Friday bullets - Sept. 24, 21

It's Friday and it's been six whole days since I have had to drive into the city. It's amazing how much time you seem to have when you aren't spending hours in the car. I am now looking forward to an entire weekend of not driving into the city. It's the little things.

• We have finished week two of school, and we are still on schedule. This feels like an accomplishment, given the hecticness of the last three weeks.
• We are enjoying Journey to the Center of the Earth, though every so often someone will ask a fact-checking question based on what we learned in our geology study, so we will pause and discuss it. It is sort of becoming a game of how many ways can my children catch Jules Verne out, but it does keep them listening.
• L. is working on becoming a survivalist... or something of that sort. She found a book on our shelves which tells all about making fires, braiding your own rope, foraging for foods, etc. She has created her own fire ring out by the burn pile and has been practicing building little fires. It involves matches as she hasn't quite perfected the hand drill method and we are fresh out of flint and steel. There has also been much rope braiding of stinging nettle to create rope. (Yes, she has been very careful to avoid the stinging part of the plant.) Quite a few foraging books which I was asked to put on hold for her at the library. 
• Today after one of my classes, we noticed that Bristol was giving a lovely ride to a bird which sat on her back for quite some time. Bristol did not seem overly enthused, but the bird seemed to enjoy it.

• It's a good thing that I am not needing to drive into the city this weekend, because I need to spend it writing up all my EFL case studies to submit. I have one class left where I will present them, then one last class as a wrap-up. I will officially have my diploma in Equine Facilitated Learning in about two weeks.
• Now that co-op has started again and I have a couple of hours in between classes, I am back to knitting again. I am finally working on finishing a sock that I started knitting in 2020, but hadn't picked-up since the world shut down. I don't know why... it wasn't as though I didn't have the time. I'm not quite sure what exactly I did during those couple of months except stockpile food.
• The climbing wall is all finished, but I forgot to get a picture of it while it was still light. I'm not sure how many people have tried it yet, but I predict that J. and L. will love it best.
• I now receive junk mail for Bittersweet Farm LLC as well as for our family. 
• Y. is doing Japanese lessons over Zoom and is really enjoying it.
• I miss D. being gone, even though he is doing well and loves college. I also miss my personal librarian. 
• For a brief moment this past week, the loft was all picked up and you could walk across the floor. It was lovely. It lasted two days. Now it is back to being covered in bottle tops (clone troopers). The difference is that the clean loft inspired everyone to get the Brio trains out which I haven't seen in quite a while. I'm not sure if the clone troopers are riding on them or not. I do know that this morning, H. and L. were quite involved in building tracks down the stairs as a sort of ski jump trying to launch the train cars down the stairs so they flew over the baby gate at the bottom. (The gate is for Aster who cannot behave herself on the second floor when left unattended.) I went out to teach so I have no idea the results of the experiments. 
• I am very much enjoying the cooler fall weather.
• My horse classes for the second part of fall could still use some students. If you are in the area, sign up! Or tell your friends to sign up. Registration is on my website: Bittersweet-farm.com
• And in the spirit of self-promotion, the documentary is going to aired on PBS (on the WORLD channel) on Nov. 23 at 9/8c. Can I say that it feels very strange to see pictures of my family on PBS's website? It is a little jarring because it is not what I expect to see. (If you don't want to wait until November, you can also catch it on Vimeo.)

And with that, I'm going to end here and go curl up in my comfy chair with a book. Have a good weekend!