What's Been Up

Well, lots of stuff i'm not going to share... just to get that out.

What i will share of what's on my mind and in my doings:

Gardening!  This is swiftly becoming a passion.  While I was away, numerous of my plants died.  So many heirloom seeds who only got a barely there taste of life and then went the way of all the earth.  The pain is over their loss of life as well as my unrealized monetary investment.  *sigh* 

A few plants were looking pretty sad and near-death upon my return.  It has been tremendously gladdening... uplifting... heartening... joy-filling to see my lovlies perk up under my care.  I honestly cannot convey to you the pleasure and joy that i feel about my plants... especially as they have flourished and improved since i've been back.  I'm so grateful God put a friend into my life to tell me that it was in opposition to my nature to be good at gardening.  Don't tell me something like that... especially if it's something my family needs to get along better than we otherwise could... it's a challenge to me and i rarely fail permanently when i take up a challenge.  :)  Fall flat on my face lots of times... definitely.  But i also happen to be pretty tenacious when i have a goal in mind.  ^_^

Maybe you'll think this is crazy, but i really feel a sweet connection to my plants... like i can almost feel them calling for me when they need some water or transplanting or something of the kind that they cannot do for themselves.  I DEFINITELY felt my sunflowers reach out to me in a real and extremely tender way after the miscarriage last year.  If anyone had told me such a thing was possible before i experienced it myself, i would've considered it with loads of scepticism... but i know it's real now!

Thankfully, death did not fall upon as many of our animal-types as upon my plants, while we were away.  Only 1 rabbit died while we were gone.

FOOD!  While I was away I spent some time learning.  Much of the learning was by way of documentaries.  Documentaries such as: Food Inc.; Sick, Fat, and Nearly Dead; The Gerson Miracle; and quite a few others.  As i was learning in this temporal manner, i also heard much from Father.  I was able to fully comprehend some things i'd been hearing for some time... it actually made sense. My determination to use Hippocrates statement more fully firmed up in my mind and heart.  He said, thousands of years before Christ: Let thy food be thy medicine and medicine thy food.  I felt led to move juicing into our consumption - which required obtaining a juicer.  It has been aquired and juice has been consumed daily since.  I'm very pleased with the experience and feel the results well-worth thte time investment.

I'm making a lot more from scratch... and i really feel like i was doing quite well in that area before.  I'm not buying bread currently (sure do miss it, though!) and buy much less meat than we were consuming.

I'm also dehydrating.  It's been really gratifying to see how much Jmy likes almost everything i make!  He's been the most accepting of the juices and RAW crackers.  The crackers he refuses are banana based, which is VERY odd if you know anything about this little guy.  He's loved the curry and tomato based "BBQ" chips (two different types).

I made pizza with eggplant as the "crust" today and even my most finicky (Ria) loved it!

Food preparation is also a paying gig for me now.  I'm making food for someone with whom i've bartered.  As a result, i'm saving/earning my family between two thousand and twenty five hundred dollars within three months.  It's not really good pay, per se, but it's definitely worth it to me.  It's been really great (motivating) to prepare vegan foods for this other person... encouraging my forays into more food prep with veggies for my own family.  We're not going vegan, by any means... just working to align more fully with the Word of Wisdom and the diet described in the Bible (particularly Daniel), though not focusing at all on Kosher.

Home maintainance and improving organization therein.  The house was a wreck when we returned.  Seriously.  I whipped it into shape (semblance of improved shape, anyway) inside of 30 hours and have been working to improve it more since then.  That first day of work really did me physical harm, though... my hip has been giving me some huge problems since... so frustrating.  ahwell... at least the house looks better, for the most part (even still).

Oddly enough, though, i still have not fully finished unpacking my suitcase.  A few clean clothes (most have been put away properly) and lots of books and random other things.  Most things have been unpacked, but it's difficult to find places for what is left - thus it's still in the suitcase waiting for me to figure it out.  :)

It took me almost two weeks to straighten the van back up the way i work to keep it (very orderly, which is MUCH easier to maintain in the van than the house because we do not live in the van!).  So, all i have to do in it now is maintainance sweeping once or twice a week depending on how dirty feet are when we pile in.

The play room, the laundry room, and the computer room need some concentrated attention to more fully organize them.  Hopefully i'll get to the easiest (? laundry room?) of those very soon.  We'll see.


That's pretty much it.  Probably sounds like little to do, if anything, but these few activities can (and do) take up a lot of time.  Numerous days i've stayed up much later than i planned or physically should have to plant seeds because i'm working to do that on good and best days based on lunar cycles.  It REALLY does make a difference!  Thankfully i've been able to get the most important things done... but little time to "play," thus no blog updates until yesterday.  We'll see how much i can get in from now on.  ^_^