Tag: homemade bread

Fat Fridays: Mental Health Check In

Happy Friday everyone. 

It’s 8:45am and I’ve already had a busy morning. Made homemade muffins for the kids for breakfast. I’ve got a big batch of yeast bread started, sitting in a bowl on the mantel to rise. Walked around picking up all the winter clothing that was left on the floor yesterday after we had a small batch of snow (only happens a couple times a year for us). Lit all the candles in the house in an attempt to chase off the gloom from this cold gray morning. I’ve cleaned up several messes from my son’s puppy that we are babysitting during the day while he’s at work. And also let my cats in and out the door about 5,000 times. 

And I’ve been trying really hard to not be snappy at my kids. This is their second snow day home and in my current mood, I’ve found it challenging to have to deal with arguments, fussing, and just a bunch of energetic kids bouncing around the house. (Stop throwing playing cards at my candles, No, we are NOT playing basketball in the house, yes, we ARE going to clean your room, No, we are NOT going to do a science experiment that involves setting paper on fire.) 

I am struggling a lot with depression and irritability. I’ve been working on getting back to healthy eating, cutting out sugar and processed foods again, and my body is in shock and not happy as it is deprived of all it’s junk again. I know I’m making progress, I’m starting to crave healthy food again and I haven’t had a hard time staying away from the bad suff, but it always puts me in a bad mood when I come off sugar and junk. I have a feeling a lot of that is just physical things happening in my body. 

I’m coming off the High of the Holidays and feeling a predictable blah-ness from resuming normal life again. 

The last two years have been pretty traumatic and so I find myself facing this new year with a lot of hesitancy. What craziness is going to happen this year? 

We’ve got an upcoming court date for our foster daughter and I’m having to face a lot of inner-demons as I resolve to make my voice heard instead of staying quiet. 

I imagine everyone has a list of reasons for why their mental health is not doing so great right now. 

What am I doing about it? 

Well, I’ve been really focused on keeping my home in a constant state of tidiness and order and coziness. It is calming to me to sit in a clean room with candles lit and some pretty things to look at. I tend to be very comfortable with clutter and chaos, but lately I’ve been going the opposite direction and needing everything orderly and in its place. 

I’ve gotten back into daily Bible reading. I have a 12 month Read the BIble in Year. Each day has a date and a passage from the Old Testament, the New Testament, a Psalm and a Proverb. I have decided to start in the month of December and work my way backwards, cause that just feels more doable for me. I am finding this reading time to be a time of calm and peace. 

I am working hard on getting our whole family eating healthy again, and one of the things I’m focusing on is baking our own whole-grain bread again. I used to do this a lot, years ago, and then stopped. I find that I need to bake about every two days in order to keep up with the kids. There is something very soothing about making bread. It makes me feel grounded and connected to the earth. Weird? I don’t know. I just know that I am enjoying it and find it soothing. 

The last thing is I am trying to keep life as simple as possible. I’ve had to hit pause on keeping up with community events and concerns, what’s happening in our country, and just focus in on my home. 

And even doing all that, it’s still been a struggle. But, I’m hopeful. My body is going to adjust to the healthier diet again, we’ll get past our court date, spring will come again. Life keeps moving. We just have to take it one day at a time. 

It’s Fall!!

fallpic

 

It’s Fall! My absolute favorite season of the year! Technically it has been Fall since the end of September, but the weather got a bit confused and gave us a couple weeks of 90’s weather. But, it has finally figured things out, and we actually woke up to a nice brisk morning. Hurrah. I am unofficially celebrating by cooking soup, making homemade bread, having a tea party with some of my kids, and possibly lighting our cook stove tonight. 

 

Of course, I really don’t like it when I give the impression of a life that’s all bright and cheery without any bad points at all. This day has had its moments. Like this morning, when I got the entire family up and ready to go see the Shriner’s Circus, then just before we left, I checked the tickets one more time and realized that the circus is actually next weekend. Not this weekend. Oops. Unfortunately, if you are in my family, you are used to mom making colossal mistakes like this. I also went to get out my nice LLBean Flannel sheets to put on my bed and discovered that someone had taken scissors to the elastic on the fitted sheet. Thank you children. My husband said it was Entropy. I said it was children. He said children are a part of Entropy.  I also asked my girls to clean their room. They said they did. I asked if it was amazing and would I come upstairs and say Wow? And they said Yes! When I finally got around to checking their work, I did say Wow. They were right. I said, Wow, this is horrible. But, despite all of that, it is a wonderful, bright, Fall day. And I’m happy. 

 

Since I was a child Fall has always been my favorite season. From the age of six to eleven, we lived on my grandparents farm in Eastern Kentucky, back in a holler (Hollow). My grandparents had around thirty acres and all the farms around us were also big properties. We lived in a little trailer tucked up in the woods, my cousins lived down the road in one direction and my best friend lived up the hill from me. If we needed more kids than that, there were several families with kids down the holler we could invite to join us. It was really a children’s paradise. There were hills, fields, a creek, ponies, lots of dogs and cats. We had the freedom to wander all over the place without our parents worrying about us. The basic rule was: be home for meals. Check in every once in a while. 

 

Fall meant crunchy leaves all over the ground. We would make leaf piles and jump in them. Roll around in the dry, crispy carpet that covered the ground. One of my favorite memories about fall leaves was the ravine we happened upon one day while stomping around in the woods. It was a very steep incline, a good long drop down into a dry creek bed that only filled up when it rained. The side of the steep hill was covered in leaves. We discovered that if you sat down on the edge of the hill and just let yourself go, it was kind of like sledding. On leaves. Not sure if the seat of our pants stayed intact, but we had fun.

 

Another big part of fall was the smell of wood smoke. Most people in those parts heated their homes with wood burning stoves. Every fall my dad would get his big red farm truck and load us up in the back then head off down some little trail into the woods where he had scouted out some fallen trees. We would then spend the day playing on the fallen tree while my dad did the heavy cutting with his chainsaw. When he had the wood cut to movable pieces my brother and I would then step in and help load it all into the back of his truck. When the truck was as full as he could make it, we would climb on top of the wood and ride slowly back home. Where we then had to unload all the firewood and stack it up into a woodpile behind our trailer. It was a family project and we all felt content when we knew we had enough firewood stacked for winter. 

 

Fall. It’s bright red cheeks from running outside in the cold. Dark by suppertime. Hot soup and warm bread. Reading books out loud next to a fire. Blue jeans and flannel shirts. Slippers and robes in the early mornings. A time for pumpkins and hay bales and hot apple cider. What’s there to not love? 

 

So, I’m off to enjoy my fall evening. We’ll have some pinterest-worthy moments, and we’ll have some crazy, smack-my-head, roll-my-eyes moments, cause I’ve still got a houseful of kids, but I’m going to choose to be happy, cause it’s Fall!