How Do You Know?

• How do you know when you can put the ice cream buckets away, when everyone in the house has been carrying them around for a week "just in case"? We have had a stubborn stomach / flu bug hanging around our house for over a week now and I am so over it! Everytime you think you're all heading in the right direction, someone comes around carrying one of those wretched buckets again. Most of the time they're not getting used anymore, we're just all slightly paranoid. 

• How do you know when to ask your husband to do things and when to just be thankful for what he does? It's no secret that my husband is not all that concerned about possessions or looks; I love that about him. Except when I wish for things -- like a cleaned off porch and an organized storage shed and a lawn that's mowed and a nicely tilled garden and mulched flower beds. My philosophy is generally that it's not worth ruining what I have, by fussing over what I don't have. On the other hand, sometimes it doesn't hurt to ask. 

(And what I have, btw, is quite nice.)

• How do you know how long you can go without deep cleaning your house? If you regularly clean your bathrooms and sweep your floors, is that enough? Will the dust on the curtains eventually weigh down the curtain rods too much? Can you just pretend you wanted the white wall in the stairwell to be a slight shade of grey? Will the bugs collecting in the light fixtures actually block out all the light at some point? We're working on the conclusion to this one. The short answer is: a long time. 

• How do you know when always believing the best about other people is actually not a healthy thing? Recently I've been thinking about how easy it is to slip into the habit of expecting the worst from people. Instead of assuming someone just never thought to tell me the news, I immediately believe they intentionally didn't want me to know -- things like that. It's such a detrimental habit that breeds distrust and cynicism. On the flip side, I think that attitude can be ingrained to a fault, to the point where a person doesn't have the ability to think logically for themselves -- they said we have to buy the $100 outfit to participate; I'm sure they have a good reason! Somewhere there is a line. 

• How do you know when you are addicted to a thing? Depends what it is. When it's 9:15 pm, and you're waiting for bread to cool so you can go to bed because you've baked four loaves of sourdough bread in a day and you only have two bread pans, it is probably safe to assume you're kind of addicted to sourdough toast for breakfast. Jasmine will never let me forget how I rolled my eyes when she started experimenting with sourdough!

• How do you know when an idea you thought was so wonderful, is one that you should just lay aside? Like Pooh Bear says, "When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it." Sometimes you think you've had a brilliant inspiration -- from the Lord, no less! And then it just doesn't quite roll. No one else is quite as enamored or invested. In fact, you're not quite sure if they even like the idea at all? A few say they do, and probably you should just go with it. But nothing about it goes smoothly and maybe, after all, you're just hanging onto something that's only Thing-ish in your own mind?

• How do you know when your refrigerator has not been cleaned for a very long time because the mother in the house is a pro at pushing off projects she doesn't like to do? Oh wait. I know the answer to this one. All I have to do is open my refrigerator. 

• How do you know when you should stop asking questions and just get on with your life? 

Questions for the Lord, as they say.