Laundry at Night

When it is warm enough, I have to get the laundry in by dark, or it gets covered with bugs.  Ants seem to think that the lines are their personal highways anyway, I just don't like the nocturnal bugs in my clothes, and especially not in my baby's diapers! 


Unfortunantly right when I need to get the laundry in before dark in the summers, is also right when the kids get cranky, tired, and hungry, and also right when my husband thinks the world suddenly needs to revolve around him.  He's fine the rest of the day, but just once a day can't I drop everything at a moments notice and pay attention to him?  It's hard to drop anything at a moments notice when you are living off the land.  Everything is a web of things that other things depend upon.


Hathor the Cowgoddess calls this the bewitching hour.


Once it freezes, though, sometimes it is too cold to take the kids outside with me, and I enjoy the best time to hang up laundry being in the middle of the night.








The death in the air stings my throat and shrinks my nostrils.  Sometimes it's too cold to breathe.  Tingling points of ice touch cover my exposed skin.  Clouds trail in fast motion as the wind whips through the night.  The silence and peace and utter lack of humans refreshes me.  No nagging.  No tugging.  No neighbors looking over concerned.  No judging.  Just peaceful night surrounding and loving me.  I am invisible in the dark.  I dare take the luxury of looking up at the stars.  This is my time.  I have no deadline to perform.  All I give in exchange is my scant sleep.  And stars are better than sleep.  I let the sky engulf me, happy in its unconcered beauty.  It is not a slave of small human concerns, what one person said, or what is or isn't on sale.  It does not care what deadlines were met or what car did or didn't start.  And when I become part of it, neither do I.  


It takes effort to hold the cloth on the line in the whipping wind, while I get the clothespin to stick.  But this is effort without interruption.  I can let my methodical self take over.  In the dark cold of the night, others' happiness doesn't depend on me being overly flexible, and I can be as rigid as the cold that permeates through my clothes.  


Civilization, common sense, and life itself, beckon for me to return to the warmth inside.  But I am free!  Free of concern about everything else, and I inhale the black coldness.
Each item I hang, will dry quickly in this wind, and I think of the luxury of having several clean diapers for my baby.  The luxury of his screams not ripping my soul as I scrounge for something to put on him, before he soaks me while he nurses back to sleep.   If only I could always enjoy creating happiness in life, while remaining separate from it, as I do now.

I want to do

something that I am good at,
that I enjoy,
that will give other's joy.




- smelling the butterflies

My kids' happiness

Sometimes my kids do something that mortifies me.  Usually it has to do with respect or unselfishness towards other people, especially their elders and people younger than them.  I want to somehow communicate to them how important it is to love and respect.  But is this concept of "you aren't 'good' unless you are nice" what I really want to teach them?  Do I want them to know that I think "less" of them when they are rude?  Do I want them to know how much more righteous I am, than them, because "when I was there age ...."?  Or do I want them to feel the intrinsic joy of seeing a softly held back smile sneak out of the shy face of an old lady as they make her day?

I love competitiveness, but is "goodness"  a competition?  Do I get my reward from being good the same way I get it from outsmarting a brainteaser?  Do I get my reward from anything from the beautiful inner joy of feeling wonderful, or only as I compare to others - or some imaginary scale I made up?  Even if I'm only comparing myself to myself, is my happiness only from how I measure up?

Then my teenager, when I'm least expecting it, when I'm not tired and judgmental and thinking "he should!" thoughts, stops in the middle of an online epic battle and asks my mom what he can do to help.  

Is the beauty of a moment like this worth it's rarity?  Is it worth waiting for?  If I had raised my kids differently, I could have coerced him into helping all the time.  Is this one true pure act of helping because he truly feels it inside and wants to, worth a hundred kind acts he might have otherwise performed out of the pride of "being good"?

To me it is.

Is it really about how "good" he is, or about how happy he is?  Being good IS being truly happy.  Not a superior feeling of being better than some idea of how things "should" be, but a happy glow inside.  The word authentic comes to mind. 

Zuko	Why can't I do it? Instead of lightning it keeps blowing up in my face... like everything always does.
Iroh	I was afraid this might happen. You will not be able to master lightning until you have dealt with the turmoil inside you.
Zuko	What turmoil?
Iroh	Zuko, you must let go of your feelings of shame if you want your anger to go away.
Zuko	But I don't feel any shame at all. I'm as proud as ever.
Iroh	Prince Zuko, pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source. True humility is the only antidote to shame.

The Last Airbender season 2 ch. 9 "Bitter Work"


When we think our happiness is dependent on how we measure up on the "righteous scale", we not only rob ourselves of the subtle and underlying taste of true happiness,  but we judge others as we judge ourselves.  Pointing our fingers and mocking at their lack of righteousness,  we hold out a barbed hand to rescue them.  But if they truly followed our idea of perfection, would we enjoy it?  Would we enjoy the lack of someone to ridicule?  The lack of someone to "help!" 

"And it came to pass that I beheld a ^atree, whose ^bfruit was desirable to make one ^chappy.
And as I partook of the fruit thereof it filled my soul with exceedingly great ^ajoy;
And I beheld a great and ^bspacious building
 filled with people, both old and young, both male and female; and their manner of dress was exceedingly fine; and they were in the ^aattitude of ^bmocking and pointing their fingers towards those who had come at and were partaking of the fruit.

  And after they had ^atasted of the fruit they were ^bashamed, because of those that were ^cscoffing at them; and they ^dfell away into forbidden paths and were lost.

And great was the multitude that did enter into that strange building. And after they did enter into that building they did point the finger of ^ascorn at me and those that were partaking of the fruit also; but we heeded them not."
(I Nephi ch. 8)

One Sunday as I opened the heavy soundproof door of the Chapel, my toddler spun across the room as only a three year old can, and made sound contact with the edge of the door.  I hadn't pulled it open very swiftly, and I hadn't realized how fast she must have been spinning, so at first I didn't know how badly she had been hurt.   Her ear splintering screams, however, immediately testified as to how mistaken I was!

I rushed her to the kitchen where I desperately tried to get her to let me put ice on it, closing the doors as I knew only too well that she was all anybody could really hear as the meeting started.

Seeing my friend in her car just outside the door, I took my child in my arms and went to see if she had anything that would help calm my daughter enough to endure what I deemed as the necessity of ice.  

Just outside the door I bent down again to try to hold the ice against the rapidly growing lump on her forehead, hoping it wouldn't split open.  And that is when a concerned lady stuck her head out of the door and said in all the splendor of her concern for the insult of the child, "Did you ever consider that she might be crying because it's cold outside!" and then disappeared with a humph (I had previously always wondered what this would look like in real life, lol, but she really did it!) before I would have time to dare respond to her exceeding wisdom.

Sugar, as any drug, is wonderful when used appropriately, and calmed with a chocolate coin, my daughter got her head iced and her concussion eventually wore off.  We were very worried at first, but then I had time to worry more about my feelings towards this lady.  I so wanted to forgive her, but I didn't know how.

Wasn't I a freedom fighter?  Would giving her some slack lessen my stand against judging people.  We never really know what is happening when we look in on a situation, from the outside.

So many times I have discussed with like minded friends online the importance of standing up for children.  That is all she had really been doing.  But my bitterness towards her wasn't just for being grossly misjudged.  (Did she really think I was perhaps punishing my wildly protesting child by making her stand out in the cold?)  But what if I had been?  What if I had been that evil and bad?  I have seen less than kind parents in public places like the grocery store, and I have known very well that it was the parent more so than the child, that needed my love.  If I drew attention to the judged inadequacy of their love for their child (which we all can unquestionably tell by a persons parenting skills),  I knew very well that child would be beaten and blamed for the embarrassment later on.   So I had no illusion that this lady was really trying to help.  Perhaps she had that illusion, though.

Then it hit me!  I could only feel greater sorrow for her circumstance than for mine.  Her response was ignited by a true belief way deep down in her soul, that her self worth was inseparably dependent on how "good" of a mother she was.  A deep scar that I knew only too well myself.  A battle I fought desperately in the dark hours when the state of the house was such that I thought I deserved for CPS to take my children away.  A thought that nagged at my sanity when I had just recycled all the library books because circumstances I felt helpless to control ended up resulting in a bleeding head because they had become airborne in the hands of an unsettled toddler.  I knew this feeling to the depths of my toes, to the back of my throat where tears reside.  If there was one dark cloud behind which the monsters of my life reside, it was my inadequacy as a parent making me know I was not worth being loved.

Thankfully I have a husband who believes in forgiveness, imperfection, and trying again and again - not in the beauty of succeeding, but he beauty of trying.  Perhaps this lady had no such person in her life.  Perhaps her judgment of me was merely an outlet for the pent up tenseness that had built inside of her her whole life.  I could only feel horror at how decisively I had judged someone drowning from prejudice,  so incredibly like myself.

I laud Christ for waking the religious world up to their reliance on pride in their actions of righteousness.  He gave the world a taste of true joy from authentic kindness - without caring what the judgment of ones self or others was of the action.  Now I look at my warped idea of following him, and need a wake up call to authentic joy from good.  Good is what makes us truly happy inside.  And I need to somehow lay aside my piety of self righteousness that makes me like or hate myself depending on how I judge myself on my scale of righteousness.

It is like the cotton candy parable.  I love cotton candy!  If I went to the fair and didn't get any cotton candy because I couldn't afford it, and then upon returning home, learned that the cotton candy had been free, would I be sad because I was "bad" for not having gotten to eat cotton candy, or would I be sad because I wanted to eat cotton candy and missed out.  Sin is not happiness.  It is it's own punishment.  We don't need our own, or anybody elses opinions to make us embarrassed or sad for causing our own sorrow by sin. 

And true happiness doesn't come from recognizing where we measure on a scale of righteousness, only from feeling happy deep inside from following our inborn love of doing good.

Toilet Paper Stores

One more Christmas story, even though societal conventions say "It's not Christmas anymore!"

Well, I haven't taken my Christmas decorations down yet.  It is still dark more than it is light, and Christmas is partly the celebration of it being dark and how beautiful lights look in that dark.  Besides, this story is relevant to right now, for much the same reason that keeping Christmas lights up is a good idea!

There are certain stores that sell millions of plastic bottles, cardboard boxes, and metal twisty ties.  Then they package these things all up for you in plastic bags that hurt the environment just as much as disposable diapers, and send them home for you to have the fossil fuel burning garbage truck drive by each week to haul away, (hopefully to be burned at hight temperatures to create fume free electricity or at least to a landfill, but too often to be thrown raw into the ocean.)

We call these stores "toilet paper stores" because they are very good if you want to buy something "disposable" that lasts as long as toilet paper.  They are also actually very good  places to buy toilet paper itself for really cheap if you like getting your exercise for the day by walking over car fume smelling asphalt.  And toilet paper is nice.  There are some times when you just want to have toilet paper around.  Nice soft cotton reusable wipes that actually get you clean the first time, and that you can get wet if you need to, are called family cloth for a reason.  And there are some people that it is probably best if they don't use a bidet.  So when you have company over, and you don't do THAT kind of laundry for company, providing them with soft dead clear cut trees, is sometimes not only really convenient, but a life saver. 



http://hyenacart.com/WindyWillowPond/mt/3343/42503/Willow-Wipes-Family-Cloth-Baby-Wipes-in-Floral-mix

Off subject note here on family cloth for even, or especially for those that know all too well that you can't get toilet paper with food stamps.  I go and buy old big  100% cotton T-shirts from Goodwill or some other second hand store.  Then I cut the front off and the back off, and these are the perfect size and a good shape (though not exactly rectangular) for a flat cloth diaper.  Because it is knit, and because I am good at breaking sewing machines, and because I don't have time, I don't even bother to sew the edges to keep them from unraveling.  I've used them for years, and they get holes in them before they unravel.  These also make good runny nose rags.  No matter how the commercials say they improve paper, soft cotton will not rip the skin off your nose like paper does.  They are almost as versatile as a receiving blanket.  It you get big enough T-shirts, you can even use them for a receiving blanket for a newborn, at least for a couple of weeks depending of course on how big the baby is ;)

And the sleeves left over make wonderful family cloth.  T-shirts without plastic words and pictures painted all over them, work the best.  You can usually get them for a dollar or two, and sometimes stores even will have a whole bag of them marked down as bulk!

One time I was buying a whole bunch and the checkout lady was obviously perturbed.  I got the overwhelming feeling from her that she had seen much better times financially and was feeling sorry for herself for being so down on her luck that she had to work at a thrift store.  She was probably a little more than hungry as well.  I call it skinny.  When you don't eat a lot because you want to save money.  There is a certain tense tired feeling that always accompanies you when you are like this. 

Anyway, she was almost making fun of me for being frivolous and buying so many shirts that she could probably not afford.  "Oh, you're husband will have lots and lots of shirts for work!"  I didn't want to embarrass her so I didn't tell her that "my husband" hadn't held a steady job in years (and years) and that I had saved my pennies to be able to buy these shirts so I would no longer have to end up in tears in the middle of the night when my babies were crying while I desperately tried to get creative in finding something to keep them dry.  She reminded me so much of myself.  I am so like that, thinking only my lot in life is desperate.  Seeing others' lives as easy, and grossly misinterpreting both.

So, the Christmas memory.  It was Christmas Eve and it had been dark and dreary outside all week with lots of biting wind and no snow to play in.  Just no fun.  The small town we lived in had no indoor place to play.  Our house was 800 square feet if you counted the overly drafty "enclosed" back porch.  This, combined with lots of energetic little kids made for bad cabin fever.  We had even taken blankets and books out to the car and climbed all over in it (as it was at least sheltered from the wind), for a change of scenery.  And this is with owning coats and socks to use for mittens.  At times like this, I always wondered what they did in the olden days or in other countries in smaller houses than ours, without modern snow/cold gear.

We had no money, so we didn't have to worry about buying Christmas presents.  So I loaded all the kids up, and took them to the local toilet paper store.  It was large!  It was warm!  It was filled with bright lights, toys, and Christmas music!  It was the best idea I'd ever had.

So we spent all day warm and happily wandering up and down the isles.  Staring at toys for hours as our imaginations filled us.  How many trips to the store have I not had time to dawdle as much as my kids wanted me to?  We dawdled.  We enjoyed every minute of Christmas. 

I started to feel sorry for the other shoppers.  If we had had money, I too would have tried to leave the babies home while I went Christmas shopping "for" them.  I too would not have time to listen to their animated talk as they decided what each doll was thinking.  I too would not have gently touched each Christmas plant, and marveled at the softness of the sleeves of baby Christmas outfits.

It is so much fun to not have any money.  It is so much more relaxing than having a little money.  When you don't have any money, you don't even have to pay attention to the sales, because any price is more than you can afford.

After all these years, that Christmas Eve is still one of our favorite Christmas memories.  

Now when we shop for Christmas, we all go, and one parent feeds the imagination, while the other one plays sneaky ninja Santa's Elf!