Ordinary Time

Remember a couple of years ago when Vienna was so sick because her metabolic system was haywire and it took a long time to stabilize it? That wasn't fun for any of us. She'd been doing so well... until she wasn't. Last Thursday she seemed a little off and Friday I knew something was wrong.  Because I am a little pathologically hypervigilant about her health we caught it nearly immediately. She is now back on her protocol from two years ago and we've had blood drawn to make sure we know what's going on. (According to the vet she is probably experiencing an insulin spike.) The good news is she doesn't seem to be getting worse. If she doesn't continue to make forward progress, there is also another type of medication we can try. There's no reason to believe she won't make a full recovery.  So my brain knows that, but my nervous system hasn't quite believed it yet. This looks like feeling unmotivated to do much, feeling as though I can't concentr...

A few of my favorite people have birthdays today. G. and L. turned 17 if you can believe it. There were donuts for breakfast and we had L.'s birthday dinner tonight. She decided to go with her long standing dinner choice from when she was younger: homemade macaroni and cheese, mini-pickles (sweet gherkins), and squishy bread (grocery store made French bread). Wednesday night will be G.'s chosen dinner of Pasta with onion, bacon, and goat cheese. For dessert we went out to our little town's seasonal ice cream place.  Happy Birthday to all three of you! I love you very much!!

Food is really one of the joys of summer, isn't it? In the past few days we have enjoyed salads completely from the garden, we picked the most cherries from our trees since we planted them, and the hens are going all out in terms of egg production.  (These were from several days; we'd let them pile up a bit.) Strawberries are ripe this week, but I don't know if we're going to get time to go picking this year. Of course, once you pick a bunch of fruit, you have to do something with it. I know I don't have time for that. Maybe I just buy some already picked to enjoy fresh. I also noticed that the black raspberries are starting to grow, but we probably have another week before they're ripe.  The perishable nature of summer fruit, though is also a problem. With pears and apples, they can sit around for a bit if I don't have time to do something with them immediately. Summer fruits? Not so much. And that is all I have for you tonight... my musings on future guilt...

A few weeks ago we asked everyone what they would like to be sure to do this summer. An item on G.'s list was to go see the new bison at the Burlington Prairie Forest Preserve . Earlier this year, bison were added to the prairie ecosystem. They are owned by the American Indian Center of Chicago and are the only herd in the area living on tall grass prairie. The bison currently have 38 acres to roam. There had been a baby born recently, so that was added incentive. It was a beautiful morning, so some of us made the half hour trek north. We were lucky that the bison were all grazing near the public viewing area this morning, and we did indeed get to see the baby bison.  After we had watched the bison for quite a while, we decided to hike one of the trails. This wasn't a forest preserve we had visited yet and it was beautiful.  The hike was just over two miles and looped around the prairie. We started out at those trees in the distance. If you're local, I recommend going, espe...

Some good friends invited me to join them tonight at a local florist/gift shop that was hosting a bingo night. I actually won something!  It's a very pretty plant and I was also given care instructions. I'm a little afraid for it though. Maybe you can figure out why based on comments I received when I got home. (These are not direct quotes, but the intent is accurate.) "Does the plant know that it is doomed?" "Mum, are you going to kill this one?" I fully admit that keeping houseplants alive is not one of my strengths. That is probably an understatement. My mother-in-law was known to take houseplants from my home to nurse them back to health. They never reappeared. This is a long standing problem.  I'm going to do it this time. I am going to keep this plant alive. Really. 

It's been well over a year since we started assigning the teenaged children a day to cook dinner each week. I have to say, I'm a huge fan of this whole plan. I've noticed a few things about it, so I thought I'd give an update.  The first is that practice really does build skills. While everyone had pretty decent cooking skills when we started, I would say that their abilities and comfort level have significantly increased. Their timing of getting everything to the table at the same time has also improved.  Second, they are all experiencing the thing I struggle with every week when I sit down to plan menus: the question of what to eat. This is probably the most challenging part of the whole process. Knowing how to overcome the feeling of forgetting everything you've ever made is also a skill. They are all pretty good at pushing through while using the tools at their disposal... I keep previous menus to remind us of what we've made in the past, a wide variety of c...