Ordinary Time

I do a lot of laundry. The children who I don't do laundry for do a lot of laundry. The laundry machine is running fairly constantly around here. I didn't used to make my own laundry detergent, but a friend shared the recipe she used, so last year, I decided to try it. I've been happy with it, and having done the math for how much it costs me today, I'm even more happy with it. This recipe originally came from another website, but since this is third hand now, I don't know what it is. (If I figure it out, I'll add it in.) I have also tweaked it just a little bit based on container sizes I could find. Here is what I use: Fels Naptha soap bars - 3, grated 1 1/2 boxes (~ 76 oz, give or take) of borax (I think the boxes are also 55 oz since they are the same size as the washing soda) 1- 55 oz box washing soda 2 c. (or one small box) baking soda 1 - 5 pound box oxyclean (there are approximately a gazillion types, I always choose the cheapest) 4 C epsom salts...

Let's lighten things up around a bit. It's feels as though it's been a fairly heavy week. D. got hired for his first job this week. He is going to be working at our local library as a page (which seems to be a fancy name for shelver of books). He had originally thought is was a volunteer position, but it turns out to be a paid one. This could be my in at the library. Maybe I will finally be remembered... if only as D.'s mother. I'll take what I can get. Poor Y. has been feeling crummy for most of the week. It is very sad to see her feeling so rotten. In math this week I not only had to teach a child how to multiply two, two-digit numbers, but I also had to teach another child how to do long division. I think they both have the basic idea of both, but there were some unhappy moments. I did not do a load of laundry today, mainly because I am out of laundry detergent. So coming home from the stable today, I picked up the makings for a new batch. Yes, I make my o...

Well, R. has slept the past couple of nights, though it is has not been an easy thing to get her to sleep. I am also not thrilled with the amount of pharmaceuticals it is taking to get her to sleep. When she wakes up in the morning, she is much better, and is pretty fine during the day. Then, at about tea time, which is 4pm for us, she starts to wilt. Today, she sat down next to me and fell asleep on my shoulder for a good long while. For a little bit after her nap, she was doing fairly well, and then right about 6:15 or so, her behavior and functioning took a huge plummet, heading back towards the night time crazy. Part of me wants to say it's fatigue. She is clearly tired by the afternoon, and asking her to take a nap in her bed is a total no-go. It won't happen. This is the main reason I sat for so long on the couch while she napped, so she could get some sleep. If it is fatigue, it was clearly not enough nap. But the mystery is that for months there is no problem. But w...

R. slept last night, but things are not looking good for tonight. I'm stressed about the only medicine that has helped her relax and to sleep (and thus us sleep) not working. It was the only thing that has helped so far, and my brain is spiraling a bit about what life will look like if we cannot find another medicine to help. Yes, I know I am jumping to the worst case scenario. They always say to go with your strengths. They... Whoever this mysterious 'they' is. In this case, it's benign. But I've been seeing far too many instances of the use of 'they' being not so benign. Now, fair warning... I'm worried and tired. My filter is broken. Proceed at your own peril. If you are going to get upset about my soap box, you might just want to stop here and come back tomorrow. So there's this virus going around. You might have heard of it. It's a new mutated form of a corona virus, and in China where it started, it has caused untold distress. As a re...

R. did not have a good night last night. Yesterday, right before dinner, it was like someone flipped a switch and suddenly she was right smack dab in the middle of a psychotic episode. It took more than the usual rescue drugs to get her back to somewhat normalcy, but we never quite reached it. At bedtime, she just could not relax, and did her weird lie down in bed, but not let her head touch the pillow with her eyes wide open-thing. Eventually she slept for a little bit, but then had to be moved into our bedroom for the rest of the night. It was not restful. For anyone. Even younger people were walking around like zombies because of the interrupted sleep. Today she was coherent, but clearly exhausted. It took the emergency seizure meds with me to our co-op just in case. Thankfully I didn't need to use them. But tonight, I'm just not sure what we are in for. She is right now sitting in a huddle on the floor of my bedroom while J. tucks everyone else in, because she wouldn...

Carrie Capes, the director of Horse Power Therapeutic Riding (where I volunteer), asked me to write something about working with people who have an ODD diagnosis. Because I have opinions. But that's not news to my regular readers. I'm also not one to turn down a good blog post topic. So here it is for everyone.  On the surface, ODD is a diagnosis which characterizes the behavior of a child who does not cooperate, who shouts, “No!”, who is rude, and in general is unpleasant and difficult. Even though I have a child (or two depending on the day’s functioning) who exhibit these characteristics, I do not find the ODD diagnosis to be overly helpful. This is mainly because it is a diagnosis which merely describes a set of symptoms or behaviors instead of addressing the cause of the behavior. It would be like diagnosing a child with hearing loss when in reality that child has wax build-up in their ears. Addressing symptoms instead of causes doesn’t do anything with regards to...

I decided to stick to easy basics for the most part this week. It had been a while for some of these dinners. If you hadn't noticed, I tend not to repeat things more than once a month or so. I get bored easily. Monday Macaroni and Cheese      Homemade, a request from a child Sauteed spinach      With garlic and balsamic vinegar Tuesday Chili      Because it's easy and I have a lot of ground beef Cornbread      Homemade Wednesday BBQ beef sandwiches      Once again, because I have beef in the freezer. Cooked in the crock pot because Wednesday nights tend to be a little nutty. Cooked carrots      With butter and dill Thursday Chicken noodle soup      I found some frozen chicken bones from roast chicken in the freezer, so decided it was a good week to make soup. Biscuits      From scratch Friday Chicken gyros      I am total...

We were at the visitation for our friends' daughter last night, so posting didn't happen. Yesterday Y. turned 13, and we celebrated this evening. If you go strictly by age, she makes the 7th teen in the house currently. Part of Y.'s birthday gift is to get her ears pierced, because 13 is the age for that in our family. She is very excited. I finished To Kill a Mockingbird earlier this week. I have been processing it with anyone who will discuss it with me. I can't help but think it reads very differently in 2020 than it did when it was published or even when I was in high school. I didn't hate it, but feel extremely gutted by it. I am now currently reading a phenomenally light and fluffy book. I needed a mental and emotional break in my reading life. I've started doing figure 8's and learning how to pivot in my driving lessons.  I ordered some new winter breeches (for riding) because they were on sale and my collection was getting truly pathetic. But...

I like to include food into what we are learning as much as possible. As I have mentioned before, when we were part of our long standing history co-op, we would end each year with a big feast. Everyone (adults, too) dressed in costumes from the era and we all made a huge amount of food that would be typical of that time period. (We were always so thrilled when we passed the 1400's and could include chocolate, tomatoes, and corn into our menu.) These feasts were wonderful, but did involve the parents spending inordinate amounts of time constructing costumes for our ever growing families. That, I don't really miss. Too many late nights. I can't replicate the feast aspect of those years, but I can have an evening where we try the foods. This is what we did tonight. This morning we spent reading about ancient Egyptian kitchens, cooking, and food, and this evening some of the children helped me cook. We had catfish cooked with onions: Lentils: (Do you have any idea...

A friend asked me to write about high protein snacks, so, because I can't think of anything else to write and I'm tired, I'm going to make use of the prompt. First, some of you may be wondering why. Why is this even a thing? Well, do you remember this post from a while back, about some small, screaming girls? Go ahead a read it, it will illustrate the why pretty well. Sometimes I Get Things Right Some children are more prone to behavior difficulties and just coping in general without regular amounts of protein in their system. This is particularly true of children from hard places, whose brains are not wired optimally to begin with. By regular, I mean every two hours, though even that is a little too long for a couple of my children. As a result, the whole household has become a little fixated on protein and where to find it. It is often the difference between calm and chaos. The other thing I want to mention is that in my example in the link I posted, the other rea...

It's been an emotional day, for two completely disparate reasons. First, hug your children a little tighter tonight, because you never know when it will be your last opportunity. Friends of ours lost their daughter over the weekend, and my heart breaks for them. Humans were not created to have to endure death; it is antithetical to our very nature. It is so very wrong. Second, if you are a white parent, especially if you are a white parent in a place where diversity is low, please, please, please, expose your children to other types of people. A grade school child when confronted with a natural hair style of an African-American woman should never feel shock and surprise. Instead it should be just a fact of life. As I witnessed this, my heart broke over the beautiful girls and women in my life who would've been hurt by being told their hair is weird. Yes, I said something, don't worry, but really, it is not the child's fault for having no exposure. I lived in a div...

This week's menu wasn't too difficult to come up with because of a birthday, a history evening, and new magazines arriving. Monday Roasted broccoli with wheat berries, blue cheese, and cranberries      This is from the new Midwest Living magazine which arrived this week. It looks fantastic in the photo, and wheat berries are something I have in abundance. (150 pounds of abundance!) Plus it doesn't look too labor intensive, and by the time dinner rolls around on Mondays, I have little energy to do much of anything. Bread      From the store. See the previous paragraph. Tuesday Chicken sandwiches       This is the dinner we were going to have last week when I thought J. was going to be late, but he was not. (We ended up having tamales from out big tamale making day which were leftover and I had frozen.) He is late this week, so back it goes on the schedule. Cooked carrots      With butter and dill Wednesday ...

It's a funny thing about being able to view the statistics for the blog, because you can see correlations you might not notice. One that I have discovered is that on the (very) few times I mention political things, the number of people viewing the post plummets significantly. I know that politics is often unpleasant, but one cannot always be an ostrich even though that is was seems easier and more pleasant at the time. Silence is tacit agreement, and I cannot agree to so much. But the title promises no politics, so I need to veer towards safer ground. The other correlation that I have discovered is that funny animal posts tend to do extremely well in terms of the number of times a post is viewed. So to help balance out yesterday's post, I present you with what happens when a certain Great Dane takes selfies. (Yes, we all know Olive had help taking her selfies. Her great big toes are just too big to push the little buttons on the phone after all.)

Happy Valentine's Day! We actually did something for Valentine's Day this year. That doesn't always happen. It is a holiday which tends to be ignored around our house. I had found at Aldi some small, cute, and affordable stuffed animals which I bought on a whim and surprised everyone with this morning. The general sentiment was one of pleased surprise, often accompanied by statements such as, "We never do anything for Valentine's Day!" Keep 'em guessing; that's my motto. My children also made and decorated Valentine's Day cookies. The younger half did most of the work with some help from older siblings were around. I left for Horse Power this afternoon, having shown them the recipe for frosting and leaving them with food coloring and sprinkles. (Let me tell you, my 30 year old self would never have done this! Food coloring?!) I did vaguely wonder what I would be coming home to. Well, I'm pleased to say that I came home to a clean kitchen an...

Everyone has really been loving the art class they are taking at our co-op, and have all been making some really nice projects. But I am particularly thrilled by what H. has been learning and creating. Here are some of her most recent projects. As you can tell, dolphins are the current theme, though she was working on a sketch of jellyfish as I was writing this. The top was painted and the bottom done with colored pencils. I look at these and can't help thinking back to the skills H. had when she first came home nearly eight years ago. Even though she was 9, she had the pencil skills of a significantly younger person. As far as creating art, I remember that coming up with something out of her own head was an impossibility, though if she had someone she could copy, she could get along. What a difference between then and now. It's pretty amazing. What I want to make clear, though, is that this isn't something J. and I did. All responsibility goes to God and H. Wha...

"Parents attuned to their children's emotional states provide the basis of secure attachment. Of course, no parent will be able to read his or her child perfectly in every interaction. Peter Fonagy, a British psychoanalyst and researcher in the field of attachment, suggests that even the most sensitive parent accurately tracks with his or her child only about 45 to 50 percent of the time. But over time the child will have experience that his emotional states matter, even when his parent makes a mistake that disrupts his emotional equilibrium. God does not expect parents to be perfect. He does, however, long for us to be perceptive. He does not expect that we will never make mistakes, but he cares that we are attuned to the mistakes we inevitably will make. God cares that we are honest about our blunders, but not so that we will beat ourselves up until he is satisfied that we have been sufficiently shamed for our behavior. God is interested in integration, in connection. And ...

This is a day late because J. and I decided at the last minute to go out to dinner last night. There were a growing stack of logistical things we needed to talk about, but could never find the uninterrupted time to have an actual conversation. The theme for this week is things I don't have to work too hard on fixing. I just didn't have the energy to do anything with a long preparation. Monday Chalupa      This is a favorite for us. It's a pork loin cooked in the crock pot with pinto beans (and other things), served over tortilla chips with various toppings. Everyone likes it, it's easy, and I had some frozen pork loin in the freezer. Tuesday      I had thought that J. was going to be late at work on this night, but it turns out he isn't. I haven't quite decided if I will keep this as it or save it for next week when he really will be late and come up with something else. I tend not to cook when he isn't going to be here for dinner and heat somethi...

I'll dive right in. P. probably had the most exciting day today, because she bought her first car! It's a little two-door Chevy Cobalt, and she got a spectacular deal on it from a dealer. She now has the nicest looking and newest car out of all of us.  It is a manual transmission, so J. drove it home for her. Her project for tomorrow is to learn to drive stick. This is how I bought my first car, by the way. I bought a stick, and J. drove it home for me because I didn't know how to drive it. We had just started dating at that point. P. having her own transportation will help with the never ending game of Family Car Tetris that we seem to be constantly playing. It is caused by too many people going too many places with too few cars. When scheduling anything, the person must keep in mind not only their schedule but the schedule of every other person in the family to make sure that the car is available. It is tiresome. Of course, D. is planning on getting his driver's ...

No, I'm not writing about commercials and how I find them annoying and intrusive. Instead, I have a couple of commercials I am going to give myself here, so I apologize if you find them annoying and intrusive. I really try to keep the advertising to a minimum here because I personally dislike it. So the first commercial is to give information, which admittedly is useful only to people who live locally to us, about the poetry seminar the J. and I will be leading next week. Here is the press release. For Immediate Release: Kish poetry workshop series begins soon Kishwaukee College's Poetry Committee will lead interactive poetry workshops in a regularly occurring series on campus. Jud and Elizabeth Curry will start the Spring 2020 series with "Sharing Poetry with Children" on February 13 from 11:00 am - 12:00 pm in the Art Gallery (C1260). The event is free and open to the public. The poetry workshop series invites members of the community to join Kish faculty, ...