Buying Time

You probably know who my favorite cat is

Sunset Cabin Weekend

You probably know who my favorite man is

And. . . my favorite girl

He's like a bad boyfriend. . . sneaking around and then bites you like it's your fault

You probably know what Mary's favorite animal is

Over MEA, the Minnesota Fall school break, Calvin went to St. Louis with the EVMB, Mary went to camp Grandmommy's in Iowa and Bill and I went to the cabin--hold your breath--all by ourselves. Best weekend of my life.

If you are married, I highly recommend this. You can even use our cabin. Sitting comatose in front of the fire for 48 hours? You can feel the life seep back into your bones. If you are single, you have to give this love, this time to yourself. Somehow.

Life is a process, an ebb and flow of growing and evaluating. Sometimes we slip back into chaos, hopefully temporarily for projects, like the workshop. Sometimes it feels like that chaos becomes the norm. Even after the workshop you still wake up at 4:30 a.m. and run the list.

For me, when the flood creeps closer and closer to the door, I stockpile. I better get seven gallons of milk from Costco, because who knows when the water will recede and I'll be able to get the car back out of the garage. Better order Mary's senior prom dress too, and Calvin will be needing cheese. If you have opened my fridge drawer you will know that there have been moments where there have been twenty bricks of co-jack. . . just waiting for the apocalypse. There are upwards of five pounds of coffee beans in my freezer at any given moment.

I've given a lot of time to SAM and to the SPTG and that is a complete privilege. Little by little though, I've got to balance things out a little. I've got to save time to plan my own studio events, and budget time to be gone for my own guest teaching. I'm going to New Ulm in November and out to DC in January. Someone else gets to stay up all night wondering who will pick ME up from the airport.

A couple weeks ago I asked Mary Lynn for more help. Over the last eight years she has been our baby sitter, turned friend, turned chauffeur. Now I'm buying a little of her time. A little of my own time.

Hopefully now, when the flood rises, Mary Lynn can take the life raft to the pet store. I don't have to stuff a thirty year supply of kitten kibbles into the laundry room cabinet. When Flopsy died, I gave an entire trunk load of bunny litter, bunny hay and bunny kibbles to neighborhood bunnies.

Buying time. Window washing. Leaf blowing. That's one kind of time.

Piano lessons for Calvin and jazz piano for Mary? That's another kind of buying time. Investing in someone else's knowledge.

Where your money goes, there goes your heart. My pastor reminded me of that verse when we were celebrating my least favorite holiday, Halloween. By the way, on Halloween I gave up refined sugar for 30 days. This is day five. This is a physical abstaining from the gluttony that has been the last few months. My thoughts on Halloween are a different post and you can probably go into the archives of this blog and you will see the same pattern. . . how three days after Halloween both kids get sick and run fevers and stay home from school. Mary throws up. If Halloween celebrates the dark side--for me that dark side is sugar.

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Luke 12:34.

This year a lot of our heart went into Doris's piano. That is a good thing. God's perfect timing.

It's not in my value system to buy more than I need. Food. Clothes. Toys. I'm not a hoarder, my house is probably pretty high on the tidy scale, but when I hear the lightning and thunder, I batten down the hatches. I buy more blueberries than an army can eat. . . stress requires antioxidants after all. . . and then. . . we throw them out when they spoil. Ditto for kids' clothes. What if I can't do laundry for forty days and forty nights? We've got to have enough undershirts to survive that kind of tragedy. Exaggeration alert. . . 

This entry is a really long and honest way of me saying that we're reevaluating. I'm reevaluating. Where is my heart? What is my treasure?

Family, church, friends, our kids' music education.

Our time.

Way back when I was taking Book 1 from Doris, I asked her how she managed to balance teaching and family life. She told me she had a good husband and a lot of help. I've got the good husband part. I'm upping the help part.

I'm on a self imposed spending moratorium, and I'm putting my money into my time. My sugar eaters anonymous program is a physical reminder of that. One other facet for me, is to use up the stockpile of everything that I have in my possession, before buying anything new. For shampoo, that means that I'm really hopeful that Mary's grandchildren like the smell of Paul Mitchell. I guess we have this much because you never know when things could get really busy, or terrorists could attack, and we might need to wash our hair 37,454,281 times. And conditioner of course, because in tough times you can't have snarls.

Much love to everyone. . . you are my treasure too!