Sifting Through Cinnamon in Search of a Lost Hour

Quick! Administer cinnamon toast!  I'm fading!!

I awoke this morning and discovered that an hour had been stolen clean out from under my nose!  Yes, I "saw" that the clocks had been changed yesterday (Saturday night, in fact, by my zealous husband), but I didn't "feel" the loss until this morning when I awoke an hour behind schedule with an hour loss on top of it.  Eeeek!

I padded downstairs to put on the kettle and discovered I had forgotten to run last night's dinner dishes, in addition to noticing that the steamer used for broccoli prep had been missed on the clean-up sweep the previous eve.  (By notice, I mean, with my nose -- Ick!)

What's a girl to do in such a situation?  Pray for a miracle to turn back time and tidy all in one gesture?  Cry and hope somebody takes pity on you?  Brew a pot-of-tea-for-one and make some cinnamon toast?  How 'bout all three?  Okay, the praying for a miracle part seemed like a futile effort, since I didn't want to repeat the time change scenario.  Fair enough.  Crying, even in the silver-screen fashion of gently flowing glamorous orbs of crystalline sorrow seemed silly since every other person in this house is asleep or faking sleep, save my husband who is chirpy as ever in the morning, popping in and out the door doing the morning "chores" of letting out chickens and the cat and such.  Since crying would stuff me up and dilute what  little surface beauty I awoke with, I opt to suck it up and hit the cinnamon toast hard!

One of my sweetest childhood memories involves cinnamon toast -- that slightly sweet treat delivered on a bed tray to the infirm.  It rarely happened, but when it did -- oh my!  What delight!  Much later in life, following the delivery of a baby (number five), I developed some sort of "fever sickness" and writhed in bed for many days.  My friend/nurse came to the rescue and watched my four littles  + littlest (baby) while I recovered.  I remember little of that week, save for a distinct moment when a tearful Elizabeth came in to my darkened room with a tray of tea and cinnamon toast.  "Here Mommy, please eat this and feel better," she sobbed.  I ate, tasting the cinnamon like a fire of life, a healing fire.  I recovered in due time, but my spirit lifted measurable with the first tiny nibble of c-toast.

Daily I intake a spoonful of a cinnamon-honey-turmeric-ginger concoction I store in a pooh-bear-approved honey-pot shaped jar.  The spicy, silky, yummy flavor slips down easy and delights my body and mind.  Sometimes I spread it on toast or flavor a cuppa tea with the jewel-toned elixir, but today -- with all its off-kilter change-o-mania -- I went straight for the toast, butter (LOTS), and cinnamon/sugar shaker.  A pot o' tea sidled alongside to enable me to nibble, sip, repeat when necessary.

Here I sit at the keyboard, drumming out words tinged with humor: clear proof of the amazing healing properties of cinnamon toast.  If this day doesn't improve, I plan to serve cinnamon toast at lunch and, if necessary, cinnamon toast at dinner.  I will not be beaten by this time-change villain.  If it won't give me back that hour I will simply celebrate cinnamon-ily until I just don't care a fig for that lost hour.  Did I just say "fig"?  Sweet, gushy, yummy, spread-on-toast fig?  I wonder how that would taste, with just a hint of cinnamon?

Happy Monday (what's left of it, that is)! 

Internut Syndrome

One day back as a “blogger” – JUST ONE – and I’m already frustrated!  I forgot that I have internet problems:  connection problems, time problems, discipline problems . . .  

I rolled out of bed this morning with a cloak of tiredness dragging me down.  Last night, I did “one quick check” before hopping into bed and . . . well, you know how that goes:   A comment!  An email!  I’ll just quickly read it and reply, and then off to bed.  Oh, I almost forgot to opt out of that site.  Hey, it’s morning in Ukraine; I wonder what’s going on?  And on and on it goes until I am way past bedtime, overloaded with cognitive “junk food,” and smarting with a bit of back pain from sitting too long at a makeshift station designed for “quick” checking the internet. 

Yep!  I have all the symptoms of Internut Syndrome. 

When I rose without shining this morning, I discovered my internet connection was down . . .

AGAIN . . . grumble. 

Just, great!

How am I supposed to blog? (I did make a commitment, you know.)

What if I need to pray about something specific in Ukraine?

What will ------ think if I don’t reply to her sweet comment?

And then I knew for sure . . . Internut Syndrome had taken hold.

I shuffled downstairs in my cute, pink, cableknit sweater slippers and I didn’t even notice they were cute.  I dropped leaves into the tea infuser without remarking the fresh, minty breeze from our newest favorite:  Immuni-tea.  I murmured a muted “Good morning” to my daughter as she wrestled with two sunnyside-up eggs; she murmured back in kind.  The teakettle performed, the tea steeped, while I gathered cup and saucer, hefted the cozied teapot, and made my way to my favorite chair.

Plop!

*sigh*

A gray blankness held me in limbo: 
gray sky, gray light, gray day.

I reached down mechanically and scooped up the first book my hand encountered in the basket beside my chair:  One Thousand Gifts Devotional, by Ann Voskamp.  I leafed open to the next entry:   

Devotion 19 – Awakening Grace

I poured out the floral-minty morning brew, perfectly steeped and dancing with fragrance.  I lifted my faithful companion teacup (Blue Willow, of course) from its saucer and caught a steamy whiff of meadow dances, rollicking streams, morning dew, and flowers waking.  I felt my brow begin to unravel from its tight-knit scrunch as my shoulders started melting into suppleness.  Fear of failure had wrapped me in its grip; pressing expectations had pinned me down.  One day blogging and I was a mess!  And then I turned my attention to Ann.

She began by quoting 1 Thessalonians 5:18:

Give thanks in all circumstances; 
for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

She went on to quote Robert Louis Stevenson:

The man who forgets to be thankful has fallen asleep in life.

Yes, yes indeed.  I have fallen asleep in life – that’s a primary symptom of Internut Syndrome.  The virtual eclipses the tangible whilst the unreal pounces and devours my sense of time . . . the REAL of time.

Another sip of tea.

Another gaze out the window

Is that a glint of blue?

I grab a pen and scribble:

2146. [Thankful that] the internet is on the blink – my morning just gained time . . . real time.

* * * * *

That tenseness that I shouldered as I came downstairs has faded.  That nutty, nagging voice in my head has gone silent.  Maybe it was just a dream – a bad dream.  Not to worry, for I am awake now . . . and thankfully so.

[D]are yourself to give thanks . . . 

and it’s the setting of an alarm 

and you could wake up to nothing less than your life.

Giving thanks, this is an awakening – the breath of God upon the face, close and warm.

~~ Ann Voskamp ~~

One Thousand Gifts Devotional