Monday Message

"God gives us difficulties to bring out the best in us."  Marvin J. Ashton

I know with negative things so loud we need to look for kindness because there is a lot of kind acts out there. We just need to look for them and we need to be kind to others as well.

Look for ways to recycle and reuse. Think outside the box. This container at one time had a salad in the bottom and toppings in the tray.

Now it holds a few tatting projects and tatting tools. I could easily make a basket to fit. I think that would be a cute idea... lots of things we have gotten for a certain use but look around and see how you might use it differently.

Gus asks you how are you coming on your skill building?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOxxeaELAS4 - first part of crochet for beginners.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdpfodLDWbE - crochet for beginners.

You will know how to crochet after watching those videos.

It is the right time of the year for rhubarb...

This is a family favorite! I transplanted my rhubarb this year to a better spot, it wasn't thriving so hopefully it will now.

My garden is growing well. I have been gathering grass clippings after the grass is mowed and using it for mulch. I did find I had another package of bush beans so I planted them where the one row did not come up. I also planted a pole bean package at the foot of a pole with strings and transplanted my tomato seedlings, they are doing very well. I usually am not successful starting them from seed so maybe this will be a good garden year??

I feel that the CDC will be right and that we will be in for a worse

time of virus in the fall and winter. So I suggest you beef up your

storage as you can and if you do any canning... do you have enough

sugar and lids?

See where you are low and build it up.

Did you notice what items were in short supply like yeast and flour? If you use these items, see if you can get them in during the summer when no one wants to bake. Remember, yeast goes in the freezer.

This year might be the year you learn to can. It would be a good year to learn to dehydrate. It would be a good year to learn how to freeze food too. It is not too late to put seed in the ground here in Iowa. You can have a second crop of green beans when the first crop is done.

Plan for what would make your life easier if we had to go back into stay at home situations. We are still in that mode as we are in that demographic that still has to stay home. We are only just going for essentials like meds and food, that is what high risk seniors are to be doing in Iowa, probably everywhere else as well. I know it has been hard on people to stay at home. When our ancestors lived long ago, many lived very rural and were home most of the time. They probably went to get supplies once or twice a year. We should look to them now to help us through. They did not go to the grocery store every day. They did not even have TV.  Toilet paper, if you go back far enough, hadn't been invented yet, toilets either for that matter.... So while it has been hard, it could be worse. Think if you had no toilet...yikes!

But truthfully, they lived their lives. They loved their families no less than anyone else. They made do with what they had. They made hard times fun for their families. They lived frugally, they looked to the future and planned for the future. 

Life is hard and will probably get harder, but we can do it. We can do it grudgingly, feeling sorry for ourselves and the easiness of how life used to be.  Or...we can roll up our sleeves and do what we can. Look to our future. If we lament our circumstances we will be unhappy. Face it, we will never be where we were before. It will take a lot to get out of this. Blaming others is not the route we want to go.

No one said you deserve this and that and if you don't get that you will have a tantrum...how does that help??

If you talked to kids of the depression they mostly will tell you about the fun times they had as they grew up.

Money is most likely to be tight for very many right now. You should not feel that you need things to make you happy or that you need places to go to make you happy. Your dreams can change. If your kids are around the house 24/7 and you feel stressed, you can make the time miserable for them or you can build memories with them inside your four walls. 

If you are thinking, "well, she is an empty-nester" yes, I am, but I wasn't always. In the summer my kids were home as well. Go through your closets, you have clothes you could throw in a box and let the kids play dress up with. Read stories, bake cookies together in the kitchen, let them be messy then let them help you clean. I made worksheets up to keep them on task for school. Let them make a play and present it to you. At night, do shadow puppets...put on a black and white movie and tell them that is what Grandma and Grandpa watched when they were little, or put on your childhood favorite movie and let them see it through your eyes.

Once after a huge snow our grandkids came to visit. I filled empty dishsoap bottles with water, added food coloring and out we went and drew pictures in the snow. To this day that is one of their fondest memories...that cost nothing but time.

If you run out of ideas look online, there are tons of ideas there!

Most of all, do not be selfish if you feel it is not fair and it is cutting into your time, change that mindset. Your kids will not be little or even home forever.

We are sacrificing not spending time with our grandkids now so we can still be in their lives later. Is it hard? Yes, it is, but we must. Life is not passing us by. We are living life every minute and every minute we can choose to be happy or angry or sad, it is still living life. Yes, there are people with mental hardships and hopefully they have people in their lives that are helpful.

Life will be different and sometime, long years from now, people will look back to what was now and ask what did they do to get through those hard times.

Missy says hang in there!