It All Seems to Hit the Fan at Once

We got hit with a one-two punch in the last 24 hours.  First, late last night my husband noticed that a sizeable section of the ceiling in our laundry room was bowed out and cracking.  We suspected it was connected to a problem in the master bathroom above, where we had been feeling a portion of the floor that seemed spongy, like water had gotten underneath the linoleum and softened the subflooring.  James called American Home Shield, and as they considered it an emergency, they planned to have someone contact us on Sunday morning and come out that day if possible.

James stayed home from church and waited, and the call came just before 10:45.  After talking with James, the plumber said that he was pretty sure the culprit is a leak in the seal between the bathtub and the floor or around the tub drain, and that it was slowly leaking down into the drywall of the laundry room ceiling.  He didn't seem to feel it was an emergency and set an appointment to come out on Monday morning at 9:30.

We're pretty sure fixing the leak is going to involve pulling up the floor and subfloor in the bathroom.  We don't know if more will need to come out, but at the very least, bringing everything back to normal afterward is going to require replacing the subfloor, and replacing the flooring through the whole bathroom, in addition to taking out the drywall in the laundry room and replacing that, too.  We're hoping and praying that it doesn't snowball into any bigger kind of problem, like mold.  I don't know if the toilet or bathtub will need to be pulled out to fix things, but this could turn into something big quickly.  And in the month before Christmas, so it would be hard to find worse timing.

So that's problem #1.  Problem #2 occurred tonight, when the washing machine showed an error code that translates to "Contact for service."  It's not like the other minor codes we've seen that just require unplugging the machine and letting it sit for a bit, then plugging it back in, and everything works fine.  We bought our machine when we moved here over 4 1/2 years ago, so it's way past the warranty, and we didn't buy the appliance coverage from American Home Shield (DANGIT!) since we didn't think we'd need it any time soon.

James is currently downstairs with the machine partially taken apart, working to try to fix it so that we don't have to pay someone to repair that, too.  I'm trying to remain calm and not freak out thinking about all the "What ifs?"

Especially since my car has also been sounding really strained, and I'm going to be taking it in soon to see what's wrong.  Hopefully something minor, but it never seems to turn out that way with car repairs, does it?

I'm starting to feel like a really tightly-wound ball of stress and have to seriously work on committing this to the Lord before I end up with stomach pains, as I tend to do when I hold onto stress and internalize things.  I'm reminding myself of Philippians 4:6-7:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ⁷And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.


Praying about things probably isn't going to magically cause my car to stop making that sound, or the washing machine to put itself back together in working order, or the laundry ceiling to move back into place and the bathroom floor to feel normal.  But it will allow me to deal with all of this without wanting to pull my hair out, and with the assurance that God knows it's all happening and will bring us through while granting the peace that I really desperately need right now.

Giving Thanks

Since Thanksgiving is in a few weeks, I thought this would be a good time to list some of the things for which I'm thankful.  I'm thankful for:

• a Savior who loved me enough to come to earth and die for my sins, centuries before I was even born.
• a wonderful loving husband who is a caring father to our children and who seeks to serve the Lord in all he does.
• a 6-year-old daughter who sometimes drives me crazy but always keeps life interesting, who is intelligent and funny and sweet.
• a 2-year-old son who lights up when he sees someone he loves, who sometimes expresses his love with a little *too* much hands-on demonstration and whose giggles are infectious.
• the liquid maple trees and their vivid red leaves at this time of year - they look unreal!
• music - all sorts of music, from cheesy 80s pop to Christmas songs to praise music to Hawaiian and lots of others in between.
• having family nearby and being able to see them regularly.
• a really fun vacation to Victoria a few months ago with our dear friends Corey and Gilda.
• a warm comfortable house (and especially my warm comfortable bed).
• being able to sleep well again at night and not dealing with several of coughing before I'm able to settle down.
• physical health.
• a weight-loss tool that has allowed me to finally develop willpower and self-control and see results that I know will last.
• computers that provide opportunities for organization, communication, creativity and fun.
• a church staff and membership that is striving to follow what the Lord would have us do and is growing and being challenged in how to put that into action.
• the ability to sing.
• trees, grass, flowers and bushes, and the general abundance of greenery in the Puget Sound area.
• rain that keeps me from having to water said trees, grass, flowers and bushes for about 9 months out of the year.
• sun breaks in the rain that keep me from going nuts and allow me to appreciate the beauty of the rain falling.
• the double-layer pumpkin cheesecake that I'll be having on Thanksgiving.
• fondue.
• board game nights with friends.
• Christmas.
• Reese's peanut butter cups.

It was actually pretty easy to come up with that list, and I could keep going, but it's getting late and I'm down to the wire with publishing this today.  Perhaps I'll do another thankfulness list in the next week or two and see what else comes to mind.  Suffice it to say that I'm feeling pretty thankful!

A Little Break

Tomorrow, Rachel is going to my mom's house to spend the day and the night, a Grandma/Granddaughter Day. They started doing this probably a year and a half ago, a few months after my mom had moved out of her house and into her own place.  Rachel looks forward to these times, but I think I may look forward to them more!

I love that they enjoy each other's company so much that they look forward to their overnights together, but it's also nice to get a break from the drama that life with a 6-year-old girl often brings, at least our 6-year-old girl.  The last few weeks have been particularly tumultuous, so it's with a sigh of relief that I'll be sending her off for this weekend's overnight.  It's amazing how you can hit some really high highs and some really low lows all in the same two-week period.

While Rachel visits with Grandma, James, Ben and I will be going out to a brunch summit.  (Ooh, how official-sounding!)  James and I started doing this years ago but have been spotty keeping up with it, and we're trying to reestablish summits as a regular event.

What is a summit? you might be thinking.  It's just a time devoted to discussing the next few months and what they entail:  holiday plans, people we'd like to get together with, places we want to go (museums, zoos), restaurants we want to try, events that are coming up and things that we want to accomplish around the house.  It's a way to make sure we're being organized and getting to some of the things on our mental to-do lists that would otherwise just stay in our brains and never get done amidst all of the regular goings-on in our lives.

We like to start out at a restaurant with a comforting breakfast/brunch-type meal and have as much of our discussion as we can there without either rudely monopolizing a table in a busy establishment or annoying everyone because our kids have gotten restless.  Then we head home and finish what we didn't get to at the restaurant.  Sometimes it also entails physically walking through the house to think about the projects, big and small, that we may have forgotten or that come to mind as we discuss things.

We've found our summits to be really helpful with making sure we don't just keep saying "Hey, we should go to that place sometime" and never actually go there.  And getting all of those things out of our heads and onto paper helps me to declutter my mind and have fewer things going round and round, competing for attention.  If you've read the Harry Potter books or seen the movies, I suppose you could say it's kind of like my own Pensieve, but I use it for thoughts about things in the present and the future rather than memories of the past.

I'm looking forward to getting back to regular summits.  And I'm also looking forward to a yummy breakfast out!

Frustration

Almost didn't make it in time today.  It's nearing midnight and I'm scrambling to type so I can post and not already fail at blogging every day, 4 days into the month, because that would be sad.

It's just been one of those days.  Ben was in a pretty good mood this morning and ate well at breakfast, so we headed to Target after dropping off Rachel at school.  (She did mostly decent with getting ready, but it got a little bumpy for a few minutes.)  Got our shopping done at Target with minimal fuss and lots of belly-tickling (his belly, not mine), then we headed home to hang out for a bit.  I turned on WordWorld and Clifford the Big Red Dog for him while I got a late breakfast, then gathered things for going to lunch with James.  Each week, we take lunch to him at his workplace.  Rachel comes, too, when she's not in school.

Normally Ben is completely uninterested in TV, but it provided enough entertainment that I wasn't being inundated with "Snacks! Crackers! Goldfish!" every 2 minutes while I was getting lunch ready, and that was helpful.  Is it wrong to wish your child was more interested in television?  But I digress - he did well, then we went to lunch and had a nice time there with James having lunch in the cafeteria, then going for a walk to the lake that's on the property.

Home for nap time, but a nap didn't happen.  As is often the case, he decided he'd rather jump and shriek like a monkey instead of laying down and sleeping.  Crazy kid - I'd totally nap if I had the chance more often.  I was able to get in some time on the exercise bike while he amused himself in his crib, then we went and picked up Rachel from school.

And it all went downhill from there.  We're having some real challenges with Rachel's attitude and anger again, something we thought was largely behind us, at least until teenage hormones set in.  Instead, her temper is flaring up now that she's back in school, rather than settling down like it usually does when she's back to a scheduled day and activities that allow her to get out of the house, socialize and expend some energy.

When she acts up like that, Ben gets agitated and starts to act aggressively, too, so at one point both kids were in their rooms and I called James to let off some steam and tell him what had happened so that he'd know what to expect when he got home.  It's so frustrating - we have to keep teaching the same lessons over and over, and just when we think we've made some great headway, she pulls a day like today that makes us (or, at least, me) feel like we're back at square one again.

I have no doubts that we'll win the parenting battle and that Rachel will grow up to be a strong, confident young woman with a heart for God and the ability to control her temper and make right decisions.  But sometimes the road ahead looks long.  I'm thankful for the past three days when we really did see some strides forward in her behavior and choices, and that helps me to be hopeful for more of that.  Feeling a little battle-scarred tonight, though.

Who, Who, Who Made This Owl?

Okay, I know that was corny and that you already know that I made this owl.  It's from the book Hello, Cupcake!, which I received as a birthday gift last year.  I tremendously enjoyed looking through it and picking out designs I wanted to do.  It's full of so many creative designs, and many are fairly easy to carry out, judging by the pictures and instructions.  But a year passed and I hadn't done any of them.  Then this year's birthday arrived and I received the sequel, What's New, Cupcake?, and I figured that I'd better get started actually making some of the designs.

Our pumpkin carving party last month provided the perfect opportunity to make some chocolate owls.  I had planned to make some carrot cake pumpkins, too, but ended up having to just improvise a much more simple design of my own instead of the really cool pumpkins from the book. so I'll just be blogging about the owls this time.

If you'd like to make these yourself, you'll need to start with chocolate (or another flavor) cupcakes and chocolate frosting.  I believe the book recommends using about 2 cans, but I made some from scratch because I didn't have enough of the canned frosting.  And boy, did that frosting turn out well!  You can click this link to find the recipe for Chocolate Frosting from the Hello, Cupcake! book.  It's thick and tastes like a semisweet fudge.  You'll need to use it pretty quickly after making it since it sets once it cools, or you can add milk to thin it to a spreadable consistency if you make it ahead of time.  FYI, getting a flatter cupcake actually works in your favor for these, since the owl eyes will sit flatter that way - something I figured out after I'd already gotten started with mine.  I used brownie mix for mine and added an extra egg to make it more cakey, but I think leaving out the extra egg would have given me flatter cupcakes with which to work.

Next you'll take a package of Oreos and, half a dozen or so at a time, microwave them for a few seconds to soften the cream filling.  Twist them apart.  The sides with the cream will be the base of the owl eyes, and the plain sides will be used to form the ears:

Take the plain sides and cut about 1/2 inch into each side.  If you use a serrated knife and saw carefully back and forth, you'll get a better result and less breakage:

Frost your cupcakes, getting one side as smooth as possible since that part will not be covered:

Place two of the cream-side Oreos on each cupcake and two of the ear pieces at the top:

I cut a bit off of each end of the ear pieces since they seemed to fit better that way.  Then you'll take chocolate frosting in a pastry bag with a small round piping tip (or fill a ziploc bag with some and snip off a small bit at the corner) and use it to cover the ears and to make "feathers" at the top and just underneath the eyes on each owl:

Using yellow Runts candies, push one into each cupcake to form the owl's beak:

I got enough of the yellow candies in 3 bags of Runts to make 18 cupcakes.  Then you'll pipe a small dot of vanilla frosting (canned, or you can make some by scaling down this recipe for buttercream frosting) onto each cream side and use it to attach a Junior Caramel (or Junior Mint, if you prefer those) to finish the eyes:

Hello, Cupcake! also suggests that you pipe a little vanilla onto the chocolate candy to make a highlight, but I found that it looked fine without it.

I was pretty happy with how these turned out, and now I'm excited to make more fun cupcakes!

The Big 4-0

So I turned 40 last month.  And you know what?  It was no big deal.

For a few months, I had been dreading the arrival of my birthday and being FORTY.  FORTY.  That sounded so much older than 39.  It's an entirely different decade, people!  But for some reason, several weeks beforehand, I began to look forward to the day with anticipation.  And I was actually excited to turn 40!  How on earth did *that* happen?

Leading up to turning 30, I thought I was going to be fine with it.  But I got really annoyed about leaving my 20s, and I was pretty much bitter the entire year whenever I'd remember my age.  It didn't help that my birthday started out with my co-workers decorating my cube with black and gray and "Over the Hill" decorations.  Nice, people.  Real nice.  And then a few days before I turned 31, I just decided "Eh, I don't care" and really no other age in my 30s was that big a deal.  39 seemed significant since it was my last year in my 30s, but it didn't bother me.

Anyway, I was afraid that 40 would be a year of bitterness, too, but I just feel a lot of optimism.  I truly feel like I'm only getting better with age.  I started thinking about women like Catherine Zeta-Jones, Rene Russo, Meryl Streep, Michelle Pfeiffer, Angela Bassett and Helen Mirren.  They're all older than me, and all pretty fabulous - it was inspiring!

I've found a weight-loss method that actually works for me (tracking my eating and exercising with the Lose It app for iPhone) and has motivated me more than anything I've tried before.  I've been losing weight at a steady pace and know that I'll be in better shape in my 40s than I was for pretty much my entire 30s.  I've been working through a great Bible study (the newly updated Breaking Free by Beth Moore) and feel like I'm gaining momentum spiritually.  I'm developing more patience as a parent.  Lots of areas that have been challenges for me in my 30s feel like they've been coming together, and I feel good about myself.

I'm just so glad that a milestone that I thought would be difficult is actually pretty great!

Here We Go Again

I was psyched to start blogging daily again this month, which is NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month).  I have half a dozen ideas for posts saved on my iPhone (and a ton more in my head that come and go) and I had intended to start out the month with a "how I did it" post on the owl cupcakes I made for our pumpkin carving party a week and a half ago.  But a post like that requires pictures, which means I'd have to take the time to decide which ones I want, insert them into the post and make sure their formatting is correct.  And suddenly it's after 8:00 and I have other things to get to now that the kids are in bed, and I need to get to them if I want to get to bed at a decent hour, which I do.

This is my problem, though:  I have great intentions, but I always seem to run short on time.  I'll have to start setting a reminder to do this earlier in the day when I'm not racing against the clock to get something written down just so I can say I blogged today.  This phase in life, with young children, is so often about prioritizing and figuring out what you're going to let slide.  And it's not as if blogging is a critical part of my life, but it's fun to get back into the habit of writing regularly and it can be a creative outlet.  And maybe one day I'll enjoy going back through these posts and reading about what was on my mind or what I was up to at this stage.

Rest assured that I *will* be blogging on those cupcakes in the next couple of days, along with my thoughts on turning 40 and other things I've been thinking about.  I know, you're totally waiting with bated breath for the grand revelations soon to come.

(And if you're wondering where the phrase "waiting with bated breath" came from, like I was just doing, here's what World Wide Words has to say about it:

Bated here is a contraction of abated through loss of the unstressed first vowel (a process calledaphesis); it means “reduced, lessened, lowered in force”. So bated breath refers to a state in which you almost stop breathing as a result of some strong emotion, such as terror or awe.

Shakespeare is the first writer known to use it, in The Merchant of Venice, in which Shylock says to Antonio: “Shall I bend low and, in a bondman’s key, / With bated breath and whisp’ring humbleness.

So there you go.)