The Gift of Time

My memory is not as good as it used to be. I still probably remember more than the average person, and more in the specific areas I choose to remember, but I'm definitely forgetting more these days. Facebook reminded me of a memory from nine years ago during the first year we owned our house. I had actually completely forgotten our house came with a deck, a really ugly deck. 

 

Our house has a roof overhang running along the edge so the raised decking board made the entrance to the deck very low - I believe it was less than 8 ft from wood to wood. This was undesirable and we weren't going to keep it. Mentally, a bit part of my thinking was also I didn't want to keep anything left from the previous owners. We weren't going to keep it, so in the fall when the weather cooled down, we took it apart with our own two hands.

This was what it looked like once we'd gotten rid of all the above-ground parts. My husband and our neighbor eventually pulled each one of those concrete posts up one by one with a farm jack we'd borrowed. 

For a while, sitting on our patio meant this was our view. I used to close my eyes and imagine what I wanted our backyard to look like. I wanted to see a fence that wasn't oxidized. I wanted to see a cozy place to get together. I wanted to see love flourishing. I wanted to see a freeze-frame of life being lived to the fullest. And for a long time, when I opened my eyes, all I saw was an aged fence and some stretch of grass. 

A lot of love has been put into this house. I've blogged about it over the years. You can revisit them at this link if you wish. For the longest time, we put off the outside because it was "less important" than the inside. This was mostly true for a long time until our kids came along. They needed a space to play, a place to be free to run around, and a place to explore. After we had a patio paved in about 1/4 of our yard space, everything else snowballed - the playhouse, the plants, the toys, etc.

I snapped this picture of my children playing outside together one afternoon. Our backyard is not magazine worthy. It's not designed by Joanna Gaines or Shea McGee. And it almost always looks a bit disheveled and awry. But this picture completes my vision from years ago I used to merely imagine with my eyes closed. I love getting to watch my children play together and keep each other company. I love that I can grow herbs, vegetables, and flowers right on my patio. It's so satisfying to be able to walk outside with a pair of kitchen scissors and a bowl and return shortly with freshly cut green onions, basil, or peppers.

As I get older, I'm reminded of the passing time by my greying hair, added wrinkles, and joint aches. It's easy to forget how time can change things for the better, especially when it comes to inanimate or intangible things such as feelings and spaces. Over time, this backyard will continue to evolve, and one day, the playhouse will be gone. One day, the sandbox will be a relic of the past. One day, there will be four adults from our family sitting on this patio enjoying this space together.

That's the hope.

Adult Experiments

One of our wedding gifts from our registry was a rice cooker. Some of my friends from college pooled money together and purchased it for us. We used it for the last ten years and it has been a wonderful part of our household cooking preparation. 

In the last month or so, we realized we were cooking rice every single day. Yes, we naturally consume a lot of rice as part of our weekly meals, but having to cook rice everyday was a bit overkill and excessive. Alas, our little 5-cup rice cooker was no longer making do for our growing family. 

We already own an 8 qt Instant Pot and I've blogged about how we love it. This was the concluding post to  tracking my small appliance usage in 2022. One of the features of the Instant Pot is its rice cooker function. We've actually never tried it, but in the past few weeks, we did, because we were wondering if we needed to purchase a new rice cooker. 

We looked up some recipes online about how to cook rice in an instant pot. This recipe was the starting point of our testing. The recipe itself is fine. If followed correctly, it makes great rice. But there was one main issue with this recipe - you have to stop the cooking at a precise time in order to yield the best rice texture. This means the IP will pressurize, cook for 3 minutes, and then naturally release for 10 minutes. In minutes, this means after approximately 33-35 minutes, you will need to return to the IP and release the rest of the pressure. For our household, it's not always possible for me to be at home and available to stop the cooking after 35 minutes. I love the feature about designated rice cookers where you can keep warm in the appliance for days!

My husband and I experimented with this a few times to see if we could play with the proportions. We tried a shorter cooking time (1 minute) and letting it naturally release longer (we tested up to about 2 hours) and with less water in the recipe. All our tests yielded very mushy, soft rice. Although edible and arguably the same taste, the texture just wasn't right. 

So we came to the conclusion that we need an actual specialized rice cooker to cook our rice because it will cook, finish, and keep warm for days if we needed it to, and the texture of the rice is unaffected. 

So much more counter space...but I will sacrifice 
the space for well-cooked non-babysat rice. 😅

 

Luckily, we found this new 10-cup rice cooker for less than $150 at the time we purchased. The current list price has gone up significantly.  Originally we were looking into the Zojirushi brand which always costs around $200. We ended up deciding on the Cuckoo because it seemed comparable in quality at a lower price point. We'll let time tell us if we made the right decision or not. 

Who knew 20 years after high school we'd still be using constants, variables, and reading results in our own way. 😏

Bubbles

When my mother died, one of my friends asked me if it was weird to visit because I had to "walk over dead people." I told her it wasn't weird because my mother was there. I never thought about going to a cemetery in any other way. 

In the two decades since I said goodbye to her, the plots around have filled up with new stones. I used to walk and read the stones around. I've seen ones for young children. I've seen ones for the elderly, and I've seen ones for all ages between. There's a stone about two grassy plots over for two pianists who died in an accident. I've probably "walked over them" at some point, but I've never thought of it as such.

This summer, I had a sudden urge to want to go visit. I'd picked up flowers a few days before. When my husband saw them, he looked at me quizzically and asked, "Did I forget something? " No, he didn't. But he's right, I've never purchased flowers before. I told him why I bought them and we decided to all go and visit that weekend. 

I had to think of what my kids were going to do. I honestly can't remember if I'd ever brought both my kids to visit. And they were older now and needed some perception of "fun" in order to stave off whiny complaints. So I decided to bring our bubble machine. 

When we got there, we set up the bubble machine for the kids, and I prepped the flowers for the vase. I sat for a while just watching the bubbles float around us in the light breeze. The kids had fun. I sat and felt like my mother was there with us watching the bubbles. Watching my kids twirl around and chase them. It was both so calming and sad. 

My daughter understood why we went. She knows my mother is dead. She understands everything at a factual level. I don't think the emotions have seeped in and they probably won't for a number of years.

Bubbles made a world of difference.

 

At the same time I wish she could physically be next to me watching my life unfold, I remember there's a good chance if my mother were still here, this wouldn't be the life I have. When I'm truly honest with myself, I don't think I'd choose things to be any other way.

Another Cabinet

We have a running joke of tackling one house project a year. In the beginning of the year, we finished our bathroom cabinet. The year trucked on and we didn't think much about doing anything else around the house.

During the summer, I brought up the topic of painting our built-in cabinet located in our breakfast nook to my husband. We had put this off when we originally painted the kitchen cabinets...because the kitchen cabinets were already a monster to tackle and took a lot of time to DIY. This built-in was also located away from the rest of the cabinets so it could stand alone as a piece of furniture. The second reason we put it off was because the top cabinets have glass so you can see into it. This meant a more time-consuming prep and painting process.

We revisited this conversation of painting the cabinet this summer. We talked about painting it white to match the rest of our kitchen. This idea was halted when we realized we'd need to purchase a new gallon of white paint because we didn't have enough leftover in our existing gallon to complete this project. We also discovered the lip which secures the glass will not be able to be painted. So if the cabinet surface was going to be white, the lip underneath the glass would still be wood-colored. That nixed the white paint idea.

We discussed scrapping this project completely due to this hiccup, but then I brought up painting the cabinet in a dark blue paint. This paint was a random $9.00 purchase from the "oops" paint shelf at Home Depot our first year of living in this house. It's an exterior-grade oil paint, I liked the color, and we originally purchased it to repaint the trim around the windows on our back porch. As we remodeled and replaced exterior patio doors, I continued to use this paint for the doors as well. I even used the same paint to paint over some beige tiles on our window ledge. 

We made the decision to go for it and paint the cabinet blue. Walking into this project, I knew I was going to be the one painting 100%. I actually enjoy painting, and now since getting AirPods, I can knock out a number of audiobooks while painting which makes the entire process a lot of fun for me. I will forever remember Me Before You by Jojo Moyes as the book which grounded this entire project. 

Cutting in for this cabinet took hours.

The cabinet box and shelves took two days to complete - one for primer and one for paint. Painting in between all the shelves was the hardest part because none of the shelves in this cabinet are removable. Because of the glass doors on top, I had to make sure to cover every nook and cranny including the undersides of every shelf. 

Originally, the project was supposed to start after we returned from our trip. Due to having some extra time, I actually finished the inside paint and primer before we left. This ended up being a much-needed change because the fumes from the oil-based paint were heavy. This was the second time we had used this paint indoors and the fumes this time were probably 2-3x stronger than previously because there was so much more surface area to cover and much more paint used. Coming back from our trip to a non-fume-filled house was a breath of fresh air, literally. 

After our trip, I had to finish painting the doors. This took one day and I was able to paint everything outside.

I spy some creative drop cloth weights. 😅

We finished this project in three days (of actual painting) with a total cost of $0. All the materials we used were purchased from previous projects or reused multiple times. The one expense we did purchase for/because of this project was a gallon of paint thinner. I did that in order to save my $10 Zibra Triangle paint brush from being ruined by oil paint. But the actual cost of this project is still $0.

I absolutely love the finished results.

I'm really happy with the way this project turned out. It's not perfect by any means and there are visible flaws, but for the amount of time spent and the cost of the project, the results far surpassed what I thought could be done. 

My favorite part of completion was actually purchasing risers to display our little trinkets on. My mini snow globe souvenirs can proudly be displayed in the cabinet now.

A sample of my snow globes and global trinkets.

Time-Saving Changes

We recently made a change in the house which has had a huge impact on my day. Years ago, we turned our dining room into a playroom for the kids. They've happily maximized this space and played to their hearts content. However, as time passed, their toys would gradually leave the playmate and infiltrate the rooms around. Any fellow parents out there understand how this works. 

Dealing with this tornado every day I taught was really annoying.

Last weekend, we moved all the toys into a bedroom. The dining room still isn't back to being a regular dining room, but I'm okay with it. We still have a table for the kids to do homework. There's a lamp in the corner with an armchair. And the rest is empty space. You know what? I want to leave it empty.

The styrofoam wanted the spotlight.

We moved all the toys into a bedroom, and I no longer have to corral toys before my afternoon teaching. I really love it. Cleaning up after my kids really stressed me out and made me unhappy. The irony is, the mess looks the same. It's just moved into a different location in the house, one which can be closed off and hidden from view.

This is so much more bearable for me to look at.

See, I'm not kidding. It looks the same, just in a different location. But looking at their toys in my dining room made me resent them. I didn't enjoy the creations my children made. It stressed me out to see everything not put away neatly in the storage containers and clear boxes I purchased specifically to house them. 

But now, when I see their toys in the bedroom, I get excited to see what toys they pull off the shelves to play with. It's fun for my eyes to dart from one area of fun to another. I don't need to destroy their Hot wheels garages constructed out of Magnatiles because they can simply just stay put.

So I'm excited for this year because it means I don't have to do a mad dash of cleaning around my house in the half hour before my students begin arriving for the day. It means I don't have to force my children to disassemble their precious creations. It means I don't have to resent their mess of creativity and entertainment. 

That's Valuable. 

Two Decades of Grey: Here and Now

I took my kids to a dairy camp hosted by Tillamook at a local venue near us recently. The first time I saw it, the free tickets had sold out. Then, I saw the ad again and was able to book my kids and I free tickets. I didn't know what to expect going into the dairy camp because it was only slotted for 30 minutes. Not sure what was going to happen that was so spectacular in a half hour, but I figured it was worth a shot.

We arrived and we walked all the way around the building to locate the entrance. It was a bit deceiving because there were doors on the parking lot side, but they were not the entrance doors. Finally, we entered, checked in, and waited for our adventure.

The dairy camp was fun. My kids were old enough to enjoy it and not too old to be bored by it. The decor was my favorite part. Cheddar snack size portions made up the low walls to designate where to go. Tables were designed as ice cream pints. They had cream cheese blocks and tubs to stack and play with for one activity. The budget spent on design was spot on.

The kids even received cute little Tillamook bags at the end of their adventure. They clung onto them as we browsed the gift shop and in the car on the way home. But as soon as we made it home and got our shoes off, the bags were left in the back hallway. I retrieved them and took them for myself, so it's my cute little tote bag now. 

All in all, it was a fun adventure. Thank you, Tillamook, for hosting such a fun indoor children's activity during the summer. 

An unexpected side to bringing my kids to this dairy camp was discovering more about myself and how I wanted to proceed with my grey hair journey. Originally, I had planned this entire series and written out every story I wanted to share in a specific order. I've shared many of them with you throughout this year on my blog. Then, it came to the final few stories to end my series. That's where I got stuck. I wrote my first draft of this in April. I tried again about a month later. And I tried again this summer. All of those drafts got scrapped because I wasn't happy with the message they conveyed. Part of it was I didn't know what the clear message I wanted to convey was.

At this dairy camp, I found my answer.

***

When we first gathered to go in, the lady rounding us up had grey hair. Her color was completely natural and you could see the greys spread throughout her hair. But her face looked young. Her skin looked young. She had an energy about her which contrasted to the color of her hair. And she was doing her job appealing to this group of young children, working magic to open the secret door to our awaiting adventure. 

That's the person I want to be. As my hair goes ever more grey, I hope I can still exude youth in my face, my words, my personality. It takes an insane amount of self-acceptance to be able to face the world with so many greys at such an early age, but as time passes, I've learned to rest in the confidence. That's not to say I don't have bad days. I have plenty of bad days when I look in the mirror and the reflection staring back at me makes me feel like I'm an old lady. Those are the hard days. There are also good days when I look into the mirror and I feel they're not as pronounced as I thought they were. 

The reality is, both reflections are the same. It's true - different lighting and different hairstyles might look varied, but the hairs on my head are still the same. So the truth of the matter is perspective. 

As I get older each year, my need to "stay young" decreases little by little. After all, we all have to remember, aging is a privilege. It's not something everyone gets to experience either. So this concludes my series on two decades of grey. Writing it was cathartic for me and allowed me to love myself on a whole other spectrum. 

Two Missed Calls

Missed phone calls have given me a soft spot depending on the person and the circumstance. I've written about missed calls before from my past. But this one was different. 

I hadn't looked at my phone in about an hour. It was sitting in my purse while I did other things. As we wrapped up and got ready to go home, my husband started the car and I buckled myself in. I reached into my purse and pulled out my phone. The process was instinct now. When I pressed the button and saw the Home Screen light up, chills went down my body.

I had two missed calls from "Donna."

The only "Donna" who has ever meant anything to me was my mother. And on this Sunday afternoon, the first thought that entered my mind was I had missed two calls from my mother. 

It sounds absurd. My mother has been dead for over 20 years. She never had her own cell phone number. I've never even inputted her name or number into my cell phone because I received my first cell phone a year and a half after she died. Why in the world did my mind automatically think that? 

Because at the very core of my being, my mother is still very much a part of my life. No, I don't think about her 24/7. No, my family and I will never see her with our eyes. But a part of her is always with me and I can't change that even if I wanted to. 

***

Yes, I put Donna's number in my phone. She's a government employee I was introduced to and she and I will be getting in touch periodically. When we first met, my mind did register her name being the same as my mother's. That was my conscious thought. But she's not more than someone I need to interact with once a month for a short phone call. I added her name and number to my phone so I wouldn't ignore it thinking it was a spam call. 

When I received these calls from her, it was only the second time we were in touch. And instead of my brain registering her as the government employee whose number I had saved in my phone, my mind took me directly to my mother's name. 

This is what grief looks like 20 years later. The most outlandish thought of having a missed call from my deceased mother supersedes reasonable thought of missing a call from a stranger.