a good mother....

A good mom bakes peanut butter cookies on the first day of school...


A good mom gets up in time to see her kids off to school, makes sure they are wearing modest and neat clothes, have their lunches, and that they eat a good breakfast.

It's only the second day of school, and shh, on the first day I slept through the alarm and ran outside in my nightgown with a sweatshirt over it, to say goodbye to the three high school girls as they waited for the bus.

But I DID walk again this morning. And I baked cookies yesterday. And I got up in time to see that they did not eat any breakfast, but Evelyn did go out the door with a large mug of coffee. Oh, I try.

Our first day of school was a success. They did spelling and reading and reading comprehension, and math, as well as beginning Norwegian, and gym class. Then Jonathan and Charlotte Claire made taco salad/nachos all by themselves. A hot cup of green tea with honey, and homemade bread toasted with butter and jam, curled up on the couch with school books, how can you beat that?


Today, after our school work is done, we are heading to the library, taking little Miss Lydia with us. We also need a few things from the grocery store, so the school girls can pack decent lunches.

Later in the day we are going to visit Grandma in the rehab place.

And, Miss Kathryn is home from Norway! She was supposed to go for a whole year, but she came home early. Ah life, never predictable.

The dogs are all antsy and fussy because our friend Mike is here installing the brand spankin' new septic pump! They know someone's here, and are barking intermittently. Also, the guys from the highway department are working on the ditches, with all the rain we've had they have to make sure the water if flowing through them properly, and they are cutting branches down too.

Anyway, I am trying to lay off sugar again, because it's like a gateway drug for me. A little bit leads to a handful of this and a slice of that, so I'm going cold-turkey. It's hard when a trip to the store is in order, because I don't have much that I CAN eat. No almonds or cashews, very little in the produce drawer, and we are running out of eggs.

And the peanut butter cookies...I honestly only had a small taste, just to try them. It was very very hard, because I wanted to sit down with a whole stack of them with my coffee...they were very chewy and the brown sugar and butter in them made them so carmel-y, I just wanted all of the cookies. all. So I didn't bring a single one into the living room when I sat down with my afternoon coffee. Not a one. I bagged most of them up so the girls could take them with their lunches for the next few days.:)

The thing about this restricted eating, dieting, healthy lifestyle, whatever you call it...is this: it's hard. It doesn't get easy, it never comes natural to me, and I KNOW there's a fine line I walk, I am never invincible, never more than a bite away from falling off the good food wagon. I cannot be smug in my plate of greens with my bunless burger, because I KNOW myself, and therefore do not judge those who indulge.

Cool weather brings it's own special challenges, the pumpkin swirl coffee is back, and you know that "swirl" is sugar, right? Oh so yum, and life is short, but the answer has to be NO. Just plain coffee. Oh, but I LOVE the swirl...NO, just plain coffee. And the pumpkin pies and cookies and cakes, the recipes that come up to taunt me as I scroll through the social media...and pies, can we talk about APPLE PIE? Heck, we can even substitute those apples for the pears growing in the tree in my yard, make a pie with flaky buttery golden crust, with sparkling crystals of sugar baked on top...and my resistance is null, void, and gone. So I have to carefully navigate through the autumn, enjoying the sights and smells but not the tastes, ha.

And...can you tell I am teaching/talking/correcting/helping three kids with school work while I write this? It feels choppy and disjointed, but that's the story of my life, choppy and disjointed.