stacyboemiller

Well, nothing is more attractive than a tall, handsome man in an apron, so when Brant said he was going to bake cookies all weekend, my heart skipped a beat.

By about Tuesday I was starting to feel pretty sick to my stomach.  This doesn’t necessarily mean I was able to resist eating more cookies.  After all, they are delicious and they were made with a lot of joy and love by a tall handsome man in an apron!

You would think my solution would be to stop eating sweets, but I am American,  and about 6 pm every night I start to think about a cup of tea and a little something sweet.  My answer this week was to make some healthy sweets to have around.

I pulled out the food processor, threw in some walnuts, dried fruit, a little vanilla and a teaspoon of water.  I formed this healthy concoction into little balls and rolled them in coconut.  Delicious, and I felt much better this morning rather than after a night of say – downing a gingerbread family before bed.  

A few weeks ago we were all sitting in the living room enjoying a fire in the fire place.  Brant was reading, Noah was making some bracelets,  Juan had legos, and I had a big jar of buttons that I was making rings out of.  It’s always like this at our house, by the way – quiet, full of creativity, a fire going.  There were probably little halos above each of my children’s heads.

Ruby asked for some string to string some of the buttons I was working with.  I tied some fishing line onto a clasp and dumped a bunch of buttons into a box for her.  She sat for a half an hour quietly stringing and when she was finished, the result was a really adorable bracelet!

This little project is great for many reasons.

1. Cheap!  Buttons can be found at thrift stores, craft stores, and garage sales for a really small amount of money.  Cheap clasps can cost as little as 10 cents each, or you could use elastic and skip the clasp all together.

2. Time.  This project could take your little one around 1/2 hour to do.  Moms can get so much done in a half hour, it’s ridiculous!

3.  Gifts!  What a great gift to give to a little friend for a birthday, or to a cousin, or depending on the buttons, a grown up friend, like Grandma.

As most of you know I work at a school.  If you don’t know it by now – anyone who works at a school works his or her ass off!  Teachers are there at the crack of dawn and then take work home with them.  I am amazed.  The office is also a busy place, especially at Palouse Prairie School where we don’t have a school nurse. I am constantly busy uploading data that is to be sent to the state on a monthly basis, balancing lunch accounts, working on deposits with my co-worker, Debbie, answering the phone, delivering messages, etc.  In the midst of this I get ice packs for P.E. injuries, give aspirin to pre-menstrual 8th graders, quickly grab the puke bucket for nauseous children, and I distribute about 5 to 10 band-aids a day.   I say all this to shed some light on our collective excitement when our administrator announces a Secret Santa event our last week before break.

Her e-mail started, “I realize this is not very PC of me . . . “  In our diverse school, one must be sensitive to the fact that not everyone celebrates Christmas. No one was offended however. We did not care if it was Secret Buddha, Secret Maccabee, or Secret Solstice Sun.  We were ready for some cheer!  Morale was huge over the week as teachers and staff checked their box every morning.

I drew the name of the Special Ed. teacher.  I love this woman.  She smiles and laughs with the kids all day and makes everyone who walks in her room feel welcome. We were only allowed to spend $1 each day Monday through Thursday and then $5 on Friday.  It is really difficult to show your appreciation for co-workers on these amounts.  A good chocolate bar costs at least $2.  The first day I found a box of hot chocolate for my friend for $1.  Her room is freezing and I thought maybe she would enjoy the warm treat.  As I watched her retrieve it, I felt a little disappointed.  Here was this once a year opportunity to give small surprise gifts.  I had to up the creativity.  I lay in bed that night wondering what I could give her for under a dollar.

I haven’t made a diorama since 4th grade.  Do people still make dioramas?  I don’t know but I chuckled to myself as I fell asleep that night, knowing that I was going to wake early to fashion a strange and unique gift.  I woke up at 5:30 and gathered the material.  I did not have to buy anything.  Ruby woke up and we spent a nice 1/2 hour together gluing down moss and coloring tinfoil.  I did not know what my friend’s reaction would be, but I do know that I smiled and laughed all throughout the creation of my odd project, the sneaking it in, and the huge effort of delivering it to her room unnoticed.   I felt like a crazy old lady armed with a rare craft fair specimen!

Later another teacher laughed as she asked me if I had seen the awesome diorama project someone left for the Special Ed teacher.   A few other teachers came in to check it out and observe. Oh, the satisfaction. When I revealed my identity on Friday, we both had a good laugh and she informed me that her students also love the silly gift I left her.

The older I get the more I embrace my weird side, the more I enjoy all the small pleasures that life has to offer and that we can make ourselves, and the more I try to make little celebrations out of the simple things.  The diorama of the Great Palouse Prairie Secret Santa 2011 exchange is a bit of all these things: a weird, small pleasure, in celebration of one amazing teacher.

Nothing like starting a blog, loving it, and then diving into a full time job.  I am a big fan of telling people that if you love something, you find time for it.  I like to tell this to mothers who say they don’t have time to read.  Well, I say, “Just get 15 minutes less sleep a night.”  I do follow this rule, by the way.  I give up ½ hour to an hour of sleep a night because I love reading.  I am humbled a bit now though, knocked off my “if you love something . . .” soap-box, if you will.  Here’s the problem.  Sometimes you just love too many things, and you have lots of kids, and mountains of laundry!

I get up at 5:30 or 6 to pack lunches and get four of us ready to head out the door.  Every day this week, my morning routine has also included dressing a kindergartner while he was still sleeping. He could not wake up!  We all get home in time to make dinner, do homework, bathe kids, put kids to bed, and then I usually have jewelry to make for my business.  I am not even including laundry, grocery shopping, bill paying, dog hair vacuuming, and toilet scrubbing.  I crash after ½ hour of reading and then we do it all again.

Let me say this – I know this is not unusual, and most of you are probably thinking, “Yeah.  So  what?!”  I realize this is the plight of most of us. But then I ask this, friends – From where in the hell do we pull out all this time to do the things we love?  For the last week, my exercise routine has consisted of squats while I’m brushing my teeth and lunges when I have to take a note to a teacher and no one is looking.   I love cooking, reading, creating, exercise, snuggling my kids, dancing, etc.  There are not enough hours!

I also love writing.  Having a blog appeals to me.  I can take an experience and put it into one compact piece.  When I write, I gain a bit of distance from my own story.  I can stand back and examine it, pass it around, let others chew on it, and get their response, hear how my story connects with theirs.  It is a wonder to take these larger things around us, lasso them in, trim off the ugly edges and then show them off.  I think I love Facebook for this reason – as much as I fought it at first, and despite the fact that some people are still way over-sharing -”The horrible gas I had is better now.”, or under-sharing  “I had salad for lunch”. It is a chance to keep up with other’s ongoing stories.  I want more: more stories, more of your stories, more of my stories, more of this gigantic, collective story we are all living.

So I am going to try again to fit in this silly thing that I love.  I. Will. Blog. Maybe not every day, and I may have to do more lunges down the halls of Palouse Prairie School, and I may have to try beading with my toes, while cooking dinner for my family, but I want to write. I want to collect my stories into compact, examine-able groups of words, and blogging seems to help me do that.  Big sigh.  Here I go . . . again.