Yes, the inner geek has struck again. I'm learning to embrace it, though. At this point in life, I'm fairly confident that no matter how geeky I get my husband will still think I'm cute, my babies will still think I am the source of all goodness, my sister will just laugh, and my friends will still love me. (They already all know I'm wierd, anyway.) So why hide it?

I've come to this conclusion about schedules: love 'em or hate 'em, if you're going to have smallish children and get anything other than diaper changing and nose wiping done in a day, you have to have one. And follow it, kind of dogmatically. I've been scratched mine out on several different pieces of paper, tweaked it, and scratched it out again. I'm still trying to find a good balance for all the stuff: Mommy stuff, Writing stuff, Me stuff, and other random but important stuff like paying bills and washing clothes. Oh, yes, and Sleep. (Occasionally.) Inevitably, just when I really get on a roll and start getting comfortable with my schedule, one of the kids starts one of those "I've just hit a new phase in life and my sleeping and eating patterns will now be completely different" surprises. Love those. Yum, yum.

Mara, for example, no longer needs two naps a day. She will still go to her bedroom, but she usually stays awake for the entire two hours during either the morning or the afternoon "nap." Fortunately Robbie sleeps through most of her noise. Unfortunately, she starts getting bored when he doesn't wake up and "talk" to her. Bored + 2 year old = Not Good.

A few days ago I was tapping away at the keyboard, racing through a last article, trying to get finished before lunchtime. Mara is talking away in their bedroom, but she's fairly quiet and happy and Robbie isn't crying. It's about half an hour before naptime should be over, so I'm just going to leave her in there. Until I hear three very distinct words: "Uh-oh. Poo-poo. Mawa."  She kept repeating them: "Uh-oh. Mawa poo-poo. Uh-oh. Poo-poo. Uh-oh. Mawa." Time to go check in.

So I open the door to see Mara squatting in the rocking chair, holding her diaper in her hand, pointing to the floor. "Uh-oh." Yep. There are little piles which should have ended up in her diaper had she kept it on her bottom. She knows how to get herself a new diaper from the changing table; if only I could teach her how to put it on...

Time to adjust the schedule again. Not that I don't love my little pooping daughter, but those two hours of morning nap are my most productive writing time. Not worth cleaning up piles off the floor every day, though. Here's to flexibility.

(Oh, yes, that picture at the top is my schedule that I finally moved from various pieces of paper to an actual pretty spreadsheet. I made it a .pdf, then Joe showed me how to take a screenshot so I could make it my desktop background. Geeky, I know, but now it's there all the time. And it still has photos on it, they're just smaller...).

Sex.

Here's what a popular women's health website says: "Repression is the only sexual sin against oneself. If you're in a relationship enjoying regular sex, or you're single and have casual sex, or if you're celibate but have found creative ways to sublimate; that's all fine. But if a lack of sex represents a deprivation or you've closed off your natural sexual energies, that's not good."

Silly me, all those years of thinking that it was a good idea to wait for my spouse. What naivete! All that repression, and I could have brought a truckload of emotional baggage, memories of other men, a handy "sexual satisfaction comparison chart," and maybe even an STD just for kicks. What was I thinking? Instead I committed the deadly evil sin of repression. I deprived myself. I closed off those natural sexual energies until I got married, and I began that intimate relationship with my husband with no emotional regrets, no experience, no way to compare, no disease, no old memories.

I really got that messed up, didn't I? Our relationship would have been so enriched if I had been able to say, "No, no, no, honey, you've got it all wrong. My last lover did it like this..." That would have brought us closer. We would be so much better off if I had to continually fight the memories of other faces, other moments with other men. I'm sure that would bring more sexual satisfaction for us.

When we justify what we desire without regard of the consequences, we suffer. Choose sin once, or twice, or a few times, and you will find yourself tied up with it. You'll change your mind and decide life seems more peaceful free of it, but you can't undo those knots. You are bound to your past decisions.

That's why God says things like "Adultery is a dead-end road (Prov. 2:18)" and "Illicit sex is a honey-coated dagger (Prov. 5:3)." He created sex; I hardly think He did so just to deprive us pointlessly. Deprivation is necessary first so that you can have sexual satisfaction later. The kind of sexual perversions that we hear of so often today come from sexual saturation. There's no age limit, no partner limit, no method limit. Get bored? Find someone new. Do something different. Eventually you run out of new and different and you've forgotten how to appreciate sex for what it is: physical fulfillment and emotional connection as an expression of love, service, appreciation, and awe for the one you're committed to. Sex is meant to be exclusive.

When was the last time you had sex that felt that way? It isn't possible outside of marriage. You might get some of the factors right, but you can't show love without showing respect, and you can't show respect when you're giving someone a cheap, uncommitted experience instead of a real, exclusive intimacy.

Real deprivation is denying yourself (or someone else) the richest and best that sex can be, and attempting to be satisfied (or to satisfy) with a far inferior version. If that's where you are, or where you have been, don't stay there. If you've been walking the line, keep this in mind: if you camp out on the doorstep of sexual sin, you'll find yourself walking in, staying a while, and then forgetting how to leave when you want to. Walk away.

It's worth it.

Have you noticed all the pretty pretty shiny shiny on the right sidebar? Uniform size. Colors that coordinate with the site represented. Great designs.

I can't take credit. Me and Words are good friends. Me and Graphics are not so close (unlike some people I know).

The logos are thanks to Cathy, whom I chanced to "meet" via Wordless Wednesday. While I was browsing her site, I noticed her ad for logo design and, well, you can see the results on the sidebar. I am logo happy.

(Go get your own!)

I think, technically, this is a pie because cobblers generally are made with lumps of a biscuit-like dough dropped into the fruit filling, and this is decidedly not that method. However, every year on my birthday when my Mom made me a blackberry cobbler because it is my very favorite dessert of all time, she used pie crust and a berry filling similar to this. And she called it cobbler. Technicalities aside, I'm calling it cobbler too.  This is my own version of our family "cobbler." By the by, you could use another berry - raspberry or strawberry - or a mixture, or any other fruit really - peaches, apples, etc. But really, can anything beat fresh summer-sweet blackberries? I think not.

You will need:

Method:

Gently wash and pick over the fresh blackberries. Put into a tightly sealable container with the sugar. (Use only as much sugar as needed to get the berries sweet enough.) Stir gently. Stick in refrigerator for a couple of hours or overnight. The berries will release lots of juice and you will want to eat them all just like that. But resist the urge and continue on.

Preheat the oven to 350. Get your double pie crust and roll it out into one large roughly circular shape. Grease the bottom of your pie plate. Loop the pie crust over your rolling pin and transfer it to the pie plate. The edges will overlap. This is good. Do not trim them. Poke a few holes in the bottom of the crust. Now get those berries that you haven't eaten yet.

Dump the berries right in the middle of the pie crust. Yum. Yes, juice will probably run out between the crust and the pie plate. This is okay, because you greased your pie plate, remember? (I use butter to grease mine.) Your cobbler should look something like this now:

Now dice the 4 T. of butter and sprinkle over the top of the blackberries, then sprinkle with the 2 T. of flour.

Gently fold the excess pie crust up and over the mound of scrumptious looking blackberries. This is not a perfectionist pie so take it easy. Just flip them up and over. They may or may not cover the entire pie. Make sure there are some little vents for steam to escape. Poke a couple of holes if needed.

Now slide your pie plate onto a cookie sheet (just in case the juices run over) and then into your preheated oven. Cook for about 20 minutes until the crust is lightly browned on top. Remove from oven and try not to drool. Scoop in large helpings into bowls and top with ice cream or whipped cream (the real stuff, please, not the nasty Cool Whip junk - blackberries deserve the best). Serve immediately to your friends and family if you're feeling generous. Or just eat it all yourself!

I spent a few hours yesterday on website stuff. I don't mind doing so; it's not frightening or confusing or overtly complicated. It's just time-consuming. I upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress, long overdue, installed a whole lot of new widgets and plug-ins, and then spent a long time configuring them, testing them, reconfiguring them, moving them around, and retesting them. At one point, one of my sidebar widgets caused the entire front page to start showing posts from months ago and made my recent blog updates disappear into never-never land. Moment of panic ensued. Deactivated plug-in. All became calm.

I'm most excited about two things: want to hear? (Hint: I don't really care. I'm going to write about them anyway, because I'm excited. If you're not excited, quit reading. Skip to the end. Leave a boring comment about how boring my post is.) The first is a WP plug-in for Picasa that allows me to put in a simple link to my latest Picasa album and voila! it shows up in my post. Here's an example of that. Lovely. So much easier than uploading photos one by one, inserting, arranging, resizing.

The second is (shock) another WP plug-in for Facebook that publishes a little blurb of my latest blog post on my Facebook newsfeed. I'd tried having the posts automatically published in notes, but they always ended up having weird formatting. This way it shows just the title and a few lines; no big bother, but anyone who wants to read more can just click-a-roo on the link. Oh dear, I just said click-a-roo.

One thing I haven't figured out is how to get my full post from this blog to show up in my RSS reader (Google). I've checked settings, and the "show full post" box is marked for the RSS options. I'm not sure if it's a Wordpress problem or a Google Reader problem, though the reader shows photos from other feeds with no problem. But maybe they're not Wordpress? Not sure. I'll leave that one be for a while. I need a break from the web back-end stuff.

Image Credit: Extra Ketchup.

I love my new digital camera. I take pictures compulsively now. They're not necessarily good pictures (I leave that to my sister and my sister-in-law) but they are records of my days. For whatever that's worth...

30 July Album.

The coffee shop where I usually go on Tuesdays - Solid Rock in Eureka. Comfy chairs.

But this is where I usually sit at Solid Rock. Harder surface, yes, but lots of room for laptop, phone, notes, books, etc.

Our emo child.

 

I'm on a mission to find good, affordable coffee. I can't handle paying $12/pound on a regular basis. So this week it's a duel between Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks. I actually paid less for the Starbucks.

I'm working on it.

Robbie is usually cute, sometimes just weird. He'd been running a high fever for 2 1/2 days at this point, so maybe he was a little delirious. Teething is so fun. He threw his head back and looked to the side the whole time I was feeding him. I thought maybe his neck muscles stopped working.

 

Random food shot: last night after we got home from worship practice and put the kids to bed, I made this amazing omelet. Is it okay to brag about your own food? Bacon, swiss and cheddar cheese, and topped with fresh-from-the-garden tomatoes, chives, and parsley.

One day, one fine, fine day, when all our other business ventures are operating like well-oiled machines, our kids are self-sufficient, and we have time and money to spare, Joe and I are going to start a radio station. A Christian radio station. A good Christian radio station. A good Christian radio stations that does not play songs from the 1990s and does play something besides the poppy, redundant, gooey stuff I'm listening to right now.

Sigh.

Some day.

After yesterday's time-out, I feel much better. Almost like I really do have a hammock like that one. I do have a hammock somewhere, I just don't have the trees... One step at a time. It's too hot for a hammock right now, anyway.

So yesterday (and this morning) I got through the revamp of my freelance writing blog, an item which has been haunting me for a few weeks now. There are so many freelance writing sites out there, and they all cover the topics so well. I really hate the idea of being redundant. If it's already being done, and done well, I don't want to do it too.

I'm happy with my changes. I think I've hit on a resource niche for freelancers that isn't really covered well. Here's hoping, cowgirls!

In addition to the blog revamp, I set some priorities and got rid of a few obligations. Not really anything huge, but a few significant, if small, changes. I feel better.

Image Credit: Lili Vieira de Carvalho.