SISTER WISDOM

Hello, week in review.

We found the first open daffodils. We smelled them. We tried not to touch them.

Later we found lots more, so we picked a few and put them in a vase for Mommy. I love being Mommy.


I launched a Safe Herbs for Babies series and more in Parenting 101 series. I’m getting better at being focused. Yay, me! This is the part where I stop typing so I can pat myself on the back. Okay. Done now. Back to typing.

So the daffodils were great, and the sticking-to-the-editorial-calendar is great, but the real GREATNESS, the best, the genuinely awesome, the absolute HIGHLIGHT of our entire week (month) was when that gold Honda minivan pulled into the driveway. There was my sister and her three, and after the initial hugging and screaming and dancing and general mayhem died down, we had several lovely days of more hugging and screaming and dancing and general mayhem.

The girls went to the salon on Sunday afternoon. Aunt Katie worked her magic.

Ava’s hair got shorter.

Mara’s hair got shorter.

Mine got redder and Mileah’s got blonder.

We have just one thing to say: AUNT KATIE IS AWESOME.

We went to the park. Joe met us on his lunch hour.

We climbed and played and slid and twirled and swung (swang? swinged?).

The kids played inside and outside as much as possible, and my sister and I talked as much as possible. Then she packed up the minivan and headed back to Tennessee, and we waved from the front porch and walked into our eerily quiet house.

Now I’m depressed.

I will battle my depression with the one sure-fire cure I know. It always works for me.

Books! Reading! Yay! Just don’t go reading a depressing book if you’re trying to use books to battle depression. We’ll keep it on the light side this week.

Blogs

• FIMBY’s very honest, conversation-sparking post about feeling isolated. I guess this doesn’t exactly count as “light reading” but it’s definitely worth a visit. I think it touches on something more common than we realize, this feeling of being “on the outside.”
• The Ultimate Hack for Writing Productivity at Write to Done, a guest post by Bamboo Forest of Pun Intended. Great points. It’s the details that kill us. And the procrastination. And the distractions. And lack of focus… “We can be real. We can be writers.†We can do this. We can set a timer, commit ourselves to working non-stop until it sounds and feel proud at what we’ve accomplished.”

Books

• Grow Your Own Drugs: Easy Recipes for Natural Remedies and Beauty Fixes by James Wong. If you are interested in herbs, natural beauty and body products, and/or natural health, you should read this book. It’s great for beginners, as there is a glossary and lots of clear explanations of special terms, ingredients, supplies, etc. I love the collection of recipes and I’m going to be trying several in the next few weeks, so more on that as it materializes. Beautiful photos, too.
• A Stew or a Story , M.F.K. Fisher, editor. My favorite Fisher is still the big yellow collection. I can just lose myself in there for hours, though I always come out eventually because I have to go cook something. This shorter collection is nice, too, and it has several essays I hadn’t read. Fisher is my source of cooking inspiration when I’m just kind of tired of the kitchen.

And Otherwise

• Gigi, God’s Little Princess. I recently received and reviewed this children’s dvd from Thomas Nelson Publishers. Bottom line: cute, good message straight from the Bible, very girl-girly, my daughter was enraptured, but I wouldn’t want to watch it 20 times. But then, what children’s dvd would I want to watch 20 times?

What’s your recommended reading for the week?