Ordinary Time

It was back to real life today as the holiday is over and everyone is well. I wasn't feeling overly excited about the prospect of going back to my rather full regular schedule. We did an abbreviated version of school this morning to ease all of ourselves into it. Tomorrow we'll try to manage the whole thing. Riding lessons and horse classes filled the afternoon, and I have a meal plan and a grocery list ready for tomorrow. I keep telling myself I can do all this because I admit to having vague feelings of panic about it all after so many weeks off. I kind of liked having significantly less on my schedule. A lot. Probably everything would feel a lot easier if R. was functioning well. We are on over a week of complete disregulation. Thankfully the medicine we have makes a difference at night, though she has been waking up with nightmares every single morning between 5 and 6 am. Just enough before the alarm to make it a little difficult to go back to sleep. During the day, it is a

To top off the holiday weekend, we went and cut our Christmas tree today. Not everyone could make it, and due to Covid, the free hot chocolate in the cute little cabin wasn't happening, but we still had fun. As usually happens, we wandered a bit, saw a tree we liked, stationed a child there so we could find it again, wandered quite a bit more, decided we didn't like any of the others we saw, went back to the first tree, and decided that it was the one. We do this every year. It makes at least one of the party a little annoyed and that party wishes we would just skip the vague wandering part of the schedule. But how do you know you want the first one you see until you have scoped out a good portion of the others?  (Once again, pictures by children since I seem to have stopped even trying.) Unbelievably, I think we have a time next week where everyone can make it to decorate the tree and have our usual tree trimming party. The more teens and adult children you have the trickier t

I was going to skip the bullets this week, but then realized that there were a few things that happened other than Thanksgiving. The first turkey carcass has been in the roaster with some vegetables becoming broth for the past two days. It made very good soup tonight. I have a couple of gallons that is going into the refrigerator to cool so I can skim the fat off and put through the pressure canner tomorrow. The second carcass went into the roaster tonight, so a couple more days and I'll have a few more gallons to can. This usually lasts us all year. In other food storage news, I drove to Moscow today. Well, Moscow, Iowa where I met my brother . It seems Moscow, IA is a halfway point between our two homes. In the parking lot of a gas station we switched pounds and pounds of frozen beef from his coolers to mine. My freezer is now restocked for the coming year. I am out of frozen chicken and had been hoping not to see a good sale for the past month or so. I wouldn't have been abl

We had a very nice day together yesterday, though we missed having P. home. We did video chat with her a bit at least. The early part of the day was spent either relaxing or working on food for dinner. There was some game playing as well. This was a giant game of Dutch Blitz. You can get an expansion pack for it so eight people can play at once, which is a bit overwhelming, I'm told. When not preparing food, or trying to light a bonfire,fighting for a place in line for the washing machine, or setting the table for dinner...  J. and I tag-teamed sitting with R. I have no idea whether it was just the holiday itself or something triggered a memory, but for the past couple of days she has been dealing with PTSD flashbacks. Unlike in the past, these never developed into a full-fledged seizure, but it takes concerted effort by me or J. to keep her calm. She was only slightly better today. I'm hoping a good night's sleep (oh, how I hope for a good night's sleep) and another ca

I spent my afternoon 'helping' the youngest six children clean the two rooms they share. I didn't really plan on spending the entire afternoon on this task; I really thought a couple of hours and we'd be done. Clearly, I hadn't really looked to carefully at the state of their rooms except to note that they needed some cleaning. Well, that was an understatement. Six bags of garbage, some recycling, and at least five large bags of stuff to donate came out of one room in particular. It is much, much better now and vacuuming was even able to happen. Usually I let them take care of their rooms without worrying unduly about how tidy they are are. I don't have to live in them and because of the layout of the house, I don't even have to walk past them to go other places. At some point, though, I find I need to step in and really do a thorough cleaning. When everyone was younger, this often meant that I would find some way to distract them such as an outing somewhere

I was able to eek two more meals out of the kitchen and pantry before having to go to the store and do actually grocery shopping. The good news is that my freezer now has enough room (I hope) for the side of beef I'll be picking up on Saturday. Shopping was also kind of important since there is that major food holiday happening on Thursday. My biggest problem with a holiday requiring much cooking is that every seems to think they should also eat other meals during the week and not just the big one. I find it a little challenging to plan meals that are A) not expensive and B) easy enough that they can be fixed while making all the other parts of the big meal. Figuring out all those other meals always feels more like an accomplishment than planning the big meal, which is usually pretty much set.  Saturday, Nov. 21 Pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and goat cheese      We love this dish. I had penne in the pantry and sun-dried tomatoes and goat cheese in the freezer Salad French bread    

Our weather has been so mild this fall that many of my herbs were still growing, particularly dill. The dill from this summer, which had died back, reseeded itself, and I discovered dozens of not so small dill seedlings in the garden. It was a happy discovery, and I've been using it all fall.  Tonight I fear our mild weather is at an end, because we have a cold advisory and snow forecast. I decided it was time to get out the horse blankets because it would be below freezing. This made me realize that if I wanted to save the herbs in the garden, I should probably do it tonight as well, plus we needed more dill for dinner. So there I was in the dark, using my phone as a flashlight, cutting all the herbs I could find. Here is what I ended up with. Boy, what a horrible picture! I promise it didn't look this bad on my phone. Anyway, all that on the right is dill, there is sage in the top middle, thyme in the bottom middle, and oregano on the left. Now, I could put it all in my dehyd

Our house-wide rearranging is slowly, s-l-o-w-l-y, becoming organized again. (Thank you, Covid, for not allowing me to make full and complete use of what could have been a very useful quarantine.) The utility room is starting to look a bit more organized and I have more room, which is nice, but even better, our bedroom is starting to get put back together. One benefit of it all is I now have this wonderful little reading nook, which, I have spent quite a bit of time in recently. Isn't it cozy? The second floor of our house has all these rather inconvenient dormers in every room, bathrooms, too, and it can be a challenge to know what exactly to do with them. This used to be J.'s desk and work area, but it did not provide him a huge amount of room, especially now that he is pretty much remote full time again.  As a result of all the moving around, he has a slightly bigger area plus a filing cabinet in which to organize papers. It still has some organizing that needs to happen and

I have finally updated the " About " page on the blog. They have been pestering me to update it for a couple of years now. Since the last time I did was four years ago, I guess they all have a point. Children grow and change an awful lot in four years. In my defense, do you know what at pain it is to collect pictures of twelve individuals that they both like and approve of showing to the world? This time the heavy lifting of that endeavor went to A. who took care of getting pictures of the younger six. I think you'll find everyone looks quite a bit more grown up. The other thing you'll notice if you head over there (and which you'll also notice in any future posts) is that an initial has changed. It's not a difficult change, so I think you can all manage it. M. for all future posts will be known as W. See? Just turn that M. upside down and there you are. Not hard. W. changed his name a while back and I was slow to keep up. Plus, the initial was already in use,

Once again, I'm not sure how much I really have to share this week. Sitting on the couch does not lend itself to doing many interesting things. As you might tell, I am better, but the fatigue is still very much a part of life at the moment. Yesterday, while I didn't perpetually fall asleep as I did the day before, I still did a lot of sitting. Today was better, but I hope I didn't overdo it and thus be wiped out tomorrow again. I am not a good patient and do not do this whole lack of energy-thing very well.  Everyone else in the house seems to be just fine now, which is very, very good. Obviously, while I've been sitting, we haven't been doing school. People have been keeping busy. L. has read many books, G. has baked and listened to many books, and much cardboard construction has happened. K. has spent the week creating a Clone Warrior (from Star Wars) helmet for himself. Every time we see him, there is more he has added onto it. We've been having some great su

Everyone seems to be pretty recovered from out little household-wide encounter with Covid. We're still technically under quarantine, though because L. didn't get sick until last Wednesday. J. and I are both feeling significantly better, though we are still finding that our stamina is not fully recovered yet.  Take yesterday, for instance. By mid-afternoon I was beat and pretty much sat on the couch and read a novel the rest of the afternoon. This is exceedingly unusual behavior for me, as I try to limit my fiction reading to night time. (The book? Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart. It was written in the 50's and is a light yet well-written gothic romance set in France with just the right amount of untranslated French to make one feel as though one's language skills haven't slipped too badly. If you need diversionary reading, it is recommended.) Now my fatigue could also have something to do with the fact that the previous night L. had great trouble falling aslee

When you clean up a room, you sometimes discover that you don't have the storage solutions that you need. You think maybe a trip to IKEA when you can leave your house again might be a good idea. As you think about different storage solutions, you realize that you need to move out a filing cabinet. In order to get rid of the filing cabinet, you have to decide where to put the files that are in it which you still need. So you decide to move the giant filing cabinet upstairs to your bedroom because this way you can have a place for the files and your husband can have a space for his work files. You (or your husband and son) move the large filing cabinet upstairs. Of course, things never fit quite like how you imagine them in your head, so you need a new plan. If you move one desk, a reading chair, and two large bookcases, you could use the filing cabinet to create a wall and allow your husband to have a slightly larger work space. Moving all those items seems more than you can handle

I realized that I forgot to share some pretty big news yesterday. A. was offered her first full-time, post college job yesterday! It is a management trainee position which will turn into a facilities management position for a well-known, nationwide gym. It's exactly what her major is in and it seems as though it is going to be a good fit. We are very proud of her and she is very excited. As far as the ongoing Covid drama, everyone but Y. seems to be nearly back to normal now. Y. started running another fever and spent most of the day in bed. I'm hoping she can kick this thing soon. J. and I felt so well that we spent a good chunk of the afternoon trying to sort out and restore order in the utility room. That would be the room of the house that functions as laundry room, storage room, has the furnace, the hot water heater, water filter, and freezer and second refrigerator. It is not a terribly large room to manage all of that, so it very easily becomes the place where random ite

I'm not sure how long this will be because when you spend the entire week just sitting around, there doesn't end up being much to write about. Everyone continues to improve, though it's a slow process. Most of the children are back to their regular selves, with Y. and R. being the last to feel not quite right. I was happy to see R. get off the couch where she has sat for the past couple of days and do something this afternoon. The process is a little slower for me and J. While we have had mild cases, it was still much worse than any of the younger people. The worst has been headaches and muscle pain. The muscle pain definitely made it difficult to sleep at night. Those are mostly gone, but now we're just tired. I did some laundry this morning and then had to rest a bit. Do you have any idea how much this annoys me?  I did get some hair trims in yesterday. G. wanted her hair cut to her shoulders, so I cut 8 inches off. It looks cute and she is happy with it. I also trimm

That would be the J.'s test result that took nearly a week to come back. Since that time, quite a few people in the house have gotten sick and recovered. I'm much, much better and J. is improving. The few who have not succumbed are holing up in their rooms trying to avoid the rest of us. While we have felt not great, I think it is safe to say that we have had a mild experience with this virus. We are looking at about ten more days of quarantine, though. I spent some time this afternoon cancelling classes and lesson I was teaching. I hope the weather cooperates and we can make them up after Thanksgiving. I still have one doctor's appointment for R. that was scheduled for next week that I need to reschedule. And suddenly, I find myself with ten days with nothing on the calendar. I can't say I'm terribly upset about that. Since I am feeling better, the first day or so is going to be spent trying to dig out from under the disaster that has become the house while I sat o

Still recovering and still no results. We all have moments of feeling better and then deciding maybe we aren't feeling better. For children this usually means that I've discovered someone has crawled into bed and is asleep. For me, it just means I sit down a lot. I'm realizing I don't think I sit down much during the day because Nefertiti has been settled on my lap far more than usual. I think this means that I have a lap to settle in. I think that the general trend is towards getting better, though.  Needless to say, while we did a little bit of math on Monday, not much school has happened since then. This could be one of those things that new homeschoolers feel stress about or that non-homeschoolers do not understand. Because as we all know, sickness happens, so you just have to make the best of it. It is an incorrect assumption to believe that if students are not involved doing book work every day that school "should" happen that they will get behind. The o

We have all been fighting something here for the past five days or so. It started with J. last week, and then one by one, people have succumbed. (Those who have not are keeping pretty scarce in their rooms at the moment.) J. did go to have a test, but we are still waiting to hear the results. Sigh. On the plus side, it does seem as though people are on the mend.  G. was one of the first to fall, but she is completely recovered now. So much so that she did some baking this afternoon. It was G.'s first layer cake and she did it extremely well. I gave some tentative instructions and then left to go lay down in bad again. This was pretty much supervision free. It was a fudge cake and was one of the moistest cakes I've ever had. We will probably add it into our usual repertoire. Dinner was chicken noodle soup. There was a moment of not knowing what we would do for dinner since today was supposed to be grocery day, but then I remembered I had the left-over chicken from the other nigh

I've been doing a lot of knitting over the past couple of days because I've been stewing ever since I hit publish on my post on Saturday. Knitting is good for stewing as it allows one's hands to be busy, but given the right kind of knitting, requires very little thought about what you are doing. This frees the brain up to think about other things.  Those other things I have been thinking about tell me that I need to add some clarification to my post. Well, one clarification and then a chance to flesh out my premise just a little more. I do not want to be misunderstood. First my clarification. When I was writing that post, I was definitely intending my audience to be my fellow white evangelicals... or those who used to identify as evangelical. Frankly, I'm not sure where I fall at the moment because there is so much about the conservative evangelical church that flies directly in the face of what Jesus teaches. I cannot be a party to that. I am not a person of color and

It was such a beautiful day we went and tried out another forest preserve near us. This time we went to Big Rock Forest Preserve. Pictures by M.