Joe the plumber

I know that I don't like it when people call our Joseph Joe. I try very hard to avoid it. But with Joseph's fascination for toilets, and his pre occupation with the plunger, this oportunity was too good to let it go by.

Poem

If anyone happens upon this blog that knows me from a messageboard, they will notice that my signature always is the same:

"Be soft of voice and gentle of bearing"

For me, this quote is what I strive for every single day in my life, and with someone who talks as much as I do, being soft of voice seems particularly important. For those who have always liked the quote, here is the complete, though short, poem from which it is lifted:

"Be soft of voice"

Be soft of voice
and gentle of bearing
be kind of heart
and gentle of hands
be bright as the morn
and still as the evening
within you they'll find
God's love reborn.

Changing seasons

I have always thought I dealt well with change. After all, I went from public school to Catholic school without a hitch. I went from a sheltered home to a university in another country and thrived. I went from living at home to living in a small studio by myself and loved it. And last not but not least in three years time I went from being a single young woman living alone in an efficiency in Antwerp Belgium to being a married mother of the cutest young boy ever in a house in the Suburbs of Columbia SC in the USA. And I never had that much trouble with the changes. Or so I thought.
Today I realised though that I have a tendency to cling to the past. This realisation came to me while I was walking the stroller down the street, with two sweaters over my summer dress with bare legs. Yes, you heard it right! Mrs. "Modesty but NO frump" was wearing two sweaters over a summer dress and freezing her calves off. I won't even try to pretend that I looked perfectly elegant.




Autumn has crept up on us and then all of a sudden jumped and shouted "Boo" from beneath the color changing bushes. Two weeks ago, I could have paraded out in a bikini during the hottest hour of the day had a I been so inclined (which of course I wasn't). Three weeks ago I hadn't even touched my vest, let alone a coat or a shawl. A blouse was more than warm enough and I still was grateful for airconditioning. But all of a sudden winter is lurking around the corner. A friend in Minnesota is speaking of snow and laughing at my descriptions of autumn chills which to her would probably still spell summer. On my drying rack, a shoulderless dress that I wore with the cutest little white bolero is still hopefully spread out. I need to accept that even in South Carolina, the weather is getting colder. I need to prepare for the extra effort that wintery elegance requires.




Throughout this post, you see some winter garments from one of my favorite stores: Petite Sophisticates. Every so often we go to the Tanger outlet malls near Hilton Head and this outlet store is always my first stop. Of course not every piece of clothing is to my liking, but in general I think the brand does a very good job in making you look feminine without sexualising your look. Their skirts generally come to either just above the knee, fall on the knee, or come right under. While I love my extra long Tznius skirts, skirts that fall to or just below the knee still fall into my acceptable category.
Winter always gives me a few challenges. It's so tempting to just burry myself into bulky knits and only think about the warmth I crave. Still, there is a happy medium, and hopefully I'm up to the challenge to find it again.

Chosing right...

I love my husband. I know that mostly this type of declaritive sentence is followed by a 'but' which then contains a complaint. And to be sure, husbands are rarely perfect beings. Then again, neither are wives.
So there is no but in this sentence. I LOVE my husband. To be perfectly honest, I quite adore him. He is smart, nerdy, cute, kind and absolutely wonderful and there has not been a day in which I didn't thank the Lord for helping me find such a wonderful, wonderful man.
After two years of marriage, one of which had quite a few challenges, I love my husband a million times more than I did when I married him. And the Lord above knows that I loved him quite a lot on that day already.

So what is the secret? It's very popular to say that 'working on' your relationship yields the most results. And certainly, no relationship, no marriage, thrives without both people valueing it and stepping out of their comfort zone now and again to talk about their relationship and what they feel or what they worry about.
I think htough, that one of the greatest 'secrets' in having a wonderful marriage is to chose right in the first place.
This doesn't seem much of a secret at first. After all... aren't there so many books geared to catching the right guy? Well... yes and no. Most books focus on the 'catching' part. How to atract a man, how to make a man want to marry you... or often in more Christian titles: what a man looks for in a good wife, or what a good wife is.

In my experience, being a woman, there is very little written about how to see if a man is truely going to make a good husband. I am no expert, but a friend and I both are the lucky wives of two exceptional husbands. I actually waited to marry until I was thirty because I wanted to find one. And I am so grateful that I waited for him. My mother had started to think there was not going to be a husband, and no grandchildren. I wish I could say I had been cheerfully trusting in the Father the entire time, but I have been impatient and frustrating throughout the wait. I knew that I had three requirements for a husband, that seemed to me simple enough to find. It really wasn't, and looking back my list was far from complete, but it's a good place to start.

I wanted a husband, first of all, who was kind. Not just kind to me, but an innately kind person. Someone who wished others well with all his heart and wanted to truely be the best person he could in other peoples lives'. A kind heart is one of the most important things a man can have, since it will temper a lot of other vices: if a man is truely kind he will not wish his own vices and sins to touch or harm other people, therefor he will strive to keep them as small as possible.
Secondly, I wanted a husband who was intelligent in a bookish way. This to me was the way to make sure my husband matched my personality. You do not need to have the same interests, but the same way of looking at life can be extremely beneficial. For example, my husband likes math type knowledge, he likes economy and our mutual interest in history is still different since I like social history, fabrics, knits, parlour games, pots and pans and household budgets, while he is interested in battlefields, treaties, strategies and laws. But we both like learning from books, our interests tend to be cerebral rather than outdoors or competition like. We have a similar way of looking at life and that helps a lot in a great marriage, much more than say... both liking the same type of movies.
Thirdly I wanted to have a husband with an inner drive. I didn't always define it as faith, but I wanted someone who looked for more in life than go to work, come home to watch tv or go out, go to sleep and repeat. I wanted someone with an inner motivation, for his work, for his hobbies and for his life.
I realise now that, what I tried to describe at a very early age was faith. Faith makes people go the extra mile and that makes even every day life part of a bigger and more glorious whole.

It was a good starting list and it certainly helped me decide that my husband was the right one for me. There were other elements though that I looked into once there actually was someone on the horizon.
(to be continued)

Saturday Salutations

Just wanted to add a short post here this morning to wish you all a wonderful weekend. I may or may not be blogging a lot in the next few days. My friends have just left for the UK and Belgium again and I am already looking forward to seeing them again at Christmas.
It felt wonderful and strange to speak my own language again throughout the day and receiving a reply in the same language. We spend our last evening playing trivial persuit. My husband won (he always does) but I felt extremely proud at knowing which paper the troops of Ulysses Grant founded when finding the abandoned offices of the Bloomfield Daily Herald in 1861. It's the Stars and Stripes.
Aparently I am finally starting to learn some American History. I've always learned history through the little social life issues more than the big wars and treaties. I think often in history lessons the wars are painted on the backdrop of the daily life, while for many people the experience was the reverse. For those on the front, the war was the reality, but in the mean time those at home still had to milk the cows and knit the socks for those that were wearing them in the famous battles from Antietam to Bastogne and Normandy... for those the day to day life of rising prices and managing with less men and waiting for news was the reality with the war always on the background of their minds.

And here I am lost in posting again. I will philosophise about history another time. It's naptime and I need to get some things done! *LOL*

Feminine Friday: After the birth

Joining in again with the barefoot mama, following my first steps to motherhood. I had wanted a natural birth. My husband insisted on everything in the hospital, and I was ok with that, but I wanted to have as little intervention as possible. You know the saying: "When you plan, God laughs?" I am sure he was having a little chuckle. I was overdue and had to be induced as there was some concern due to the pregnancy diabetes that the baby would be overly large. He wasn't. But neither was he coming out. First there was induction. And I still refused that epidural. At least until I was exhausted by nearly 20 hours of labour. I had no complaints about the epidural at first. It helped me relax, I could sleep and regain some strength. However then I had to be redosed and it didn't 'take'. My pelvis and legs were numb so I could not push effectively, but my abdomen wasn't sedated so I felt every single contraction....

I was in the pushing stage for eight hours. There were five doctors around me and three nurses. In the end we had to use forceps to free our little boy, who came out sunny side up and wailing, in the five minutes of the entire process that his father had stepped out because he had been turning green. I later heard that I had been one push away from an emergency cesarian.



I went into shock after the birth and had to wait a few minutes until he was cleaned to hold my son. Luckily though when he was brought a few hours after birth, he latched on like a champion. He never had any problems nursing. He had head control while he was still in the hospital, and he never slept more than twenty minutes.
I became a zombie, literally walking into walls (see posts in this archive with october last year next to the title).
I was luckily not having any signs of post partum depression, but sleep deprivation slowly turned me into a horrible hag... It took nine months for him to stop waking up four times a night and sleep till five am. My brain returned... my manners returned... I returned. And we still want a second one.

Next time... I'm going natural again. My husband thinks I am insane. *warm smile* He loves me.

Hospitality, the oldfashioned way

That's the reason why I have not blogged for almost a week. My best friend and her mother have travelled all the way from Europe to be here for a week and play with my cute little man. Of course I can hardly spend my time at the computer with such company. The food is simple, but the conversations are fun.




We have been playing scrable most evenings. Last night my husband wasn't feeling well and went to bed early, and Maria's mother retired early as well. There we were, just the two of us at the kitchen table, playing scrabble. I had my knitting in hand to make sure no minute of deep thinking time was wasted. I realised that if we had changed electric light for a lamp, we could have made up a scene out of the previous century. Maybe scrabble didn't exist then, but probably something similar.




Despite very good scores all previous evenings, it just didn't want to work. Last night there were three five letter words and that was it. The rest were four letters and under. When it was time to go to bed, we decided to have a little more fun and make some 'interesting' though non existing words. I remember that we decided that an 'iwry' had to be a South Australian bird with striped eggs.... I do not remember what a 'vansy' was, but I am certain it was equally ridiculous.
Maria's mother had a look at the scrabble board that we had left out this morning and wanted to know what an "iwry' was. We told her about the South Australian bird.
Sometimes having fun can be so simple