Ordinary Time

A friend of mine sent me a message with a podcast recommendation. Since I tend to listen to podcasts the most while I'm doing barn chores, I can plow through them at a pretty rapid clip and am always happy for suggestions.  The recommended podcast in question? The Good Whale about Keiko, the orca who starred in the movie, Free Willy. This has everything I love about a good podcast (and good non-fiction in general)... It is very well written, has high production values, and tells a story that has implications far beyond the subject at hand. I highly recommend it.  I have now listened to the five episodes that have been released and am eagerly waiting for the sixth and final installment. I need to know how it turns out, this project of rewilding Keiko. I vaguely remember hearing about the whale on the news in the 90's, but that also coincided with having only little children, so I admit to not following the story very carefully.  While the story centers on the orca, I find ...

That title makes it sound as though the day was eventful, doesn't it. I suggest you take your expectations down a notch or two. It was actually a pretty calm day. These are in no particular order, by the way. 1. I tried to do something with the masses, other than leave them home to go and do frantic Christmas shopping, that is. So we all liked in the van to go see the current art exhibit up at Fine Line. I guess I should pay closer attention to dates because all we saw were people finishing up taking down the exhibit.  2. I did a load of laundry and my laundry is currently caught up.  3. I woke up a couple of hours before my alarm this morning because I had dreamed that the forest preserve behind our house was on fire and our barn caught fire as well. In my dream we had just barely time to get the horses out, which is when I woke up. I briefly tried to go back to sleep, but ended up needing to go downstairs and look out of the back door to be sure the barn wasn't blazing. None...

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the huge fabric haul I made at my favorite thrift store. We'll it's now all washed and ironed and put away ready to use. It was a lot of ironing. This is because nearly all of it was 60 inches wide and no less than a yard and a half in length, though much was far longer than that. Here it is right before I put it all away. ("Put it away" sounds so much nicer than crammed it in the small space available, doesn't it?) You can see how thick some of it is. It's a lot of fabric. And I realized when I was going through receipts last week that I only paid $7.50 for all of it. It was definitely worth all the ironing.  I'm also realizing why I never finish Christmas projects aside from the fact I only like to work on them in December. It's because December is just so busy. I'm not sure what exactly I've been doing since Thanksgiving, but by the time evenings roll around, I have no energy to think about anything. Usually...

I listen to a lot of Christmas music in December. It's pretty constant in fact. Often it's just the accompaniment to whatever I'm doing and I don't pay much attention. But I was doing a lot of ironing last week which is hardly intellectually taxing, so I was paying a bit more attention to lyrics. Not a huge amount, because I can't tell you the songs, but enough for something to catch my attention.  There were at least a couple of different songs where it was mentioned about how meek and mild Mary was. Enough that it started to irritate me because it's not actually something that seems to fit with what I see in the Gospels. In fact what little we do read about Mary, it seems as if she was anything but meek and mild. I did a quick check to make sure I wasn't missing something, in fact. And yes, quick is the right word, because there isn't a lot about her at all. There's really nothing about Mary in either Matthew (definitely a Joseph-centric telling of...

First a word from our sponsor... me. I have some bags leftover from the sale. If you're interested, send me a message. At this moment, I have one chicken, three horses, and one rice bag. Thank you. We'll now return to our regularly scheduled programming. It won't surprise you to hear that I was horse crazy as a child. My room was filled books about horses and posters of horses  and every newspaper articles about horses were taped to my walls. But by far, my most precious horse related items were my model Breyer horses. I had a lot and played with them pretty constantly. I would even take them outside, put them in the grass, lie on my belly and take pictures of them because I thought the resulting photos made them look like real, live horses. I have a whole photo album of these pictures... somewhere. I was going to show a few of these photos with you, but the album is not where I thought it was. It is probably in the box in the crawl space with the apology to my children on ...

 Whiskers on ponies And blankets that fit them. Pumps pouring water And warm woolen mittens. Enough hay in the barn that I'll perpetually fling, These are a few of my favorite things. Boots that keep toes warm And happy sheep faces. Farm sounds that greet me from various place. No flies, just sparrows who fly on their wings, These are a few of my favorite things. When the pumps freeze, when there's wind chill, when I'm feeling cold.  I simply remember my favorite things... Put on my layers and layers of clothing and go outside anyway to take care of everybody.