Diva is Angry

This week on the interwebs there's been a great hustle and bustle about being a stay at home mom/wife. I am getting really angry and frustrated, so this is a rant, a vent, whatever. Stand back.

Today, I was accused (not directly, but as a general statement) of being a "Complegarian." (Complementarian/Egalitarian compromiser). What's more, I was informed that such a compromise is not only wrong, but it starts me down a slippery slope which will cause me to misinterpret scripture and ultimately dishonor God.

FIRST, I think this whole argument is completely stupid. I am a Christian and a Bible reader first. Yes, I tend to adhere to the views commonly known as Calvinism, but I read Scripture and THEN decide if Calvinism still makes sense. *THAT* Is why theology is important. These discussions bring out the differences and therefore cause you to think through the finer points. They help you consider things you hadn't considered, they teach you more about Christ and they help you worship better. YOU DO NOT START WITH THE THEOLOGY OR THE CREED OR THE CHURCH FATHER. YOU START WITH THE BIBLE. Being a flaming Egalatarian will NOT send ANYONE to Hell.

SECOND, this idea that there is only one way to manage a family or parent is complete nonsense and I am soooo sick of it.

Is it a sin to keep your child home? It might be.
Is it a sin for you to stay home and not work? It might be.
Is it a sin to send your child to private school? It might be.
Is it a sin to homeschool your child? It might be.
Is it a sin to send your child to public school? It might be.
Is it a sin to send your child to daycare? It might be.
Is it a sin for you to work outside of your home? It might be.

When someone find the verse that says "Thou shalt only work outside of the home if thou art a schoolteacher and hide your child under a bushel" please let me know.

The issue has nothing to do with the actions in these situations, but the heart and the purpose. I do believe that I should submit to my husband and to God. I'm not saying it's easy, but I do believe that. I believe that men and women are of equal value, different purpose, different desires, different needs.

This Domestic Diva will work her butt off to send her husband to school to get as many degrees as possible. I will continue to work so that he can serve our church without pay. So just back off, ladies.

Season's Gleanings

My husband asked me "You're going to blog about the cucumbers and the bread together? What are you going to call it? 'Season's Gleanings'."

Well, now I am!!!

So. Cucumbers and bread.

I wasn't even going to blog about my sad looking loaf of Rosemary Garlic bread, but when I got home, my husband had demolished an entire loaf of it, so I thought that regardless of looks, it must taste yummy enough to be posted here. I purchased "Brenard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads" on half.com (for like $5, woohoo!) and attempted to make one last night. It turned out okay - I need to buy some wheat flour and next time I won't smoosh it after it's risen... and I'll probably try some fresh rosemary... but all in all, not a I was pretty pleased with how my first breadmaking attempt turned out.

And cucumbers!! Tonight we picked our first cucumber and a couple of lettuce leaves (for our burgers.) Oh my my my. If I can ever get everything growing, I have lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, jalepenos and celery - that would be the best salad EVER! Oh and if my carrots ever grow....

So tonight, we nomed on our bread and cucumbers :) cheap and DELICIOUS.

Behold, the mighty fitted sheet

I saw this video today and I thought it was domestic-diva-y enough to deserve a link on this blog.

You treacherous fitted sheets, wadded up in my linen closet! Tonight, you shall be mine!

Compost Fail

Today, after what we shall refer to as a "worm ordering fail" (ladies and gentlemen, please check that an internet company hasn't gone under before trying to order products from them.), I FINALLY got my pound of red wiggler worms in today.

As my compost was beginning to outgrow its existing (closed but aerated) bin, I decided to put it in a bigger (open) bin for the worms to get to work to. Remember how I explained the "good smelling microorganisms" before? Well, we didn't get any of those, because I have the compost of A THOUSAND POOPY DIAPERS! (Actually, I might prefer the diapers...)

We've learned a few more things about composting tonight via the interwebs, and I thought I'd share. Balance the compost - people refer to this as "wet/dry", "green/brown" or "nitrogen/carbon". Too much fruit and grass makes you have a wet, green, smelly, nitrogen-y compost. Apparently, instead of recycling those Sunday papers we should be composting them.

We added a lot of "dry" material to the compost tonight and put a lid mostly covering the compost, and we're just going to pray that the worms eat and the carbon decomposes faster than our neighbors can report us for an "unregistered landfill". (Apparently you can get fined for this.) If it still smells tomorrow night, we may have to take more drastic action.

Molly Piper

I started reading Molly Piper's blog right after her Father in Law (Pastor John Piper) announced on twitter that she was pregnant with the twins. Let me just say, I love this blog.

One thing that I get so frustrated by is women's bible study literature. Yeah, we've got big life issues to work through in a godly way - we want to learn to be submissive wives without being doormats. We want to learn how to raise our kids in godly ways (at least, so my mom-friends tell me). We want to figure out how we fit our emotional, imperfect selves into the Christian walk and glorify God while we do it.

This does NOT. mean we all want books written by beauty queens and soft spoken old ladies talking about nothing more than how this particular bible verse makes us *feel* right now. We're smart ladies! We have real people thoughts.

And where are we supposed to turn? They think I'm crazy at work because my husband ultimately is the decision maker in my home. And then there's sometimes this attitude in the church that God made me for baby-making only, so what am I doing outside my home in the first place? Now before I get carried away about all the woes and trials of being a Christian woman, let me just stop and say,

Molly Piper, thank you for being so awesome. Thank you for not having perfect hair and for admitting that this Christian thing can be tricky. Thank you for loving your husband and your kids and God, and still having a brain in there. Thank you for being so encouraging and real.

Now, go read her blog. http://mollypiper.com/

cake!

I would like to begin by explaining the fate of my previous 3 two-layer cakes.

Cake one was a mountain dew pineapple cake (yay Cake Doct0r) for my mom's birthday. The cake fell and so the pineapple topping was more like soup in a cake bowl. It tasted yummy though.

Cake two was a box birthday cake for my sweet husband. I had just gotten my icing tips and I wanted to make something beautiful. It ended up breaking in half, and while I was slathering icing over the crumbs to "put it back together" and sobbing, while occasionally falling in the middle of the floor.... Jacob finally took it from me and threw it away.

Cake three was another Cake Doctor attempt - this time at a Strawberry cake, for my mother in law's birthday. This one not only got the soup bowl effect, but it tasted like strawberry powdered milk. Not my best evening...

So onward to cake four. I decided to offer to bring a carrot cake to my grandmother's house for Easter, because I had seen this very cute decorating video on allrecipes.com that I wanted to try. Given the fate of my previous three cakes, I thought I'd do a trial run this weekend, and if it succeeded, take it to a friend's party later.

Yaaaaay!!! (Note, my husband has insinuated that objects in pictures may actually be less lovely than they appear.)

But I would just like to proudly state that this cake is totally covered in frosting, the carrots resemble carrots and there is no huge dip in the center. I win the cake making game. :)

And if you'd like them, here are the recipes for Carrot Cake, and colored frosting (although the frosting was a little slippery... and a how to decorate video.

Gardening in 1975

Last night Jake and I went up to a local college. After visiting a comic book store, a used bookstore and my second ever Bubble Tea (much tastier than the first time I tried it.), I came home with a book on vegetable gardening. First of all, there are not very many books on vegetable gardening... Hundreds and hundreds of books about flowers, but if you wanna grow some food, you are on your own.

I started reading mine in bed last night. The author keeps talking about how vegetable gardening is gaining popularity due to the energy crisis and the high cost of food, not to mention the economic downturn... this book was written in 1975.

So I spent a little time on wikipedia this morning: 1975 - Watergate had just happened, and the Vietnam War, which had started almost 15 years previously, would FINALLY end that year in April. There was of course the ongoing Cold War, and they started Daylight Savings time in February because of an energy crisis. Wheel of Fortune started that year, which I thought was kinda fun. The world population was only 4 billion (we're at 6.8 billion now.) Apple Computer would be founded the next year and they're about to land on Mars.

And apparently, people liked to grow their own food.

I've already learned a lot from this book, but mostly, it's kinda fun to be connected to the gardening divas from 35 years ago.

Oh, and I have several sprouting cucumbers and romaine lettuces inside already!!!! :-)