Shoe Droppings

A few days ago I mentioned that, while I am in a good place in my life currently, there is a foreboding sense that perhaps it is too good to be true,  too good to be lasting.  Perhaps this is setting me up for tragedy.  I do not enjoy feeling this way.  But I have my reasons.


This year has seen tragedy strike my piano studio.  Heart-breaking, devastating tragedy.  The worst kind of tragedy.  Two of my students have lost a parent to death this year.  


At the beginning of the school year the mother of an eight-year-old boy (with two other sons, even younger) was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  She exited this earth just last night, on her birthday.


In February the father of an eight-year-old girl (with another son and daughter, even younger) very suddenly passed away.


The mother that was lost was 38.  The father that was lost was 36.  


There is no sense in this.  This is unjust and cruel.  This is sad beyond any words that can be spoken or written.


These events have shaken me.  To be sure, what I'm experiencing is in no way a comparison to the world-shattering realities both of these families face, and I am not trying to minimize that or elevate where it has taken me.  But these deaths have made me examine my life, question my security, and quite frankly, brought me fear.  


Brian and I are 35.  These things could happen to us.  Why shouldn't they visit our household?  What is keeping tragedy from striking my home?  


I had a moment with my hairdresser (who,like many, has a special knack for  getting me to talk about things I wouldn't normally spill) where I was expressing sorrow for these families.  The night before my appointment I had been in the kitchen with Brian, making a meal, laughing and enjoying his company.  And then I stopped and thought, "here I am having such a sweet moment with my partner, and a few miles away there is a wife who is mourning the loss of her husband, and husband who is caring for a dying wife."  And I felt bad; guilty about the lovely, care-free evening I was able to experience.  I told these things to my hairdresser.  And she, in no uncertain terms, told me that that was exactly what I was supposed to do.  I was supposed to love Brian, hold Brian, and enjoy our time together.  I was not to take that for granted and by having those sweet moments I was helping bring more love to this hurting world.


Many of you know that lately I have been raging over the phrase, "everything happens for a reason."  Not everything happens for a reason.  There is no reason that these six young children should be robbed of their mother and father.  There is no reason this wife and husband should lose their beloved.  


This is not to say that I think nothing happens for a reason.  I do believe that the divine intervenes at times with mystery and infinite wisdom, opening up pathways, providing angels in our lives, or perhaps setting up a road-block.  Sometimes the reason things happen is because of our choices.  But sometimes there simply is no reason.  "Everything happens for a reason" seems to take away our responsibilities as human beings.  Because we are always left with a choice.  We have a choice as to how we use the events in our life.  


These mothers I've referred to, one who survives and one who has passed, have used these events in intentional and life-affirming ways.  The mother who passed shared her experiences, through CaringBridge entries, of living in limbo - trying to live even as she approached what she came to call "her second birth."  She wrote about the joys and the struggles in candid, beautiful and haunting ways; full of grace and always embracing the light.  The mother who lost her husband has shared about that experience as well, through both a blog and honest, heart-breaking, and often hopeful and positive posts on Facebook.  


And both have clung stubbornly to their faith in God.  I use the word "stubborn" because I can't believe their faith just stayed put through these experiences.  I believe they both had to make the audacious decision to remain rooted in this faith.  Regardless of your beliefs, I think you would find both of these women to be inspiring and deeply thought-provoking as they have faced life's most difficult scenarios.  I can't comprehend where they find the strength to carry on.  Still, they have chosen to find beauty and goodness in this life even as they recognize and live with pain.


I don't know where this leaves me.  I don't know that I have a conclusion to all of these thoughts.  I only know that right now I grieve for these families.  But I will also try to celebrate all the beauty they have experienced in their lives, and I will try to celebrate the beauty in mine.  (If you need help finding some beauty, go ahead and watch the video below. May blessing find you where you are.)

Identity Crisis

I am having an identity crisis of blog-sized proportions.  Who am I?  Who is this little blog?  It seems that nowadays everyone has a theme to their blog.  

• There are the cooking blogs with all kinds of healthy, quick, cheap, gourmet, delicious, satisfying, etc. tips a person could possibly desire for any occasion.  I love them.  But these people have the best cameras and photography skills in the world!  Have you seen their food photos?  Go now if you haven't! Mostly I'm jealous of people that make their living this way.
• There are the fashion blogs where a person shows you how she (mostly she) pulls out a dirty hanky, an old tank top from Goodwill, and a clunky bracelet from her dead Aunt Edna's jewelry box, and transforms into a fashion goddess.  (I do not have this skill.  Perhaps I should read more of these blogs.)  Then the blog author models all of these posh outfits.  Who is taking all of these pictures of them!?!?  
• There are the style blogs.  Rinse and repeat the above ideas but instead go dumpster diving for dressers and broken down lamps.  And then voila: your home instantly looks like a stylish New York loft.  Or on the other end, the rooms shown are stylish but completely unaffordable, serving only to make me discontent with what I have.
• There are the, so called, mommy blogs.  Well gang.  I'm not a mommy.  Although I'm sure I could give some awesome advice about how you should raise your children.
• There are the "How to Raise a Family of 15 on $.50 a Month" blogs.  Don't get me wrong.  These blogs have some AMAZING tips - tips I use!  But sometimes I feel about them like I do about extreme couponing.  Which is to say, while I am in awe, I wonder if the time and energy put into cutting costs is truly worth it in the end.  
• There are travel blogs.  These are generally full of helpful tips on saving money, where you should go, what's new and hot, what airlines are best. I only know about the places I've been.  Which may seem like a lot to some of you.  But, it's not nearly enough to start handing out advice.  Also, I only know which airlines I don't like.
• There are knitting blogs: blogs where people knit enough to actually have enough finished projects to show people weekly!!  I may wield my needles like I'm trying to knit my way out of a burning building, but I can't keep up with that pace.
• There are blogs for simple living, organic living, creation care/environmental living.  I'm a total sucker for this stuff.  But I'm not a role model for it.
• Political blogs.  I may go off on a political tangent every now and again but, BLECK!
• Feminist blogs.  I love feminists but we tend to put out some negative energy because when we focus on gender injustices we get, well, pretty ticked.

So I guess in the end, I'm just a standard old "personal" blog; telling my little stories and sharing my life with you.  This space may have elements of all of the above (minus the fashion advice - yikes!) but in the end, I guess I'm just full of words.  Maybe I'll try my hand at some entries that follow the above style of blogging in the next few weeks.  Maybe we'll all wish I hadn't.  :)

About a Birthday Boy

This is the story about a birthday boy who is, at once, both demanding and disturbingly unobservant.


The first part of this story is about Brian's birthday present.  Brian loves to grill, considers it an art form, and makes me much delicious meat.  But the years of hard use have taken their toll on his faithful grill.  Ready to retire the old one, Brian has been eyeing the Big Green Egg variety of grills for a couple of years.  They are cost prohibitive.  Luckily, some new versions of these kamado grills are on the market locally as of this year.  


I had a vision.  Brian would be out of town the three days before his birthday for work.  I would purchase the new grill and have it set up, waiting for him when he arrived.  I couldn't wait for that moment when his eyes would fall upon the new grill, and the recognition of this marvelous thing I had done would light up his face, and he would fall all over me with zealous appreciation.  


So, I purchased the grill, assembled the sucker myself, and waited for our glorious reunion.  He arrived home and immediately I suggested we let the dog out.  We sat on our patio, mere feet from the new grill.  Me, wildly anticipating the moment he would notice.  


Nothing.  Nada.  The dog did his business and we went inside.  


Fast forward an hour.  I come up with another excuse to head out to the patio.  This time I say, "Oh did you notice my cilantro is coming up now."  He would have to face the grill to take in the cilantro.  He swings his head around, says, "how 'bout that," and goes back to staring at nothing.  


Now at this point I'm wondering if this man is playing games with me.  Nobody can be this obtuse.  I become a bit testy because I'm sure he's toying with me.

Fast forward an hour.  I come up with the idea that my plants need watering and won't he come out with me?  Here's where it gets stupid.  I water my plants, that frankly don't need watering, and I ask him if he would please turn off the water and help me wind the hose up.  Feast your eyes upon where the hose is in relation to the grill.  (You may also notice my cilantro to the left.)


He stood, reeling in hose, staring at the new grill and ABSOLUTELY SAW NOTHING!  I briefly considered going back in the house and suggesting he throw something on the grill.  But I could take this charade for not one minute longer.  He walked away from the grill, and I said something to the effect of, "you're so dense."  I agree, it wasn't nice.  Brian, perplexed, walked back to the hose, thinking I was upset because it was leaking water.  At that point I stood by the grill and all but danced my merry jig next to it.  Basically, I pointed at the grill.  He stole every bit of fun out of that gift.  Let's hope it yields some good meat.


Fast forward 24 hours.  We're sitting in a Mexican restaurant for his birthday dinner when I ask him what birthday dessert he'd like me to make him.  (I knew that family was coming over to surprise him that weekend.)  I listed all the usual suspects, things I'm good at making.  Things any mid-western/Mennonite gal is good at making: pie, cake, cupcakes, brownies, etc. He didn't know.  He claimed it all sounded good.  I told him to just pick something then.  He said he couldn't.  


Then he proclaimed: "I want a molten lava chocolate bundt cake with cherry sauce."


?!?!?!?!?!?!


Where in all tarnation did that come from?  


Or, he said, the other option would be homemade cannolis.  


Are you kidding me?  Do I look like I have a hidden Italian grandmother somewhere who has taught me her secrets.  How about we pick something from the repertoire I have established?


I decided to go with the cake option.  Brian, decidedly, made this concoction up in his head based on other desserts he has partaken of.  But for me the search was on to find something that matched his request.  I love trying new things, however, I'd prefer not to do it for company.  Aww geez.


Luckily, I found a recipe that seemed close to fitting the bill.  The Tunnel of Fudge Cake.  (Some of you may remember the original recipe - it was a 1966 Pillsbury Bake-Off winner.  Ahem, my mother remembered it.)  However, this updated version comes from a fellow Hoosier.  I guess we mid-western ladies really can do it all - fancy or plain.

 Here is the link to Annie's Eats blog where I found the recipe.  


I have to say, Brian requested a real winner.  Perhaps this could be a new birthday tradition I could sink my teeth into.

And Now for My Mountain Top Post...

The human spirit really is indomitable.  It does not want to be in the depths.  It fights to buoy itself up, to break through the surface and take a cleansing breath.  There may be moments when we are drinking in mouthfuls of salty water but inevitably (for most of us), we surface.  That is where I'm at today.  At the surface, floating around and enjoying the waves.


Life at the Showalter house is good.  Sometimes I worry that it is too good.  Sometimes I feel guilty about how happy I am, content.  A lot of times it makes me feel as though - even though nothing horrible has happened - I'm waiting for that old proverbial "other" shoe to drop.  Or I guess in this case, I'm waiting for the first shoe.  


At one point in high school I remember lamenting over the fact that I was in a perpetual state of stress.  I was always stressed.  A close friend said to me, "Lisa, you don't know how to function without stress.  If there wasn't anything to stress you out, you would create it."  Ouch.  I wondered if it could be true.  I didn't want to be that person who is just "so busy" and has so much to do and never has time to slow down and enjoy life.  I've held on to the memory of my friend's words and have tried to consciously live in a way that fights this culture's celebration of busy and overworked.  I've not always succeeded.  (I simply don't manage stress well.  I'd love to figure out how to handle things better.  And it's only in the last few years that "no" became a part of my vocabulary.)  But for the last year and a half, I've been slowly learning how to pull it off.


And today I can exclaim contentment.


For the first time in my adult life I am focusing entirely on my chosen vocation: being a piano teacher.  When I began teaching, I was working a full time job as well.  Then I went back to college full time.  After college I juggled teaching with working for my father's business.  From there I transitioned into working at a church.  So here I am, finally, doing one thing - and a thing that I really love.  For a time I felt like I wasn't reaching my potential somehow by only teaching piano.  But it has felt so great, this last year especially, being able to really focus in on teaching, that it's sinking in that this is indeed what I should be doing.  This is enough.  


It is true that I am never going to become wealthy teaching piano (I think this  may be the source of the aforementioned guilt) but I am able to supplement Brian's income as well as take care of this household that I love so dearly without running myself ragged.  Maybe we don't have oodles of excess cash laying around.  But we can pay our bills, take a nice vacation each year, and still have time to enjoy each other's company in reasonably pleasant surroundings.  We will not be sending in our entry forms to the rat race any time soon.  


I will continue to battle stress all of my life, but I am not going to seek it.  Instead I will seek simplicity and peace, even if they are, at times, out of my reach.  For now, I will share with you pictures of my favorite place on earth.  My backyard, the place where I sit and I "consider the lilies of the field."

Where I Park My Tookus

My Sweet Goldfinches

"Pink Lisa" Flowers From a Student

Not Only the Birds Get Thirsty

Many Happy Fires Have Been Held on the Lower Level

This Would Not Be My Blog without a Reggie Picture!  Hoping that you are finding your own places to relax, find peace, and find guilt-free enjoyment.

Weak Week

*WARNING* What follows could be classified as a pity party and has been known in the state of California to cause birth defects and extreme irritation on the part of the reader.

I have never been so happy to bid sayonara to a week than I am to this one.  And here I was just getting ready to write an entry in which I exclaimed from the mountain tops that I am the happiest and healthiest I have ever been.  Thanks universe, for reminding me that life is full of poop.


The week began with a debilitating cold that made me waste an entire weekend sleeping and feeling miserable.  When I wasn't sleeping I was wallowing - and producing more snot than one can possibly fathom.  


Already in a weakened state, I received news on Monday that triggered an 18 hour crying jag.  Granted, I am prone to bouts of crying when I am sick (please tell me this happens to others) but this episode was really quite epic.  I still have a headache from it.


Now, weakened and depressed, my neck decided to become kinked, rendering me sleepless.  I even tried sleeping with one of those ridiculous doughnut looking travel pillows under my neck.  (Okay look, those pillows really do make sleeping on an airplane at least bearable.)  But sleep has been elusive.

Weakened, depressed, and tired, I began yesterday in a very precarious state of mind.  But hope springs eternal and there are always little things to look forward to in a day - like the mail delivery.  I love getting the mail.  I look forward to bringing in the mail.  Sometimes I know it's there and I make myself wait to go get it because the anticipation is just such fun.  But yesterday, the mail carrier approached the house - and just walked on by. 

Hours later I received an email informing me that my favorite store in town, The Shuttle Shop, is closing.  This is my local yarn store - where I learned how to knit and how to knit confidently.  This is where my shy, insecure self branched out and met new friends.  This is the cozy little shop with the fun and quirky owner and where I spent hours sitting on the sweetly battered furniture knitting away happily.  This is where I developed a hobby that I love and a past-time that relieves stress.  This is a refuge in this town for me.  So somehow this felt like the final resounding blow on this already battered spirit.  It felt like every part of my sunny disposition exploded in a gory pool around me.


So when Brian walks in this door in a few minutes and our weekend officially begins, I am shedding this week like an over-ripe snake skin.  I am letting it go and I am going to be happy again.  Because that's how I normally am.  And that's how I choose to be.


Happy weekend to you all.

I'm Writing to Let You Know I'll be Writing

I have not intended to take such a hiatus again from blogging.  I fully planned on updating once a week.  I have all these blogs nebulously circling around in my head, just waiting for me to give them form.  But they are entries that require a certain amount of courage on my part. And even though there are not millions of people reading this blog, I still need to be sure that I am okay with them being out there in the blogosphere.


But, in the mean time, I leave you with a new revelation on my part.  I am discovering that many piano teachers live up to their stereotypes.  Here I thought I was an artistic free spirit.  Turns out that my destiny is to be an old lady who is persnickety and out of touch.  It makes me sad.  I will fight the good fight as long as I can.

Hot Pockets

In my last post I alluded to our kitchen project.  Those of you who know me know about the project, and how I nearly lost my marbles during it.  


It really wasn't even a huge project, we didn't remodel anything.  We didn't replace cabinets or counter tops or appliances.  And yet, the inevitable disaster area was present for one ENTIRE month.  For a person who doesn't rest easy when the house is a mess, (not that it never gets messy) this was a living nightmare; a constant source of unease and tension.    


And the food situation!  Oh the humanity!  Somehow I was under the delusion that I would be able to pull food together in a torn-apart kitchen.  But when push came to shove, and I had lessons to teach and painting to finish up, food preparation just wasn't top on my priority list.  So we started dining out.  A LOT.  Enough so, that when I tallied the dollars up that we spent during January and February eating out, I thought I might mistakenly be looking at the bank statements of a Las Vegas high-roller.  Enough that I resigned myself to the fact that we would have to take out a second mortgage on our home to pay it back.  Enough that I briefly passed out and dreamed of a world where we hadn't spent enough to send 30 children to school in Kenya for 14 years. Waking up merely found me once again, facing this cruel reality. 


With the kitchen project still unfinished I realized that we had to find another solution.  Without any usable counter top space, a stove that was sitting precariously in the middle of the kitchen, and less than hygienic conditions, I realized we had only one option.  Microwaveable food.  


I grew up in a home with a thrifty mother who prepared well balanced meals for us.  "Instant" anything was simply not in her menu plan or on her grocery list.  (My poor mom, who lovingly baked us cookies from scratch, all the time had to listen to me whine about how I wanted "store bought" cookies just once in a while.)  As I've matured, this is something I have tried to emulate - cooking from scratch, avoiding overly process foods.  So it was with great shame that Brian and I went foraging for frozen foods that would take only minutes to heat up.


Into our grocery store we went, completely reversing our normal shopping experience.  The items that our eyes normally just skim over were now what we sought.  We loaded into our cart: Deli meats, bread, (so far not so bad), microwaveable Kraft macaroni and cheese cups, three boxes of Little Debbie snack cakes, a bag of frozen burritos, and a family-sized box of Hot Pockets.  And then we hightailed it for the self-check-out counter with great haste lest someone we know, or even strangers, would see our embarrassing bounty.


Now, all of this is not to say that I am opposed to the occasional Hot Pocket or frozen burrito.  I am not such an elitist that I find it impermissible to occasionally partake of such fare.  Life gets busy, things happen.  A frozen burrito can save the day.  It was that our shopping cart was filled up entirely with these culinary delights.  It felt like some sort of guilty pleasure to purchase so many easy options.  


So we went home, filled up on, what became, really boring food, for the next several weeks, and gutted it out.  (Ha!  I didn't even mean to make a pun but it's funny right?)  For those of you with a little spare time, here is a video of comedian Jim Gaffigan talking about Hot Pockets.  (It's a clean clip, other than some talk of poop.)  Every time we grabbed a Hot Pocket out of the freezer, we sang the theme song and thought of this little clip.  Hope you enjoy!

Break Down

Now that our kitchen is complete, it would seem that the cosmos has let loose a slew of bad luck upon us.  It's one of those times where you think that being an adult, owning a home, owning a car, responsibility, is all completely overrated. 


Brian's fancy new car has an ominous "clunk," our washing machine is leaking water, one of our windows won't open, the burners on our stove only come on with gentle coaxing, we have a HUGE clogged drain situation, and - Brian would say, most notably - his beloved watch literally fell apart while at work.  


So our week has been spent dealing with the above crises.  The watch (which Brian loves only a little less than his sunglasses, which he loves only one half of a degree less than me) is now fixed.  The car is repaired.  The clogged drain is well on its way to wholeness.


There are days that I feel like I'm the only one who does anything around here.  I throw a grand old pity party for myself...and then I start getting a bit snappish, shall we say.  But then there are days like yesterday when I watch Brian lay on his back in a filthy crawl space for five hours, cutting into pipes that are spraying and spilling the most horrifying sludge of disgustingness all over him, and I realize that I do not, in fact, do everything around here.  These are things I could not begin to accomplish on my own.  I would gladly clean the toilet for the rest of my life rather than once deal with what Brian valiantly tackled last night.  


Now I feel kind of bad for telling him he was singing too loudly in church Sunday.  Well, I actually felt bad immediately.  I sort of stole his joy in the Lord.  Clearly, I am a lazy ogre, and Brian is an attacker of muck-filled-pipes with the voice of an angel.  


Here's hoping your week is finding you with a smoothly running household.

Fishing Story

This is a story about two things: a pair of shoes, and two men who love to fish.

Brian owns a pair of basketball shoes that I'm pretty sure he purchased in 1983. Maybe he hasn't owned them that long but I feel like these shoes have been with us our entire marriage and helped us usher in the new millennium.

I hate these shoes.  

When they were new and shiny - and being used for playing basketball - I'm sure I was fine with these shoes.  But I don't even remember the time that they were actual basketball shoes and not the main point of contention in our marriage.

First of all, Brian has had a hard time coming to grips with certain fashion trends.  I know that back in the 90's it was completely acceptable for men to wear basketball shoes with any kind of attire.  It was what guys did.  I have tried to kindly explain to him that men no longer do this.  Basketball shoes are for basketball, only.  Unlike giving up pegged pants, this particular concept has been difficult for him to grasp.  He literally tried to wear these basketball shoes to my grandfather's viewing.  (Let that soak in for a second.)  He had them on his feet and got huffy with me when I made him change them.  

And thus began the great shoe debacle.  

Just so you can see what we're working with here, feast your eyes on these beauties:

I have hid the shoes, placed the shoes in the trash, had stern words about the shoes with him, and still these shoes are never in our closet - BECAUSE THEY ARE ALWAYS BY THE BACK DOOR BECAUSE HE IS ALWAYS WEARING THEM.  Now to be honest, if I wanted those shoes gone, they would be gone.  But I don't want to be like that.  So my hiding and trashing the shoes has always been with the intent to help him see how serious I am.  

He claims they are good work shoes.  Which I can agree with.  We all need a trashy pair of sneakers for mowing the lawn and doing muddy yard work. But he has been through a plethora of basketball shoes and other various sneakers since these have been purchased.  Why aren't they getting mixed into the rotation?  He doggedly hangs on to this pair?

So I thought we had come to an agreement.  He could keep the basketball shoes if he wore them only for dirty jobs and NEVER wore them out in public again.  And yet, over and over I find them on his feet.  If he has to run out to the grocery store, on go the old shoes.  If he's running to Menard's, on go the old shoes.  If we're going over to our friends house for a casual evening, there they are again.  You'll often hear me saying things like, "oh, the grocery store must be a construction zone, huh?" or "you expecting to play in the mud tonight?"  He really is incorrigible.  

So you'll understand why the next portion of this story is beyond horrifying to me.  Brian and his friend Dan love to fish.  They spent many happy hours together last year fishing the lakes of this region.  This past Tuesday was a beautiful, warm day and they decided to make this year's inaugural fishing outing.  What shows up the next day on the front page of the Warsaw Time's Union Newspaper?  This:

(Brian is the one sitting there looking like he's not really doing anything.) 

And guess what shoes Brian has on.

Which brings me to part two of this post, which is not shoe related.  (Thank goodness, right?)  

As I mentioned Dan and Brian spent MANY hours fishing together last year.  (We had an AMAZING fish fry at the end of the season.)  I was always a little curious about how Dan and Brian would spend their time, because let's face it, fishing is not, well, like playing a game of basketball.  There's a lot of downtime.  So Brian would come home and I'd ask, "what'd you guys talk about?"  And he'd saying, "Nothing really."  

Really?!?!  You sat side by side for four hours and you didn't talk about anything?  

Now I'm not trying to be nosy with him.  Their man time is sacred.  He doesn't have to share everything with me.  But I can't imagine coming home from my friend Heather's house and being like, yeah, didn't really talk much.  Just ate dinner and then watched a show.  No!  We're catching up, discussing worries, talking about work, talking about family, etc. I usually fill him in on a few things we talked about (whether he wants to hear about it or not) because that is what you do with your life partner.  i.e. "Heather and I were discussing your shoes and she totally agrees with me."  (JUST KIDDING!)

One day last summer Dan and Brian took Felicia's (Dan's girlfriend) nine-year-old son with them fishing. When they got back Felicia and I were sitting on the porch and Brian and Dan busied themselves with some other activity but Austin joined us there to tell us about their trip.  

We had our chance.  We would finally discover what these two talked about whilst fishing.  We began, very casually, pumping Austin for information.

Us: "Did the guys talk while you were out there?"

Austin: "Yeah."

Us: "Did they talk about baseball?"

Austin: "No, not really."  

Us: "What did they talk about?"

Austin: "Fishing."

Well. Mystery solved.