“When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

Wendell Berry

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Our house is starting to look more and more like this.

So we decided to do something we’ve never done before when moving.

The premise is that we can pack up a little bit every day, and then carry the packed boxes out to a storage container in our driveway.

This way we wouldn’t have to move all the contents of such a big house (4500 square feet) all at once on moving day, resulting in a possible commitment to an institution of some sort.

A little bit every day. You know, climbing a mountain begins with one small step and all of that.

Oh, here the delivery man is again! Two storage pods!

Then the movers will come on May 30th and carry the boxes I couldn’t manage, and all of our furniture out to these pods. Then the big truck will come and load them up, and deposit them in the driveway of the new house, where the movers will unload everything.

Hopefully, this will make the whole process a little less stressful.  Hopefully.

Michael was taking everything in stride. Or in chair.

Mildred and Edith never take anything in stride. They barked and whined at the front door and could not figure out what those two huge, dangerous white things were in our driveway.

Then, Michael’s friend Steve picked him up to take him fishing on Boulder Lake. It’s fishing opener weekend in Minnesota, and the cabin and the boat were waiting. (I had the bed to myself last night, which means the covers actually stayed in place all night long.)

I admired the storage units, changed my clothes, and drove off to a local church where my adorable granddaughter Lil’ Gleegirl was going to sing in her pre-school program.

If you need help picking her out, she’s the most beautiful little girl there dark haired sweetie in the plaid dress.

She quickly scanned the crowd of parents and grandparents to make sure we were there. Why does a simple smile and a wave make me cry? Can anyone explain that to me?

After the singing, which was fantastic, we went back to her school, which is Preschool-5th grade and will be where she and her sister and brother will attend next year.

Lil’ Gleegirl was anxious to show me her own cubby, her favorite play area with big blocks and puzzles, and below, how she can take out a rug and then roll it back up after she has worked a puzzle or two.

There were snacks for everyone. Lil’ Gleegirl’s teacher told me she was one of the most cheerful and enthusiastic children she’d ever known. I told her I completely agreed, and that she was definitely the most cheerful and enthusiastic member of our entire family.

Then, because it was Grandparents’ Day, the children got to go home with their grandparents. Lil’ Gleegirl wanted to take a tubby, have a sliced apple, and watch part of Lady and the Tramp. I worked on applying new badges to Mr. McBoy’s new Boy Scout uniform, and soon I had to take her home in time for her brother’s big to-do for scouts.

When I dropped her off, her daddy reminded me that a mother robin is nesting on a downspout next to the house by their front living room window, so I got out to see. Little baby robins have hatched and the mother is busy feeding them, and scolding anyone who comes too close. The three children have named the robin Avery.

But before Lil’ Gleegirl got out of the car, I told her how much I loved seeing her sing, visiting her preschool classroom, and how fun it was to just be with her at any time. She casually answered, “Yes Grandma. I think it’s really fun to come and stay at your house for fifteen days.”

It has been a long while since I’ve looked at the stat counter on my blog to see what search terms people are Googling that lead them by accident to www.JustJulieB.com.

So today, since I really should be packing boxes because we’re moving in less than four weeks, and because there’s a load of laundry in the dryer that needs folding, and because there’s a mountain of paperwork to tend to, I thought I’d check for some Google giggles instead. (And while I can see Google searches, I cannot see who searches for them, in case you’re wondering.)

Below in bold are some of the exact words of recent Google searches that brought people here:

Beaver teeth braces – I remember my brother calling me Bucky Beaver before I had braces, so maybe there’s another tortured youth out there wondering if there’s orthodontic hope for her.

Just Pee Blog – I am not aware of a blog about “Just Peeing,” but I am fairly certain I would not want to visit it.

Tallest girl in class – This always brings back memories for me, because with rare exceptions, I always was. Except this year.

Men in diapers – Once again, I’m just not sure I would visit a blog that specializes in this. For me, this could be hilariously funny or heart-wrenchingly sad.

Julie Plumage – I suppose there could be worse last names. Sara and I are always asking each other questions like this: “If you had to be Sara Boop or Sara Beep, which would you choose?” and “If your name had to be Julie Gweeble or Julie Maneeble” which would you choose?” and then we laugh our heads off and think what a relief it is to have the names we do after all. I might just have to ask Sara soon, “If your name had to be Sara Plumage or Sara Feathers, which would you choose?”

Baroness Schraeder eyebrows – “Aha!” I thought…so I’m not the only one who can’t stop watching this woman’s multi-tasking eyebrows when viewing The Sound of Music!

Does Nancy Drew like peanut butter soup – This one made me laugh out loud. To think that someone wanting the answer to this question would happen upon my little blog seems so odd! And does anyone know if Nancy does or not? I read all these books when I was young, and don’t remember anything about peanut butter soup.

Just Julie matters – Sometimes I wonder if it does.

Penny Proud’s grandma bunions – Poor Penny Proud.

A squirrel with no nut – Yes, if you’re doing a report on starving squirrels, this is the blog for you.

When did I get so gray – I’m not sure, friend. Could it have been over the last few years or so? That’s when it all happened for me.

Men with sideburns broke down – Oh, dear…did the men with sideburns break down mechanically or emotionally? I’m sure my blog talks about this somewhere deep within its pages…I can’t remember where, but it must be here if Google says it is.

Tiger hairstyle – You’ve heard of the Bob, the Wedge, the Pixie – soon men and women everywhere will be asking their stylists for the Tiger.

Piggeth – How did people know that Evil Piggeth (our Schnauzer Edith’s evil twin) lives here? I try not to speak of it too often. If we even quietly say the word “Piggeth” when Edith is within hearing distance, she instantly transforms into a maniacal dog who lunges at the oven door or the glass doors in front of the fireplace, snorting and pawing at her evil twin, whose reflection she sees there.

Shy bladder CDs like Bold Bladder Work – I had no idea there were CDs out there for shy bladders. I had no idea there were shy bladders in the first place. Or bold bladders for that matter. Do you have a bold bladder or a shy one?

Why does water come out of my eye when I use a Neti Pot – Yikes…that sounds like a question for your brain surgeon to help you with. We hope your recovery goes well.

Phobia of muskrats – I think my friend Jessica T. must have typed this phrase on Google.

Middle aged mother – Yes, this one I completely understand. I am one.

Today I will be spending some time with Mr. McBoy as he and I continue our Swiss adventure in the wonderful book Banner in the Sky. Then I will be taking one of our dear Foster gals to her new home, to see her new room there and to spend a little time with her new Foster mom before she moves in late May. I am also behind a little on my Community Bible Study lesson and hope to spend some time on that. And dinner, oh yes, I have to feed people around here. I had a request for chili recently so maybe I’ll make that since it looks to be a cold and rainy day. And I have more things to drop off at the Goodwill, and more boxes to pack. And tomorrow morning, an old friend will be coming by so we can start a Bible study together – this one.  I’ve never done a study by Stormie but I look forward to this one. And oh, has anyone out there ever seen “Bleak House”?  Michael and I just finished watching every episode (took us a while) and I loved it. (You can see the trailer here.) Now I’ve downloaded this Dickens book to my Kindle and started reading. Yesterday I took Michael for a follow-up appointment with our family doctor, and we both left there in slightly less cheer than when we arrived. Michael was very (understandably) resistant to the word walker and did not want to have his blood drawn, and I quickly fell prey to my icky default mode of thinking which is never good, the kind with self-focused ruminations like, Ihatethisthisistoohard and Iwishsomeonewouldtakecareofmeforachange, which is never, ever productive.

Anyway, checking once in a while to see what people are Googling usually brings a smile. If times get really hard, it helps to remember that I belong to Jesus Christ and He (wonder of wonders) belongs to me. And I don’t think He would mind that along with the scriptures I sometimes meditate on to keep me focused on what is good and true, I might also be pondering what a beaver with braces would look like, or whether or not Nancy Drew likes peanut butter soup.

To trust in spite of the look of being forsaken; to keep crying out into the vast, whence comes no returning voice, and where seems no hearing; to see the machinery of the world pauselessly grinding on as if self-moved, caring for no life nor shifting a hair-breadth for all entreaty, and yet believe that God is awake and utterly loving; to desire nothing but what comes meant for us from His hand; to wait patiently, ready to die of hunger, fearing only lest faith should fail–such is the victory that overcometh the world, such is faith indeed.

George MacDonald

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Do you ever ask yourself rhetorical questions? Do you mutter under your breath and say things like, “What in the world is going on with you, Gladys?!” Or when you’re driving to the store to buy toilet paper and cottage cheese do you ever ask yourself out loud, “What do you think you’re doing?”

No? Oh come on, I’ll bet you do.

We’ve been packing up just a few items and putting them in just a few boxes, and hauling just a few things to our local Goodwill, all in preparation for our move to a different home on May 31st. Recently as I was going through our closet, I asked myself a rhetorical question.

I asked myself, “Hey! What’s with all the ugly brown shoes?”

And I didn’t have an answer for myself because it’s just way too deep of an enigma for me to figure out at this stage of my life.

Here is one pair of my ugly brown shoe collection. Guess how many times I’ve worn them? Zero. Zip. Yes, that’s right. I bought them in late 2006 because we had a trip to England, Scotland and Ireland planned, and Mr. Europe Through the Back Door Rick Steves said Eccos are really, really comfortable and good for a lot of travel walking. I did not think they were cute, but bought a pair anyway, and then didn’t wear them, because my dark blue Danskos felt better. So I walked all over the British Isles in those instead.

But I’ve kept these Eccos for all these years, and am not sure why.

Shoe comfort is important to me. My feet do an incredibly demanding job. They are long and narrow-ish (think “marsupial” as Ember would say), and must carry around more poundage than they would prefer. So when a friend told me these shoes below were comfy, I bought a pair. I wanted to be able to slip them on without tying laces, and I wanted a non-slip sole because we have snow and ice on the ground in Northeastern Minnesota for sometimes six months out of the year.

But these shoes weren’t very comfortable:

The arch hit my foot’s arch in the wrong place, and they ended up hurting my feet. So I don’t wear them anymore.

I love these ugly brown shoes below. Or boots, actually. They’re Mukluks, made in Minnesota, and are the warmest winter boots I’ve ever owned. And soooo comfortable. You can wear these outside in the snow when it’s twenty below zero and your feet will stay warm. So even though they’re not the most adorable looking boots you’ll find, I’m keeping these. (If I ever move to Costa Rica, I will give these to a deserving Minnesotan, but for now they’ll stay in my closet.)

And oohhh, don’t get me started on Birkenstocks. I love Birkenstock sandals. I have owned six pairs in my adult life, and worn them almost daily. They last at least five-six years, with frequent wear. I have a pair without the toe thing that I wear in the winter with warm socks too. When I put on my Birkenstocks, my feet and legs sigh loudly and say rapturously, “Aaahhhhh. Thank you.” I have friends who wouldn’t be caught dead in a pair of Birkenstocks because they’re sort of clunky, not exactly feminine and prissy looking. But my Birkenstocks and I will be together in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse, so long as we both shall live.

Why I still have these shoes pictured below is beyond me. I bought them for Sharon years ago when she was in college. She didn’t wear them much and gave them to me. I have worn them a time or two, but I think they look a little dated, don’t you? They’re fairly comfortable but since I haven’t worn them in at least five years, I think it’s time to give them to some nice woman who wears a size 9.5 shoe, so she can store them in her closet and not wear them too.

These taupe-ish brownish shoes are sort of dressy — what I might wear to a wedding or a fancy dinner at the White House. When I was young I used to wear very high heels even though I’m already 5′ 10″ tall, but when I turned 50 I decided to boycott high heels. It was one of my Turning Fifty Resolutions, and I’ve stuck to it quite well. These heels are about as high as I’ll go now that shoe comfort means more to me than style.

Two years ago I finally found a pair of very comfortable ugly brown shoes to wear for daily errands. They’re Merrells, and these feel good on my arch, and when it’s icy out they give me some traction. They have good soles. Do you have a good sole? Sometimes I think my sole isn’t so good and I need to spend some more time with the Lord to let Him work on my shriveled, selfish sole. Er, soul.

Okay now don’t laugh. It’s all about comfort, remember? Even Isaiah quoted, “Comfort, comfort my people!” (I know, that kind of comfort was about comfort for our souls, not our soles.)

These shoes are Earth Shoes, and are designed on the premise that when we walk on sand, our heels actually go deeper than the balls of our feet, so shoes should also follow suit. As you can see, the heels of the shoes are lower than the rest of the shoe. They look a little dorky (ugly might be too strong a word? Yes? No? What do you think?) but they are sooooo comfortable! If you don’t have a pair of Earth Shoes and you have feet issues, I would encourage you to get a pair of these.

However, if you have feet like mine that are size 9.5, these shoes do nothing for making your feet look smaller. If you’re into that. These shoes make your feet look so big it’s almost comical. When I got them home and put them on again, one thing immediately came to mind.

And what came to mind were the 1000-foot ore boats we see almost daily on Lake Superior, transporting iron ore from our port to various parts of the world through the Saint Lawrence Seaway.

Does this ore boat look like my Earth Shoes, or what?

I’m going to keep five pairs of my ugly brown shoes. The others I’ll give away in hopes that they’ll find some nice big feet to land on.

How about you? Do you buy your shoes based on the cuteness factor or the comfort factor? Do you have a favorite brand of shoe? Do you have any ugly brown shoes? Or ugly green shoes? Or ugly purple shoes?…….

O God of the open ear,

Teach me to live by prayer
as well as by providence,
for myself, soul, body, children, family, church;

Give me a heart frameable to thy will;
so might I live in prayer,
and honour thee,
being kept from evil, known and unknown.

Help me to see the sin that accompanies all I do,
and the good I can distil from everything.

Let me know that the work of prayer is to bring
my will to thine,
and that without this it is folly to pray;

When I try to bring thy will to mine it is
to command Christ,
to be above him, and wiser than he:
this is my sin and pride.

I can only succeed when I pray
according to thy precept and promise,
and to be done with as it pleases thee,
according to thy sovereign will.

When thou commandest me to pray
for pardon, peace, brokenness,
it is because thou wilt give me the thing promised,
for thy glory,
as well as for my good.

Help me not only to desire small things
but with holy boldness to desire great things
for they people, for myself,
that they and I might live to show thy glory.

Teach me
that it is wisdom for me to pray for all I have,
out of love, willingly, not of necessity;
that I may come to thee at any time,
to lay open my needs acceptably to thee;
that my great sin lies in my not keeping
the savour of thy ways;
that the remembrance of this truth is one way
to the sense of thy presence;
that there is no wrath like the wrath of being
governed by my own lusts for my own ends.

~~from The Valley of Vision

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Have I ever mentioned that I don’t care for the word busy? Well if I haven’t, I’ll say it now — these last weeks have been incredibly busy ones, and the next two months are bound to be even busier, and although my dislike of busyness is interspersed with much gratitude, I’m liking busy less and less.

When one moves a foster care home, there are so many things to address. Cable television has to be installed in our gals’ rooms. (I do not need cable and lived happily without it until we began doing foster care.) Phone lines have to be run in their rooms since they each want their own phone number. Hard-wired smoke detectors have to be installed rather than just the battery-powered kind. The State Fire Marshal has to go through the house before even one resident moves in. The county foster care licensor has to inspect the house. Many change of address forms have to be filed with the post office. And there’s more, but I just can’t think of them all right now.

I think once we move and have unpacked the last box and hung the last picture, I’ll feel better. But this year I will be 55 years old, and I’m pretty much feeling 55 years old. I crave time at home and quietness. I am already picturing myself in the new house, sitting in our master bedroom in the late mornings, with a cup of tea and my reading, and my ever-more-quiet husband by my side. Our new smaller house has a beautiful, close view of Lake Superior, and there’s nothing that soothes my soul like our big lake. Like Ember, I will be “looking at the blue” as often as possible. Our profession requires that we stay active with the women we care for, and I do enjoy that. I love to see them happy and excited to get out and do things. We are tentatively planning a trip to DisneyWorld within the next fifteen or twenty years and the thought of their glee and delight about that makes me glad. There are always many doctor’s appointments and various banking, haircut, out-to-dinner-and-a-movie type outings, and Michael and I enjoy doing this with them.

But when I come home….aahhh. I love to be home. I think I have the teensiest bit of agoraphobia or something. I’m not exactly afraid of wide open spaces, but sometimes after being out running errands for the better part of a day, the agoraphobic me kicks in and says, “Get home. Now!” And I usually obey.

This morning I got up at 5:30 and could still smell the onion and garlic from last night’s dinner. I make Chicken Tortilla Soup every few weeks and every time I hear everyone’s mumbly-yumbly sounds at the table I wonder why I don’t make it more often. It’s easy, uses just a little meat, has lots of vegetables, and is absolutely delicious. I like the smell of garlic and onions sauteing in olive oil when it’s time for dinner, but when I get up in the morning I prefer the scent of my favorite candle in all the world, a Thymes Frasier Fir that makes the whole house smell clean and nature-y in about ten minutes. I know the environmental engineers of the world would probably tell me I’m polluting my indoor air with a scented candle, but a girl has to choose her pollutants. And I choose this one.

If you look closely at the photo you can see that a few dishes were not done last night before I went to bed. Most were, but instead of cleaning up everything, Michael, Sara and I watched a movie together. We loved it. It’s called Arranged, and is about a young Jewish woman and a young Muslim woman who meet each other teaching at the same school, and who form a bond because they’re both facing arranged marriages.

As of yesterday, we have no car. My husband has an older truck so we do have transportation if the need arises, but the dealer where we got our Honda almost three years ago kept calling us, wanting to know if we would be willing to sell our car back. Apparently used Pilots are in demand and since ours didn’t have many miles on it, they wanted it. We finally decided to let them have it, and bought something just a little smaller. Something not a Honda. We still need a mid-size vehicle because we transport so many people, but the one we bought (which we will hopefully pick up later today) gets slightly better gas mileage than the Pilot did, and has a name I like better.

My mother told me years ago that she wasn’t sure she could vote for Gerald Ford for president of the United States because she didn’t like the shape of his forehead. Even back then, when I was nineteen years old, I knew there was something absolutely terrible about that kind of political reasoning. Can you imagine? So today when we bring home our new car, I’ll be careful about telling people that what swayed my vote regarding which vehicle to buy out of all the ones we test-drove, is that its name reminds me of my favorite place in Scotland, a country I love. If our new car had been named The Ukraine or The Inland Passage or even The Alpine, I couldn’t possibly have bought it. The car is nice and hopefully will meet our needs, but the name is what eventually made it stand out from the others. Any guesses on what we bought?  🙂

And yes, The Slippery Slope to Becoming Your Mother gets just a little steeper with every passing year. Sharon, Carolyn and Sara….don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I’ve been trying to pack three to four boxes per day, thinking that if I keep up with that, by the time we move in late May I’ll have most of the house done. So far I’m not too overwhelmed, but I know the last week will be hard. We’ll go to the real estate office on May 31st, will close on our house at 9:00 a.m., move into another conference room to close on the house we purchased at 10:00 a.m., exchange keys, and will not be able to go back to finish anything up in our old house because the new owners will be moving in right away. So every person and dog and jug of milk must be packed and ready to leave early that morning.

But….when we’re all done, I’d like to have you over for a cup of tea. Can you make it, do you think? Let me know when your schedule permits a leisurely visit on the deck of our new home, which looks out over the biggest freshwater lake in the world. If you’ve been needing negative ions for brain health in your life, we’ll have plenty to share.

Thank you so much for stopping by….I hope you have a blessed day!

If you visit this blog regularly you know that I joined Ember in committing to donate at least one item per day in the year 2012, resulting in 366 things gone from our home when it’s all said and done. It has been a wonderful exercise and has helped me clean some hidden clutter away that I’d long forgotten about. I’ve been taking pictures and posting each week’s seven things, ever since January.

I know. Be still your heart, right?

As we prepare to move to a new house at the end of May, I’ve been weeding through drawers and cupboards and closets, unwilling to move anything to the new place that I don’t plan on using there. In doing so, I’ve donated in just a few fell swoops, at least 60 or 70 things in the past two weeks. But I didn’t stop to take any pictures. I just piled the things in boxes and bags and my daughter Carolyn kindly drove them to the Goodwill for me.

So even though there’s nothing photographic on the blog to document it, I know I am covered in my one item per day until at least the end of June. Just today, many mugs, candle holders, scarves, mittens, movies, and plates left the building.

And it feels really good. It’s sort of pathetic what makes you feel happy when you get old, but I don’t mind admitting it at all.  🙂

Michael and I have been married for almost 31 years, and we’ve always slept on a queen-sized bed. We’ve owned one uncomfortable queen bed, one very comfortable soft-side queen water bed, and the mattress we sleep on now, which is like a dream, but also fifteen years old.

He has said at least one hundred times, “We need to buy a king-sized bed.” And I’ve never said much in response, because our sheets are queen-sized, our comforter and blankets are queen-sized, and when something is working for you, why change it?

Well, the master bedroom in the house we’re moving to is quite spacious, even though the house is smaller overall than this one. And since our current queen bed is pretty old and has two submarine-shaped dents in it where the owners sleep, we finally gave in and bought a king-sized bed. We went to the bed store and laid around for a while, and finally decided on one that will be delivered on June 1st, to the new address.

When we tried out the huge mattress at the bed store, we looked across the vast expanse at each other and I called, “Hallooo over there!” and Michael sort of half-grinned. But for probably different reasons than you might think. We can read each others’ minds, you see. And I knew exactly what Michael was thinking, and he knew my thoughts too.

He was thinking, “This bed will be just perfect for the four of us.”

Here are three of the four of us, resting on our current queen bed after a full day of errands and cleaning.

Michael is in the blue jeans, Mildred is in the blue collar, and Edith is wearing the red. The pooches don’t like to sleep at the foot of the bed. They crowd in as close as they can, making a Michael and Schnauzer sandwich whenever possible. Millie didn’t like the click of the camera and you can see the paranoia in her eyes. Before I took the photo she was quite relaxed, and stretched out as if she owned the bed and Michael.

Anyway, we will soon have possibly the last bed we’ll ever own, and it will be a king-sized beast…for the beasts.

Don’t judge.

“Are you born again?” he asked, as we taxied down the runway. He was rather prim and tense, maybe a little like David Eisenhower with a spastic colon. I did not know how to answer for a moment.

“Yes,” I said. “I am.”

My friends like to tell each other that I am not really a born-again Christian. They think of me more along the lines of that old Jonathan Miller routine, where he said, “I’m not really a Jew — I’m Jew-ish.” They think I am Christian-ish. But I’m not. I’m just a bad Christian. A bad born-again Christian. And certainly, like the apostle Peter, I am capable of denying it, of presenting myself as a sort of leftist liberation-theology enthusiast and maybe sort of a vaguely Jesusy bon vivant. But it’s not true. And I believe that when you get on a plane, if you start lying you are totally doomed. 

So I told the truth; that I am a believer, a convert. I’m probably about three months away from slapping an aluminum Jesus-fish on the back of my car, although I first want to see if the application or stickum in any way interferes with my lease agreement. And believe me, all this boggles even *my* mind. But it’s true. I could go to a gathering of foot-wash Baptists and, except for my dreadlocks, fit right in. I would wash their feet; I would let them wash mine.

Anne Lamott

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