Ordinary Time

It was a beautiful day for Mother's Day. We finished getting the back porch ready for summer, did some planting, I got to read a bit, then most adult children were able to make it for dinner... which I had nothing to do with.  (Pictures by K.) Nefertiti also had a lovely day. For the past few days she's been looking out the back door and mewing longingly. It sounded just like she was saying, "Out, out, out, out." It was sad and pathetic. This afternoon Y. put Nefertiti's harness on her and took the poor cat outside. For the next few hours, Nefertiti was the happiest cat in the world. (Pictures by Y.) (The rest of the pictures are by K.) This is Duck, who is our only duck right now. This is a rare picture of her out of the coop because she has been spending most of her days brooding a clutch of chicken eggs. Woe to the person or chicken who gets too close to her while she is sitting. No, I have no idea if they will actually hatch, nor do I have any idea of how a du...

I was taking a weaving class for much of the week and tonight was the Inclusive Game Night that our church hosts once a month. This means I don't have a lot of extra energy for writing. The weekend also promises to be busy, so I'm not sure you should expect too much for the next couple of days, either. Maybe Monday things will go back to normal and I'll have brain space to write.  I did get some nettle leaves dehydrated today, though. 

  Fluffy the Rooster has officially moved out of the chicken pen and into the barn. His choice, not ours, but I think it was wise on his part. He now follows me around the barn during morning chores. If you want to see a video of him crowing, head to my business FB page (search for Bittersweet Farm LLC) and you'll find it there. That isn't quite the sneaky way to drive traffic that it seems. I just don't have the energy after a very full day to upload it to YouTube so I can upload it here. Its really just sheer laziness.  I do wish he'd choose a different roosting spot, though, because I'm tired of cleaning off the top of the barn medicine chest every morning. I took a picture of that to share with J., but I didn't think you would really want to see it. Maybe I'll save it when I need a visual the next time politics causes me to write a post.

Today was R.'s 20th birthday as difficult as it may be to believe. I know I have checked a few times today to be sure I had the number correct. R. was very excited and chose donuts for her birthday breakfast and a chicken and green bean green curry stir fry with pan fried noodles and dumplings for dinner. Dessert was chocolate cake and ice cream. (A huge thank you to Y. who fixed everything because I was at a weaving class all day. )  R. opened presents tonight, but we'll do a party with more siblings here on Sunday. Her stack of brand new coloring books was by far her favorite gift.  Happy Birthday, R.! We love you!!

As of today I have completed my Level 7 post-graduate certificate in Equine Assisted Services through the Athena Herd Foundation.  It was a great experience. There were four other students in my cohort and we all met at least once a month to discuss our projects and the process. I always enjoyed these conversations because they were filled with interesting discussions and good questions and ideas.  As I've mentioned before, my action research project was to develop a program which would help to mitigate sibling conflict by working with horses. I also used the process to make changes to my original plan in order to create a more effective program. When the numbers were all crunched, those who participated showed a statistically significant increase in how their families interacted both in terms of general behavior as well as using the tools and skills they learned. All adults rated the work with the horses as being integral to the program's effectiveness. I will admit it was pe...

There is an event coming up that H. would very much like to attend, but it just isn't going to work this year. As you can imagine, this is very disappointing to her. There was a lot of processing going on today.  The fact that H. could express a desire and then express genuine emotions when that desire couldn't be met is no small thing. It's even a bigger deal when these things happened without any prompting, coaching, or disassociation. While I'm sorry H. has to experience disappointment, I would be pretty thrilled about the expression of need and disappointment if it stopped there.  There was more to this process, though. H. wrote three "stories" (her term) that she brought down and read to us to help her express her needs and disappointment. This is so huge I need to say it again.  She wrote a story. She was able to read the story to us long after she had written it. The story expressed need and feelings.  I was totally floored by this. I didn't expect ...