Ordinary Time

This morning, L., who takes care of the chickens, noticed one hen was limping. Upon closer inspection, L. noticed that one of the hen's feet looked oddly swollen. The hen was immediately whisked off to quarantine and L. started doing research.  It turns out the hen has a condition called bumble foot, which is when a chicken gets a cut on its foot and the cut becomes infected. It's painful and if not caught in time can lead to death as the infection moves through the body.  I write this as if I know about chicken illnesses. This is merely my reporting of L.'s research. It seems that it was caught early, which is good for the hen. It's also good for the hen that I wasn't in charge because I'm not sure I would have caught it.  Treatment involves soaking the infected foot in an Epsom salt solution, removing any scabs that have formed on the foot, treating with an antiseptic spray (it was a pleasant surprise to know we had this stashed in a cupboard), them wrapping t...

Today marks the start of the Lunar New Year. We're not celebrating tonight because of schedules, but will be celebrating this weekend. It lasts two weeks, so we're good. We're also ready. The decorations are up. The Chinese lantern window clings are also up, but they're impossible to take a photograph of.  The menu has been planned. Y. will be spending Saturday making two different kinds of baozi (steamed buns). This is her choice as she mostly associates the holiday with cooking good food. We'll be having other things as well, I just have to make a trek to the Chinese market before Saturday.  I'm case you don't celebrate the Lunar New Year (we certainly didn't before adopting children from Asia) we are now in the Year of the Horse. The Year of the Fire Horse, to be exact. This happens only once every six years and can signal a time of massive change and transformation. Let's all hope that it is positive change and massive transformation because our ...

The bit of my mending pile that did not get tackled over Christmas break wasn't so much mending as adding. I had a few shirts and sweatshirts that I had collected that I wanted to embroider my business logo on and use for work shirts. This would be machine embroidery, not hand embroidery. I already had the file for my machine and had done this before, so in theory it should have been easy.  But machine embroidery involves getting out a lot of supplies I don't normally use and switching parts of my sewing machine. It is also one of those things I don't do quite often enough to keep the process fresh in my head, so it also involves a bit of figuring out as well. Yesterday afternoon I had a few free hours and I really needed the shirts that had been decorating my studio for months. It was time to bite the bullet and just do it.  When it's been a while since using the embroidery function, I always start with the shirt I care about the least. That way if I make a mess of it,...

Our weather has been unusual. It's gorgeous weather, mind you, we're not complaining, but it's just not right. In a month where the Chicago area has experienced significant snow storms, today we had sunny skies and low sixty degree weather (~16°C). It was wonderful... and a bit disconcerting. Everyone I've talked to agreed we're all just waiting for the other shoe to drop. While I've done some organizing in the barn, horse coats are still accessible, heated buckets are still in stalls (though not turned on), and stock tank heaters are not stored away.  But this type of weather is definitely something to enjoy, anomaly or not. So today, I continued to kick the pastures which were in a sorry state due to all the snow followed by frigid temperatures. Things are warm enough to actually be able to do something about it. And it's not a bad job in 60° and sunny weather.  G. spent some time working on halter training the younger sheep. They are not really fans yet, ...

If you've read here for any length of time, you are aware that reading to our children is extremely important to us. We start when they're babies and continue often though high school. J. still reads to Y. every night (her choice). Between reading out loud for school, reading at tea time, and reading at bedtime, we probably averaged well over an hour a day of books read out loud through the elementary and middle school years.  There are so many positive benefits to reading out loud to your children: Increased vocabulary  Increased sense of how written English sounds Increased ability to follow oral speech Increased ability to follow complex sentence structure Understanding of the idea of story and story structure Connection between parent and child Exposure to stories a child might not be accessible if the child has to read the stories themselves  Exposure to different ideas and concepts Focus I'm probably missing some benefits from that list. There is pretty much nothing...

You know I'm always interested in the difference between perfection and striving towards excellence. I came across this passage in a book I'm reading by an author and creative writing teacher which I thought was profound.       "Nothing perfect is interesting. Sometimes a student who is struggling to get work to me will say, 'My problem is that I'm a perfectionist.' I always answer, 'Oh, you don't like to fail in public, unlike the rest of my us?'       'No, no,' they say. 'The problem is I'm my own harshest critic.'      'If that were really true,' I will say, 'then you should have no trouble at all showing me your work.'       I'm a perfectionist. They say it apologetically and boastfully, a character flaw that speaks of high standards. Not I'm better than you , but I need to be better than you. Nobody ever modestly said they were a perfectionist." from A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction by El...