Setting up

It was time to enlarge the top of the improvised living room table to make it usable for board games.  I spent some time thinking about building out the cable spool end further, got stuck on how to support the new part from underneath considering the structure of the base, and then remembered that we had some boards that were the right length, and I could just build a whole new table top.  Putting the boards together went quickly; I only had to saw the cross pieces.  The surface is partially varnished from before, and I will probably throw a tablecloth over it when company comes over.

A while back I finished hemming a set of cloth diapers I had cut from a flannel sheet.  The sheet is from a set I bought at a garage sale for $3, and I think I got something like 13 or 14 diapers out of it altogether, including using the pillowcase for a cloth diaper as-is.

I also sewed a pillowcase to actually be used as a pillowcase, from fabric in my stash, and used up most of the thread that kept tangling up in my sewing machine.  It got better-behaved toward the end of the spool.

We had several chairs that needed gluing.  Happily, we have bar clamps now.  When I was done, I had leftover glue, and a pile of sticky bits of fabric I had been wiping up glue with, a wooden skewer that I had been spreading the glue with, and a sheet of paper I had been using to catch drips.  I kneaded the fabric in the glue, arranged it slightly on the paper, stuck the skewer into the center, let it dry, and now I have a fake flower that I can stick out in the window box in the spring.  I'm not sure how the glue will do outdoors, but it should be okay for a while.   

There was a story from one of the local news stations recently about a group that was teaching people how to turn milk jugs into mini-greenhouses:  cut horizontally most of the way around the center, punch a few drainage holes in the bottom, put in soil, plant seeds in it, then close it back up.  My husband has done this before.

New diaper covers

Recently I retired some of our cloth diaper covers, the last of the ones that we bought for our first baby.  I had been extending them for the last baby, who had outgrown them, by pinning them on with the diapers, but the baby started escaping from them regularly.

To replace the diaper covers, I made several new ones:  two layers of fabric with a layer of plastic enclosed in between. For a pattern, I traced around a secondhand pocket diaper that we use as a diaper cover.  It has no elastic around the leg openings, yet it manages to achieve a decent level of containment.  

For plastic, I used ironed-together chip bags for one, and stole my bulk rice bag sewing machine cover for the other.  The rice is both tougher and more flexible.

The sewing procedure is very similar to making prefold cloth diapers, which for some reason I can't find any decent directions for, so:  take the fabric for one side, sew the innards to it on the "wrong" side, then add the fabric for the other side with the "right sides" together and sew around the edges--but leave a gap so you can turn it right side out, and then once it is turned, sew the gap closed. For diapers, I also topstitch around the edges to keep them from inverting in the wash.

For closures, I experimented with using elastic ponytail holders and large (coat) buttons, sewing on the elastics where the tension would keep the loops secure on the buttons.

In practice, this works fairly well, although it would be better to have two elastics per side, so that the back edge doesn't pivot outward and make a gap around the leg.  The buttons I used are large enough that no additional buttons are needed for this.

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Then I made a new cover for my sewing machine, using a nice fabric remnant that was handed down to me, that was too small for a pillow cover.

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I took some water bottles that were getting in the way, filled them with water and two drops of chlorine bleach each, and put them aside for use in emergencies and outings.

Buying chlorine bleach at the grocery store was annoying.  New versions have been introduced since the last time I bought any, in the Pre-Covidian Era.  Now there are fabric-preservatives and new scents added to most of them.

I also use bleach to turn black cotton clothing into brown cotton clothing, socks in particular.  The key is to use very little bleach in sufficient water, and to rinse thoroughly right afterward.

Mending and melding

I finally took a stab at my mending pile, and was able to adequately repair several items of clothing, one of which required serious darning/re-weaving where a button's stitching had ripped right out.

One of the things I did a while ago, and then forgot about, was to overdye a skirt and shirt in the washer.  The skirt had colors that were too bright, and the shirt was much too pale.  The skirt came out very nicely, and the shirt came out in a dull but tolerable shade.

I did a quick experiment with cutting a milk jug into narrow strips and then crocheting them.  Crochet uses up length very quickly, and it was difficult to cut very much of it because the scissors I was using tended to slide on the plastic.

Then I messed around with ironing the result, in between sheets of kitchen parchment paper. The plastic fused in some places and not in others.

I also tried ironing flat pieces of milk jug together to fuse them, again using parchment paper to protect the iron and working surface.  This worked, but since the plastic shrinks a bit when heated, you can't butt two edges together and expect them to stay there.  It also doesn't come out entirely flat.

At the playground, I found some stringy dead weeds that could probably be made into a rustic basket, if one reliably had their hands free for working.

I counted diapers going into the washer, and indeed as described in The Tightwad Gazette, twenty diapers equals one load of diaper laundry.  Cloth wipes are included in that, and really it is twenty diaperings rather than diapers, because I am putting a newborn-size diaper inside a larger-baby diaper at each diaper change.

I don't have time for this crap, but someone has to say it...

 ...Knock. It. Off.

By the way, I was in far more physical danger during the Minneapolis/St. Paul riots--with the Twin Cities under curfews, and my midwife at risk of being pulled over on the drive to my house, where I was overdue to go into labor with a Baby of Unusual Size--than any member of Congress ever was during the January 6 "insurrection". 

If that link doesn't work, try my Locals.com Psalm73 community, which you can join for $2, I think (which goes to Locals, not to me). 

The simplest, most basic tests of who the true President is:  Does he like babies?  And do babies like him?

Biden has failed that first one already, starting with his own grandbaby that he wouldn't even acknowledge.  I don't even know if that baby is a boy or a girl! 

My turn, part 1

My turn to haul out the sob stories, I mean.  Aren't we all a bit tired of hearing them from the left for the past four years, and also the eight years before that, and the eight before that as well....

There was something in the newspaper from a week ago Sunday that set me off a bit.  A Hmong woman was telling about how when her mother was admitted to the hospital for COVID, for her first meal the nurses ordered a special meal for her that is the first meal that they serve to Hmong women after they give birth.  After that. her family brought in "culturally-appropriate" meals for her every day.

When I transferred to the hospital with my first baby, after giving birth at home, it was in the wee hours of the morning.  The baby needed some medical observation, nothing too worrisome, and I had lost somewhat more than the usual blood loss--but not so seriously as to need to go to the hospital by myself.

I may or may not have been given a breakfast that morning in the obstetric ward, after being up all night, but at lunch time I was given a tray, and I also had a bunch of doctors coming in and out, and I didn't feel comfortable eating in front of them.  When the tray-collector came around, I told her I wasn't finished with it.  Which you can take as meaning that I had had practically no free time for eating at all, because I'm not a slow eater.

When time was coming on for supper, I remember remarking to the nurses about 6:30 pm that I was looking forward to dinner, because by then I was quite hungry.  Two or three hours later, a nurse came in, found me slumped down (with baby safely tucked in at my side) and despondent, and asked, "What's wrong?"

"Starving," I murmured.  Supper had never arrived, and my blood sugar was falling.  My husband had been away dealing with home and things, so I had been alone in the hospital for several hours at least, and not wanting to bother the nurses.

She went away, and came back with a skimpy little sandwich, and an apple.  There may have been a little juice as well.  But that was it--no tray, and no dinner.

I called my husband after I had perked up a little, and told him to BRING REAL FOOD.  He eventually showed up, bringing me a meal from Wendy's--Wendy's, after being up all night and all day giving birth and then being in the hospital.

It may be of interest to some readers to know that my hemoglobin level was 7, and all they did for it was give me some iron pills.

I think we were able to go home the next day, but before that they did a jaundice test on the baby, which led to us returning to the hospital the following day for an even bigger s***show.

This time, the baby was an official patient, as I was not, but they gave me a room to sleep in, and the baby went to the nursery.  We got there in the evening, having had to drive very slowly through crowds from a sporting event who were unsportingly blocking the streets to the hospital, and who may have received some unsporting hand gestures in return. I sat up the whole first night with the baby; apparently one of the effects of higher blood loss while giving birth is that the post-birthing hormones are concentrated within a smaller blood volume, so I felt that this was within my capability, and I wanted to stay with my baby, and bond.  At 6:30 am, however, I was very tired, and went to bed.  At 7 am, while I was still awake, a very loud noise started up outside the window, my boarded-up window.  On a Saturday.  The hospital was building an addition, and just had to have the Giant Jackhammer going right outside what should have been my window, for several hours.  I don't even know when I was able to go to sleep.  I hadn't slept much the night before, either.

As a non-patient, the hospital was not even pretending to feed me, but my husband brought me little meals from the cafeteria, mostly hard-boiled eggs and hot dogs, and at some point my mother-in-law brought in two or three meals' worth of chicken stew, which I was able to refrigerate and microwave.

The baby's medical treatment was an additional s***show, and so was dealing with the rest of the dozen obstacles to breastfeeding that I haven't yet described, but we were able to go home again toward the very end of the third day.

So maybe you can understand now why I am triggered by that newspaper article.  It's no use complaining to the hospital I was at; it closed a couple of years ago.

A handy tool

Somewhere along the way, we inherited a long-handled weeding fork. I am finding it useful these days not only for weeding without bending, but also for clearing the little round cottonwood pods out of the spaces between the deck boards.  Two more things that I can do while carrying the baby!

A signal for the sickroom

Sickroom isn’t quite the right word for the bedroom where the newest Baby of Unusual Size and I have been hanging out since his home birth last week. It is at the far end of the house, and can go without attention from the rest of the family for hours at a time...which is sometimes too long.

A couple of weeks ago, my husband looked into why the doorbell, an older wireless model with a button and a chime that communicate by radio, wasn’t working. We had a similar one, new in the box, that had been handed down to us at some point. I’m not sure exactly what he ended up doing, something like replacing the original button with the new one we had, I think. They can work on the same frequency.

Later on, I got the idea of taking one of the buttons and using it to ring the doorbell and summon assistance when needed. He must have given me the only one that worked. Anyway, it works fine from the bedroom, and it has been very helpful more than once.

In other topics, I am finding this pantry/craft space inspiring; it has been a while since I have been able to have a little crafting space of my own.

Kevin Roche looks at Minnesota coronavirus trends. The case numbers have remained fairly flat to slightly declining. The number of long-term care facilities with cases is over 200 now, I read somewhere last week, out of something like 1700 total in the state. While the state has been working to contain this epidemic-within-a-pandemic, I still see a high potential for these facilities to be infected. It will just be spread out over several years, and considering the turnover of residents that can happen over such a time period, it is likely that places that had been cleared before will see fresh outbreaks later on.

So I still expect to see cumulative Minnesota deaths run up into five digits, eventually. They are at about 1300 now. At the same time, I think it is time for Governor Walz to stop twiddling the dials. There is an effort being made now to recall him, but apparently the law requires trying him in the state Supreme Court, and only if that is successful can there be a special election held to try to vote him out.

Improvements

The neighbors handed down their children's outgrown bikes to us. They have been enjoying them.

I made another fabric-covered box, for storing baby clothes. The box I used was a bit shallow, so I measured the depth of the box plus the width of one flap, divided it by two, and scored a line across the flap at that point. This enabled me to fold the each flap down into the box so that it just came down to the bottom, making the sides taller and stronger.

With the proliferation of both economic insecurity and cardboard boxes from deliveries, it reminded me of the Seventies books Nomadic Furniture and Nomadic Furniture 2, which included a lot of cardboard structures...all the way up to a cardboard car seat, which would not be at all legal today.

Another idea I had for the fabric-covered box was to use clothespins to help hold the fabric in place until I could sew it. They were helpful.

Since the toddler is learning to open doors, we needed to pull out one of the plastic childproofing doorknob covers that we have. The problem was that the stem of the doorknob was too big for it to close around. But I was able to trim the doorknob cover with a pocketknife to make the hole large enough to fit.

I also used a pocketknife to trim some sharp edges off the plastic lid of the dish soap bottle that my husband likes to refill and re-use.  One less tactile annoyance.

Flat diapers experiment

I had a couple of used flannel sheets to work with a while back, and decided to experiment by making flat diapers out of them, instead of prefolds. (A set of prefold instructions, not by me, are here; I use a similar method--a center pad sandwiched between two outer layers--but I cut the outside layers as one piece, if possible.)

For flat diapers, all you do is cut large rectangles and hem them. To use one on a baby, you fold the diaper into a smaller rectangle, or a triangle, trying to put the greatness thickness where it will be needed the most. Then pin at the sides with diaper pins, and put on a water-resistant diaper cover, which could be PUL, or wool, or nylon "plastic pants", or an empty pocket diaper (any of which may need to be handwashed, depending on your washer; read the manual).

(Diaper pins are not so easy to find anymore, except online; the last time we bought them was by special order.)

The main advantage of flat diapers is that they are easier (and faster) to wash and dry than prefolds.

I did notice, though, that they seemed to be shedding more lint in the dryer than my prefold diapers ever did. I think this is because the entirety of both sides of the fabric is exposed; with a prefold diaper, the inner layers are more protected from abrasion, and any lint they shed might be trapped inside the diaper.

So I expect that the flat diapers will have a somewhat shorter lifespan than the prefolds. A prefold might take me 45 minutes or so to cut and sew; a flat diaper under ten minutes.

I think I got about ten flat diapers out of a single full/double flannel sheet, but that was probably from the sheet that was very worn in the middle.

I will also add that I was reminded recently about the old practice of "turning" an old (flat) sheet to extend its lifespan:  cut it down the middle the long way, and make the old middle into the new edges, and the old edges into the new middle. This leaves a seam down the center, but that is tolerable. I have a sheet (made by L.L. Bean) that has been going strong for over a decade, which I plan to use this technique on, when the time comes.

Preparing for Christmas

I am enjoying this Christmas season a little differently this year. Having a new baby, I am taking things much more slowly and simply.

My Christmas shopping is mostly done, and mostly will be done at the thrift store and the grocery store--but not during the baby's third-week and sixth-week growth spurts.

Our Christmas decorations are exactly the same as in past years (follow Christmas tag on the sidebar to see posts with pictures), except that I haven't made any paper snowflakes.

I've been taking a moment here and there to stop and enjoy the Christmas lights in our house and neighborhood.

I did one fairly quick papercraft:  shaving cream marbling on some index cards.  How:  make a pile of shaving cream, stir in paint until partially mixed, flatten the surface of the cream, and press the card down onto it. Then carefully lift the card, scrape off the excess shaving cream, and set the card aside to dry.  I used bronze acrylic artists' paint, Golden brand, which had the unexpected effect of leaving a verdigris color where the paint was thinnest.

Christmas baking will happen next week. I usually make caramel popcorn, and will attempt to make a batch of cookies from an old family recipe (full batch:  10 dozen cookies). My husband usually makes some kind of a sugar cookie for the kids to decorate.

A pregnancy project: Making things stay put

Making room for a new baby mostly means making time for a new baby...with an emptier schedule, fewer commitments, and simpler housekeeping.   I did some work on the last point, to fix some things that seemed to never stay where I had put them.

One rocker had a seat cushion that ended up on the floor at least six times a day.  I used scrap pieces of denim to make ties for it, which I sewed onto the cushion by hand.  That was several months ago, and I haven't had to put it back even once.

Our bath towels were frequently sliding off their pegs. So I crocheted a loop onto a corner of each towel, using sturdy cotton yarn. The yarn has been in our stash for years, but the colors coordinated well with the bathroom colors. Now the towels stay put. I should note, though, that the pegs for the towels used by the younger children are horizontal, and they can easily get their towels down without ripping the loops off; in other situations, that might be a problem.

I have a crate that we are using for a piano bench, with a seat pad made of several layers of fabric, tied together quilt-fashion. This seat pad was also frequently found on the floor.  I used linen yarn to tie it directly to the crate, through the hand-hole. Now it sometimes is flipped down, but it is easy to flip back.

One of the children's winter coats did not have a loop inside the collar for hanging it up; I made one out of a scrap of bias tape, and sewed it in.

Sabbatical 3: Lessons learned

Having just completed my third one-year sabbatical, there were a couple of things about it that surprised me.

The first is how much of this sabbatical I spent just catching up on maintenance and unfinished projects. When you take a break from "getting ahead", there is time to do those sorts of things.

The second is that even though our income was the same as the previous year, we had a number of financial challenges over the year that left us needing to make do and do without, much more than usual. Last sabbatical, I put some money toward a special crafting project--a homemade fiddle from a kit.  This time, I did another special sabbatical project (which I will post about later), but for the most part I crafted and created using only materials that I already had, or ones that showed up unbidden on my doorstep.  I made lots and lots and lots of things, but I never ran out of supplies.

For part of the year, I set my never-ending to-do list aside, and just did what needed to be done, or what I wanted to do.  Other times, I went back to making lists, and went full speed ahead on Getting Things Done. I have a new baby coming very soon, and there was a lot that needed to be done beforehand.

Spiritually, I have spent a lot of time reading George MacDonald novels, and I have been learning a lot from him. (He has been a significant influence on C. S. Lewis and other Christian writers).

I also put some effort into making wish lists this time...sometimes I get so used to using what I have and doing without, that I forget to think about what I would actually like to get. What is remarkable, looking back, is how many of those things that I listed actually showed up, one way or another.  Some things I was able to buy, some things I was able to make or improvise, other things I realized that I didn't really want after all, and a number of things were handed down to me, unasked-for. It sounds like The Secret's "law of attraction" at work, but I don't believe in that; I believe in a God who loving and gracious. George said, in one of his books, that no desire is too small to set before God, who will purify it.

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The book I wrote after my second sabbatical year, The Serendipitous Sabbatical:  Rest in Unexpected Places, can still be found here.

Just simple solutions

Our refrigerator still thinks it is a freezer...sometimes. That makes it hard to store non-freezable foods like lettuce; I just gave up on buying them for a while. Finally, I started putting them in a small cooler, and the cooler into the fridge. That has been working well.

The other thing is that we have a nearly-walking baby. We found that an empty five-gallon bucket, upside down, makes a good push toy on a hard floor. Baby is very happy to toodle around the kitchen pushing it. We always make sure to close the basement door first.

Survival mode

There's a good post on that here for you.

I'd add:

I've put in a lot of work over the years to scale our lifestyle down. There is a very long list of things that I don't do, and of all the things that I do do, I do none of them perfectly. More like 30%-80%.

Pay special attention to making sure that diapers get changed on time; diaper rashes during survival mode are no fun at all.

The most essential essentials are food, clothing, and shelter. Probably the house will keep standing up on its own for a while, so that leaves food and clothing. And diapers.

Exercise:  Even ten or fifteen minutes, twice a week, makes a big difference. Use weights (enough to challenge you at 5 reps, but not so heavy that you hurt yourself), and get physics on your side:  Force = Mass x Acceleration, Work = Force x Distance, Power = Work / Time. In other words, use heavier weights, work up to fast but controlled movements, and do only a few reps of each motion before going on to the next.

Rest:  Write it on your to-do list, because in survival mode you're too busy not to rest. Seize your opportunities as they arise.


UPDATED TO ADD:

Water:  Pay special attention also to keeping your water intake consistent.  If your hydration is all over the place, your blood sugar and mood and willpower and eating will be, too.

Overhauls and a new project

The time came for some more diaper refurbishing--replacing the outer flannel layer of worn-out prefolds.  (The center pads in prefolds last much longer, and can be re-used.) Their last re-covering wore out relatively quickly, after only a year or so, because I used fabric from a flannel blanket with a looser weave, instead of from flannel sheets or clothing. Still, the blanket I used was only $2 at the thrift store, had a pretty pink and white plaid pattern, and was a good buy, considering the use we got out of it.

So, I took a used flannel sheet, twin size, and cut it up for diapers. There was enough fabric to re-cover nine toddler-size prefolds. I have been slowly sewing these as I have time, and only have one left to do.

Another project I have been working on is knitting a towel, as an experiment. The idea came from a book, Flanagan's Smart Home, which lists basic household necessities for starting out or starting over. According to Flanagan, a simple waffle weave towel will dry you and itself faster than a standard bath towel. I have some nice cotton yarn from a sweater that I carefully unraveled some years ago. At one point, I started knitting a vest with it, but I'm not really a vest person. For the towel, I decided on a K2, P2 check pattern* as the easiest way to achieve a waffle-like texture. Because of the width, I am only knitting one or two rows at a sitting, so this project is going to take a while.

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*Knitting books almost never mention this, but to change back and forth between knit and purl stitches in the same row, you need to bring the yarn between the needles so that it is coming in from the right direction for the next stitch. So patterns with more switches between K and P stitches will take longer to knit. I chose K2, P2 rather than K1, P1 because it would create a similar effect, but would be faster to knit.

A few things

I did a little Christmas shopping at the thrift store--in our family, we give mostly new things for Christmas and birthdays, but also a few good used things. It is hard to get to many stores as a one-car family, and I rarely shop online, so I'm not looking forward to the rest of the Christmas shopping.

We had homemade bean and ham soup for lunch today...very easy to make, except for remembering to start the beans soaking the night before. Later on, a child made homemade bread.

I've been cranking out some quick sewing projects here and there:  diaper covers, underwear, leggings.

I also have a furniture project going, but slowly as it requires a lot of sawing, so it's more of an exercise project.

My husband has a 1970's soft sculpture-style wreath in primary colors that his mom made. At one point, I tried hanging it in various places indoors, but it didn't fit in anywhere. One child suggested hanging it on the front door, so that is where it is now.

I did the FlyLady sink shining (first babystep in her system). My sink definitely needed the bleach soak.

This baby has reached the point of needing Ridiculous Diapering at night:  an extra-large toddler-size cloth diaper, with a doubler (extra center pad), inside a waterproof cover, then over those a medium cloth diaper, with another waterproof cover over it, to catch what leaks out of the inner diaper (which is completely soaked by morning).

Here come the holidays

Finally, the urge to start crafting Christmas gifts and decorations and food strikes...just before the holiday season starts.

One year I made an Advent calendar by listing people and objects from the Christmas story in the book of Luke, along with some of the titles of Jesus, on index cards. I then did a sort of scavenger hunt around the house and at a salvage/surplus store, looking for a small object to represent each one.  Some of these things are heavily improvised--Fourth of July sparklers to represent frankincense--but we do have a tiny bottle with a tiny bit of real myrrh. The objects are kept in a bag made from a scrap of red and green fabric. So we have a family tradition of going through the cards and pulling out the objects, even though we frequently fall several days behind.

I am planning on sewing doll clothes from some vintage pink satin (part of a ball gown) that was given to me.

We have a fireplace that is set into a wall of brick, with no mantel. I've been thinking about what I could hang up there. Once upon a time we had an outdoor vine wreath that a bird had built a nest into, but it disappeared during the last move. Probably I should just put up something that we can put our Advent calendar objects on.

I usually make a large batch of kettle corn (caramel popcorn) to give to family. With babies around, I rarely bake cookies. Sometimes my husband does cookie baking with the kids.

My Christmas card list is very short. Once or twice, I made cards by carving a potato stamp, and stamping the design onto paper.

I've been trying to make a Christmas ornament each year for each child, that they can take with them when they grow up and move out. One year I used salt dough, which didn't hold up well in either use or storage.

Grace notes

Yesterday I picked a few fallen birch twigs from the yard to put in a vase.

Today I spent some time going around with a damp rag. It makes a remarkable difference in a home when the barely perceptible dust and little handprints are taken care of.

On Monday, "Rake leaves while the sun shines" turned out to be wise; the weather changed to thunderstorms in the afternoon.

I've almost gotten a handle on this baby's rhythm: he has his days and nights straight, but the one longer nap that he takes each day moves around in a precessional sort of way. Maybe he's on a 26-hour day.

Toned

I've been sick, and only recently finished painting the base of the new used coffee table. For paint, I mixed some old paint samples together, guessing that the color would come out lavender. It did, but it was too bright for the mudhole colors in the living room. I experimented with wiping some black acrylic over it, but it was too difficult to apply evenly. So I mixed a little of the black paint in with the lavender for a second coat. and that came out much better, although still slightly too bright. It relates to the colors in the rug and the quilt now. I have about enough paint left for an even more toned-down third coat, when I get to it.

I also made progress on the skirt that I am handsewing; I finished the side seams. I am using crochet thread in a backstitch, which goes more quickly than one might expect.

Next month's big project will be raking leaves. I have been getting an early start because I'll be doing most of it, while carrying a baby. I can rake one-handed for short periods, and then lift the leaves into the bin with my trusty scoop shovel (grain scoop). I'm glad I started lifting weights a little again.

Seed money

I made it to the thrift store, knowing that I don't really need anything at the moment except for more books. I spend a lot of time reading in the newborn weeks, and am well on the way to having read ten thousand pages this time around.

I found three paperbacks: one spiritual, one practical, and one classic literature. With a 40 percent off sale, it was 93 cents for the three, and the practical book is likely to save me many, many times that amount.

With cash flow being tight recently, I decided not to renew our only magazine subscription (Backwoods Home). But there, too, over the course of a year's subscription I am likely to find information and ideas that are worth far more than the subscription price to me. (If only learning about things enough to know that I don't want to try them.) So I am reconsidering it.

The spiritual book was also worth far more than its price--it has gotten me thinking about goals and dreams and vocation again. At one time, we had a fairly definite plan that we were working through, but circumstances changed and God led us in a different direction.