An Opportunity To See What God Will Do

Contentment, Devotional Thoughts, Guidance, Joy, Sunday's Sermon 1

Today’s sermon resonated with me on several levels.  Our pastor spoke about giving and generosity and money — a very timely topic, since I expect to lose my job in a few months and don’t know what I will do.  I also have filed for divorce and don’t know how the settlement will turn out.  So lots of reasons to worry about money, right?

Pastor Ed spoke from I Timothy 6:6-19 to point out two big lies we believe about money, that hinder our generosity.

Lie #1: We think our provision depends on what we do.

If we depend on ourselves, we’re proud.  Even when we worry because we think we haven’t done enough, we’re showing pride, thinking it’s all up to us.

We shouldn’t be like antique collectors, but like a well-appointed distribution center, accepting gifts from God and passing them on to others.

Lie #2:  We believe that we would be happier if we had more resources.

We put our hope in wealth.  We think we aren’t doing so, but our actions say otherwise.  And that’s foolishness.  Wealth is so uncertain.

Here he talked about putting our hope in our own plans.  He talked about how God gave our church a wonderful piece of property, and we planned to pay for a building by selling two outparcels.  But then the real estate market tanked.  However much we were disappointed is however much we were putting our hope in our plans and not in God.  And then we forget to thank Him for His abundant provision — the gift of the land in the first place.

God’s will often is dynamic.  He often doesn’t show us the whole picture right at the start.  We need to walk with Him step by step.

That part of the message resonated beautifully with what God’s been telling me about my divorce.  As I said in my last post, I felt it was time to file for divorce.  But I still worried if I was lacking in faith, not trusting God enough.  Didn’t God tell me, and confirm and reconfirm, that He was making my husband a leader and a witness, and one day our marriage would be restored?  I prayed about it.  I thought this was the right step, but how could filing for divorce be following God’s leading?  Was I just lacking in faith?

Then one day, when I was reading in Hebrews 11, a phrase jumped out at me from the part talking about Abraham sacrificing Isaac.  He did that even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.”

If Abraham had been thinking like me, he could have said, “I’m really sure that God told me I’m going to have many descendants through Isaac, so I must be hearing Him wrong about this sacrificing Isaac.  How could that work?”

Hebrews 11 says that Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead.  Abraham had to give up his own plan about how it should happen.

As Pastor Ed emphasized today, my hope should be in God, not in my own plan.  Surely God can resurrect my marriage, but if so it will be through His power, not because of any plans of mine, or any stubborn holding onto my marriage even though my husband has left.

As for my job search, all the rest of the sermon related to that.  I did not get the Assistant Branch Manager position I had applied for at my last posting.  I now have four applications out there for four very different positions.  I don’t know what my chances are for any of those positions.

But as I think about the future, I will not be afraid.  My last three jobs have been complete gifts from God.  (No, pretty much every job I’ve ever had has been that.)  It’s not like God’s going to abandon me now.

I’m bolstered up by two Truths Pastor Ed pointed out from the Timothy passage.

Truth #1:  Our provision comes from God, and that’s where we should place our hope.

Truth #2:  God richly provides for our enjoyment.

Don’t get so caught up in my own plans that I forget to enjoy and thank Him for the many gifts He’s already given!

And that kind of attitude enables me to be generous with what God has provided.  God asks us to be generous, because that’s who we truly are, that’s how we will live “the life that is truly life.”

So, it was a beautifully encouraging morning.  Instead of seeing my probable job loss as a tough trial I’m going through, the sermon reminded me to see it as a wonderful opportunity to see how God is going to provide.

Journeying On

Contentment, Details, Joy, Marriage 2

I had a lot of uncertainty at the end of 2009.  It started with headaches that lasted for weeks.  Then came news that I would probably lose my job.  My husband was to retire from the military soon, and I didn’t know what that would mean for him paying child support.  My Dad had a heart attack.

Well, life goes on.  And we get through!  And God is faithful.

First, my Dad is up and around and recovering.  I got to see him over Christmas, because he bought my son and me a plane ticket to California.  What a treat to see my family!

I had a neurology follow-up appointment on Friday and got to report that I haven’t had one headache to speak of in the month of January!  It’s amazing how much freedom from pain helps my outlook!  I went back on a preventative that I used for about a year three years ago — and it’s working beautifully.  I am so pleased.

As for my marriage, I was right.  My husband’s retirement does mean he’s planning to cut child support.  And it turns out I can’t get half the marital portion of his retirement unless there is a court order, which I can only get in a divorce.

So — I’ve decided to file for divorce.  It was a hard decision to come to, but I feel better and better about it, that the time is right.

Part of what made it difficult is that I truly believe that God has told me that my marriage with my husband will be restored some day.  That I am not supposed to look for a replacement man.  It’s a matter of obedience, for my specific situation, from the specific guidance God gave me.

However, I also believe that God has told me that I need to let my husband go.  That when he comes back to God it will be because of God’s work in his heart, and not anything I have done.

I also have to let go of my fantasy that he will come back because of his loving, forgiving wife who puts up with anything.  There are many laws protecting women in my situation — but only if I invoke them by filing for divorce.  If I just put up with getting along with what my husband sees fit to give me, it doesn’t increase his respect for me.  He concludes that he is right, that that is all I deserve.  It is time to respect myself enough to say that’s enough, that our 23 years of marriage deserve some respect.

Though I admit I wish it hadn’t come to this.

That leaves the job situation.  And this week, I applied for a promotion, for a Librarian III position.  I hadn’t thought I’d be eligible, since I am only a Librarian I, but my boss encouraged me to apply, and when I looked into it, sure enough, I do qualify.  And Librarian III’s are not going to be cut if the proposed budget cuts go through, so that would mean I’d keep my job, get to stay in the public library, and get a pay raise.

I brushed up my resume on Wednesday to get my application in before it closed on Friday.  In the process of doing that, I convinced myself I can do the job, which is the first step!  Although I only have two years experience as a full-fledged librarian, I maintain that my eight years at Sembach gave me a wonderful variety of experience that would apply.  And my ten years teaching math, while not exactly supervising, is still that same type of experience.  So we will see if I can convince them!

But either way, the experience interviewing will be a great thing.  It was also wonderfully therapeutic to focus on my good points and my abilities!  Gave me something to think about that was not the divorce!

It also reminded me how many times God has brought my way the perfect job at the perfect time.  I have been very blessed.  I do not need to be afraid of what the future will hold.

Christmas Letter

Joy, Letters 7

Life is FULL of reasons for Joy!

That’s the motto I’ve adopted for my life as a single Mom and a career woman.  Indeed, 2009 was full of lots of joyful moments:

 ManassasWe moved last Spring!  (Be sure to note our new address.)  Our new place is a rental townhome, and it’s much cozier and more homelike than our old apartment, but much less expensive, so a winner all around.  I have a longer commute to work, but I’m discovering the joy of audiobooks, so I don’t mind.

 TimOnIceRiver

We’ve discovered Virginia is beautiful.  Tim and I had some good times hiking this year at places like Shenandoah National Park, Manassas Battlefield Park, the creek right by our home, and even on a frozen solid creek at the start of the year.

Shenandoah

I’m still thoroughly enjoying my job as Youth Services Manager at Herndon Fortnightly Library.  There’s lots of variety, and I particularly enjoy connecting kids with great books.  With budget cuts, I may be forced to look for a new job next year, but I have thoroughly enjoyed the time I’ve had at this job.

 Tim is a Sophomore at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, ranked the number one high school in the nation for the third year in a row by US News and World Report.  He’s not terribly talkative (He’s a teenager!), but I’m pretty sure he likes going there!  He admitted to particularly liking his Computer Science class last year, so this year he’s taking AP Computer Science.  We’ll see if that ends up being the area he specializes in.  (Seniors have to do a research project.)

 Josh is living at my parents’ house in Los Angeles, working for my brothers’ company, writing software that makes graphing calculators easier to use.  He’s proud of his work on Zoom Algebra 300 and Zoom Chemistry.  Now the calculators can do Algebra 2 problems, and show the steps, as well as balance chemical equations.  Check it out at www.zoommath.com.  On the side, he’s still writing screenplays.

 I’m still writing my website of book reviews, www.sonderbooks.com, and still enjoying blogging and connecting with old friends on Facebook.  This Fall, I had several book-related joyful moments: I got to meet my favorite author at the National Book Festival, got to attend a Kidlit Bloggers’ Conference, and got to take an online class on the Newbery Medal.

nbf1 

2010 has lots of uncertainty, but I am certain that God will still be looking after us and continuing to provide an abundance of joyful moments.

 Wishing you much Joy this Christmas,

 Sondy Eklund

MRI Report

Details 5

Yesterday I had an MRI done of my brain.  I’ll find out the results some time next week.

I was looking again at the brochure they give you ahead of time, and I had to laugh.  The brochure says, “You may feel some vibrations.  You will hear a loud, rhythmic tapping from the machine during your study.”  Talk about an understatement!

Getting ready for the exam is rather cozy.  I put on a cotton gown that was quite modest.  They had me lie down on a table and put a pillow under my knees, like how I’d get comfortable in yoga class.  They gave me earplugs because the machine is loud.  They put pillows on either side of my head, which is how I like to sleep (or at least one side of my head) when I’m on my back, anyway.  They gave me a blanket.  To be honest, I’d been wanting to lie down all day!  (In fact, I’d done it a couple times in the break room at work.)  So it felt very good to have someone solicitously telling me to do so and making sure I was comfortable.

I only wish they’d given me pillows for my arms.  My elbows were on the table — and the part of the table that didn’t move, so they kind of hunched up when the table slid me into the machine.  He’d told me to be perfectly still, so I was worried about adjusting them, and my shoulders were tense — and then what seemed like loud alarms went off!  Like Star Trek red alert warnings or perhaps prison break alarms.  Had I moved too much?  Did that mean I shouldn’t breathe?

I kept thinking of the line from Galaxy Quest:  “I know that sound:  That’s a really BAD sound!”  At least it made me laugh — in my head only, because I was still a little afraid to breathe!  Surely they didn’t mean me to be so still I couldn’t breathe, did they?

It took awhile, but I finally figured out that these ominous loud throbbing pulses were the “rhythmic tapping” the brochure had referred to.  They would switch from a high pitched red alert type to a lower pitched more ominous clear for the nuclear warhead sort of sound.

Anyway, I figured out a better way to adjust my hands, and I was almost able to go to sleep.  The pulses were kind of mesmerizing, once you refused to let them alarm you.  With one set, it almost seemed like I could feel the molecules in my brain realigning, which was rather freaky, too.  I tried to sing in my head to go with the beat, and that really helped, especially to make me stop thinking so much about breathing.

They really do need to reword their brochure, though, at least for people whose head is going in the machine.  Let’s see, it could say something like this:

You may feel some violent shaking.  Do not be alarmed.  You will hear loud, ominous pulses through your earplugs, similar to alarms as in a prison break, air raid sirens, or red alert signals on a starship.  Do not worry, and try to breathe normally.  This is all part of aligning the molecules in your brain through the mighty power of magnetic resonance.

Hmm.  I have a feeling I know why they go for understatement.

Yesterday was the 23rd straight day of my headache.  I woke up with it real sharp, but on the opposite side.  That actually encouraged me, because my old migraines had a habit of switching sides right before they were ready to finally leave.  So this was acting more like a “normal” migraine for me.

Then I took an Indomethacin (a strong NSAID) and two Topamax (a new preventative the neurologist prescribed), and had breakfast and rested before work.  The headache pain really let up, but I felt dizzy and sick.

So — at work I looked up Topamax to see if dizziness was a side effect, and, well, I ran across another side effect and combined with something else I’d been experiencing, it dawned on me that the Topamax is completely negating the other medication I am taking to regulate my hormone levels.

So — what this means is:

1)  Topamax is NOT a good preventative for me.

2)  It could actually explain this extra long 24-day headache, because my headaches have always been hormonally related.  The Topamax may have made it worse instead of better.  So I don’t have to be puzzled if the MRI comes back clear, as I hope it does.

3)  It explains why my emotions have been all over the place these past couple of weeks — and especially why I’ve been crying at the drop of a hat.  Whew!  I was starting to think I was just a basket case!

So — I called my neurologist to ask her to take me off the Topamax and put me on something else.  We had discussed the preventative I was on two years ago, which had worked so well, I stopped using it.  I am definitely leaning toward going back to that.  It also happens to be an antidepressant, and with everything else I am facing, I think that would be a nice migraine preventative to use!

However, she is out of the office for a “couple of days”.  Supposedly she had someone else filling in for her, but no one did call me back on Friday.  On my own, I decided to cut back the Topamax to one pill a day on Saturday.  Since they had me start out gradually, they will probably want me to stop gradually, too.

And today, it snowed!  I woke up feeling much better than I did on Friday, and the world is so beautiful!  But I only have three Indomethacin left, so I decided to save them for days when I have to work.  I took the one Topamax and some Naproxen instead, and ended up pretty wiped out with a headache.

I had hoped to go to our Open House at the Library and then do the grocery shopping and then go to a friend’s book launch.  But I ended up doing none of the above.  If I had only had the bad headache, or if it had only been snowing, I might have done some of those things.  But I knew that driving in the snow would have made the headache pretty intense.

Oh and a new weird symptom is a sore neck, particularly when I swallow.  Lymph nodes?  I’m super tired, and it was all I could do to do the laundry and sweep the snow off the steps.  (I knew I should have bought a snow shovel!)

Tomorrow I don’t think I will make it to church, or to the book club I hoped to go to for the first time or to the prayer meeting in the evening.  My big goal for the weekend will be to buy groceries — I will have Tim with me to push the cart, so I think I can pull it off.

I’m developing a new fear that I will use up all my sick leave — which is partly why I’m rationing the last Indomethacin.  I need to use it on days when I work.  I’m still praying and trying to trust.  Whatever in the world is going on, God will get me through.  “When you pass through the waters [or the headaches], I will be with you.”

On the lighter side, I just got this big sense of well-being at the MRI yesterday.  I know people were praying for me; that must have been involved.  I got this nice sense of here is this big huge hospital full of people whose job is to care about how people feel.  And after a day of trying to work while feeling crummy, there was a nice man telling me to lie down and get comfortable and asking me how I was feeling.  It was very nice.  I had a nice meal at the almost empty cafe when I finished, and rush hour had almost finished when I drove home.

Today, too, it’s so nice that the first snow of the year hit a day when I don’t have to work.  I can get some things done, then lie down.  I was up in my room, with the windows open watching it snow, reading the delightful book, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and I even got to the place where it explains why they call it that.  The roads are supposed to be clear by Monday, so it’s simply snow to make things beautiful for a few days.

All that is to say, hey, I’m not feeling well; I’m actually feeling pretty lousy.  But I’ve got a chance to take care of myself, and that does feel good.

NaNoWriMo Report

NaNoWriMo 0

Today’s the last day of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and I specifically took it off to do a last blast on my novel.  But it’s also my 20th day of this headache.  So, I took it easy.  I have found that taking a Maxalt does wipe me out the day I take it but then the headache eases up for a few days, so I took a Maxalt.  I managed to get the grocery shopping done, which I had avoided on the weekend, and the laundry, which my son brought home from his weekend with his Dad.

I did finish writing up a scenario of the vision I have gained for the book.  I’ve definitely gotten less stuck than I was at the start of the month.  I think it could use another month (at least) of brainstorming.  But for December, I want to tackle The Mystical Mantle.  I think I will definitely have new energy for it.

I’m having fun with tracking my progress, though.  I always was a numbers person.  In the past, I never liked using word count.  So much of writing is revising, and you may need to take out more words than you write, so I like to go by time instead.  However, NaNoWriMo led me to see the value of using word count when you are doing a rough draft.  It helps you to keep your hand moving.

Since a lot of my revising of The Mystical Mantle is going to be inserting some new material, I may use some of that for writing the new material.  Anyway, I made myself a new spreadsheet like the one I was using for NaNoWriMo to track my progress, and I can use it for my blogs, too.  It’s rather fun.  I think I will also keep track of my time.  I had already decided to evaluate whether 30 minutes a day is a doable goal for 2010.  I enjoyed the goal of 15 minutes a day in 2009.  Maybe now that I’m in the swing of working full-time, I can do 30 minutes a day in 2010.

Anyway, I hope to still write a review or two tonight, but as far as novel writing goes, I am calling NaNoWriMo done for me for this year.  I did not meet the 50,000 word goal, but all in all, I thoroughly enjoyed participating, so for me it was a grand success. 

Here are my final statistics:

Words written on my novel:  17, 294

Blogging: 15,092 words

Total words, novel plus blogging: 32,386

Reviews written:  18

Other blog entries:  32

That counts Sonderquotes, which are other people’s words, and easy to write up.

All in all, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this focus on writing, and it gave me new energy.  I also got all my pictures put up and the boxes in my room unpacked, so I also feel pretty much moved in to my new home — what’s left is basically putting away some last bits of clutter.

So now all I have to do is get rid of this headache.

Write on!

Best of Lists and NaNoWriMo

Books, Contentment, NaNoWriMo 1

So the end of the year is approaching, and everybody’s coming out with their best of the year lists.

I have to admit that I hate that!  How can you say what were the best books of 2009 when 2009 isn’t over yet?  And of course that would be to admit defeat — to admit that I will not, in fact, finish reading all those great books that are piled at the foot of my bed clamoring to be read.

So, I make my Sonderbooks Standouts lists in the following year.  The years that I was really on top of things, I printed my list on January 1st.  But that was awhile back! 

For my list of the best books I read in 2006, I decided to copy the Newbery Medal and call the list the 2007 Sonderbooks Standouts, since I was making the list in 2007, and I didn’t want it to sound horribly out of date.  Besides, 2007 was practically over by the time I got that list made!  So my list of Standouts goes from 2001 to 2009, but it looks like 2006 is missing whereas really 2009 is missing — does that make any sense?

Anyway, NaNoWriMo is almost done, and I got just slightly slightly more caught up on books I’ve read and want to review.  At the start of the month, there were 35 books waiting to be reviewed, and this morning, there were 30, so I made a tiny bit of headway.  At this moment, there are 31, and I think by the time I go to sleep there may be 33, so it’s not actually great progress.

I did not get very close to the 50,000 word goal for the first draft of a novel.  However, I did experiment with the reckless, brash way of writing through a first draft.  I think I work better with more of a plan — The Weekend Novelist approach of writing key scenes first.  However, with the particular book I was working on this month, I had tried that approach and reached a dead end.  This was like a month of brainstorming that gave it new life.  I think I will spend the next two days printing out what I produced and write out a scenario of what I’ve got, and I think I can come up with a plan for writing that I can really get excited about.

I’m happy that I did NaNoWriMo.  It shook me up.  Reminded me that writing is fun, and that creative juices flow better if you spend more than 15 minutes at a time.

For 2009, I had a New Year’s resolution of writing for at least 15 minutes every single day, and I kept it almost perfectly.  Probably only missed about a week’s worth of days (actually more days this last month, when I had that nasty headache — but I was writing a lot more on the other days, so it was okay).  But I was getting in kind of a rut with that.  I was revising a book I finished a long time ago, and it was getting kind of mechanical, a bit of a drudgery.  I’m hoping I can get back to that book with a bit more excitement now.

So, here are my goals now:

I’ll still keep a word count for the last two days of November.  Let’s see.  For writing plus blogging, I’m up to 30,772.  Think I can write 10,000 words on each of the next two days?  Hmm.  I’m not so sure!  So that won’t be part of the goals.  Here are the goals:

1)  Write up a scenario for the novel I worked on for NaNoWriMo.  All the writing I did got a little incoherent, but some things were coming together.  I’m going to write it up so I can come back to it after December.

For December:

2)  Reviews, Reviews, Reviews!  I want to review all the books I read in 2009 so that I can make my Sonderbooks Standouts lists right at the start of January.  It would be nice to scoop the Newbery and the Printz!

3)  For December, I am going to experiment with a goal of writing on my book for 30 minutes a day, instead of the 15 minutes a day goal I had for 2009.  If it seems do-able, that will be my new goal for 2010.

4)  I want to finish rewriting my earlier book by the end of December!

And then start looking for an agent!  It’s time to SELL that book!  (The Mystical Mantle is a middle grade novel about a princess whose father offers her hand in marriage to the person who wins a quest to gain the Mystical Mantle of Meteorology from the Obstreperous Ogre.  She decides to win the quest herself so she doesn’t have to be a prize.)

I now have four books in different stages of completion.  Unicorn Wings, my first novel, is sitting in a drawer, chalked up to experience.  The Mystical Mantle is being rewritten.  A retelling of One Eye, Two Eyes, Three Eyes is in first draft, and my NaNoWriMo novel is in early shaping stages.

But, see, NaNoWriMo got me to that place.  Before I was slowly, slowly revising The Mystical Mantle, so some day I was going to get back to Duet’s Story. (“One Eye, Two Eyes, Three Eyes” is an awfully long name.)  NaNoWriMo at least showed me the charm of working on one project for a specified period of time!

So, here goes!

And I’m also getting satisfaction out of reporting my progress in this blog.  I always did get a kick out of checking things off, and it has that sort of feel to it.  🙂

So, two days left in November.  I have both days off.  In those days my plan is to somehow consolidate what I’ve written on Dear Diary, my NaNoWriMo novel, so that I can come back to it after I’ve finished rewriting The Mystical Mantle.  I also hope to get as many reviews written as I can and try to get the to-be-reviewed number down to less than 30.

Oh, one other lovely thing about NaNoWriMo is that it transformed what was potentially an awful month into an actually good one!  This is my seventeenth straight day with a headache.  In my worst moments, I’d like them to just hook me up to an IV and make me sleep through them.  Now, mind you since Thanksgiving it’s mostly been a lot less severe.  But still.  This has given me something to be very interested in, something to remind me that life is very very much worth living.  Life is good!  That’s what writing does for me.  And NaNoWriMo reminded me of that.

Real Butter

NaNoWriMo 4

Last night, as I was getting in bed, it dawned on me.  Real butter.  That’s why the fudge I made yesterday was absolutely perfect, melt-in-your-mouth, delicious.  Hmm.  Was it really? Yep. Perfect. Definitely much better than ANY of the fifty or so times I made it as a child.

How is it better?  Well, it’s creamier, fudgier, not a hint of graininess.

What did I do different?  Well, come to think of it, not once in all those times I made it as a child would I have ever thought to have used real butter.

I’m looking at the recipe now.  To be fair, it does say “butter or margarine.”  You only use two tablespoons, and you don’t even cook with it.  You mix in the butter right after you finish cooking.  Then you let it cool.  Then when it’s cooler, you vigorously mix in vanilla until it turns into fudge.

Now, my fudge was always close to perfect — just on the grainy side.  But isn’t it just possible that margarine didn’t quite blend right with the sugar/milk mixture and melted and rehardened just a little grainy, as opposed to how yesterday’s batch did, all fudgy and, well, buttery and smooth and absolutely perfect.

I’m sure my mother would have let me buy butter for making fudge if the idea had ever entered my head.  I didn’t even think I liked butter and never would have dreamed of using butter.  My housemate in college, Karen Tullsen, introduced the idea of using butter in baking, since she never did anything else.  Then my husband persisted in using butter when making his traditional Sunday morning pancakes with our boys, despite my complaints about the smell.  Eventually, believe it or not, I grew to like it, even the smell.

And, truth to tell, margarine over the years has grown to look more like “spread” and less and less like butter and I have changed to where I would never use anything else in my baking.

I do feel sorry for my child self.  All that work.  All that agonizing over whether the sugar was completely dissolved, when a simple change to using real butter would have solved the problem!

There are all kinds of simplistic sermon illustrations out of that, but I will refrain, I think.

On the good side, I am pleased that now I am much more confident that this batch of perfect fudge was not a strange, irreproducible fluke that will live in time as a legend.  The perfect fudge that I supposedly made on Thanksgiving Day when I was all alone but that no one else ever tasted.  Now I feel confident that I could do it again. 

So I do not have to worry if there doesn’t happen to be any left when my son returns on Sunday night.  I will simply have to make another batch.

What can I say?  I am shut up in the house alone with a pan of my favorite fudge, and it is absolutely perfect.

I should also add that I am third of thirteen children and I never did learn self-control regarding sweets.  If there are sweets around and you do not eat them now, you will probably not get any. 

And my goodness that fudge tastes good!

And although my headache still is not precisely gone, it is not worse, so at least the fudge is not making me sick, right?

Can you tell that I am not even trying to fight it?  Will you despise me utterly if I confess that a part of the reason I made fudge on Thanksgiving Day was that I knew that I would be alone in the house for the next three days and would get to eat it up all by myself?  If you are tempted to judge me too harshly, chalk it up to the fact that I can safely say that not once when I made fudge as a child did I ever get to eat even half of the fudge myself. (No wonder I “tested” so much of it while cooking!)  That must have been a little fantasy indulgence right there.

I’m hoping for a writing blitz today — alternating with reviews and writing on my NaNoWriMo novel.  I’m hoping the headache will stay subdued enough to allow for that.  Wish me luck.

Betty Crocker Cookbooks, Fudge, Pictures, and Home

Contentment, Family, NaNoWriMo 4

I have two bright red Betty Crocker Cookbooks.  One is copyright 1972.  It has lots and lots of smudges.  Especially on the page for fudge.  Oh, how many times I tried to make penuche (brown sugar) fudge, without the nuts of course. 

What I made tasted wonderful, but it was never quite right.  Always just a tiny bit grainy or maybe a lot grainy.  Oh how I agonized over that recipe.  You have to stir constantly until the sugar is dissolved.  Was the sugar dissolved yet?  Of course I had to lift the spoon out and feel it with my finger and see if I could feel sugar and see if I could taste sugar grains.  And of course with a gas stove defining medium heat was a little tricky.

Then there was 234 degrees on the candy thermometer and the soft ball test.  Did it have to be a precise ball?  Of course, after the cooking, you had to cool it down, and then mix “vigorously” until it was “smooth and no longer glossy.”  How glossy is no longer glossy?  How vigorous is vigorous?

As an adult, I bought a book on making fudge but I don’t think I ever did make it again.  Incidentally, it said that humid weather is great for making fudge.  I wonder if that was our problem in California….

Then, a few months ago, much to my own surprise, I tackled a recipe for cinnamon brittle.  I followed the candy thermometer and waited and waited for it to get to the right temperature — and took it off the heat the moment it did — and the candy then proceeded to incinerate!  I learned that maybe my thermometer measured a little low.  And thought some day I should try something easier, something softer on my teeth, like fudge….

Yesterday, I cooked a pre-Thanksgiving dinner for my son and me.  For Thanksgiving dinner I pull out the Betty Crocker cookbook I bought with the gift certificate we got as a wedding gift, copyright 1986.  It’s also bright red, but in loose leaf with a wipe-clean cover.  It’s where I go for my two very favorite Thanksgiving recipes — mushroom stuffing and candied sweet potato slices.  Mmmm, I love that stuffing recipe.  It’s basically celery, onions and mushrooms fried in butter and mixed with bread cubes and some spices, but yum yum!  I do dutifully fix it early and stuff it in the turkey, but the truth is I like best what I just cook in a dish on the side.  I really need to cut the recipe in half or a quarter, because I never ever stuff such a huge turkey — but there’s no leftovers I like better!  And I don’t make it any other time, and it keeps well, so what’s the harm in it?  Yep, I stick Handel’s Messiah in the CD player and start chopping celery and onion and mushrooms and it’s holiday time in my heart!

And then, of course, the candied sweet potatoes.  As I was mixing the brown sugar and butter and cinnamon, I got to thinking:  How is this any different from fudge?  I’ve really got to make fudge….

So.

Last night as we were sitting down to pumpkin pie, my husband arrived to get my son for the weekend.  (We had expected that traffic would make him later than usual, but I suspect he got off work much earlier than usual, because it was the earliest he’s showed up in a long time.)  So I have a grand and lovely weekend all to myself.

And this morning I woke up to find my headache of fifteen days actually mostly gone!  It’s making little visits, but is mostly leaving me in blissful, happy, glorious freedom!

So, what could I do?  I decided it was time to MAKE FUDGE!

And the crazy thing?  That fudge came out absolutely positively perfect!  It is melt-in-your-mouth not a hint of graininess magnificent brown sugar fudge. (Excuse me.  I need to make sure I’m telling the precise truth.  Yep.  Creamy. Fudgy.  Delicious.  Mmm.)  Now, remember how I learned that humidity helps with fudge-making?  Well, today was definitely humid.  But I feel a little bad for my poor child self.  If that’s all there was to it, how come it was so hard for her?  (But, boy was I glad I learned that lesson about my candy thermometer — I stopped cooking before it got to 234 degrees because it did, in fact, pass the soft ball test.  I’m glad I did!)  Now, I did plenty of testing, but probably not, in fact, as much as my child self used to do.  So maybe there’s something in that.

Anyway, now alone in my house with a pan of absolutely perfect fudge, two questions remain.  The first is will my headache be able to stay away if I ingest that much sugar?  The second is will there be any left for my son to taste when he gets home Sunday night?  Of course that brings up a third question:  Is there any reason for him to know that there was any fudge?

So far, consuming the end of the pan of fudge (Hey!  I had leftover turkey dinner, too!) has only gotten my headache better, so I call that positive reinforcement.  Hmm.  A friend was wondering if my headaches might be related to hypoglycemia.  I wonder if this would support or refute that hypothesis?

I’m also in a great mood (or is that a sugar high?) because today I really and truly finished putting up all the pictures on my walls.  Yes, I still have a few boxes to unpack.  But for me the true measure of when you are moved into a new home is when you have your pictures on the walls.

It’s tricky for this move.  So many of the pictures include my husband.  What do I want on my walls for this my new life? 

Mostly I’m including the happy young family pictures.  I’m including the pictures of the boys, young and joyful.  I’m including the pictures of us traveling all over Europe.

Most of the pictures we had on our walls always were ones that I took.  Steve never took much interest in what we put on our walls — Usually I’d drag him into helping me decide what to put up, but he’d let me put up whatever I wanted.  So I haven’t changed too much since he left.

And most of the pictures are my own photographs.  Photographs of castles.  Photographs of beautiful places.  Photographs of places that make my spirit soar.  And of course photographs of people I love in beautiful castles that make my spirit soar.

When I moved into this place, I said that it felt a lot more home-y than the apartment where I was before.  That’s even more true now that I have my own pictures, symbolizing my dreams, on my walls.  I do need to get some more current pictures up there next — but I think I will do that by getting myself a digital photo frame for Christmas and filling it with digital photos.  But that’s a whole new project!

As for the boxes, I had four piled in my closet, and I decided that I would empty the contents onto my bed on each of my four remaining days off in November.  So I will be dealing with the contents of box one before I go to bed tonight.  I am already excited because I discovered where my Blocking pins were hiding, and now I can block and sew up that sweater I finished knitting this summer!

Okay, that was all a long digression.  It was a lovely Thanksgiving Day.  I didn’t exactly get a lot of writing done, though I did spend fifteen minutes on my novel.  I still want to do a few more things this weekend before I officially declare myself moved in, but I am feeling much much more at home.

And my headache is worlds better, perhaps even gone!  And I am so very very thankful!

Here are my NaNoWriMo stats:

Words on my novel in November: 14,766.

Words on my blogs in November: 11,916

Total words written in November on my novel plus blogs:  26,682.

So I’m happy that I at least got past the halfway point, even with a record-breaking mind-blowing headache.  Life is good!

Happy Thanksgiving

Contentment, NaNoWriMo 0

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I really and truly have three days off!  That is going to be lovely and luxurious and, I hope, thankful.

It won’t be as productive as I had fondly hoped because, the truth is, I’m on the fourteenth day of a headache, and I’m really drooping.  Had to figure out a way to lounge as I type.  I’ve gotten headaches all my life but I never conceived of a 14-day one.

On the good side, it’s not all that bad today, painwise.  After the corticosteroid ran its six-day course, the neurologist gave me Indomethacin.  Yesterday I took a Maxalt, and today it’s almost, almost gone.  I did some stuff this morning and then took a nap.  The nap actually made the headache stronger, but I feel too weak to keep going, so I’ll probably take another nap before long.

But the cool part is, I can work at my own pace, hang out, get some pictures put up, do some writing, write some reviews, take some naps, and there’s just no pressure, and it’s all okay.

Remember my goals for the month were first to finish moving in, and I’ve already made progress toward that today.  I’m pretty much giving up on the NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words, but I DID work on my own goal of 15 minutes a day of writing, and I DID work on my own goal of doing some writing on my novel today.  And last night I got a couple more reviews written, and I plan to get some more today.

So I’m thankful.  For my home.  For my job.  For my time off.  For my son who will share my meal with me.  For my husband who provided me with great health care and who will give my son a great weekend.  For good food and the ability to prepare it.  For a cozy weekend and the wonderful opportunity to spend it working on the things I really want to do.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Good Enough

NaNoWriMo 1

Well, that last post about how maybe I could write 50,000 words in November after all?  Sorry, it isn’t going to happen.

And that’s okay.

I still have six days off left in November, and three work days.  So I need to think through how I want to spend them.

Now, part of this does depend on how things go with these marathon headaches.

I did see a neurologist, and she gave me a corticosteroid that’s giving me some relief.  But it’s something of a catch-22.  When the headache goes, there are some side effects of agitation and an elevated heart rate and not feeling great that aren’t really conducive to clear thinking, either.  When those side effects let up, mostly the headache is coming back.  Actually, both the side effects and the headache were better this afternoon — right before it was time to take another pill!

Anyway, I only have a couple more days of the corticosteroid, and I hope, hope, hope that will be the end of this headache, which is on its tenth day right now.  By then, I’m hoping either the neurologist’s tests will reveal what is causing the new bout with headaches, or else the new preventative she gave me will kick in and they will let up.

So, all that is to say, it’s not the time to burn the midnight oil or skip meals.  I’m going to be gentle on myself, but decide what I want to accomplish in this last week of November.

My son’s going to be with his Dad for Thanksgiving, but I have Wednesday off, and he gets out of school early, so we’ll have a little pre-Thanksgiving feast together, and then I can have a nice cozy weekend retreat for the rest of the weekend, working only on Saturday.

One thing that working on NaNoWriMo did remind me is that I do enjoy writing an hour at a time, that this is actually rather easier and more enjoyable than doing it only fifteen minutes at a time.

It reminded me that, yes, I want to be a writer, and, yes, a writer writes.

So, no, I probably can’t possibly finish 50,000 words on my new novel by November, but I can still make some good progress, and any progress is good progress is good progress, and that is good enough.

Here’s what I’ve decided to make my goals for November:

1.  I will try to finish moving in.  This means finishing putting up my pictures throughout the house, and unpacking the boxes in my room and the spare bedroom.  This will feel very good!

2.  I will see how far I can get on my novel.  I will try to put in at least an hour a day, where possible.  It would be nice to get at least halfway to the 50,000 word goal, but we will see.

3.  I will try to get at least one review posted per day, preferably two or three.  I have a stack of 35 books I want to review, so I’m not going to get caught up in November, but maybe that can be my goal for December.  Of course, the main problem is that when I’m not feeling well, the one thing I can do is read, so the stack just keeps on growing.

As Thanksgiving week begins, I’ve been thinking of how much I have to be thankful for.  NaNoWriMo reminds me that the one thing I ALWAYS wanted to be was a Writer.  I used to think I’d accomplish that by being a stay-at-home Mom supported by a husband, but now I’m finding that being a full-time librarian is actually a bit more conducive to a writer’s work habits.  And I’m definitely more involved in the world of books.

But a writer writes.  It will be interesting to see how many words I can get written in a month, even when I’m plagued by headaches.

So far, on my novel:  13,699 words.

On my blogs: 7,535 words.

Total: 21,234 words.

Write on!