Ladybug Farms: The Reluctant Servant...And Other Things

I took on a new service this week. It's really part of an old service that I used to do, but new since I thought I'd gotten rid of it almost two years ago.

I said yes to something that I hate. I used to be in charge of childcare for my prayer group. I wrote up the service schedule, made sure the child care workers were where they needed to be, and dealt with all the ensuing problems. Which usually meant someone complaining or workers not showing up so having to scramble to find people to cover for them. After over four years of this, I reached the point where I'd had enough of the complaining and scrambling and so I resigned from my service over a year ago, swearing I would never have anything to do with childcare running again.

Last week my replacement asked if I would be willing to be the one who makes the service reminder phone calls. Ugh. I hate talking on the phone to people I don't know well. I still remember my mom making us make our own phone calls when we were kids. If we didn't call ourselves, we didn't get to do or have what we wanted. I used to resent mom for that, but it was an important life lesson which I should have learned better and I've since carried over the practice with my own kids. I make them go up to the counter and request their own drink refills, make their own calls to ask Grandma if they can come over, etc.

Needless to say, I was a bit less than thrilled when my friend asked me to be the phone caller. My brain screamed NO!!!!! But I knew it was a simple task, requiring ten minutes of my time a week at the most, and I had no valid reason to not do it. So I said yes. Blah. This week I had to do my first reminding--and I emailed the people. Not a phone call, but I'm working myself up to the actual phone calling. Maybe next week.

Wednesday as we were sitting around the breakfast table, Joy started in on her usual litany--Mommy, how did they make crackers in the old days? How did they make curtains? How did they make...??? I decided that we would make crackers together. I considered making curtains, but since we don't own sheep nor a spinning wheel or a loom, I decided that was stretching my skills beyond any reasonable ability.

Our ingredients

Let ME roll them out!

The finished product

We made cheddar crackers that taste almost exactly like mediocre Cheez-Its. They involved cheese, butter, flour, water and salt. They required lots of muscle to roll out flat. Then we cut them into squares, sprinkled them with salt, and baked them until they were crispy. The kids liked them okay, Hubby said they're not his favorite (which is code for "yuck"). I thought they were delicious, but that was probably my carb deprivation talking. I couldn't decide about these crackers--were they a whole food since I made them from scratch? Or were they taboo since they contained flour? I ate three. If they were taboo, I broke my fast. Oh well.

Last night we are finally, FINALLY, had Hubby's sister and brother-in-law over for dinner. Just them. No family holiday or party involved. Amazing. They'll be celebrating their one year wedding anniversary next weekend, so you could say that we are slackers and you would be right. We talk about having people over all the time. In reality we have people over outside of regularly scheduled events maybe once every three months. If we're trying. This is an area that we need to work on beyond saying:

"Wouldn't it be nice to have ... over?"
"Yes, it would be nice."
End of conversation.

Maybe I will add Hospitality to my list of areas to work on for one of my fasts just as soon as I finish up my food fast, then do a media fast and a spend fast. (Did I mention that we are going media-free in our house for Lent? As in no TV and very limited computer usage? I'm not sure if we will survive--my Facebook addiction is strong--but we're going to try. The kids begged me to let them give up candy instead, but I remained strong. If I can give up processed foods for an entire month, I can do anything! Rar!)

And one last parting picture because it's priceless. We went to the Asian food store today and Hubby bought red bean cookies for us to try. They definitely were not my favorite. Joy fully agrees. My enjoyment of them was further reduced when everyone decided that they looked a lot like raw pizza dough filled with mashed up worms. Thanks guys for that mental image. I threw the rest of the package away.