Having been born a few months before the beginning of 1980, the decades of my life tend to match the decades of the calendar pretty closely.

The 80's were most likely the most chaotic decade of my life.  I can remember living in five different homes, and I am told we lived at least two different places in my lifetime before that--all told, we lived in three different states.  I remember participating in at least four different church groups, and there was at least one other that I don't remember because I was too young.  I also remember visiting around to various churches, longing to be able to settle down in one and develop some roots.  Meanwhile, five of my siblings were born in the 80's.  My longest-standing friendships (outside the family) were first formed in the last few years of that decade.  Although I didn't do a very good job of keeping track of the dates, I believe I was saved, Spirit-filled, and baptized in the late 80's.  It was also in the late 80's that we decided that we didn't need doctors and holidays anymore.  (We had already been getting along nicely without TV, so I grew up blissfully out-of-touch with current American culture and expectations.)

The 90's were also pretty chaotic, and in some ways a lot more depressing.  We only moved once, and we never changed churches, but the church itself changed--dramatically--several times.  I learned to drive, but made no close friends (the ones I had made previously had scattered with the most dramatic upheaval of the church) and had no one to hang out with.  At school, I enjoyed a lot of people-watching, but didn't form any lasting friendships.  Oh yes, after seven/eight years in homeschool, I began public school in 8th grade, and then graduated after 3 and a half years of high school.  I got my first part-time job, working with my dad.  Four more little sisters were born in the first half of the decade.  I did make friends with some folks in Alabama, making the astonishing discovery that I was a Northerner (and what better proof than my assumption that such distinctions were as obsolete as slavery?) and acquainting myself with a conservative point of view that was dramatically different from what I had seen in my earlier teens.  Thanks to a mutual friend, I got to visit them quite a few times, but most of our communication was by letters, and I mean letters in envelopes with stamps on them (not because we are technophobes, but because even e-mail was still a relatively new invention).  The new millennium found me on the brink of change, but with no real inkling of what might happen next.

According to my mental "schedule," this past decade (I don't know what to call it on the calendar, but it was the third decade of my life) "should" have been the one in which I married and started a family.  But it was not to be.  However, in many other ways it was the best decade of my life so far.  Two of my siblings have married, and not quite two years ago I became an aunt.  I DID go to college and obtain an Associate's degree, DID get a more permanent part-time job, and I DID do a lot of traveling.  I got a passport in 2001 and used it to travel to England four times (not to mention Wales and a brief visit to the very edge of Scotland), to Switzerland, and to Guatemala--places I never dreamed of going in the 90's!  I also took trips with the family to the east coast, Niagara Falls,  South Dakota and (briefly) Wyoming.  And just this past fall--albeit after my 30th birthday--I flew to Colorado.  I got my first two cars, my first two digital cameras, and my first laptop (oddly enough, I still have NOT gotten my first cell phone.)  Shifting politics among the church groups we vaguely refer to as "our circles"--and the explosion of Internet communication--have produced many interesting friendships, and while some have ended rather painfully, there have been many good times and delightful discoveries along the way.

So what's to come?  Who knows!  I'm starting to feel a distinct sense of pressure now that I MUST take care of that goal of marrying and having a family before this decade is over, as I simply don't HAVE another decade after that to have a family (part of one, maybe, if I follow in my mom's footsteps).  This is a depressing thought--a sort of dark shadow looming on the horizon (I mean the sense of time running out--if I could be sure that my goals were to be fulfilled any time soon, it would be quite the opposite.)  Still, life is pretty good otherwise.  I do hope that I can reach my goal weight before this year is over.  I hope I can enjoy various old friends, make some new friends, and discover some interesting new places (whether locally or further afield).  It would be neat if I could actually finish the book I've been writing--and get it published.  I want to see God moving in my life, my family, and the church in amazing ways I have not previous witnessed or experienced.  But for the most part, I'm taking one day at a time.  I'm not in a hurry to rush though my life.  I want to enjoy it.

Which, at the moment, means signing off here and going to bed.  hehe

Well, well... Here I am, writing on Xanga again.

The biggest "excitement" at the moment is related to my grandpa.  He had his 94th birthday a week ago, and we all went up to see him.  He had recently had a fall and broken his hip, but it was a clean break and had been pinned back together, and my one uncle was just a little concerned that anti-clotting medication was having a bad affect on him.  However, he seemed well enough--just rather drowsy, and inclined to talk as if he might not see us all again.  Well, over the next couple of days, some things came up that were a bigger concern.  Saturday there began to be talk of family who hadn't seen him on Thursday coming to see him sooner than later.  Then Sunday the news was that he seemed to have pulled through and everything was OK.  Then Monday they said he had a matter of days or weeks left.  I went up with my dad on Monday to see him, and again with the rest of the family on Tuesday.  He still seemed drowsy and easily tired, but not exactly sick.  Now my uncle is talking like either the report on Monday was just plain wrong or there's been a miracle.  But he's still concerned about the sort of care Granddaddy is (or isn't) getting, and of course there are no guarantees about the future...  Meanwhile, one of my aunts and a cousin are coming up from Florida for a few days.  Well, we'll all be glad to see them, and I don't think anybody will be disappointed if it turns out NOT to be a final goodby...  We all know that Granddaddy is ready to go if it's God's time.  But we also know that God can keep him around as long as He sees fit, no matter what pronouncements have been made.  So we just have to take one day at a time and see what God has in store.  And to make sure Granddaddy knows how much we do appreciate him.

It's nice to have extra days off work, but it seems we keep making plans how to fill them.  We have friends and family coming to visit, and some of us will be visiting elsewhere also.  I was going to be going with several of my sisters to a kind of church conference this weekend, but I'm having second thought about it.  We have plans for next weekend also, and between the two, next weekend's plans are more my style (visiting a family in their home, rather than attending a conference at a hotel--oh yeah!).  So I think I will be staying home tomorrow, with all due apologies to anyone who might have been hoping to see me (I doubt there are very many).

I've been somewhat busy today, doing some cooking.  I made a big pot of vegetable-rice-chicken soup, which should last for many lunches.  I also made a loaf of bread in the bread machine and baked an apple-oatmeal bar, which is almost 100% fat free, and not TOO high in sugar (as such things go).

Also, this morning we had to salt our street because it was a sheet of ice, and Mom actually went off the road at one point--and someone else right behind her.  (Mom said she felt them bump into her, but when I got there they weren't touching and there was no damage--all I can figure from what I saw was that the tire of the pickup lightly bumped the bumper of the car, and then veered off slightly before the pickup came to a standstill.)  I think the ice might have melted off eventually anyway, as did a similarly-paved side street here in town--but we couldn't wait for "eventually" when Mom needed to get out again soon.

And I worked a bit on a puzzle with my sisters.  There's another one being started now, which I'd like to help with, but I've been feeling just slightly yucky today, and reclining with my laptop is definitely more comfortable than hunching over a table of puzzle pieces.  I have a pleasant Baroque CD playing softly in the background, and the most vocal of the "baby" cockatiels seems to be trying to sing along with it.  He is SO cute!

What I really need to do is to work on cleaning my room.  So many odds and ends need to be sorted through and organized.  Some I may be able to get rid of, or at least tuck away somewhere.  I'm not sure about the rest, but it's high time I figured SOMETHING out!  That should be a good project for tomorrow, and as this sort of yuckiness rarely last more than a few hours, I should be feeling fine by then.

When I went shopping this week I got a new clock for our living room.  I wanted a shelf clock, not a wall clock, and most of what they had for shelf clocks did not appeal to me.  What I really wanted was just the time and aesthetics--more like the wall clocks.  However, I'm pretty happy with the one I got, which has a fake wood frame that matches some of the other wood stuff in the living room, and a digital display that includes indoor and outdoor temperature and the date (plus it's one that sets itself automatically to the right time, so no need to fiddle with that).

I'm sort of un-dieting for a while now.  The goal is to maintain for a while, and then see if I can get a fresh start.  Trying to break through was just getting too frustrating.  My main concern now is that (a) I DO maintain... not just gain everything back, and (b) I DO get a fresh start before TOO much longer.

I've been pondering various Thoughts which I sometimes think of blogging about, but there never seems to be time for that sort of blogging, although I'm hard put to say what exactly IS occupying all my time at the moment.  We do seem to "run around" a lot these days, so my evenings are rarely unoccupied--and I usually work mornings.  I get various odds and ends done in the afternoons, but they never seem long enough, and I don't think I'm being as efficient as I could be, since I tend to treat that more as my "down" time for the day.  I've been working on crocheting an afghan, sometimes I have an e-mail to write, exercising takes time, and then there's cooking occasionally and doing my little "chores" around the house.  I don't even take much time for reading, although I have several books that I keep vaguely "planning" to read... one of these days.

So there you have it.  Not an update that is designed to make everyone keep hurrying back to read more, but then my life isn't a soap opera, and I'm quite satisfied for it not to be!

There are probably better things I could be doing with my time at the moment, but this is my first evening all week with no major commitments, so it's nice to just relax and type...

I thought I would write about Balance.

It is a good thing to have balance.  Without it, we would not be able to walk or stand.

It is good to be able to balance a bank account, because if you can't, you might have financial problems.

But that isn't really the kind of balance I had in mind.  I was thinking of things that are best had in pairs.

• Good, sound sleep... and good, hard exercise.
• Time to be completely alone and quiet... and time to be completely socially involved.
• Some time every day to do things you love... and to do not-so-nice things that need to get done.
• Thinking through complex and complicated details... and letting the brain relax and dream.
• Serious, productive work... and pure fun.
• Developing a strong personal relationship with God... and reaching out to meet the needs of others.
• Summer and Winter (even though I usually prefer spring and fall)
• Day and Night
• Sun and Rain

OK, enough on that theme.  I guess that'll be all for now.

The week began with my main concern being that I was STILL on a plateau that no amount of calorie-counting or working out could bust through.  Monday morning at work was staff meeting, but otherwise nothing unusual.  However, as I was working out in the afternoon, I noticed that I had a little unexpected congestion.  It didn't hinder my ability to exercise--but something obviously wasn't quite right.  That evening, even as I could feel other disturbing symptoms closing in on me, I researched weightloss plateaus and discussed with my mom and one of my sisters the radical idea of actually eating a little MORE in order to get better results.  It was a scary thought--what if it didn't work and I ended up gaining back hard-fought pounds?

That night, I could tell I was SICK!  My room was a little on the cool side, as we had an east wind.  But the extra clothing I was wearing and the extra throw on my bed should have been plenty.  I was experiencing the unnaturally cold feeling that I associate with fevers and other flu symptoms.  I had a nasty little cough, too.  Long before morning, I switched my alarm from 6:30 to 7:30, as I wouldn't need a whole lot of margin just to get up enough to let my boss know that I wasn't coming in to work.  And I didn't go back to work for three days.  After that first night, I kept feeling better overall, but one symptom or another would warn me that I'd better not go back yet.

In the mean time, I downloaded Little Women from NetLibrary and listened to that while working on my crocheting (when I had the energy for it) or snuggling into a sleeping bag (when I was feeling the chills).  On the whole, these were quiet days.  But it was a good time to try my "eating a little more" experiment, because I was experiencing a sudden drop in pounds anyway, probably just due to being sick or something, but helpful.  And while I certainly didn't have the energy for any serious exercise, I felt like I'd been running marathons or something, so felt reasonably certain that I was burning calories.  (I also felt like I'd been hit by a truck, but I don't know if that had any bearing on the weightloss situation or not.)

I did manage to get out a couple of times.  Wednesday night was church, and no one else in my family was staying home, not even the ones experiencing the same symptoms I was.  Well, that pretty well eliminated concern about spreading anything as a motive for staying home, and it certainly motivated me not to be a wimp about it.  So, while I didn't even attempt to sing during the worship (though it was led, for lack of other options, by one of my not-so-well sisters), at least I was there.  My friends at church are not the germophobes that my coworkers are.  (It's entirely possible that we picked the bug up there, although who knows--no one confessed to having harbored any such thing on Sunday.)  And Thursday--by which time I was feeling better still--I attended a Ritter's employee appreciation dinner which, again, was being attended by everyone else in the family and, as I say, I was feeling better... except that by the time it was over, I felt like I could drop from exhaustion.

Friday I was desparate to go back to work, and feeling measurably better.  It was the first morning when I didn't, at any rate, feel that I would be unsafe as a driver, and it seemed like the more contagious sorts of symptoms had lifted (although I found when I got to work that I was coughing more there than I had been at home--or was I just more aware of it?).  But going to work was just about all I could handle that day.  I was exhausted!  Oh, I had enough energy to continue piecing away at my crocheting, but that's about all.  Still, that was OK.  I didn't go along to youth Bible Study, but I was home when a friend from Kentucky stopped by, and if I'd been feeling better, I might have felt obliged to go to Bible study and miss her short visit.  Oh, I did manage to take a short walk with my dad, who was wanting some exercise, before sundown.  I thought a little fresh air and sunshine would do me good--and I don't think it hurt me!

Saturday--better yet.  Still a cough, but I was able to take a longer walk.  And in the evening we went to "Acoustamania" at the Blue Lion.  Which was sort of like open mic night, only there are more people involved, and each group was only supposed to sing up to three songs.  And someone was in charge of who went when (I have no idea on what basis--some of the first people to sign up didn't get called up until the end of the program, and, to my chagrin, one couple I had wanted to hear had to leave before they got a turn.)  It was, of course, a mix of styles and skill levels, some more enjoyable than others.  Some of my sisters did three songs together, but I opted out.  When we tried to practice earlier that day, my singing voice sounded like that of a quavery old woman, though my speaking voice tended more toward the deep and throaty.  I tried accompanying on recorder, but although I got off to a good start, the more I practiced, the more my fingers seemed to tangle themselves up.  So I sang along with one song from the audience, and recorded video on my camera for another.

Today we had "love feast" at church, so no evening meeting.  And although my voice was getting kind of tired by the end, I was able to sing through the entire song service. The meal was nice, and more enjoyable than the last, since I was less strict about calories.  Mrs. C. helped me with the dishes again, so we had another nice chat.

And while I'm afraid that's a rather mundane update, that's really all I have for the moment.  Because the less-mundane things on my mind right now are far too unsettled and frustrating to be casually blogged about (notwithstanding, I've been attempting it for the last hour or more).  And besides, it is time for me to be closing up my day and going to bed.

So, I am feeling pretty much uninspired today.  I've been to work, I've done my exercise, I've started my laundry, and I've done a little crocheting, but what I'd really like to do now, I'm not sure.  No, actually--I'd like to eat.  But I can't, yet.  So I'm trying to solace myself with hot, unsweetened decaf tea.  Which isn't much of a comfort food, but at least it probably won't make me feel any hungrier.

This past week has been absolutely horrible for weightloss.  I've had some plateaus before, but they would last a few days, put me behind a little, and then go away.  In this case, I think I actually weighed more this morning than what I did a week ago.  On the other hand, ironically, I've suddenly had people noticing and commenting on my weight loss.  I'd say it's the clothes, except that I've been wearing different clothes for weeks now.  So, who knows?  I've certainly been doing my share of working out, and if I haven't absolutely stuck to my calorie counts, the difference ought to be negligible (say a few hundred calories off over the course of the week--and it should take 500 calories a day to make a pound of difference).

This past weekend was busier than usual for me.  It was the weekend of a big library program--so big it can't actually be held at the library (although they have plans to build a big enough room next year).  This means lugging a lot of stuff to another location, and makes tech support extremely difficult, especially when the place we held the program didn't really offer any of their own.  Dress rehearsal was pretty alarming--the only thing that got rehearsed was the kids' choir, and they didn't sound very inspiring.  We actually had to bring a portable sound system in order to run the majority of the audio-video stuff (and I'm much indebted to the director of the kids choir, who not only knew how to set it up for us, but did just that), and even that gave us grief a couple of time during the program (since we didn't have it for dress rehearsal, and, therefore, had no opportunity to work the bugs out of it).  However... the program, on the whole, went over pretty well.  The person sitting near me was really annoyed that I kept blocking her view whenever I stood up to operate the video camera, and made some very audible rude comments (chiefly annoying because they could end up on the sound for the video), but I think everyone else had a pretty good time.  In fact, the band that supplied a lot of our music actually ASKED to come back next year, from what I've heard since.  So that's a pretty high compliment.  And as I said, we hope to be able to hold the program "in house" next year.  Which could still have its drawbacks, depending on the kind of facility we're able to build... but I expect it will be loads easier to manage.  And so much simpler than having to lug stuff around.

One of the workouts I've been doing lately involves some lunges, but I think I'm going to have to swap it for something else.  Probably I'm just not doing them quite right, but, once again, my knees have been giving me trouble.  This time the right knee is the more bothersome one.  I'm hoping that if I do the stepper instead, my knees will be OK with that.  I know it will give me a good workout--just very monotonous and boring.  But, hey, I can't have my walking (which I enjoy) spoiled by knee troubles.

Well, as I take my walks, I often just let my mind kind of wander.  Occasionally there will be something it is trying to process that gets in there and keeps going around and around and around.  But other times it flits carelessly from one point to another.  Today was one of those randomly-flitting days.  (Bullets look too tidy for how my thoughts all kind of run together, but they make it a bit easier, I suppose, on anyone bothering to read this.)

• I thought a bit about my story ideas and how I could integrate my walks into them. 
• I thought about the foggy uncertainty of my future and how dissatisfying that is. 
• I was trying to expand on the thought, which I think is fairly profound, that The Word Is Sufficient.  The Word as the Bible and as Jesus.  But I wasn't having much success expanding on it.  Because at the moment I am not feeling very satisfied, and it just makes me think I'm not really connecting to the Word as I should be, but I'm not sure what angle I'm missing. 
• I also thought about the Cross.  I was thinking of a song that talks about the Cross as an expression of the love of God.  But it isn't just that.  It's also an expression of the awfulness of sin.  We have to understand both, I think, to really benefit from it. 
• And I thought about dead leaves, and how they smell all right on the ground, so what makes the great big pile of them (which is being made in the park) so stinky? Is there something else in the great big pile?  Or does a different sort of chemical reaction occur?  Or is it just one of those odors that is pleasant in small quantities and unpleasant in large quantities? 
• I also thought about mushrooms and whether I want to add a field guide to mushrooms to my collection of field guides, and I think I concluded that I would eventually like to do so, but it isn't urgent.  (What about field guides to berries?  Do they have such a thing?  I think I would eventually like to get a book I saw on identifying edible plants.) 
• I thought about litter, and how I don't really want to be bothered to pick up litter when I don't have anything handy to put it in--but should I try to always have a Wal-mart bag or something with me for that purpose?  I never seem to think of it at the right time...
• And I found a big shiny fake coin on the path, near where, last week, I saw a black knit glove.  But I didn't see the black knit glove this week.  Maybe someone picked it up, or maybe it just got buried more deeply under the leaves.  I moved the coin to a place where it would be less likely to disappear. 
• A couple of places in the path I found lots of black and white feathers.  Smallish feathers.  But I couldn't decide what they came from, or if it seemed to have gotten away.  I didn't see any guts or bones or anything, but it WAS an awful lot of feathers... 
• I thought about people I would like to talk to, but didn't really get anywhere with that thought, because thinking about it still didn't inspire me with any clever way to start a conversation, and, besides, I don't know if it would be welcome if I did, and, anyway, it probably wouldn't end up being all that exciting of a conversation if I had to come up with some lame way to start it. 
• I saw one other person on my walk, when I came out of the woods for a few yards.  He was just sitting on a park bench overlooking the pond.  I wondered if he worked there (especially when, shortly thereafter, I came to some recently-cut trees), or had simply come to enjoy the park, and whether he was bored or lonely or just enjoying a nice break.  And then I forgot about him, until just now. 
• I thought about how to walk so that my knee would not bother me, and worried about hurting it if I tripped on a root or rock hidden under the leaves, which did happen a couple of times, but not so as to damage my knee. 
• And I thought again about rue-anemones, and about tall bell flowers (of which I saw one) and moth mullein (which I might have seen, or maybe it was a primrose), and poison ivy (of which I see less and less). 
• And I thought about how to vary my route, and got very temporarily lost, but soon was able to get back to where I knew where I was.  And I thought it would be nice to have a trail map which could be superimposed over the image of the woods in Google Earth so that I could make some kind of stab at figuring out how long of a walk I'm actually taking. 
• And the weather, though cloudy, was pleasantly mild, and really very nice for walking.  And there weren't too many spider web strands to catch on my hands, face, and clothing. 
• And then I got back to the library and walked once around the wetlands for good measure, and didn't really think about much of anything at all except trying to find the firmer spots on the path, and wondering if there's any way they can keep weeds from growing up through it. 
• And I got back to my desk and guzzled a bottle of water while looking at Facebook, in case anybody had posted anything interesting or important. 
• And then I came home. 
• Which is a pretty typical after-work scenario for me.

Now I need to go finish my laundry, and then maybe I'll go back to crocheting, since I have two afghans now in progress.  One is made up of chains of rings, which will eventually be attached to each other, side by side.  They are dark green, light green, and tan, and will be attached with dark brown.  The other is just row upon row of color in horizontal stripes, with texture variations that create diagonal stripes.  It is deep red, gold, a leafy green, and brown.  The first is for my next sister who is turning 20 (in February), and the second is for my dad.  I started the second one before finishing the first because I was waiting for my sister to pick out the third color (tan) for the first.

Oh yes, I was going to go do my laundry...