Hello there friends! Has it really been 3 months since I posted last? I know I’ve said it all before, but I’m certain, absolutely certain, that time is speeding up.

Anyhow, how’ve you been?

It’s been an eventful three months here. My eldest took his first solo airplane trip to… are you sitting down?…. Japan. He had a life-altering kind of adventure. We haven’t even begun to weed through all of the stories and photos, but you can read a little bit about his experience here.

We’ve also been working hard to alter the color of our thumbs from deathly black to greeeeeeen! We put in several raised beds, read up and dug in. As of now, we’ve got honest to goodness green tomatoes, baby peppers, teeny tiny little beans and itty bitty little zucchini. So far so good!

Our next endeavor is to put up some netting to keep out the pesky birds and squirrels. For the first time ever, dare I say it, I’m thinking we might actually get to eat vegetables that we grew ourselves!

Can you believe it? I’ve been dreaming up all sorts of salsas and sauces to use up the mountains and mountains of tomatoes that we’ll achieve (fingers firmly crossed). This weekend though, we discovered Green BLTs at the 290 Cafe… fried green tomatoes, bacon, lettuce, and avocado on Texas Toast. Holy. Heavens they’re tasty! I intend to make more of those and add some peppers into the mix!

Just behind the garden you can see something else that is somewhat new and very dear to me. My very own little hideaway.

Years ago, that building was my father-n-law’s wood shop. As a kid, my husband helped him build it. Then after we bought the house as young marrieds it became a kind of dude hang out spot. Years later it was my husband’s office, then an RC helicopter shop. And now? It is a cottage studio all for me. I firmly believe that it is this building’s best incarnation yet. A place to draw and dream, listen to music or enjoy the quiet, read and create and just be. For this hermit of a girl (hermitess?) it is a blessing of the highest order. It was all my sweet Mr. Blue Yonder’s idea. That man is good to me. Truly.

I do love my men, my treasures, more than anything, but solitude and quiet, cleanliness and space? Well they do make those things rarities.

Having my own studio space gives me the  chance to drift between two worlds – the beautiful, raucous chaos of living alongside my band of merry men, and the still, pretty, pleasures of a peaceful cottage tucked away among the flowers.

I am blessed indeed.

I even got a “haint blue” ceiling.  In my opinion, every good southern girl should have a haint blue ceiling in her life!

All that new, clean, pretty space has lead to many many blissful minutes (okay, hours) spent putting those markers to good use.

If you are so inclined, you can visit my shop on Etsy and take a gander. There are currently only a few little listings, but as with our garden, I have high hopes that good things will continue to spring up there.

To borrow a phrase from the incomparable Garrison Keillor, “Be well. Do good work. Stay in touch!”

February in Texas is so glorious. It’s Baby Bear Weather – - not too cold, not too hot. Juuuuuust right.

The birds are singing and building nests. The irises and lilies have emerged. Little seedlings are spreading their hopeful little green wings in tiny pots on our window sills. It’s heady stuff this springing… we can hardly keep our minds on anything at all past digging, and humming, and feeling the damp earth under bare feet.

But…. well… as a born and raised Texan, I know, deep in my soul, how very precious and short lived this loveliness is.

Soon, too too soon, we will descend into the depths of triple digit temperature hell. There will be long stretches of breath-sucking oven heat, car seats that are too hot to sit on without dancing a bit, groceries that wither and melt no matter how quickly you rush home, burn bans and water restrictions, depressingly low lake levels and smashed garden dreams.

Call me a pessimist if you will, but this isn’t my first rodeo. It is what it is. Hot.

And so, while I will strive to cherish every ounce of this lovely spring before it vanishes, I will also be making ready to endure the trial ahead. Like a marathoner trains, like  a squirrel hoards nuts, like a sailor carefully  takes on supplies for the long journey ahead, I will prepare to survive another Texas summer without losing my ever-loving mind and winding up under the table, stripped down to my skivvies with a frozen margarita intravenous drip.

Step one: Acquire ice cream maker. Done. I got this one. Yes, in turquoise. A nice coooool color, don’t you think?

Step two: Commence to dabbling in the culinary arts of ice cream recipe creation.

Less than 24 hours after procuring the machine, I give you:

Peanut Butter Ice Cream

2 cups 2% Milk

2/3 cup Heavy Cream

1/2 cup Creamy Peanut Butter

1/2 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix. Freeze. Enjoy.

We sprinkled a few chocolate and peanut butter chips over ours, because we’re overachievers where sweets are concerned. Really though, I think that it was perfect without any add-ins at all. Perfect, like lick the bowl clean perfect.

And now, Step 3 of my summer survival plan …. figure out how I’m going to eat all this ice cream and still manage to wear a swim suit.

Hey there, friends!

You know, in the last couple of years, as my boys have gotten bigger, I have slipped a bit off the “make it your own self” wagon.

Well…. actually, it dropped my rear end in the dirt and that wagon disappeared over the horizon faster than you can say “microwavable popcorn.”

I never meant for it to happen. In fact, I meant very specifically for it NOT to happen. I never wanted our family to be harried and hurried and rushing about from scouts, to fiddle lessons, to football to karate to book club. But children get older, and their passions sprout and try as you might, they discover that there’s a great big world full of possibilities out there, and they want to be a part of it. Their studies get more intense too, and it takes longer, more of me to help them find truth and see beauty in oh, say, algebra and latin, than it once did to inspire them with play doh and watercolors.

And so I opted for convenience until we found our groove.

It has taken me a while.

In the interest of keeping it real and speaking plainly: We bought rather than crafted. Things like nature journaling and sprouting alfalfa and making jam and handmade gifts…. few and far between.  We got by and did what needed doing, and I learned to let some stuff go in the interest of peace and sanity.

I also learned to keep a sketchbook and pencils handy. All the creativity that I once poured into handmade was spent doodling away in snatched moments while I waited for piano lessons to wrap up or as I listened to memory work recitations. We all found new passions and pleasures and talents. We didn’t do a lot of handmade, but we crafted in new ways and honed new skills.

Mostly, that was fine, our season of life, but I missed the slower pace, the heart and soul that went into making something so simple as Our Daily Bread.

I think though, that we’re turning a bend of sorts. My boys are growing ever more capable of taking on some of the daily tasks. They have learned to do many jobs and do them well. We have gone from little boys “helping” (i.e. sending flour clouds into the air, emptying half a bottle of glass cleaner on one window, and sweeping everything BUT the dirt) to big boys who can really and truly HELP. They can clean, like on their own. They can cook whole meals. They can tackle half the shopping list for me. They can wash the cars and mow the lawn. They are becoming able young men.

And  you know what? They can also remember “the old days” when mama made every little thing.

I often hear “remember when we….” or “remember how we used to make…”

They miss those days too.

So, here lately, when their sentences begin that way, my response has been , “I sure do. Would you like to learn how?”

Just recently that meant that my youngest learned to make skillet apple pie. My oldest learned to make homemade bread and tomato pie. Yesterday, the middle man learned to make our yogurt.

And with all those many hands making light work?  We had some time to learn a few new tricks too. Yesterday we took our first pass at making granola. Because what better way could there be to celebrate this new phase – this mama/boy partnership – than a His and Hers meal of yogurt + granola?

Blue Yonder Ranch Triple Fruit Granola

(this is our adaptation of an original recipe found here)

4 Cups Old Fashioned Rolled Oats

1 Cup apple sauce (we used Cherry Berry flavored)

2 Tablespoons Unrefined Coconut Oil (melted)

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup honey (I replaced a 1/3 of this with cane syrup)

1 cup of chopped pecans

1 cup of dried fruit (we used equal parts cranberry, blueberry and pomegranate)

MIx all the ingredients and spread out on lined/greased cookie sheets.  Bake at 300 for about 45 minutes, tossing every 15 minutes. The granola will crisp up as it cools. Allow it to cool completely before storing.

For our first pass at granola, I think this was quite a success. Next time I might make it just a bit sweeter and add coconut. Come to think of it, next time I might just let a boy make it and see what comes of it.

I could get used to this new stage of life – big boys taking the wheel, lending a hand, picking up where I left off.

Delicious.

I think we may just be re-finding our groove, and we  might even catch up with that wagon one of these days after all. Or… maybe we’ll just walk a while and enjoy the view.

Hello again! Look at me on a blogging roll! It feels awfully nice to be here with you again, and I do so appreciate you hanging around to chat with me.

Okay, so I have been wanting to make soap for ages and ages but every time I started looking into it I’d get to the cautionary statements about lye and think… well…. maybe not.

And then some time would go by and I’d see rows upon rows of gorgeous, creamy, smelly-good soaps at farmers markets or craft fairs, or I’d see that another blog friend had given it a whirl with gorgeous results, and I’d think…. well… maybe.

I’d read up on it all again, get to the lye and…

Rinse. Repeat.

Finally though, this last time that I got that soap-making itch, I traded a few emails with my very talented and kind friend, Alice. She kindly shared a recipe with me, along with some videos, and links. She answered my questions and most importantly gave me encouragement. I could do this.

And so we jumped.

The method we used is called “cold process” soap. That just means that you don’t bake it and so it has to cure for several weeks after the making.

We bought three 1X4s and built a couple of molds like these (only ours are half the size). This is where my children learned that mama can wield a saw and make a box, but no one said she could cut a straight line or make a box that had no gaps in the corners. Ahem.

No matter. That’s why you line the dern things with freezer paper. Alice pointed me to this video and it helped greatly in getting nice tight liners.

Behold.

Mind, I didn’t say they were pretty.

Next we set out to find all the supplies for Alice’s recipe, which was mostly olive oil, coconut oil, distilled water and a little beeswax. And… LYE!

The first bits were easy to find. If you’ve got a COSTCO nearby they sell big honkin’ jars of coconut oil for a reasonable price. I got my beeswax from Hobby Lobby and it melts beautifully and smells divine. I could bathe in it. Really. Ha! I will tell you though that beeswax is not the easiest thing to cut. It’s pretty hard actually. I’m sure it’s for this reason that they sell something online called “Beeswax Pastilles,” which is just beeswax already in little bits that you don’t have to cut up.

The lye threw us a bit. If you buy it online you have to have a valid passport, a clean criminal record and sign away your first born. And then you end up with 87 pounds of stuff that you can’t store or throw away and you have to live with it forever and ever amen.

Okay, I’m exaggerating, but not much.

If you call around asking people for lye they will worry that you’re starting up a meth lab in the neighborhood, and they’ll also tell you they don’t have it. For the most part, they’re speaking the truth (about the not having lye part, I mean). Sometimes though, they just don’t KNOW that they have it because the jar doesn’t do a good job of coming out and SAYING that it’s lye.

After driving all over creation and irritating a whole bunch of people with our weird request, we found it at Lowes (which, by the way, is in walking distance of our house). Look in the plumbing section for something called “Roebic Crystal Drain Opener”. On the side of the can it says 100% lye. Bam!

At this point, all we needed were the tools: a 2 quart glass measuring cup that you won’t ever use for anything else, plastic solo cups, 2 big hard plastic spoons (like for serving), a big metal pot that you will never use for anything else, a kitchen scale (Target, $24), a stick/submersible blender that you will never use for food, a kitchen thermometer that will heretofore be dedicated to soap-making (note: I used a glass candle making one and during clean up it fell apart. I don’t know if this was the lye or just a faulty thermometer, but next time I’m using a metal one).

We had all of that but the scale and I’d been meaning to get one of those anyhow, so I feel like we got going pretty frugally.

At this point, there was no turning back and nothing at all to do but go for it.

According to Alice’s directions, we carefully measure out the ingredients saving the lye for last. I measured everything but the lye in plastic cups.

We donned bandanas over our faces, goggles, and rubber gloves. We may or may not have also worn rain boots.We measured it on a table outside, directly into the big glass measuring cup. Poured in the distilled water, stirred until the crystals had dissolved and then ran back inside before it ate off our limbs or the neighbors took our pictures in that get up.

We mixed up the rest of the ingredients in the big metal pot on the stove. When everything was melted together nicely we took it off the burner and waited a while. We started testing the temperature after a few minutes and when it came down to 120 degrees when put on our safety gear and went out to test the temp of the lye. It was a bit higher so we waited a while longer and prayed no one called the cops. We certainly must have looked VERY suspicious.  Eventually,  both pots were in the neighborhood of 110 -120 degrees.

We took the oil pot outside, stirred in the lye and then took it back in where we mixed well with the stick blender.

It was like magic watching it go all creamy and smooth. Saponification! Chemistry! An excuse to call craftiness “homeschooling”! Hooray!

Eventually it looks like cake batter. If you hold up the blender and wiggle it, it makes lines on the top that take a while to sink in. That’s called “tracing.” Once it’s doing that you can add color and scent.

I added lemon to that first batch and while it smelled like lemon cake as we poured it into the molds, you can hardly smell it at all in the finished product. Apparently we either didn’t add enough, or it’s just a case of citrus oils not “fixing” real well in soap without some other ingredients. Oh well. The oils and wax smell great all on their own.

At that point, we poured it into the mold, covered with a cutting board and piled on the towels and blankets. The stuff heats up some and it needs to retain that heat to work properly. We kept sticking our hands in there to feel the sides of the mold getting all nice and warm.

Now you have to walk away for 24 hours.

Once you’ve paced and hoped and prayed and crossed everything you’ve got for all those long hours, you open it up, lift it out and slice.

Voila!

This was such a proud moment. And the cutting? Oh people, it is satisfying in the most elemental kind of way. Like being a kid again with a brand spanking new tub of playdoh in your favorite color.

It was so very satisfying that we gave it another go with a different recipe (originally found here)

7.9 oz Coconut Oil, 6.3 oz Lard, 15.9 oz Olive Oil, 1.6 oz Castor Oil, 10.5 oz Distilled Water and 4.5 oz Lye.

We added several drops of Jasmine and Lavender essential oil to this one, and it smells faint, but so good, like the vague scent of flowers on a breeze through the window.

This time I had to share the cutting privileges. They caught on pretty quickly to how fun it is.

These bars will have to sit for 4-6 weeks and I don’t know how on earth we’re going to keep our hands off them for that long!

The lard batch turned out just as lovely as the first. We really can’t decide which we like better. The earthy rich beeswax scented first batch or the creamy white second. I guess we’ll have to use both! Work work work!

Honestly, I think we’re going to have to figure out new ways to get dirty so that we can use all the soap that we’re planning to make next.

I hope that helps those of you who have been wanting to try to get into soap making. Feel free to ask questions!

Hey there, friends!

I really wish that in this modern age you could SMELL a blog.

Well… come to think of it, maybe not. I DO live in a house full of men and well… you know.

(This little hand drawn illustration can be purchased in my Etsy shop  here)

At the moment though, it smells goooooooood up in here! Lavender and Jasmine, Mint and Rosemary and Thyme, Lemon and Sweet Orange and and and… It sure beats the heck out of the scent of dirty socks and wet dog!

Thanks to the little window into the worlds of some amazing, nurturing, creative women that Instagram has become, I have rediscovered a fascination with essential oils.

(You can find me on Instagram under “blueyondergirl”. If you are interested in natural wellness check out the sweet ladies at “herbanhomestead”, “cantrellcabin” and “”five_chicks_and_farmer”)

If you’ve been here for a while, you might recall that I have very specific ideals and very high standards for my future grand-mothering self. If I’m ever going to live up to those standards and be a proper “Sugar”, I’ve got much to learn!

AND if you’ve been here a while you also know that SOMETIMES I learn by falling backwards into trouble. Like that one time, when I learned QUITE by accident, that if you live in Texas and wear sleeveless things a good bit of the time, you should NOT put citrus oils in your homemade deodorant.

Not unless you think that brown stained pits will catch on and become this summer’s hot new thing.

It could happen I suppose.

I mean, you didn’t think walking around with your drawers hanging down below your cheeks would come into fashion, but it did now didn’t it?

Anyhow, thanks to that little lesson, I am proceeding with MUCH caution. With a couple of good books and the help of Mandi and Alice, we have made some successful inroads into home health and wellness.

Case in point? This lovely homemade body lotion. With the addition of a little lavender oil, it not only soothes dry skin, but it also helps a certain sometimes restless Blue Yonder boy to relax and get to sleep at night. (recipe here)

The golden liquid on the left is just after melting all the ingredients. On the right, you can see the buttery, silky smoothness of the finished product.

And last week, when my middle man came down with a nasty upper respiratory funk? I whipped up a little chest rub of eucalyptus and lavender and I had him sit over a bowl of steaming water, dried Thyme and tea tree oil. Both of these things really did seem to help him and he loved the extra nurturing. He declared that I would have “totally gotten and A in potions class.”  From a 10 year old boy, that’s some kinda compliment!

I will confess though. With all that success, I did get a little cocky, as I’m apt to do, and decide to take a drop of lavender internally. If you decide to try this, please y’all, only use the kind that’s MEANT for internal use, and even then, well… read on…

I should have read up a bit on how to do this right. I didn’t and I still haven’t, because I’m not entirely sure that I can bring myself to ever try it again.

Like, ever.

I plopped it on a spoon of raw local honey and downed it. Straight up. Guns a blazing. Yeehaw, I’m a tough Texas mama.

Ummm. Not the way to go. This tough Texas mama…

on.

the.

floor.

In seconds flat.

Let me just say to any Hollywood types hanging around these parts (and I’m sure there are ever so many), that if you ever need to work up a good gasping, wretching, throat clenching, eye-watering death scene, just do what I did. You’ll get an Oscar. Fo. Real.

Lordy.

Soon, I’ll tell you about our soap-making adventures and the healing garden that we’re planting.

Until then, and now that we’re getting reacquainted here on the old blog, you might be interested in knowing the handful of other places to find me on the inter webs. My Pinterest Boards are chock full of good things that I’ll get around to someday, and my Illustration Site and Facebook Page are great examples of how I spend my time when I ought to be washing those dirty socks and chasing down that wet dog.

Be well, friends! It’s awfully good to be in your company again!

Hello, friends!

I’ve been promising it for ages and at long last, I’m making good.

We dug deep into the archives, pulled out our old collaborative family project, the seasonal Book of Days, and we’re now making the spring issues available to you as series of three free downloads.

For those of you who have not been with us over the years, the Book of Days is something of a “make and do” family magazine from us to you. Each issue offers lots of ways for families to slow down, spend some time together and make new memories. It is full of family friendly recipes, nature study, ideas for imaginative play, crafts, science, world cultures and more. Every issue is accompanied by a “Parent Field Guide” that contains lots of ideas to expand upon each activity and lists of related books to read.

Each member of my family had a part in dreaming up the ideas within the pages of the Book of Days – testing them out and scrawling them down to share with our blog friends. It was a labor of love. I will admit that some of our early attempts at illustrating and layout make me cringe a little (okay a LOT), but even now, as I look back at these books, homespun as they are, I smile. We had so much fun with them, and we heard from so many other families that they are STILL using these books each year.

My boys are BIG now, but looking back at The Book of Days they are itching to do these projects all over again!

We hope that they will inspire lots of fun and learning for you and your family too.

Our very first installment in the Spring Book of Days series is meant to help your family celebrate the joyful transition from winter to spring. Between its pages you’ll find high flying adventures for your imaginations, and ideas for noticing and document the changes that spring brings to the natural world. You’ll learn all about wind power by creating a soda straw regatta and making pinwheels. You’ll catch a rainbow in a jar, visit green Ireland and sample some of her tastiest treats. (Click on the image above to preview and download it.)

The second edition in our Spring Book of Days series boasts 35 pages of great family fun! You and your children will make two kinds of pie, visit Japan during cherry blossom season, become lepidopterists, create indoor rain showers, give a little something back to the natural world, and more! (Click on the image above to preview and download it.)

The third edition of our Spring Book of Days series is 30 pages of fresh springtime family fun. Your family will sample the flavors and traditional art forms of Mexico, investigate the secret lives of plants and flowers, celebrate mothers, help the flower fairies spread some springttime cheer and dream up some fantastic contraptions. (Click on the image above to preview and download it.)

We hope that you and your family make lots of wonderful memories with the Spring Book of Days!

More free printable Valentine fun!

Another illustration from the blog archives has gotten a fresh new look and is now free for your downloading and printing pleasure.

These little sweethearts come six to a page. Print them on card stock and use them to spread a little sweetness this Valentine’s Day.

Click here to download and print yours: Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

Well hey there friends!

I thought I’d pop in and spread a little Valentine’s Day love your way. I drew these cute critters a while back and wanted to put them here as a free download for you.

Use them as valentine cards,  lunch box notes, or with a little clear packing tape and some pretty ribbon, they make great bookmarks too!

Click here to download and print yours: Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

Thanks so much for the warm welcome back, y’all. It’s so good to be here again.

So, let’s get down to the business of catching up, shall we?

You might be wondering how I fell off the old blogging wagon for so long. Well, it all started with the Great Remodel, as we’ve come to call it.

That was two summers ago, and yet it lingers on. Among other eccentricities, we still have no doors (save for the outer ones). I know that might sound a little crazy, but it actually has its upsides. I know exactly what my boys are up to in their rooms and when I’m mean and awful and ruining their lives? They can’t slam their doors.

Somehow slamming your sheet doesn’t have the same effect, now does it?

When the remodeling commenced, I had a forced hiatus, and you know what happened? I grew to enjoy spending my evenings away from the computer. Sometimes I’d think that something or other would make a good blog post and then just as quickly I’d think, “well yes but… maybe a bowl of ice cream and an episode of Gilmore Girls might be more fun.”

And that would be that.

During my blogging hiatus I watched the entire 7 season run of Gilmore Girls, front to back.

Really.

Remember when we didn’t do TV? Oh how things have changed.

Still like me?

It wasn’t just the lazy evenings that kept me from blogging though. I grew to enjoy seeing friends or having dinner with my extended family and knowing that they didn’t already know all my stories. I could maybe even surprise them from time to time!

I grew to appreciate our anonymity too – - not ever worrying if some wackadoo somewhere had a wall in his bedroom papered with photos of my family.

I enjoyed not thinking about the business of blogging for a while – stressing over how a post would be received, or festering over a comment that hurt me. Will my readers like what I have to say? Will they feel slighted if I don’t answer every comment or visit every blog? Does this blog compare well to other blogs? How are my stats? Do I sell or not sell on my blog? Do I look like a flake if one year I’m kind of an unschooler and the next we’re classical educators? What will my kids think of all this when they’re grown???

On and on and on.

Blogging started to feel like a job, you know? Another thing to fret over.

And those kids of mine? They’re growing older. Clearly no one told them that older kids are supposed to be EASIER than toddlers. They aren’t. They need even more attention and love, guidance and understanding than ever before. The stakes are higher too. I will be straight with you, having older kids has been, and still is, an adjustment for me. I did NOT see that coming!

It is a wonderful blessing in some ways to have big kids. It’s nice to be able to read a book while they swim at the pool (glory!) and having truly thoughtful conversations with your own son is kind of surreal and amazing. Older children are challenging in other ways though. You have to know how to handle it when “all their friends” are allowed to do something that they aren’t, and how not to come unglued when their choice of entertainment, while not exactly BAD, makes your skin crawl.

You see, my men are becoming honest to goodness people, like with opinions and stuff. I actually have to honor their individuality and thoughts now. The nerve! I’ve got to be a be a bit of a gambler, put on my poker face, know when to hold ‘em and… when to ground ‘em.

Big kids are busier than toddlers too! They are involved with friends and sports and classes and lessons, all the stuff I kept at bay for as long as I possibly could while they were little. Along the way though, they learned about the world and all its charms and now they keep me running around from sun up to sun down. I am desperately, DESPERATELY, trying to find the balance between enrichment and exhaustion, letting them explore all the wonders within our reach, while protecting what little remains of the slow, sweet, simplicity that once was our family life. By the time night comes, I am DONE.

Blogging takes a back seat to SLEEP!

I missed this though. I missed the friends that I found here. I missed hearing from you, sharing with you, and laughing with other moms like me, caught up in the throws of raising up a bunch of wild ragamuffins.

Also, I don’t like that almost two years have slipped through my fingers. Sure, I have photos of the big stuff – the trips and holidays and recitals, but I feel like I’ve lost some of the special little things that make up our days. I’ve lost some real treasures:

- the way the oldest thought Bon Jovi was singing about “Living on a Prairie,”

- the way it felt to take our first Mama/Daddy only trip in 10 years,

- the way the littlest man sits in his drawers by the fire on winter mornings to warm his back and then runs to me saying “quick, have some toast with your coffee!”,

- the way I was ready to beat the Lego Robotics judges to smithereens for not crowning my amazing middle boy King of the Universe (or at least winner of the competition) and how he and I both learned that the joy is sometimes in the doing, if not the winning,

- the way our Daddy showed the boys that a geezer can still get it done at the skatepark

It just makes me sad to think of those things that I didn’t store up for later.

It’s okay though. In the words of that great troubadour of old (John Mayer), I didn’t have a camera by my side, so “I could see the world with both my eyes.”

It was a phase of life – just being in the moment, just enjoying what was without worrying at all about how to save it for later.

A feast without leftovers.

A bee doesn’t keep track of the number of flowers it’s visited, right? It just flies through all the days it can.

A flower doesn’t journal about the days it spent in bloom, does it? It just spreads its petals for as long as it can.

So while I don’t have the answers – I still don’t know whether it’s better to blog or not to blog- I do know that I am grateful for the friends that I made and the stories that I shared here. I am equally grateful for the time that I was quiet and for the experiences that I just lived without wondering how they would translate to a post.

What does that mean for the future? I don’t know exactly.

I’m going to feast,

and I’m going to buzz

and I’m going to bloom

and when I can?

I’d like to share it all with you.

Deal?

I know you probably have questions. Lots of them.

Lots of you have emailed and wondered where I’ve gone. I’ve been here. Just here, going about real life. Real crazy, busy, messy life.

From time to time I’ve thought I should pop back in, but… well the longer it got, the harder it was to explain and to know what to say. I’m sorry. I really shouldn’t have left so abruptly.

So, here I am.

Finally.

We’ll get around to catching up, but for now I just wanted to take a stab at breaking the silence and tell you a real life story that after so many stalled efforts finally pushed me over the edge into blogging again.

There is an older man who lives in the woods and spends his days under the overpass close to our house. After reading “Same Kind of Different as Me.” I felt kind of convicted that I should at least TRY to do something for the man that I pass by every single day. So I took him a sack lunch and some mosquito spray, fully prepared for it being a very awkward and uncomfortable couple of seconds, after which I could drive away feeling great about having done a good deed for the day.

Instead I had the pleasure of spending a few minutes getting to know him. He was mightily impressed with the mosquito spray. He said no one had ever thought about him getting “bit up” out there before. And just like that he opened right up talked to me some.

He doesn’t see so well and doesn’t hear so well, but he’s friendly, funny and well… human. A human being with a name – John. His name is John, and he was obviously surprised that I wanted to know it.

So was I.

I drove away not feeling good about myself like I’d thought I would, but ashamed. I’ve passed him by hundreds of times and tried to look every other place BUT in his eyes. I will fully admit that I’m still scared and skeptical of the homeless. It makes me feel awkward every single time I pull the unlucky spot right next to them at the red lights around town, but my experience with John has been eye-opening. They’re just people. I’m not going to fix them or cure them, or maybe even like them much, but if John is any indication, it’s worth the small effort to show them some kindness.

I wouldn’t suggest passing out money (or your phone number or offering rides or anything like that). John had himself a tall beer in a bag at 9 AM. He was a lot more lucid when I talked to him in the morning than when we said hello in the evening. I’m pretty sure he drinks whatever money he gets and by the end of the day the heat and the beer have taken their toll. I can’t say I blame him really, but I’m not going to feed his fog. Still, it won’t hurt me any to make an extra sandwich now and again now will it?

I guess the light bulb moment for me in all of this was this: I mess up. I say stupid things. I do stupid things. I overindulge, fly off the handle, puff myself up and tear others down. I am a real piece of work actually, but I hope that people can look past my messes and love the good parts of me anyway. Who am I not to give John the same courtesy?

So, you know, try it. Next time you see a homeless person, look past the grime and your skepticism and ask them how you can bless them. Get to know them a little. It will make you want to be better.