The Cast is Off!

Musings on Life and Beauty

Monday morning found us at the surgeon’s office to get our first look at the broken ankle, post-surgery.  Here he is on the table, equal parts anticipation and worry, trying to hide both, and irritated with his mom for remembering the camera.  Someday I think he’ll be glad we have pictures of his life, but right now he’s mostly disgusted by my efforts at record keeping.


Seriously, it was the biggest cast I’ve ever seen on the lower leg.  EVERYONE commented on how enormous it was.  At school he had people stop him to ask about it, and I heard a lady at church exclaim, “THAT for just an ankle?”








All that padding!

And the ankle emerges at last…




And there is the incision.  It’s longer than they said it would be.  The pre-operative markings are still there.  The x-rays look good, but he’ll be in a boot and on crutches a while longer.  They removed the stitches but one of them broke and will just have to work it’s way out.   The ankle is still quite swollen, which they said is common.  He has no feeling around the area, which should return with time.   So this phase is finished and we’ll press forward.  Four more weeks until more x-rays and then we’ll find out when he can start walking again.

I had NO idea when this first happened how long the process would be.   Poor guy.  He is sick, sick, sick of crutches, but grateful he can take normal showers again, fit his leg through normal clothes, and so forth.  There is always something good to find, right?

These little people were fabulous while we waited.  There were no chairs in the cast room so we just stood there against the cabinets and watched.




And life goes on.  I hope I make it to June.

HH

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Joy, week 18

JOY in 2012



Every once in a while I get an urge to read one of Jane Austen’s classics so I recently enjoyed reading Pride and Prejudice — my favorite — once again.  This time through I was struck particularly by Darcy’s admission to Elizabeth at the end of the book that he had been taught correct principles but had still gone amiss in his application of some of them as the years passed.  Elizabeth’s refusal of his hand at first angered him but soon he allowed a sincere self-evaluation and came to cherish her all the more for making him know himself, for demanding of him the gentleman he had intended to be, and when he saw clearly again he went about the task of improving, of changing, of earnestly becoming the man he knew he should be.

I felt a kinship to Darcy as I finished the book this time, not because my life parallels his in any particulars, but because that experience of waking up to comprehend the distance between what you are and what you thought you were has been mine of late.  I have wondered to myself more than once how someone so good-intentioned and with such efforts to be principled, could still end up here .  You may remember this post about a stack of literature I am reading.  The books are about a specific challenge we are dealing with as parents, and what I am reading makes so much sense and yet simultaneously goes against enough common parenting practices as to make me feel like I’m on the right track and need to turn everything I’m doing upside down at the same time.  There have been days and moments of frustration but in my learning, repenting and practicing I also have a growing feeling of gratitude for this opportunity to truly know myself and choose to become the mother I intended to be.  Because we usually compare the inside of our lives to the outside of other families,  I don’t know that this process is something most people would ever notice, but because I’m the one who lives inside my life it feels like fundamentals are being shifted and realigned in major ways.   One of my great weaknesses is a tendency to become impatient with slow growth, and this kind of growth is definitely slow.

I realize all of this is ambiguous.  No need to worry; all is well.  I choose to be vague instead of specific because I also feel a responsibility to be loyal to my children and refrain from advertising their challenges or weaknesses in ways that would be, to them, a breach of trust.   I share it only because I think many of us have had that experience of waking up to our shortcomings as we gain knowledge and because it is the strongest ongoing theme in my life right now, next to the deafening roar of a schedule gone crazy during this last month of school.

Last week can be easily summed up in a few short sentences:  Too much time in the car.  Too many meals prepared in a hurry.  Too many late bedtimes.  Too much unfolded laundry.  More children fighting colds.  Too many days spent responding to the urgent issues of the day instead of systematically working on things of greater long-term importance.

I confess that all day today I’ve been fighting the temptation to indulge in self-pity and frustration and so I will refrain from typing too much in order to avoid it.  Yesterday I was driving my daughter to her soccer game when I discovered the home of a friend who had moved.  I had lost track of her and knew only that she’d moved.  Imagine my delight to drive by her home and see her standing on her driveway!  I went back and we visited and I had a smile on my face for the rest of the day.  Yesterday at church I had a conversation with a lady that went so well that I felt that same smile on my lips.  I was able to help a friend and this week stopped at the door of several great women I haven’t visited with in a while.  Sometimes those doorstep conversations, designed to say “I was thinking about you” are the highlight of the day.  I want to do it more.

I dealt with some stains on my six year old’s school shirts that I just hadn’t taken care of.  That felt good.  I cleaned the laundry room.  I almost cried when the rest of the bills for my son’s recent ankle surgery arrived but was saved by the face of my two year old peering up at me to ask if I was sad.  She then climbed up and entertained me with nonstop chatter for 30 minutes, becoming increasingly animated in her mannerisms.  Oh, I love that girl.  And it’s a good thing, too, because she racked up quite a tab this week in broken things.  She is a class all her own!

I cannot tell you how far short I am falling.  I can tell you how earnestly I am trying.
And that will have to do, because there certainly aren’t two of me!

Good luck with your week.  If you’re like me, you need a lot of it!

Jennifer

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The Sort Of Entry

Decorating

Like most people, there are things I love about my house and things I don’t love about my house.  I love the open floor plan which allows a lot of people to mingle and gather without it feeling overwhelming.  I love the way it flows.

I don’t love the fact that almost the entire main floor can be seen from the front door.

Have you ever noticed how frequently foyers are featured in design magazines, usually with some amazing statement piece that sets the tone for the house?  Often these entries are designed to shield the rest of the house from view.  When we were building our home I knew I would wish I had that kind of entry, but I couldn’t find a way to do it with our floor plan.  The dimensions of our lot gave us little choice about the footprint of the house and we did the best we could.  We ended up with a great house, but no real entry.  There’s somewhere to stand inside the front door, but you can see pretty much everything from that spot.

Which is fine, if it’s all clean.  But more often than not I feel like I’m opening my front door and the shoes, toys, socks and so forth is what sets the tone instead of a console table and an awesome mirror.

Here are some pictures of what you see if you turn your head from side to side upon entering my house:


If you knock on my door and the curtains are open, you can see through the dining room and into our kitchen eating area  (translate:  table must be clean).  When you enter the house, the dining room opens on your left with a clear shot of my kitchen counters  (translate:  counters must be clean also).


If you look straight ahead when you walk through the door, you see this:


To the right is the hallway leading to my studio/guest room with a closet and bathroom on the way.  The closet is currently our game closet which my youngest girls love to open and pull things out of ALL. DAY. LONG.  Getting that hallway clean and keeping the closet door shut is no small feat.

To the left is our family room, and for some reason everyone loves to drop things on the ground in front of this table, or on top of the table.  The table itself is a thrift store find which needs a coat of paint.  I don’t love the bookshelves but they’re sturdy and functional and I want access to some of our books in there.


Lastly, on the right is the living room.   {Happy sigh.}  I love my living room.  I can get it looking right in less than 2 minutes.   It’s the one view I have going for me (most of the time) when that knock is heard.


So there you have it.  In about three quarters of a second you can sweep your gaze across the areas of my home that get messy faster and more often than any others.  When everything is clean, I love that.  When it’s not, I really wish I had some focal point I could draw attention to instead of the clutter on the floor.

I’ve been thinking about that.  A focal point.  Is there something I could do to catch and hold the eye nearer the door?  Between the hallway and the living room sit the stairs.  All too often the stairs hold 2-3 small piles of various things that belong upstairs.  All too often I’m the culprit, placing it there while I tidy up so I can save time and take one big trip upstairs.  A few years ago my sister made me this awesome “H.”  I’ve had it in several places since then:  on my mantel, leaning against the fireplace, on a wall in the family room.  I made some changes to the family room so the H was without a home for a while.

Until now.


I hung it on the stairway wall, and I think I like it there.   I like the drama of the strong lines, and I like having something to notice.  From the front door it looks like this:


While I’d like to say that it makes the entry a little more interesting and attractive,  it surely makes me more motivated to keep the stairway clean.  It’s hard for me to justify a temporary pile on the stairs when in my brain the presence of the H means that it’s an area worth maintaining well.

I’m trying something on the edge of the dining room as well, with a similar goal in mind.


This little red bench is having an audition on the edge of the room near the front door.  I like it’s size but I’m not sure about introducing red in the dining room and I really love the red on this bench.  I saw a cabinet a while ago at an outlet store that I’ve been dreaming of ever since which would be a perfect statement and storage piece but that’s just an idle dream.   So the question is:  bench or no bench?  And do you think the H is an improvement?

Every day one of my housekeeping goals is to have the main floor tidy and clean.  With little ones home all day this usually proves to be a challenge, but it’s a good challenge.  We have days when other things take priority, and when that happens I’ve learned to shrug and open the door with a smile.

Tell me, do you have a formal entryway?  If not, what do you do to keep “the view” under control should someone knock?

Hopeful Homemaker

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