Musings

Remember the great Laundry Challenge? Well, unlike the Great Breakfast Challenge (which perhaps should be renamed "Breakfast: Accomplished-Sometimes Twice"), it remains an elusive, un-achieved goal. Perhaps I should rename it "Clean Clothes Confronted"- no, in actuality the dirty clothes are being confronted - and put through quite an ordeal. It isn't only them being agitated over this. The good thing about the word 'confrontation' is that it  puts me into a more aggressive planning mode. I know what I need to do. Get a better system. Right now I have two baskets. One for clean, one for dirty. I run three types of loads: darks, lights, and towels with bleach. My single basket overflows before there is enough to run one of these loads. This makes me look and feel more behind than I am. Tomorrow I am going out.... The good news is that last week I was great until Wednesday. Then I never folded Thursday's until Friday....you get the picture. Right n

Faith Cook pens a lovely little biography of Anne Bradstreet entitled Anne Bradstreet, Pilgrim and Poet . Anne was a leading lady in the American colonies early in the seventeenth century. She mothered eight children, and endured multiple illnesses (and pregnancies!) that taxed her physically for long periods of time. This book is wonderful! It spans 168 pages, concluding with a letter Mrs. Bradstreet wrote to her children to be read after her death. Two things immediately impress me about her. First, she clung to the Lord while living a colonial life fraught with challenges. She emigrated at the age of eighteen with her new husband, Simon Bradstreet, as well as her mother and sisters. They started in Charleston, and moved on several times after that. She faced the normal dramas of mothering as an emotional female with physical and hormonal swings. She was often ill, and in spiritual, and emotional valleys. I appreciated this quality, and felt immediate identification! Seco

So, last Saturday I turned 30. And vomited. Because I had the flu. Just like last year on my birthday. Yes, it makes me feel fragmented. And headachy. Back to normal sentences. There were some similarities to last year, such as my husband sympathetically joining me in this illness, leaving us both weak and tired. Thankfully, there were also differences, such as not being hospitalized due to preterm labor being brought on by said illness. While I was thankful for this, I really struggled with missing church! This particular flu has hit both my littles, making the total of missed sermons 3! I am so excited to be able to fellowship this coming Sunday. As far as goals go, I did achieve running three miles without stopping prior to December 1st, which shocks me. In fact, I am so shocked that I have nothing more to say about it. Except that today, owing to illness, 10 days between runs, and general malaise, I was only able to do a mile and a half, then a quarter. Bleh. My 15 minute pl