Ordinary Time

I saw a reference to a study the other day which declared that women who own horses live, on average, 15 years longer than women without horses. Now, I didn't actually see the study, though the information about it purported that it was a controlled, double-blind study. Who knows? But, I'm going with it. And that's not just because I own horses and I think it sounds good. It's also because I really do think horses are just that good for you. Riding is certainly good exercise and can be very regulating. Horses are calming and good for your mental health. But the thing that I think is key here, is the work that horses require. I've been thinking about this for some time now. While I am not always excited to head out to the barn first thing in the morning to clean stalls, I am finding it to be incredibly good for me. It gets me out of the house and into the outdoors first thing in the morning. On -40 degree mornings, this can be a bit of a shock, but even then I kn...

Along with finding my sewing machine again this week, I also have managed to sit down at my spinning wheel every day. Like the sewing machine, it had been neglected for months. It's too bad, really, because I find sitting and spinning to be very calming. When I started to spin again, after we moved two years ago, it was a pretty steep learning curve. It was just like starting from the beginning, except without a teacher this time around. I gradually have become better at it, but it wasn't quite so natural as it was when I last stopped the first time around. Sometimes seems to have happened over the past few months, as if my brain and muscles finally put all the pieces together again, because when I sat down at the wheel earlier this week, it just felt easy. I found I could sit and spin without the problems I had been encountering... breaking the yarn (a lot), too thick, too thin, too out of control. It finally felt right. I had been thinking about why, and I think I kn...

Something like last Tuesday takes it out of you, but I've found it's a little delayed. Yesterday I was done in, hence no post. Again. Today has been better. I hope we are all back on an even keep, at least for a while. I continue to work to deal with the eggs. My new very large ice cube trays have been fantastic for freezing even large goose eggs. I have been keeping a running cycle of eggs going through the freezer. They look kind of cool when they come out of the ice cube trays. They don't really look much like eggs, do they? I'm thinking we'll be glad for these this winter when every bird decides to stop laying. I also pickled some eggs. This is a bigger experiment, and I have no idea if people will like them. The recipe I followed suggested adding beets to the eggs so that the eggs become even more pink, plus you have pickled beets. L. adores pickled beets, so I know at least those will get eaten. Under the heading of, "It was the best of...

The post I wrote on Monday, left you with the information that R. seemed as though she was about to run off the rails, and I mentioned that I hoped I got to sleep that night. Well. Some things it's just better not to know in advance, I think. Monday night through Tuesday afternoon were one of those things. I was right, R. was headed off the rails, and boy, did she in a big way. If J. and I got any sleep it was probably not more than an hour. R. rarely settled, and instead spent her time trying to get out of our room to go wake everyone up or making random words or sounds come out of her mouth. It was a long night. J. had to get up early (really, it was more like he stopped trying to pretend he was going to get any sleep rather than getting up) to leave to go to a conference, which made me the parent in charge. It was Tuesday, which is our new co-op day. Thankfully, everyone is so excited about going that they are extremely helpful and proactive in gathering everything we need t...

My life is not boring. Usually this is a good thing, but sometimes too much not boring stuff going on just feels, well, too much. I really think I'd like to try boring out for a few weeks. I think I could make it work. Instead... Please keep my mom in your prayers. She is really struggling right now. Sorry to be vague with the details but I really do try to give the gift of privacy to the adults in my life. But do pray. I'm deciding if this warrants another emergency trip to Arizona. Also, R. was helping me in the kitchen this evening when the next thing I know is she is flat on her back having a tonic-clonic seizure. This is the first one I can think of where she didn't complain of an aura before hand. That makes this very different. She now seems to be heading quickly towards one of her psychotic nights as well, which pretty much means zero sleep for me and J. The small sliver of rational brain I have left at this time of night finds this interesting, making the conne...

We had a day at home doing house stuff... bills, laundry, J. did some more painting in the kitchen, I think some Saturday jobs got done. Hardly worth writing too much about. So, instead I will show you a couple of goofy dog pictures to brighten up you Saturday evening. On Friday, A. and L. took Olive to the dog park. L. and Olive We are all amazed she can actually fit that tongue inside her mouth.

A couple of weeks ago, D. was grinding some corn for me so we had some cornmeal. I was in another room when I hear a dreadful sound, a shout from D., and the grain mill being turned off. This couldn't be good. From the burning smell in the kitchen, it would seem that the motor burned out on the grain mill. Life without a grain mill is challenging if you are used to having homemade bread made from the pounds of wheat berries you have on hand. It is difficult to turn your wheat berries into flour without some way to grind it. I've always thought that investing in a hand mill to grind the wheat would be a good idea, you know, just in case of the zombie apocalypse. They're aren't even that expensive... under $100... it's just that the need never quite seemed pressing enough to actually order it. I kind of wish I had, because then we would have some way to grind wheat while we are without the electric mill. All is not lost, though. This is actually the second time (o...

There has been a meme that has been making the rounds, and while I know the people who share it mean well, every time I see it, it grates on my nerves just a little more. I thought it important to share what I find bothersome about it. First, what the meme says. "Sometimes angels are disguised as kids with special needs to teach us how to be better people." There are two big issues I have with this idea. The first is the idea that people with special needs are angels. To suggest this is to completely discount their humanity. You know human, like any other typically abled person. It doesn't really matter which direction one goes, the problem lies in perpetuating the idea that someone with special needs is not quite human. Robbing someone of their humanity makes it that much easier to rationalize treating them as less than. Less than deserving of equal rights. Less than deserving of dignity. Less than deserving of kindness. Here's the truth. A person with specia...

Guess what I did today? I spent nearly an hour sorting, stacking, cleaning, boiling, and organizing eggs. We have them everywhere. Dozens and dozens of eggs. To make it worse, we have run out of egg cartons, so my counters are filled with various baskets and containers which hold... you guessed it, eggs. This is with my family eating a lot of eggs. K. has been known to have three eggs in the morning, possibly followed by an egg snack later in the day. D. has volunteered to make quiches for dinner one night, which I'm going to take him up on. It will get rid of a couple of dozen, if I can convince D. to make enough. The other thing I did was research how to preserve eggs. Because as many eggs as we have now, come February, I'll be back to buying eggs in the store again. It's a little nuts. Here are my plans: You can freeze raw eggs in ice cube containers and then use them for scrambled eggs or for baking. This is where the rabbit hole starts. I like to bake with the du...

I meant to write something last, night, really I did. But Sunday night, R. had a bout of not sleeping. (So now we know our new sedative doesn't work under those circumstances. This was not a discovery we wanted to make!) That meant by the time night rolled around on Monday night, J. and I were both doing our very best just to function long enough to make it until we could collapse in bed. It probably would have been a very nonsensical post had I even tried. It might have even ranked up there with the college paper I once wrote when pulling (a very rare) all-nighter. I don't do well without sleep, even as a college student. At one point I fell asleep only to discover that I had continued to write while, but instead of writing the paper, I was writing down my dream. It was very weird. I think the dream had something to do with football, which is actually even weirder if you ask me. Anyway, clearly I am not functioning at a full 100% as my digressions are odder and longer than usu...

I started writing this last night, but the article which was due kind of took over and I never got back to it. I have a few minutes, so I'll actually finish it. I have been a little negligent about the blog this week. Either I'm too tired when I sit down to write in the evening or I seem to have nothing to say. (Probably because I am too tired.) The days are full. M.'s new shed was delivered which is replacing the trailer which wouldn't stop leaking. The inside needs to be finished, but the outside is done, and it doesn't leak! Pretty cute, huh? From the front door, where you can see the downstairs and the loft. Taken from the loft looking towards the front door. While I was in Arizona, everyone at home celebrated P.'s 19th birthday. Last week, on the day I left for Arizona, we received a surprise box in the mail from a friend of mine. It was loaded with all sorts of ancient Egyptian goodies that she had sent me. Take a look...

I have a good friend who is as avid a reader as I am, and we tend to enjoy the same books, so we will often recommend books to each other. This is great! I've found some really amazing books thanks to her recommendations. But when we both are having trouble finding books we absolutely adore, it's bad because our usual mode of finding books is also have a bit of a drought. As we were discussing this today, she used the term, "B+ books", and I kind of love it. I feel as though I've read an awful lot of B+ books this year. You know, these are the books that have quite a bit going for them, you like them well enough to finish them, and really love the idea of them, but something is off. It could be the ending (it's so often the ending for me that does it) or a tone that is slightly off or a misstep in the plot. It's just that one thing that causes you to rein back your enthusiasm. I always feel a little badly because there is often enough in the book that ...

I'm back in town from a very quick trip to Arizona. My mother had become seriously ill and had been admitted to the hospital, so my brother and I got plane tickets (thanks to the credit card points from our trip to Europe earlier this year) and flew out Friday night. Our weekend was spent in the hospital with our mom. (It was 108 degrees outside on Saturday, so being inside was a bit more appealing regardless of where we were.) She is still in the hospital, but doing much better. They now have a handle on what was going on, and though it will be a long recovery, she ended up with a darn good scenario all things considering. Since my brother and I no longer live near her, we are feeling particularly blessed that she has some very, very good friends who are filling in for when we cannot be there. So that was my weekend. I arrived home about 1am last night (or this morning), so it was a short night. I'm pretty pooped, and actually fell asleep while I was sitting down after I r...

There were a couple of things that caught my attention as we did our schoolwork this morning. The first is that sometimes gains are made, but they are made so slowly that you don't realize they are happening at the time. This was my experience with R. I had some tracing sheets that we had worked on a bit last year that I brought out again. Last year, this exercise was tough going. She had trouble both following the line and keeping the pen on the paper. If I remember correctly, it took multiple tries for her to even come close to completing it. This year? Well, she did it twice with very little input from me. It's pretty darn accurate. And last year, the curved ones were a complete bafflement to her. I'd say that there has been some significant progress made. The second realization I had was that we just cannot discount the importance of early language exposure in babies and toddlers. We started back with our grammar books this morning and the lesson we were on dea...

It is always with a little trepidation that we begin actual school work each year. I've been doing this long enough to know that my neat and tidy plans and fantasies about how our school time will look are often at odds with messy reality and real children. Some years start out better than others. This was a good year. I think one thing that helps is that we spend far more time talking about what work we will be doing on the first day back than we do actual work. I think this helps because it gives some time for everyone to process what is going to be expected of them. It stops the automatic reaction of, "I can't do that!" I also played up the 'isn't it cool you are all older kids now and can do so many more things' angle. Who doesn't like to have competency thrown at them? We did do some actual work today, and it involved paint, so that's always helpful, too. Wednesdays are going to be our marine science day, so that is what we began with... a...

Today was our official Not-Back-to-School day. We'll start doing some regular work tomorrow, but I have never started the day after Labor Day, mainly because I can choose not to. Instead, every year, we head off to a museum for the day. It is the absolutely best museum day of the entire year. The schools haven't been in session long enough to schedule field trips and all the different school districts have started. The museums are empty... gloriously empty and we usually have them all to ourselves. Today was not exception. Instead of heading into Chicago like we usually do, we went the other direction and headed to Rockford instead. The crazy thing is that once you figure in traffic, it takes far less time to travel the same distance. One hour of driving as opposed to closer to two hours seemed a lot more appealing. We ended up at the Burpee Museum of Natural History . While it is a smaller museum, they have a nice collection of things, plus a pretty impressive set of dinosau...

After a visit with R. to our primary care physician last week from which we came home with a prescription to help R. sleep, I am suddenly finding I have a little more brain space these days. We've had several good nights, and because she has slept, her days have been significantly better as well. So this on top of the increased functioning from the seizure meds means that life is feeling significantly calmer and much more under control since perhaps the beginning of summer. With my own increased brain functioning, I realize that the entire summer was just plain hard which explains why I am finishing it feeling as though we were in survival mode for most of it. It's because we were, and I didn't quite realize what I toll it had taken on us. It feels good to be able to think again. And what have I been thinking about? Imagination. More specifically, I have been thinking about how our society seems to have an imagination deficit. Think about it... imagination is key to so ma...