Ordinary Time

I've now started this post, written quite a bit, and then deleted the whole thing a couple of times. I have so many thoughts racing through my head, that I know to write them out would be clarifying and helpful, but sometimes they all need to simmer a bit more. This is usually the case when I do the write-delete-write-delete-thing. The other part of the problem is that all of those roiling thoughts are so incredibly disparate. There was the online argument I had about gaps in a child's education. I might have snapped just a little bit when I was then told that children with gaps will never succeed in college. Okay, I think I snapped more than a little bit. So there's the whole educational gaps idea combined with who is your audience when you are commenting on something like that. Then there was the revelation I had this morning that perhaps there is a significant connection between gas lighting in conservative evangelical marriages and accepting the gas lighting that is...

I've spent the weekend working nearly non-stop on planning the school year. I have made significant progress and feel as though I can think about other things again. It's kind of a relief. I'm pleased with how the year fell into place. As I've mentioned before, we'll be doing Ancient Greece and chemistry for our unit studies this year. Greece was fairly straightforward as I've taught it before. Since I don't have any really young children this year, just middle school-age students, I can do things a bit more in-depth and cover things that wouldn't necessarily work with younger students listening as well. While I always aim at the oldest student when I'm planning, this is really the first year that I haven't had to worry about what the younger ones will be doing as well. So for Greece, we'll be doing the usual things... basic history starting with Minoan and Mycenaean culture, Homer and Greek myths, Sparta, everyday life, form of governmen...

I'm still here, just doing 20,000 things other than writing blog posts. The school-planning-thing has become a huge albatross around my neck. Due to various reasons, when I started, I didn't have two uninterrupted weeks to devote to it and just get it done. I'll have some time, so will work on it, but first, because I set it aside for a day or two, I have to figure out where I was before I can make any forward progress. It has been slow going. Today was the first day that I felt as though I made a significant leap forward. But there is still so much to do! Next year, I may just completely clear my calendar of absolutely anything for two weeks, become a hermit, and just get it done in one long planning session.  Does anyone else have a brain that seems to be able to focus on only one thing at a time? This is more than just not being able to multi-task (which is something else I can't do), this is broader. I can only really focus on one activity at a time. For example...

I'm still planning for the school year. At this point, I feel as though I will be forever planning for the school year. I don't want to do this, so I am working at night, which is not something I usually do. I will not be writing a post, but I'll share some links to past posts about our dogs. Meet Gretel Life with Puppy Gretel-locks and the Three Little Children The Mystery of the Missing Soap What I Did on My Summer Vacation - A Diary by Gretel National Dog Day The Ongoing Saga of Gretel the Dog House of Grief I Ain't Nothin' but a Hound Dog - Or Healing a Hole in my Heart A Dog Story

I dislike planning meals when it is beastly hot. This is mainly because I do not like cooking or eating when it is beastly hot. If I could get away with it, I would just buy several gallons of ice cream and call it good. Tuesday, Aug. 25 Salmon      I found salmon on sale for $4.99/pound the other day, so bought two huge fillets. I never see it at this price. One is now frozen, the other we enjoyed tonight. J. put a mustard sauce on it and baked it. New potatoes Salad Wednesday, Aug. 26 Ponzu Steak Salad      This is a noodle salad that uses grilled steak, green onions, and ponzu sauce (it's a citrus-y soy sauce). It's pretty simple and surprisingly good for how few ingredients are in it. I think it's a Pioneer Woman recipe if you want to search it up. But most importantly, I don't need to heat my kitchen up to make it. I'll do the noodles early in the day. French bread      Store bought this time. I'm not baking. Thursday, Au...

Today was one of those days where I never really sat down, but am not entirely sure where the day went. I do have 5-1/4 pints of cowboy candy (candied, pickled hot peppers) and 5 pints of bread of butter pickles to show for it. And I taught K. how to do laundry. And all three horses have trimmed hooves because our new farrier came today. (What a huge difference a really good farrier makes! Java wasn't terrified.) And we had teatime. Sometimes it's more difficult to focus on what you didn't get done rather than what you did. It is also difficult to focus on what you did when you have a brand-new toy you won't let yourself play with until some basic home management things get taken care of. One of the things I did do today was pick-up this from someone who was selling it in an area garage sale. Yes, I know I already have a spinning wheel. But this one is a single-treadle wheel with a completely different drive system. The spinning wheel I have been using has a driv...

I think this year's garden needs to be considered a success. There were some things that just didn't work... eggplant, yellow onions, watermelon... other things have done quite well. We are in the middle of a tomato boom which no one minds, I still pick a couple of cucumbers every time I'm out there, and the okra is doing wonderfully. Today I chopped and froze some more okra, which puts us at nearly two gallons of chopped frozen okra. I also seeded 38 jalepenos, filled them with cream cheese, and froze them. When we're ready to use them, I'll thaw, wrap bacon around them, and broil them. Tomorrow I plan on doing six more pints of bread and butter pickles and also some candied, pickled hot peppers if I have time. I realized there are two kohlrabi in the back of the refrigerator that I kind of had forgotten about. I suppose tomorrow I should take a good look and see if they are salvageable. If they are, I'll cube, roast them, and freeze. I'm also running o...

I'm desperately trying to get our school year planned before it actually starts. I'm ready to be done with this whole process and have some time to move on to other things. But I have to say, businesses which are supposed to support education don't always make it easy for us homeschoolers to do our job. It irks me more than a little bit, because we often have to justify the education that we give to our children to other people, often those involved in education. There is an assumption by many that the education that homeschoolers offer their children is inferior to what traditional schools can offer. Frankly, this is a lot of hooey, not because the education offered in traditional schools is bad, but because a homeschooled education is just as good. And that just as good comes with quite a bit of effort behind it. More than once, I have come across businesses which are more than happy to sell to schools, but trying to get them to sell to individuals is next to impossib...

I'll dive right in tonight. There was no post yesterday because I was too exhausted. It was my one free day with absolutely nothing on the calendar, and I was looking forward to spending some time at home taking care of all the odds and ends that slip through the cracks. And then I remembered that I needed to renew my driver's license because it expired in early June and I was coming up on the end of the three month grace period. I knew I didn't want to try to add that errand into my schedule once school had started, so instead of getting to spend a quiet and productive day at home, I got to stand in this line instead. Look carefully and you'll see the line continuing along that sidewalk. There were definitely people in the line who were making their second or third attempt, having run out of their available time and had to leave. These were the people who brought chairs and umbrellas and drinks. I brought a book. I brought a book in which I still had one hu...

Yesterday I took R. to get a new pair of sneakers. Her feet haven't grown since she has been home, so her shoes wear out before she outgrows them (unlike everyone else), and boy, had they worn out. With Covid and everything, shoe shopping just hadn't been happening. I'm not sure G. even has a pair of sneakers at the moment. It just didn't seem to be a priority seeing as how we don't really go anywhere and it's summer. But it bothered R. to the point she was starting to perceverate about it, so shoe shopping we went. At the second store I managed to find a pair of sneakers I could stand looking at and that didn't require shoelaces to be tied. You wouldn't think that would be so difficult, but it is. (An aside, I spent years and years looking for tie shoes... because I don't actually like Velcro shoes... for my other children. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Now? Every pair we found in her size were ties and I'm looking for Velcro...

I actually made a menu before going to the store today. It felt like a minor accomplishment. Tuesday, Aug. 18 BLT sandwiches      The tomatoes in the garden are all getting ripe. And when you have a lot of good, ripe tomatoes, you have to make BLT sandwiches. Sauteed spinach     Wednesday, Aug. 19 Basil chicken with feta      I picked up a bunch of chicken breasts on sale for $0.99/pound last week, so we can go back to having some chicken dishes. This one is very good and is done in the crock pot. Along with the chicken and feta, it has chick peas (in my freezer) and basil (lots of it in the garden). Egg noodles Salad Thursday, Aug. 20 Zesty kale and sweet potato bowls      This is a new recipe for us. I'll use millet instead of quinoa for the grain. I don't actually care for quinoa and found a bunch of millet on clearance a week ago for $0.20/pound. Sweet potatoes were on sale today and kale is in the garden. I'm...

Fair warning, this post may make some of you very unhappy. In fact, I have a suspicion that I will lose more than a couple of readers over it. Sometimes sharing a hard story is more important than worrying about how people will perceive you as a result. That said, I have a picture to share with you. This is B., in the yellow. I want you to look very closely at his arms. Do you see what color they are? That orange tint you see is pepper spray. I want you to look very closely again. See those big red crosses on his shirt? It seems pretty darn clear that he is a medic. (And yes, he is trained and has passed his EMT licensing.) A medic who not too long after this photo was taken was thrown to the ground so hard that the respirator he is wearing was broken. If he hadn't been wearing a helmet, his head would have been broken as well. No, he has not gone around the world to perceived dangerous countries where he is putting his life on the line. This was from this past Saturday in o...

"Social learning is a powerful tool, but children who grow up in danger and fear learn not to be curious. Living in a state of mistrust leads people to turn away, and they stop learning from others. By contrast, if trust can be established, the brain is better able to create new neural networks." -- From The Well-Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature by Sue Stuart-Smith (p. 178) Yes, I'm still working my way through this. I get side-tracked by other things and other books. I usually have multiple non-fiction books going at one time, so if one gets buried in the pile, it is ignored for a bit. Once again, though, this book contains really interesting brain information. (I really need to buy my own copy to mark up.) This 'social learning' which is referred to is the idea that human brains are primed to learn best in small groups of people. It seems there is even a special channel in the brain which fast-tracks information shared between close-knit peopl...

We are climbing out of the hole we fell into last week. Tomorrow J. goes to pick-up the washing machine a friend is giving us. Today, J. went and looked at some used vehicles. We haven't made any decisions on that front because a co-worker has a car that isn't currently being used, so we can borrow that for a bit while we sort things out and figure out the best plan of action. The tax return was deposited into our checking account. What a difference a week makes, huh? And while all of that is wonderful and goes a long way towards a functioning household, I'm actually most excited about this. I still need to get three more saddle racks. They will go next to these. Bridle hooks And the big blank wall I asked for so I could put my posters up. Now J. has begun shelves on the other side of the tack room. Once those are done, I'll be able to put quite a bit of the stuff that is left to go in, and I can see what other storage I need.  I am so excited a...

And somehow we all made it to Friday. It felt touch and go there for a while earlier in the week. We are awash in cherry tomatoes; specifically the little yellow pear shaped ones. There are worse problems to have. I can eat them like candy. M., with P. holding, took out Java's stitches earlier this week. If I'm going to have a child who is a licensed vet tech, I should get some benefit out of it, huh? I'm told the stitches came out easily and Java was patient with the process. Her nose looks pretty good, especially considering that the vet wasn't sure that the edge that was nearly ripped off would make it. She does have a slightly jagged bit right on the edge, but it isn't terribly noticeable, nor should it bother her. See? You can hardly see it. If you look about 3/4 of the way up her nostril, by the little white patch, that is the beginning of the tear. There is a slight white line where it was stitched back together.  R. has been better, though we still...

and been far snarkier in my written response than I usually am. The assumption and tone directed at another homeschooler, though, was just so out of bounds and frankly wrong, that I couldn't help myself. And what was the egregious statement? That choosing to homeschool one's children is equivalent to not allowing one's child to have a future. Except it was said far more snidely than that. I think you should be impressed that my response contained only G-rated words, because there were some decidedly non-G-rated words going through my head. With homeschooling becoming so exceedingly mainstream these days, I am always brought up short when I come across statements that were common when I first began homeschooling 24 years ago. What rock have these people been hiding under? What a difference a couple of decades makes, though. Twenty years ago I was pretty capable of defending our choice to homeschool. The assurance must have somehow showed in my face, because it was only t...

Today was a better day, though there were still moments of extreme disregulation. I did get to go to my driving lesson, so that was something. I also made it to the grocery store, which we desperately needed. I couldn't bring myself to make a list beforehand, so I grabbed things and hoped I could create a menu for the week after I got home. As you can see, I did manage to do this. Monday, Aug. 10 Chiles Rellenos      I had picked over 24 poblano chiles in the garden, so had to make these. We make them every nine months of so, long enough to forget how tedious they are to make, but not long enough to forget how good they are. Spanish rice Chili      From a can. We needed just a little bit more to make sure there was enough food for people. Tuesday, August 11 This was the terrible, horrible day. Children made their own dinner. Scrambled eggs Toast Wednesday, August 12 Garlic broccoli penne      This is a family favorite, plus...

Well, my premonitions about the week not improving were, sadly, correct. R. was off the rails all day. I did not get to go to my riding lesson. I did not make it to the grocery store. Everyone had scrambled eggs and toast for dinner, which they made themselves, and to top it off, the car needs $2500 worth of repairs to make it run again. That won't be happening, so we need to acquire another vehicle. Currently, R. is lying in bed screaming for J. He has been back at work in person several days a week and she is stuck with me again. This clearly does not make her happy in a major way. It kind of stinks to be the hated parent. But I am off the clock and have tapped out because I have nothing else to give today.

It's been a week, and it's only Monday. Last night, as I mentioned, our washing machine started leaking from the bottom. J. hasn't had a chance to really investigate what is going on, but I am preparing myself for it to be bad news. The only bright spot is that I cannot actually do laundry for the moment. Too bad. Today, as I was driving to Horse Power, the jeep started making a very concerning noise to the extent that it just didn't sound safe to drive any longer. I pulled into a gas station and waited for AAA. It is now at the repair place. We were afraid that transmission was going out, which sounded extremely expensive, but the guy at the shop thought is might be something less dire. I'm holding out for less dire because if we cannot afford a new washing machine, we certainly cannot afford either a major car repair or to replace a vehicle. This afternoon we had a giant storm blow through with forecasts of up to 100 mph winds. I brought the horses in just as ...

It turns out that August 9 is National Book Lovers Day. I feel as though I should have served a cake with dinner to celebrate. We have quite a few book lovers in this house. Sadly, there was no cake or pie or even ice cream, which would have been nice since it was so hot today. So instead of celebrating with food, I'll celebrate with a blog post. One of our favorite picture books is Henry and the Buccaneer Bunnies by Carolyn Crimi. Poor Henry is the son of a pirate captain ("The Baddest bunny brute of all time") and lives on the pirate ship where he doesn't fit in. Instead of doing pirate-y things, Henry just wants to read. Life is not good for Henry. When the ship sinks and the crew is shipwrecked on an island, the only things that are saved are Henry's trunks of books. It is with these books that Henry saves the crew... and the day... eventually turning the entire crew into a ship full of readers. Some of Henry's books are titled along the lines of ...

I have written about traumaversaries before. About how they are past trauma stored at the cellular level in the body which come back to reenact the trauma on anniversaries of their occurrence. I have watched enough of my children experience them without any possibility of knowing that they were hitting an anniversary of a traumatic event to know they are very real things. Reading the title, you're probably now expecting to read something about how one of our animals helped one of our children navigate one of these difficult times. Since I like to keep my readers guessing, I'm not writing about that, but instead am going to tell you about Java. Since you don't live with them, you probably have trouble keeping track of all the animals around here. This is Java. Java is the one whom we discovered is going blind with cataracts. She is also the horse who is the most fearful out of the three. Things are harder for Java. When she is regulated, she is a funny nut and a great...

And suddenly it is August. It always feels a little as though the fast forward button gets pushed once August rolls around. The garden is booming. Some days I come in with fairly large baskets of produce. This is great. It also means I need to do something with all this food. Here is the haul from the other day. This was all from the same day except for a bunch of those cucumbers in the middle. Those have been decorating the counter for several days. We cannot eat them fast enough. Poblano and jalapeno peppers Beets... lots of beets The beets L. and I took care of yesterday. She loves pickled beets almost more than life itself, so was quite happy to lend a hand. I got six pints of pickled beets made and had enough left over to serve beets as a side dish tonight. I also made six more pints of sweet pickle relish earlier in the week. I am running out of room in the pantry cupboards to store all the jars of things I've canned. I am also running out of pint jars...

Yesterday was a fairly busy day, and for various reasons I was gone quite a bit. I try to have R. engaged with an activity while I am gone to make things easier for the others who are staying at home. The good news is that if I give her an activity box that I know she enjoys that it will keep her occupied for the duration of me being gone. The bad news is that if I give her an activity box that she enjoys that it will keep her occupied for the duration of me being gone. As I mentioned, I was in and out most of the day. Every time I blew through the house R. was still playing with the same activity box. I kept meaning to change the activity, but would get distracted and would need to head out again before I could actually act on that thought. This means that R. played with the same activity box for a good 8+ hours yesterday with one small break for lunch. I rarely let her play with something for that long because there is literally no end point. I will always end up taking it away b...

For Christmas last year, TM gave his younger siblings tablets. Since you all know my views on screens, you can imagine I had mixed feelings over this, but they were ecstatic. Despite my misgivings, they have proven to be a pretty good thing. There is the game that we got for R . They have all been good about waiting to get them out at the end of the day after everything is picked up. And just a few days ago, G., L., and Y. have discovered DuoLingo. This first came up because Y. expressed a desire to brush up on her Mandarin since she realized that she has lost quite a bit. Putting DuoLingo on her tablet seemed like an easy way to start this process. (To our Mandarin speaking friends in Evanston, boy, we wish we lived closer. And not just because your language skills!) It's not perfect, but it is a start. Of course, once Y. had it on her tablet, G. and L. needed it on theirs. L. is currently working on Spanish. I'm not sure what G. decided on, but I've heard mumblings ab...

Thank you everyone for your very kind comments. They made my day. After a week of seeing my stats drop to levels I haven't seen in years, I really was wondering if anyone was reading. I'm so glad you are, and I'll keep writing. Now, on to the day's business. Monday, Aug. 3 Zucchini enchiladas      The zucchini in the garden are finally starting to produce vegetables. I had three zucchini, and this is one of my favorite ways to use them. I make a homemade enchilada sauce for them. Refried beans      Homemade Tuesday, Aug. 4 Pasta with roasted summer vegetables      This is a great mid-summer dish. It's nice I have a bunch of cherry tomatoes that we can use. Garlic bread Wednesday, Aug. 5 Calzones      Homemade. I'm sure G. will be happy to make the dough for me. Salad Thursday, Aug. 6 Ginger pork with with sweet peppers      This will use up the ground pork I have in the freezer Jasmine ri...

It's me I was wondering after all these posts if you still like to read A bit about everything They say that blogs are supposed to be passe But I still got things to say. Hello, can you hear me? I'm writing and I'm writing as though life is still the same as Before Covid and when Presidents were sane I've forgotten how it felt before the world fell at the seams. There's such a difference between then And the stress of now. Hello from the other side I've imagined 'least a thousand times That I wish life was simple And the people still were kind But when I write no ever Seems to be there. Hello from the Covid times At least I can say that I've tried To write you good things Though some might be hard But it don't matter, it clearly Is too hard for you there. Hello, how are you? It's so typical of me to talk about myself, I"m sorry I hope you are well Is life too hard, the news too bad for you to be online for too...