Life at the Lumberyard

I feel like I’ve been struggling with my religion for a couple years now.  Not my faith.  Not struggling with God.  Not struggling in understanding that Jesus is present in my life.  I’ve been struggling with religion. Because Catholicism is HARD.   And nobody really talks about it.  I’ve scoured the web looking for blogs. I’ve tried to find books that can relate to me and speak not only about Christianity, but really Catholicism (and motherhood too). Something about a journey of how a young mother who has doubts and has concerns about organized religion... about this messed up world we live in... Maybe about a person who does not at all want to leave her faith, but wants more answers than questions. Or someone to gently speak that we cannot have the answers in this life, sweet mama. And that's okay. I can’t find all that much that speaks to any of this though.  I do find a lot of Catholic moms who very much look like they have everything together...

  I was incredibly moved this Palm Sunday by a little detail in the Passion reading - which I have heard and/or read at least 50 times in my life. I used to preach to students about how you should read something once and then maybe twice and then try to read it again after a few years of life… you’ll be amazed at what you find. Amazed at what you never noticed before.  As a teacher, I seriously could have taught Scarlet Letter or To Kill a Mockingbird for an ENTIRE year. (I read Scarlet Letter 41 times and To Kill a Mockingbird 16 times.) I found a new detail almost each time for each novel. Talk about amazing! But I digress. The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ is one mass I know many dread.  It’s long.  It’s sad.  We’ve heard before.  Fussy kids whacking each other with palm branches in itchy clothes.    Or fussy kids during Friday nap time trying to rock them to sleep and you yourself not paying a bit of attention. I know. (Been there.) But I r...

"May we all do a little bit better than the first time Learn a little somethin' from the worst times Get a little stronger from the hurt times..." Nobody likes to make the call. The call it quits call. Especially not born and bred farmers. “Another round, another field, one more day and we’ll have ‘er." "Just another hour, just another bin full, one more push, crank on it one more time.." "We’ll try it again next year…” But it is time. And that pains me so so much, but yet I am filled with peace all in the same breath... it’s a wild and overwhelming emotion. Dad has spent his life working, loving, breathing, sweating, bleeding, milking, cutting, growing, sawing, laughing, cussing, reaping, crying, praying, and living on this farm. He’s burned the midnight oil. And he's drank the burnt coffee at twenty after four in the morning before milking. He’s made a lot do with very little. He's hunkered down in the mud and slop to help birth a calf that w...

It's been a little while since my last post.  I've been writing a lot, but haven't been posting them. Writing is so very good for my soul, and I love when people can relate or grasp something from my postings. But, as of late, my writing has been just that: my writings. I'm going to try to make this relatively brief and discuss the building materials market in a short form... no real panic talk, pretty boring overall, but just to be honest with what we are seeing and what we believe (all according to our suppliers unless noted otherwise) what we may see in the near future. 1.) Silicone: Silicone is on the rise and is in more items than I care to think about. Those blue switch/electrical boxes, caulking, many sealants/sealers, furniture gliders, and the list goes on. AND ON. Silicon (the primary ingredient in silicone) is imported from China. China stopped production entirely for 2 months in 2021 and new shipping rates/tariffs have only made a real problem, a worse prob...

I taught English for a little while and was often asked what genre was my favorite or what genre was my least favorite. You’d think for an English teacher, that would be a tough question.  But not for me. My least favorite is fantasy or sci fi or even mythology. Absolutely terrible. (I know, I probably just made some enemies.) But I think my dislike is because my love for my favorite is so incredibly strong. My favorite genre is American Realism.  Of Mice and Men. A Day No Pigs Would Die. To Kill A Mockingbird.  And though I’m in love with these novels for so many different reasons, there’s really just one thing that pulls at my heart. The rawness of normalcy in American culture during hard times. I am positive I sound like a lunatic, but I cannot describe my love for real normal life. There’s nothing grand about the vast majority of these novels yet that’s what makes them so grand to me. The profoundness of a normal life lived by ordinary people pulls me in so close, I a...