Ordinary Time

For many years R. would never leave things lying around the house. Toys, shoes, coats, anything she saw as hers was crammed either in her closet or under her pillow if she weren't actually clutching it. I know this seems like a parent's dream come true, but in actuality it ends up feeling more than a little disconcerting.  You see, children who are secure in their home and don't worry that their possessions will still be there if they walk away are children who leave things about. But orphanages and children's hones teach another lesson. If you aren't holding something or hiding it, then the odds are not in your favor that you will ever see that item again.  These lessons are deeply ingrained and not easily unlearned in favor of healthier options when a child reaches a safe situation. I tell parents all the time that for some things you really need to think in years instead of just weeks or months. This can be difficult to really comprehend sometimes.  As an example...

(Do I add the warning up front that I guarantee I will deeply offend someone or do I just let it catch them by surprise... ? I guess you can consider yourself warned.) Sometimes I feel as though that would be me and my family. And why? Because we have trans children and we are Christian (though I'm sure some would say that we say we are Christian.) Here we go... this post has been brewing for some time.  Every parent wants to do a good job raising their children. Especially with the first, there are so many unknowns, things you don't know, fears you have over being intrusted with this little tiny baby who you suddenly love more than life itself. You want to do the right things. This is often especially true when it comes to matters of faith. The consequences of getting it wrong can be eternal depending on the voices you are listening to. This can be a heavy and frightening burden.  So you read a lot, you listen to older parents, you listen to pastors and teachers, and you do ...

I spent the day in a weaving class working on a color gamp. (It's like a woven color sampler.) I had meant to take a picture of all the colors on the loom, but forgot. I'll have the finished gamp to show you next week.  In the meantime, I have a new warp on my loom at home. It's all set to begin weaving, but has sat like this for over a week because the holiday took over.  I have another bobbin filled of the mystery fiber that came with my newest spinning wheel. I have this much of it left... which I hope will fill most of this bobbin...  so I can make a three-ply yarn out of it. My only finished object is some more dyeing I did. The spinning class I teach is going on a longish break in a couple of weeks so I need to make sure they all have enough fiber to work with. I'll probably dye this much again next week. If you look carefully you can see different shades of red, orange, and pink. It's another dye creation I'll never be able to replicate because I was usin...

I'm a bit done in from the holiday so don't have much to share. Since various  children are always sharing pet photos with the family, I thought I'd give you a taste of what many of the text messages I receive look like. Nefertiti... Olive... W. and MC's dog, Mambo who was sad that D. had to leave. B.'s cat Romeo... And one of mine, Major this morning. You probably can't tell, but he has grown a very thick and long winter coat. So that combined with his stocky build makes him kind of look like a giant four legged teddy bear.

Today was the day where we drive to Iowa to meet my brother halfway and move hundreds of pounds of frozen beef from his truck to our van. It doesn't look dicey at all. It's always nice to have a moment to see and briefly catch-up with him and my sister-in-law. We've been doing this for years, and today we all wondered why we didn't plan to have lunch together as part of the festivities. Next year that's our plan.  Some of the beef was for someone who lives in our area, but the rest was ours. This meant when we got home I had to try to cram it in the freezer along with all the other things I have in there. I'm always a little unsure it is going to work.  But I did it with not an inch to spare. The only thing that didn't fit was the lamb we split between our families. It was much smaller than we had anticipated, but based on storage capacity it probably wasn't a bad thing because I was able to fit it in the bottom of the kitchen freezer. We are now back at...

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday. It was so good that we took zero pictures. Well, we took one for the Christmas card because everyone was there, but that's for later.  Today we had scheduled to get our Christmas tree. Since we have moved, we've tried various cut your own places, but have only found one that we really like. It's only downside is that it's sixty miles away across the border in Wisconsin. But it's worth it. There are a lot of trees to choose from, it's reasonably priced, and even when busy it's not too crowded. Plus, there's a free cup of hot chocolate for everyone.  Last year we didn't go there, but went somewhere much closer to home. The experience was pretty much the exact opposite of what we had come to expect. It was definitely not the good place.  As Christmas approaches this year and we were getting things on the calendar, I wondered why we decided not to go to the good place. I was genuinely kind of baffled. But then I...

We continued to do "vital" Thanksgiving preparations today. J. finished the last coat of paint on the family room walls before dinner and I spent some time pondering how to make the room less depressing. I know the new paint will help with that significantly.  The other issue with the room is that it tends to be where couches go to die. We tend to replace living room couches when absolutely necessary and then move the old couch to the family room where many children lounge on them. I don't think we're quite at a point where I'm willing to chance new furniture in there. We also have two chairs that were my grandmother's which I love. They are the perfect short person chair, but they are in desperate need of re-upholstery.  When my grandmother had them last recovered in the 1930's, she chose upholstery based on how long it would last. Up until the last six years, it held up. I think she obtained her goal. But I suppose it's too much to expect fabric to l...

I don't really have any new projects to share this week as there hasn't been much change from last week. Instead, I want to talk a bit more about the book I'm nearly done with. I've mentioned it in passing before. It's Worn: A People's History of Clothing by Sofi Thanhauser.  While I have found it to be interesting, it has neither been a fast read nor an altogether pleasant one. When I started it, I felt as though I had a pretty good grasp of the human and environmental toll that textile and clothing production took on our world. I didn't even know the half of it when it comes right down to it. It's egregious in so many ways.  The book outlined different materials for creating cloth... cotton, silk, and synthetics (which would include extruded materials such as rayon). Cotton in large scale production is ... not great. Silk is becoming increasingly difficult to produce because of land loss, and synthetics... ? I'm pretty sure I will not be able to bu...

We're starting to gear up for Thanksgiving. We've done some cleaning, we have two turkeys thawing in the refrigerator, and tomorrow I'll get the last few things we need from the store. W. and MC are taking care of the pies, D. has agreed to bake the rolls, L. will probably do most of the cranberry -orange relish, so we're in good shape. Which (sort of) explains why, at 3:00 pm this afternoon, J. and I decided that we absolutely, positively needed to paint the family room.  We had gone in there because I wanted to do a little rearranging and ended up staring at the current paint color, deciding we couldn't live with it a moment longer.  It's actually worse in person than in the photos, being a hard to define mix between mushroom brown and khaki green that tended to suck the light and joy out of anything that came close to it. But to make it that much more unappealing, one of the walls was painted a different shade of green that did not coordinate. Lovely, huh?  B...

D. made it home this afternoon and it's so good to see him. Thanksgiving may still be several days away, but when college students arrive home it feels as though the holiday has started. P. also joined us for dinner tonight so we were nine at the table (K. was at work). In our family this means the conversation and laughter quotient increases dramatically. It makes my heart happy.  D. was also telling us about sone of the research he has been helping with. He's currently working with an organic chemistry professor and some of what he does involves working with pure lithium. L. has already asked me for lithium as a gift. L. will not be getting lithium as a gift. But really, L.'s current obsession is geology, particularly sand, so while disappointing, this news wasn't devastating. (Yes, you read that correctly. If you know her in person you can ask and be regaled with the wonders of sand. It will give the rest of us a brief respite.)  And D. is willing to take on the job ...

We are starting the Thanksgiving countdown around here. I can't believe it's less than a week away. Of all the important things that I need to get done, I settled on the completely not vital task of completely rearranging the downstairs bookcases. I'm not done. There are piles everywhere but I have run out of steam. The practice crow J. thought he had heard last week was definitely a practice crow. The suspect has been making a lot more. They are currently kind of pathetically funny. I also saw Fluffy chase the suspect away from "his" hens earlier in the week. So far there has been no bloodshed. If there is, I'm afraid the new rooster will have to go. He's a gorgeous black chicken who is getting pretty big. Tomorrow I will figure out the food preparation schedule. On that list this weekend is to can the beef broth I made today. Because I had frozen soup bones and am trying to get as much space freed up in the freezer as possible. The new side of beef will ...

I promised I would write about thankfulness today as a counterpoint to the rather depressing excerpt I posted yesterday. As I mentioned, this was triggered by an episode of the Hidden Brain podcast, I was listening to. A podcast I highly recommend if you are interested in why people behave the way they do. As I see it, there are two really big hurdles we need to cross if we are going to have a hope of perpetuating thankfulness in our lives. The first is that our brains are wired for negativity. It doesn't' sound good up front, but it is actually important that they are. This trait helps to keep us alive. It was especially important when humans had to worry about things such as saber-toothed tigers. In an environment where there are things out there that want to kill you, what is more important... remembering the last time you managed to escape from a predator, including where you were, what you did, what you needed to do better, etc. or remembering the last really pleasant walk...

I like to listen to the Hidden Brain podcast while I'm cleaning stalls in the morning. Today I began an episode about why it is so difficult for us to be thankful. I'm only in the very beginning of it, so I'll finish it tomorrow, but I have a lot of thoughts which I'll try to share tomorrow. I am also in the middle of reading The Perfection Trap: Embracing the Power of Good Enough by Thomas Curran. The portion I read today has I lot to say about the question of why thankfulness is difficult, so I'll start with this today. "The Power of advertising is so enormous that even the most informed people have a hard time resisting vociferous and aggressive social persuasion that's working against them around the clock. ... The totality is why a great majority of us struggle with self-acceptance. It's the reason we can never feel like we're ever enough. Because as long as contentment is kept tantalizingly from our reach, we're putty in the advertiser...

We were finishing up with school this morning when someone asked what else we were doing this week. So I looked at my schedule and realized I had very good news for everyone. Tomorrow I was supposed to have a meeting so had planned a Great Courses lecture on Leonardo da Vinci. We'll still do that even though I won't be at a meeting. Then Thursday is our co-op, and Friday was supposed to be a field trip, but we are postponing that because we aren't sure the van can actually make it as far as we were planning to go. All this to say, except for the video lecture, were essentially on Thanksgiving break. No one was sad, least of all me.  November me would very much like to go back and thank August me for scheduling a nice break right when we needed it. 

Just a few things to share this evening. First is some wool roving I dyed over the weekend. My spinning students were in desperate need of more fiber and colorful is always more fun. When asked, they said green would be great. So..  I can never replicate this because I was using up some odds and ends of due. The darker on the right was in the bottom of the pan. I had added a fair bit of dye and realized that there was far more dye than the fiber could absorb, so I quickly added some more on top. Because it was added later after a good portion of the dye had been absorbed by the initial fiber, it's a degree lighter. I love how they coordinate. You can't see it in the bigger picture, but there are sections of turquoise thought both. I kind of wish I could keep it for myself.  Next, I finally finished that green CVM wool I've been working on since last year. I am so happy with how it turned out. The up close detail to see the twist and the different shades of green.  Do I kn...