Dark House

Cruddy smells flake off the house and I know I shouldn’t be here.

No one has in faithless year after faithless year.

Knock it off.

I see you filching my backup plans from my purse.

God I wear blue well.

My soul is transparent like the cleanest lake.

 

I am without my numbers and shapes,

sewn from cotton fields.

I’m a doll you can love, hate, dissipate

Scifi Poem

Wrap me in rain,

give me cool comfort like the

swirling of air from a fan over my legs

at bedtime so noxious and sanctimonious.

What strange aliens wait in the field behind the house,

gaudy in their multitudinous space ships?

Give me sweet succor and lay me down

in the pumpkin patch.

Let me grow vines to root me in place.

There is no sense in running.

And when the aliens come,

let their teeth already be sharpened,

their hands quick.

Laziness and Sloth

Sometimes I open a random page in my devotionals instead of reading it in order, to see what message might be speaking to me.  It’s the same way I tend to read the Scriptures. Today I just happened to open to an entry about laziness and sloth.

“The path of lazy people is overgrown with briers, the diligent walk down a smooth road.” Proverbs 15:19.

“No matter how much you want, laziness won’t help you a bit. But hard work  will reward you with more than enough.” Proverbs 13:4

I could have opened to any page in the devotional. I had no idea what page was what and could have chosen anything. But my fingers and my eyes alighted on this. And I think there’s a reason.

I have been lazy. I’ve been lazy with the housework and lazy with the yard (I’m afraid of bugs), and lazy with my body. I’ve even been lazy with parenting. Angelica should be in sign language lessons and dance and piano. I take her to speech therapy, but that is it. Dance might have to wait until we move to Colorado and she can start a full year from beginning to end the following fall. Piano and sign language though I need to get started on. I’ve been lazy with my body by being sedentary. I don’t move much. This is not a commentary on my weight, as there are plenty of people as lazy as me who are smaller than me and plenty of people who move more than me who are bigger. But it is a simple truth that I don’t exercise. I should get an exercise bike.

I’ve been lazy with housework. Sometimes I don’t keep up with it because of my mood, sometimes because I’m just not very good at it, but sometimes it is because I am being lazy. I am very fortunate in that God has blessed me with a beautiful house and lots of things in that house. I need to take better care of them.

My devotional says that whatever it is I am doing, menial or great, I should do my  best. I am a homemaker and mother and writer. But am I being the best homemaker I can be? The best mother? The best writer? I’ve been slothful about submitting my work to magazines over the past year. Am I engaged enough with Angelica? How can I give her a leg up on education and self development? Am I being the best wife I can be? What can I do to make my husband’s life easier and more comfortable?

These verses and this passage in my devotional have convicted me today. I think I’m going to go fold laundry and organize the bathroom. Now. Right now.

Gratitude, Meds, Creativity

My mood dropped a lot last night. I didn’t even finish my hot bath.  I have been uneven lately. I think my antidepressant is starting to burn out. To ward off any deep plunges, I did take double the dose a couple of times last week and that raised me up. But as soon as I stopped taking double I dropped again (yesterday). My antidepressants periodically burn out on me and I have to switch to something different. I am going to ask when I see my psychiatrist on Wednesday. Until then I will be taking double doses to keep myself going and functional and creative. Last night I asked Craig to wake me up before he went to work this morning just long enough for me to take my antidepressants early so that they would kick in by the time it was time for me to get up. The plan worked so I intend to try again. Maybe this can help keep my mood stable and help me wake up earlier in the morning. When antidepressant kicks in it energizes me. So it may be that by taking it at 6 something in the morning I’ll be awake by 8 or 9.

To help boost my mood, and because it is always a good practice, I want to list some things I am grateful for.

1. My mother and father. I am so glad they are in my life. They are wonderful parents and grandparents.

2. My sister. She is a good sister and a great aunt to Angelica.

3. Taco Bell. What can I say? I like their cheese quesadillas.

4. That I live in Hampton Roads where the Mexican restaurants have that white dip.

5. My library. It is a privilege and a pleasure to own a library full of books.

6. My cute yellow cottage. My house is perfect for me and my family. Perfect look, perfect size, perfect design, and for my husband, the perfect location.

7. Plus size stores. Plus size clothing options are still limited, but I know that there is a lot more available today than what there used to be.

8. That I got my car back Saturday from having work done on it since that lady crashed into me.

9. I am grateful to live in a time where there is so much art and music and literature readily available.

10. I am grateful to be short. I just like being petite.

Today I am at the library studying African poetry. Some countries I love. Others not as much. Overall though, I thoroughly enjoy African poetry and this Penguin volume of poetry from each country in Africa is quite educating for me. As usual, reading poetry inspires me to write poetry so I have been getting a lot of writing done. I will post that writing here, though I am not certain some of it is so good. But it feels good to create and be mentally active. Plus, I don’t want to lose any of my work and I use this blog to archive it so I need to post my poetry.

 

 

Prayer Room/Altar/ Sacred Space

I saw something online where a bunch of women who are pagan have altars to their various goddesses in their homes. I wondered if there was a Christian equivalent so I asked around and did some reading. There is, especially among Catholics. Many people are making special places in their houses for they have Christian artwork and Crosses and rosaries. They create these beautiful spaces as a sort of act of worship. Many use these areas to pray in, study the Bible, or worship together as a family.

I would like to have something like that in my house. I would like to have candles and beautiful candle holders and to collect some more rosaries. Rosaries are really beautiful works of art and although I do not pray the rosary I sometimes hold the rosary when I pray. I would like to learn more about the Rosary and other prayer beads. Prayer is very powerful and tradition is very beautiful.

How and where can I design such a space? A corner of the library? My craft room?  I know it may seem like a silly thing to do when I am not Catholic, but there are many things about Catholicism that I admire. Plus I don’t see why you should have to be Catholic to make a beautiful sacred space in your home, and I want to incorporate symbols of what is important to me in my house.

I am thinking I could convert part of the craft room into a sort of prayer space. Then again I really like doing my devotionals and bible study in the library where it is nice and sunny, so it would make sense to have it in the library. Better yet maybe I can use the FROG . Right now that room is unused and maybe I could put it to good purpose. I know that next year in military housing we will have to go down to having three bedrooms and I will have to find a prayer space, a craft area, and a library in the mix of that. But for now I have 4 bedrooms and an office and I may as well use them.

I am really giving this some serious thought and I’m going to start shopping around to see what I could put in the room. I won’t put in any iconography because my husband is against it. But surely there’s a wealth of beautiful religious art that isn’t iconography that I could use to make a dedicated religious space in my house. Of course the Holy Spirit will move through the whole house, but I think having a designated place would be a lovely idea.