in approach. Harriet is a mean-spirited little girl who sees very little in reality of consequences. She sees the negative in most everything and when caught in this trap of jaundiced eye (and pen), rather than being held accountable for her acts and brought to better resolution, she is allowed to go on getting meaner and meaner. The other children respond also meanly. The portrayal of others is very derogatory. We spent many sessions discussing what was wrong with Harriets positions and perspectives as we went through the book. She is compulsive and obsessive and is in serious grief over the loss of her nurse. These issues were completely glossed over. Her mother and father are rather disassociated with her life and caught up in their own lives to her detriment. Raising good kids takes good input and parenting. That does not get portrayed in this book. The conclusion of the book is not well executed and the portrayal of family life is very negative. If you want a book that will rob your kids of their childhood perspective, this is it. If you want a book that is more an adult study in disfunctional children in a disfunctional world populated by disfunctional adults, this is it. After reading this book, it is obvious to me why the 60s and 70s became a child-rearing society that created the greed, personal lack of accountability, and negativism in the young adults of the 80s, 90s, and new century. Values do matter and are shaped heavily in this age range of readers. Reading other reviews on Amazon, by people who claim this book brought them encouragement to become writers, shows to me why todays literature is so devoid of values, hope, and goodness.

When I shared the above review with my husband, he said, “Yes! That’s exactly how I felt after reading Harriet the Spy as a kid. And when people say Harriet was their inspiration to write, I think ‘if that’s what inspires you to write, you shouldn’t be allowed ever to touch a pen!’

It’s funny the differing perspectives my husband and I have. I still really like the book and I still really, really like him:) And the book did inspire me to write.

But the review above does a good job of capturing the other side of what I feel about “Harriet.” The truth is that there is mostly an ungodly perspective coupled with a lot of emotional insight. If the author had been a woman who had true spiritual insight as well as emotional insight, it would have been perfect. As it is, there is only emotional insight and a rather skewed moral view.

But the reason I still love it? There are things this book captures that no other book I’ve ever read does. If I have to wade through some things I don’t like to get there, I’m still very glad this book touched my life.

Lately I have been filling pages and pages of my journal whenever I get the chance. Over the years the pace of my writing has ebbed and flowed, but I have been journaling ever since as a 5th grader I read Harriet the Spy. This book is one my husband also read as a child—and disliked. I could see why he might. Harriet wants to become a writer and is told she should keep a notebook of interesting things that happen so she can learn to write (or something like that).

What she actually does is spy on her classmates and people she knows, even actually watching outside their houses. She writes everything she thinks and much of it is critical or negative, yet she is truly curious about other people. At some point her classmates steal her notebook and discover all the unkind things she has written about them. She has no friends and is utterly isolated. She learns a thing or two through this, though it is hard now for me to remember exactly what.

I came away from this book inspired to write my own journals. I didn’t ever once think of spying on other people, filling my journal with negative things, or becoming eccentric as Harriet did. None of that held the appeal—rather, I think it was the power writing had. There was magic in Harriet’s words, despite how off-base she was, for her writings revealed that fascinating stories hide in the everyday. Writing was a way to discover the stories. And I knew even then that my life as a child was something I wanted to remember when I grew up. So writing could not only discover stories, but preserve them.

How comforting writing was for Harriet and what an obsession it became for her. If something can become an obsession for one person, it may be simply very enjoyable for someone else who is less obsession-prone. For me that’s what writing became—very enjoyable. It still is. Now there are new wonders I find in it that I did not know as a child. I didn’t know then how much self-discovery I’d accomplish in keeping a journal. Was I a simpler person with less to discover then—or, perhaps, still fairly complicated, but only less experienced at figuring out how things work?

One of the great wonders of writing involves memory. I didn’t know my memory wouldn’t be quite as good once I became an adult. Sometimes when I write details of my week that I have found unforgettable, it’s hard to believe I will come back only two weeks later and already have forgotten so much that if I hadn’t written, I wouldn’t know how an interesting story unfolded. But I do. It happens all the time. I love it that rather than forgetting, I can trace details of how big changes in my life are happening.

Often the intricate details that make life fascinating are too intimate to share with other people.  If I do share them, I only share select details with select people.  No one ever knows the full scope of the life story I am living but me. This makes my journal important.  If I don’t write I’ll lose so much.

I am forever seeing my life—even while it happens—as Story. Sometimes when I am miserable with suspense over something I’m waiting to see happen—perhaps a new place to live, an answer for a health problem, or the positive pregnancy test I’ve been longing for years to see—I step outside of my frustration and imagine I’m a reader or listener of my story.

Isn’t it so much easier to handle suspense when you read a story than when you live one? As the person living the story, you hate painful circumstances very much and you don’t know what will happen, so it’s easy to lose heart. As a reader of the story, you know things may be bad now, but often it only adds to the excitement of reading forward to see what will happen next.

So I realize that if I keep on writing, I’ll have a story bit by bit to enjoy as the months and years come. The pain of the hard times will fall away and I’ll be left with pure story. I’ve seen many elderly people who can look back at their once difficult life and say with joy, “I had a good life.” They have a new perspective they didn’t always have, similar to that a reader has at the end of a good book.

As for Harriet the Spy, I wish I could remember more fully how a character like Harriet, who had ever so many faults and who wasn’t even someone I wanted to emulate, changed the course of my life all the way to today. Most of the book I cannot remember. I have ordered and plan to read it again for the first time since I was a 5th grader. This is a way of going back to that time in my life and reading part of my own story fresh. We can read many books, but only one story is truly ours to live. Yet some special books can become part of our own real story as Harriet the Spy did for me.

Anna had become fascinated with a little book called, “Go, Dog, Go.” It was silly, it was funny. It had lines like:

Stop, dogs, stop!

The light is red.

Go, dogs, go!

It’s green ahead.

She liked to read it a lot and her daddy had been reading it to her before bed nightly.

Now we were on our way home from church and my husband was driving. I wasn’t expecting what happened next. One of those moments came when the driver misjudges whether to hurl through the yellow light before it turns red or stop instead.

He decide to stop and stop we did. We stopped so suddenly, my neck lurched forward and when we came to rest, I was rubbing my aching neck. My husband looked at me. He knows that my whole life of back and neck pain started with a whiplash accident in highschool.

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” I said.

“I know.”

Turning to Anna, “Are you okay,” I asked. She said yes.

Jacob said he hadn’t thought he had time to get through the light before it changed red. “I’m sorry about your neck,” he said.

“I know, Sweetie.”

In the middle of this solemn atmosphere, piped Anna from the back seat, sounding equally serious in her sweet three-year-old voice:  “Oh, Daddy,” she said, “I should have brought my “Go, Dogs, Go” book in the car for you!” She sighed.  “That would have helped you know when to go.”

Jacob started laughing, a deep hearty laugh. I joined in and Anna, not knowing what was funny, laughed too because she knew she had said something that pleased. My neck recovered.  My heart felt lighter. We were still laughing.

It makes me chuckle now still.

There are so many conversations when you have a three year old. Not all of them are funny, but quite a few of them are interesting. I write down (in Anna’s journal) the conversations that amuse me or stand out.

—-

In the Kitchen in the Morning with Mommy

“You know what?” said Anna. “I like my daddy.”

“I know you do,” said Mommy.

“When he gets dressed up,” said Anna, “I think he’s a handsome daddy.”

—-

With Daddy in the Kitchen Another Morning

“Daddy, I didn’t have any dreams last night.”

“Oh?” said Daddy.

“I used them all up, so I can’t have any more.”

“What will you do?”

“I just won’t have any more dreams!” said Anna.

“How tragic,” said Daddy.

____

On the Way Home from Grandma’s in Tennessee:

“I miss Grandma Phillips,” said Anna. “I don’t like to go away from Grandma Phillips. That makes it really lonely for me.”

—-

At Mealtime

“Just a minute,” said Mommy as she was eating her dinner and Anna asked for something.

Anna said, “When you say ‘just a minute,’ it says ‘just a couple hours!”

Mommy burst out laughing. She did not expect that comment.

—-

Reading the Bible Together

Anna and Momma were sitting at the kitchen counter reading aloud the story of Pharaoh’s dream in Genesis 41:1-8. When they got to verse 8 where it says that Pharaoh’s spirit was troubled and he sent for all the magicians of Egypt to interpret his dream, Anna stopped Momma to give an interpretation of what was really happening in this story.

Anna said, “He was ‘tubbled’ and he was sad, so he said, ‘Mommy, I want you to hug me.’ ”

“He said that?” said Momma.

“Yes, the Pharaoh called Mommy and said ‘Mommy, I love you. Please hug me.’”

Momma grinned at Anna and they finished reading the passage. Then Momma picked up Anna’s journal and immediately wrote down Anna’s interpretation of just what happened when Pharaoh had a bad dream!