Ordinary Time

We have made it back home. I am feeling a little more balanced, but it was hard saying goodbye to a house we've created such meaningful memories in for the past 34 years. I'll write more about both later.  In the meantime enjoy pictures of Kenzie living his best life as a beach dog.  Note the ears blowing in the wind (Photo credit TM) (Photo credit for the rest MC)

It's with a broken heart that I need to tell you we lost Bristol this morning. I'm going to take a blogging break for a while to grieve.  Here's one of my favorite pictures of her giving a bird a ride. 

Today was our 32nd wedding anniversary. So how did we celebrate? Well, to start with, when I went out to the barn, Bristol was off. She didn't look right, and my first thought was that she was clicking. On closer examination, I realized she was completely lame on one leg and her fetlock was extremely swollen and painful. (I blame Emmy.) Not good. Horse injuries rarely work this way, but the vet was already scheduled to come for their annual vaccinations, so I gave Bristol some pain reliever and kept her in her stall. I was doing my volunteer tutoring at church when I get a text from J. saying the vet was early and she's going to do x-rays because she was extremely careful concerned it was broken. This is not good. Even non-horsey people know a broken leg in a horse is a life-limiting diagnosis. I get home as fast as I can, even though every road between home and our church is under construction. I'll tell you the hamster in my head was exceedingly busy during that car ride.

Rising Lights Project where H. attends her gardening group hosted an informational meeting about special needs trusts, social security, guardianship, etc. Not exactly a fun topic, but an important one. And since this is an area where I really needed more information, I was happy to attend. It was extremely useful and I have a much better sense of out game plan.  I'll admit that I have put off doing research other than randomly pumping friends in the same situation.  Here's the thing, though. With R. being stable for the past six (!) months, we have some bandwidth. Sure, I could have made some phone calls during the past seven years, but honestly, once we had a short stretch of calm where we could think about such things, the calm would end and so would our window. It's been six and a half years of off and on crises if I'm brutally honest. Surviving the moment always seemed like a much better choice than planning for years down the road. The trouble is the road gets shor

It was pointed out to me that it had been a long time since we had gone to a museum. My children love museums and the rumblings were starting to get louder, so I decided I should do something about it. They weren't wrong, when I looked at all my museum membership cards, they had expired quite some time ago. I guess it's only me who feels as though we were just at the Museum of Science and Industry (MSI). Multiple trips a year over decades will do that to you, I suppose.  I knew there was a special exhibit at MSI on Pompeii so it seemed as good an excuse as any. (Plus, if I'm going to buy a membership, I love their inclusive family policy.) Everyone was thrilled to be going somewhere (anywhere?) and we got all the morning jobs done including getting lunches made and dinner in the crockpot in a timely manner. We were off.  I was a little concerned about how crowded it would be. Normally we homeschoolers eschew museums during the summer preferring the much less crowded times w

We had a good weekend, but it was a lot. Saturday was a birthday celebration for six people and Sunday, J. and I spent Father's Day listening to our brother-in-law's band in Evanston followed by dinner with our friends, the P. Family. All good things, but I had no energy to write. Last week I did get my new warp tied on my loom and J. helped me wind it on. I still wasn't entirely convinced that it was going to work, but it did! I can cross a new skill off my weaving skills list. The napkins in progress: I am very excited to have these done and move onto something else. Other than washing another pound of Shetland wool, that's it fiber-wise. What I have been spending every waking moment doing is reading Hey Hun: Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy, and Other Lies Behind Multilevel Marketing by Emily Lynn Paulson. It's the reading equivalent of watching a slow motion train wreck that you can't take your eyes from. It's fascinating and disturbing. Highly recommended.

We are deep in the midst of the birthday craziness that is June. G., L., and B.'s birthdays were yesterday. G. and L. turned 14. I made stuffed spinach pizza for G.'s birthday dinner last night, J. grilled fajita filling for L.'s birthday dinner tonight. No gifts though because we are doing a big June birthday bash tomorrow night where we'll also celebrate D. and J.'s birthdays which happen next week. I guess we'll also celebrate Father's Day tomorrow, but you can understand why that always seems to get short shrift.  So all I have for you tonight is a few pictures from the week.  Mulberries are ripening and will continue to do so for the next week or so. We have so many mulberry trees. So. Many. H. loves to pick fruit, so all last week she and R. (who she pretty much ordered to go out with her) have been picking mulberries. I have had to work to keep up with them. Here is the first batch of mulberry syrup which is now canned, and I have another batch in the

As you might have figured out, I think (and write) a lot about connection. Usually this is connection in the relational sense, but tonight I want to write about connection in the educational sense.  I often find myself answering the question of what the positives are of homeschooling. I think there are a lot, but the one I think that gets short shrift (and really shouldn't) is that homeschooling allows us to help our children see the connections between everything they are learning. This is especially true for those of us who do school in a manner more off the beaten path and don't think in terms of teaching subjects.  By subjects I mean English and writing and math and science and art and history and penmanship and spelling and...  Modern education (including pricey homeschooling curricula) really likes to break learning down into silos of discrete parts that have little to do with one another. But that's not really how the world works, is it? If a child is interested in l

A couple of months ago, I came across an advertisement for a virtual course taught by Dr. Daniel Seigel. He is definitely one of my favorite brain and connected parenting authors. (If you look at either my trauma reading list or my brain science reading list, you will see his name frequently.) This was a course called A Comprehensive Course on Interpersonal Neurobiology . If that doesn't have my name written all over it, I don't know what does. So I looked at the checkbook and figured out how to make it work.  Every week for six weeks, there are six hours of lectures to listen to followed by an exam. If blogging seems a little lighter than usual over the next few weeks, it's because my brain is full and I need time to digest what I've heard.  The thing I'm really enjoying about it is the level of the content. While there are some instances of reviewing things, such as the functions of each part of the brain, he reviews fairly quickly and moves on to new content. So

It's been a while since I posted my fiber activities. This is mainly because I had nothing to show because I had done very little. Not for lack of interest, but I just couldn't seem to get myself motivated.  I think I got stuck on one thing and couldn't get over that to do much of anything. What was that one thing? Finishing weaving the napkins I've been fiddling with for months now. If you remember, I made a mistake in calculating the length of warp I needed to measure and only did as third as much as I needed. So I left a bit on so I could tie on the longer warp without rethreading. Measuring the correct length and tying it on was the thing that stopped me from doing much of anything.  Just that, and it wasn't even something terribly difficult. Brains are weird sometimes. Last week I ended up with very little by way of horse business, so instead of sitting around feeling sorry for myself, I decided to see it as a benefit to work on getting on with the weaving I ha

You might have noticed that our adult children don't appear on the blog very often. This is by intent. They are autonomous adults and have a right to their doings not being for public consumption. (They are all quite well, by the way. This isn't at all some backhanded way of trying to hide struggles. Just in case someone decided to leap to that conclusion... ) But every so often I'll ask permission to post something or a child will give me specific permission to share. That means tonight I get to brag a bit about A.  Last winter A. started going to a gym to learn Brazilian jiu-jitsu. She really liked it and has been extremely diligent in training several times a week. Today she entered her first jiu-jitsu tournament. She had told us how nervous she was about entering, and I'm so proud of her for going ahead and participating despite her nerves. And it paid off! In her first tournament as a white belt, she won second place in her class. This is her winning her fight. I g

As of this afternoon, I'm happy to report that we are once again a two car family. It is kind of a relief to say that.  So first there was the accident that I told you about where Y. and I were t-boned but thankfully walked away. I can't say that the car was as lucky. (This would be our good car, the newer one, the one we were still paying off.) After much wrangling with the insurance company, it was finally deemed totalled. In the interim, we were making do with just the van. When you are not within walking distance of anything and your husband works a half an hour drive away, this can be challenging. We were making it work.  But then... did I tell you about the van brakes? I honestly can't remember. I'll tell you again, just in case because it's part of the saga. I was driving G., L., and Y. somewhere and I stepped on the brake. When I stepped on the brake, it did that horrible thing where your foot goes to the floor but the van doesn't slow down. I released t

Look what TM and his friend brought over yesterday.  Most of those are lupines. His friend knows I love them, and he works for a commercial grower. When they were going to be dumped, he rescued them, and he and TM brought them to me. I'm very excited, but I need to spend some time figuring out where to put everything. And then there will need to be many holes dug. That was my pre-birthday treat. Tonight for dinner, G. made focaccia to go along with the salmon.  It was very, very good.

As you might have already guessed, I didn't post last night. I'll save my fiber doings for next Monday; it wasn't as though there was a lot to share anyway. I meant to write a post, but we got sidetracked. After dinner last night, we took people to our local ice cream place for a treat. It was so busy! Busier than usual, and it took a while. If we were just heading straight back home, a blog post might have happened. We weren't heading straight back home, though. Earlier in the day, I saw a post on a free group about a small chicken coop someone was offering. We needed the coop, so I jumped on it. The person giving it away wanted it gone that day, so, since we were going to be in town anyway, I thought we'd just swing by and throw it in that back of the van after our ice cream treat. It sounds simple enough, right? Well, I wasn't counting on it being dark, and I wasn't counting on it being quite as large as it was. So picture us stopped on a residential stre

Every so often I come across something in my reading that states something I intuitively understood but had never put into words. Once again, in my reading about horses, I found something extremely pertinent to parenting children, especially those that are struggling for whatever reason. I'm going to share a fairly long quote with you and then discuss it a bit, but first my usual disclaimer. No, I'm not comparing children to animals. You all know that right? But very often we can learn from listening to animals something about communicating with our children who are too scared to so anything but react, often in fairly unpleasant ways, to their circumstances. While the author talks about training horses, he is really doing more listening to horses. To avoid comments I'd rather not have to deal with, I am in no way suggesting we train behavior into children. Actually, I'm suggesting the exact opposite. And if you are not a horse person, just go ahead and slog through any

It's been a really long time since I've done one of these, hasn't it? I'm happy to report that everyone at home survived just fine in my absence. J. is a completely competent parent and life continued on as normal (or what passes for normal). I am thankful to have a husband who says, "What a fantastic opportunity! Go to England for ten days. We'll be fine." What I find most amazing is that R. was fine. We spent some time before I left talking about how I would go, Daddy would be home, and I would come back. And that was it. No seizures, no psychosis, no sleepless nights. It feels a bit of a miracle given the past seven years. B., D., and J. even finished planting the garden.  If we're on to gardens, I have to admit that I am not good at weeding. Actually that makes it sound as though I try, but am not successful. The real problem is that I don't even really try. I'm great at gardening during the months of April and May, but once warmer weather

When I was little, playing school was one of my favorite things to do. Sometimes when my friends came over that is what we would play together. I have a very vivid memory of playing school one afternoon with a friend and when her mother came to get her, I carefully informed her as to what my friend needed to work on. I can't remember what the mother replied, she was probably too dumbstruck to actually formulate a response. I might have been a bit much during my childhood. I was thinking about that story today because our church runs a free tutoring program for area children during the summer and I volunteered to help. Today was our first day. One of the things I like about teaching is figuring out why someone isn't understanding something and what I can do to remedy that. Since I've had a lot of non-traditional learner's around here I have collected a lot of tools and activities to help teach various concepts. I loaded up a bag of some of my collection to use at tutorin