Ordinary Time

Tomorrow in the wee hours of the morning I'll be catching a flight to New Hampshire where I will be the trainer on behalf of Athena for a four-day Equine Assisted Services certification session. A bonus is getting to stay with my brother-in-law and his family. I have no idea if I will have the energy to blog while I'm gone. I wouldn't count on it.  The forecast for New Hampshire looks far better than Chicago's, which I'm not sad about. I'm just hoping my typical weather unluckiness won't follow me and they won't end up having an unexpected heat wave.  And for the curious, I'm packing four books for the five night trip. You can't be too careful.

So it seems having possibly identified the reason behind my creating desert was enough to move past it. Going with the assumption that I needed a project that required more concentration than I typically need for a fiber related project, I dug out something that I had put away for a while because I hadn't wanted to work so hard.  A long time ago I had seen a blanket by Arne and Carlos that was made solely by connecting crocheted flowers created out of yarn leftovers. I loved how it looked and I certainly have lots of bits of yarn. The crochet bit was the issue. I can crochet and have made crocheted objects. I just don't do it very often and a long time passes in between projects. So long in fact, that each time I start a project I have to essentially teach myself how to crochet all over again. That made this project seem like the perfect one for my current mental state. I will say that each time I do pickup a new crochet project, the relearning process goes a lot faster.  I al...

You may or may not have noticed (I certainly have), that the amount of things I have made this year so far is incredibly small. I just haven't had the mental energy to do very much. I haven't been concerned because my interests do have wild swings, but I have made note of it. I think I have figured out a small piece of what's going on. When I read the news today that the selling of public lands was removed from the Big Ugly Bill the amount of relief I felt was significant. I don't think I was quite aware of how much stress and anxiety I was carrying about this. While this issue is important, there are still so many others, not the least of which is ICE kidnapping people off the street, that are still ongoing. I think that there are many of us who are carrying weight the extent of which we don't fully realize.  What I have been doing is reading. Copiously even by my standards. I'm currently averaging over nine books a month. It's been a lot of reading. Its al...

There are many nice things about summer, though extreme heat is not one of them. The other thing I have very mixed feelings about are baby birds. They are sweet when you hear them peeping and can see their little heads stick up over the side of the nest. If only they would stay in their nests.  We have a lot of sparrow nests in our barn. Here are a few of them. There are many more nests than these as well. What these pictures don't convey is high high up in the air these nests are.  These pictures help give perspective. They are really up there.  Inevitably in late spring and early summer, I will find the occasional little nestling on the ground. More often than not they don't survive the fall and this is sad. Sometimes they do and we (J.) end up on a tall extension ladder to put the baby bird back in its nest. I have no idea if any of these renested birds survive, but it makes us feel better.  Then summer comes and the little birds grow feathers. It is more distress...

With yesterday being J.'s birthday and today being our anniversary, we have survived another June of endless celebrations. It's fun, but a bit exhausting. To celebrate our 34th anniversary, J. and I were able to have a dinner out, just by ourselves. Since I don't have much else to say, I thought I'd share a few of our wedding photos.  I truly married the best man in the world. 

L., our budding astro-physicist, really wanted a telescope for her birthday. Thanks to W.'s mad Marketplace skills, we were able to find one for an amount within our budget. L. was very excited. The problem was that the skies were overcast for the next several days. She was finally able to get to use it last night. It seems to be working well, though we need to replace the battery in the star finder. I'm pretty sure that after the sun finally sets tonight, she will be back outside using it.  And a Happy Birthday to D. today! We celebrated last week because he's out of town right now with P., visiting the H-S Family. One more birthday and one anniversary to go and we will have made it through another June birthday season.