Our Daily Bread

My family now has a new “daily bread”. I’ve been making bread almost daily for close to a year now, but a recent outing to a local Greek restaurant caused me to fall in love with Ciabatta, and true to my normal form, I came straight home and found a recipe online to mess up–er–adapt to our family’s liking.

 Herb Ciabatta is now our family’s bread of choice, and on occasion (like when the band rehearsed here Thursday night) I make it more than once in a day (meaning 8 loaves instead of four). It goes well with potato soup, I can assure you from experience.

Only five minutes from emerging from the oven, tonight’s Ciabatta is starting to permeate the house with its aroma. I’m getting hungrier by the minute. The one little irony in this is the fact that Steve and I are here alone tonight (one teen working and the other at a concert), so we’ll be dipping our lovely fresh-baked bread in olive oil and spices all by our lonesomes. Might even leave some for the kids.

A Family Worth Stalking

I'm trying to take it as a compliment, I really am, that there are people in this world who consider us worthy of stalking and harassing. And yeah, there's always the added blessing that if they're bothering us, they're leaving someone else alone. Still, it perplexes me a little bit how people can lead such empty lives that they have the time and energy to pour out finding ways to be spiteful and hateful to us--especially to our 15-year-old daughter who is one of the most amazing people on the planet.

I get that she is beautiful and talented. Jealousy over that makes sense, at least in the way the world thinks, so it isn't like it surprises me that people could be jealous of her. I don't say that with haughty pride, truly. She is beautiful because of the sunshine that radiates from her lovely soul. Her eyes and smile are just windows for the sunlight to beam through.

But the girl is witty and loving and forgiving and wise. Her wisdom is actually something the stalkers should probably be glad for, since it keeps her even-tempered while their behavior jumps all over the map in bipolar fashion. Simply put, they should be grateful that our family holds the beliefs we do, because if we retaliated the way some people do...well, it just wouldn't bode well for such folks.

I am grateful that our daughter takes things in stride the way she does. Sometimes I marvel at her ability to overlook people's ugliness and just keep on trucking. I'd like to think she got some of that from my husband and me, but the truth is she is better at it than the both of us put together. Yeah, we're pretty proud of the girl.

I'd like to think one day we won't have this to deal with. I'm trying to prepare myself for more of it to come, though, because I don't anticipate us getting nasty to appease the gremlins. Something tells me there will always be those who are so ticked off at us for being so "good" that they will attack with whatever reasoning, whatever ammo, whatever mud they can find to sling. I guess that puts us in good company. Good Lord, they crucified the Savior of the world.

Guess we'll just go on being who we are and let God deal with the stalkers.

So this is Easterhouse.

A blog for our family life adventures.