Housewifery
“Practicing the Art and Mystery of Housewifery”
We took a trip to Williamsburg, Virginia in the summer of 2012. Standing in the hot kitchen building where the cooking hearth fire had just been extinguished, the living historian explained the duties of the woman of this house in the 1700s. She oversaw all the domestic activities and practiced the art and mystery of housewifery. I asked him to repeat that. He repeated this and added, you didn’t want everyone to know all your secrets. I am, however, willing and glad to share mine here.
My definition of Housewifery encompasses mothering, housekeeping, gardening, and cooking. And includes decorating, diapering, and ridding my house of squirrels.
Click On These For The Stories
On ‘The Good Mother’
Or read ‘Mommy’s Thought Thoughts’
On ‘Raising Fair Fiona’
Or read ‘Oopsie Daisy Mommy
On ‘Son Shine’
Or read ‘Ready or Not, Here’s Mommy’
On ‘My Joy of Cooking’
Or read ‘Beautiful Buttermilk’
On ‘How Does My Garden Grow’
Or read ‘My Brown Thumb’
On ‘To Clean or Not to Clean’
Or read ‘New Year’s Urge’
Tomorrow begins the 100 Day Challenge 2020
I am a firm believer that creativity builds self-trust and thwarts anxiety. I spent a lot of time studying the inverse relationship between creativity and anxiety. So much so that I have deemed myself an Ambassador to Creativity. As such, I am always wanting to create ways that we can create together. And participating in the #100 Day Project has been one of those ways. I have completed the project two years in a row. I was very pleased with my results from the first year when I validated my suspicion that I could draw with pastels and...
read moreI Feel Your Fear Friend
People are exhibiting some weird fear behavior right now. Fight or flight stuff playing out at the stores across the world. Here in Maryland, the virus has worked it’s way into the state so much that the Governor has put everyone in a timeout for now. We’re to stay at home, Damnit, except for food. And while I’m glad I don’t have to deal with throngs of panicked people, I still had to venture out for groceries today. How do we think in a way that allows for our and others’ humanity in times of crisis. How do we...
read moreWe Need to Call it Physical Distance not Social Distance
The fact is, they’re not really sure how this Covid-19 virus is actually spreading. Obviously from person to person, but is it the breathing, sneezing, touching and transferring, or just plain smashing it into your face with your unwashed hands that’s spreading it ? So maintaining physical distance would be helpful for a couple of these transference methods. However, in a time when we can not get our physical needs met for handshaking or hugging from friends and neighbors, more than ever we need to be compensating with increased...
read moreKeep Safe and Keep Walking
Besides wanting to fight off the extra pounds that will be attempting to attach themselves to my butt during this plague season, the reason that I exercise regularly is so that I can sleep harder and better. It’s good to alleviate stress and get me away from my family who is getting on my nerves and, Yes, I know it’s good for my heart and essentially will allow me to live longer to see my kids grow up. But I hate not sleeping well. It’s a waste of downtime. But with the recent restrictions piling up about keeping distance...
read moreFamily Time and the Coronacation
In many ways, this forced isolation has expanded my heart. The persistent time spent with my family, and they with each other, has changed us. Where before we were all living our own busy lives, suddenly we are living together. And seeing each other in a deeper way. We are building trust funds between one another. There have been a few more “I love you’s” than usual. One of my most concerted goals with creating a family, has to been to consciously create a closeness between my kids. To foster their connection that will be more important...
read moreStill Practicing the Art and Mystery of Housewifery
Ask me the dreaded cliched “what do I do”question and I may pause. Do you mean, how do I earn and living? Or where do I find my life’s purpose in a seemingly dull life of parenting? I’ll answer that I’m a writer because that is definitely an answer I can proudly own. But truly, more of me is that homebody and that mother and I derive tremendous pride and pleasure from that. But you might not understand that answer. Because it all sounds so trite and swell and female. I am very proud of the homebody I am. I have tremendous...
read moreThe Gift of Me to Me
The holiday has been holding me hostage, as it does. Asking me to do be do be do be do all those Christmas chores that I find necessary. Buying presents, decorating the tree, sending cards, while all the while keeping up with the regular boring chores that I haven’t enough money to hire out. You know, life plus the Christmas special event planning. And what I realize, as I missed one day of blogging for all of this, is that I am an everyday hero. I show up to the laptop and this community with honesty, integrity, and intention to be...
read moreWe Are All Event Planners for Christmas
If you were told you’d been volunteered as an event planner and decorator for a royal ball, you’d laugh your butt off right? But regular people across the globe will do their best to plan and execute a special event all on their own this month mostly without professional help. And I’m darn proud of all of them for their upcoming efforts. We pull it off, you and me, every year. That once a year special event for which we have to send out a hundred invitations, cater quantities of food, and decorate huge floral centerpieces...
read moreWhy Does My Self-Interest Waver?
I am wondering what my deal is when it comes to my wavering self-interest. I understand that I prioritize my children and my family above myself. I understand that everything I may do that is a creative endeavor is a risk of showing my authentic self and getting whooped. Fear does a lot of dances around not showing up for yourself. And my bad opinion of egomania is well-established and substantiated which makes me not want to be that way. Except, I’m a writer for goodness sake. I have to find what I think somewhat interesting to begin...
read moreSacrificial Squirrel
Gruesome sights, they’re everywhere. Wild and dead animals, vehicular crime scenes aplenty. Eyeballs popping out or just cold blackened stares. Bloody swaths on the street. Must be Fall. Beware the frenzied Kamikaze squirrels, ironically with only the business of survival on their minds. Beware the hunted doe running from bucks and bullets. Overpopulation is their unbeknownst doom otherwise. Compassionately I remove the carcasses, the now soulless bodies from the roadway. I delivered a handsome deceased fox back to the woods from where...
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