Ordinary Time

Our Halloween tradition for the past several years, when interest in trick or treating wanted, has to take everyone to a fancy local candy shop and let them choose a treat or two, then order in dinner and have a movie marathon.  The movies this year were...  (Can you guess from the title?) Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and it's sequels. The first movie was a hit, mainly because it is just so silly and good natured. The second one, which J. and I had never seen, was... Odd. Goofy, but odd. Everyone lost steam after two movies so we'll save the third for another evening.  It was a fun holiday enjoyed by all. (Candy store pictures by K.) And we found a new to us Middle Eastern restaurant that did some pretty good shawarma and baba ganoush. 

When A. was over last Sunday to celebrate H.'s birthday, she spent some time with the ponies and got quite a few very good pictures.  First some nodes. This is Buddy's nose and was actually taken by K. earlier in the day.  Buddy and A. had a little hair styling session. My beautiful... and healthy... Vienna. They're starting to be actual friends now.

I was going to post a bunch of pony pictures because I don't know about you, but cute animals is kind of all I can tolerate at the moment. You'll have to wait until tomorrow for cute ponies, because a child presented a topic for me to write about. Don't worry, it's not stressful. Our non-stressful topic for the evening is cycling back to my decision to have my teens cook dinner one night a week. (It continues to go well, by the way.) What I didn't anticipate was the amount of self-volition it would engender. Last week, when we had some leftover barbecue beef, Y. suggested that we save it for her night to cook because she had been craving steamed buns (baozi) and she could use the meat for filling. Not only did she come up with her meal, but made very good use of some leftovers. Who's going to say no to that? Then a few days ago, I get a text with a link to a recipe, and a note saying that G. would like to make it at some time. It was an ancient Roman chicken dis...

That would be overwhelmed in a good way. A friend of mine is downsizing her studio and gave me a significant amount of weaving items in supplies. I spent most of Thursday figuring out how it was all going to fit. I managed, though I might have too much fleece and unspun fiber and need to put a moratorium on getting anymore until I've worked through what I have. It's just tricky to store so some is back to living under my studio table. Since I don't like things stored on the floor, this is not a fantastic option, but the only one that worked.  Life hasn't been all sorting and storing, though. I have a few things to show you. First is that I finished weaving the scarf that was on my loom.  This is 100% silk, made with a hand painted warp and weft. I still need to wash it. The weave structure up close. My loom is now empty again, which makes me sad, so I need to figure out my next project. It is going to be a blanket which is a wedding gift for B. and HC. I was able to fin...

Tonight we (belatedly... her birthday was earlier in the month) celebrated H.'s 22nd birthday. (22?! How can she be 22?) Not everyone was able to make it, but enough were so that we needed to add a table to seat everyone. This pleased H. because she wanted a big party. She chose orange chicken, rice, and dumplings for her dinner with chocolate mayonnaise cake and ice cream for dessert.  No, the candles on her cake in no way reflect her age.  A huge set of new colored pencils. H. says thank you, Grammy! You can see how excited she is. There was lots of laughter and good company and H. enjoyed her party. 

I think we need to veer back into more frivolous topics, such as my ongoing issue of things to listen to while I clean the barn each morning. I finished the first recorded book and as I grew accustomed to listening to a story the transition back to the house when I was finished was slightly less jarring.  Wanting to try a non-fiction book, I found one that I felt I should read, mainly because it seemed to be one I had actually read even though I was pretty familiar with the content. I started the book and realized that this was not going to work. The combination of being overly familiar with the topic and having a narrator who set my teeth on edge was unpleasant at best. I couldn't bring myself to listen to it the next day and was happy to find a new episode of one of the podcasts I listen to.  The reason I chose the nonfiction book I did was that the app I was using had very few books that I was interested in. To be clear, there were a great many books, but my very idiosyncra...

I hope it comes as no surprise to my readers that when I vote early next week I will be casting my ballot for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Being in a blue state this feels as though it is a very little thing in the effort to bring our country back past the brink of no return . I'll be honest and say that I am feeling such stress and fear about this election that I can't listen to any news or look at social media for very long. The radio is pretty firmly set on our classical music station even though they are in the middle of a pledge drive. The pledge drive is preferable.  But for those of you who are supporting the other side, if there are any of you left who continue to visit my blog, here is what I need to say. When I drive around and see signs in people's yards supporting that man, I treat it as an early warning system. The people who live in this house are not safe for my family to be around. This is far more than a difference of opinion. That worked for all the preside...

(Discussions of horse poop follow.) Last week I realized I had three muck forks all with broken tines. Trying to muck with them was hardly better than trying to haul water in a bucket with a hole. You spend far more time picking up the poop that fell out than you do anything else. It's slow and frustrating.  So, I decided to order a new muck fork. This isn't any old muck fork, though. The other annoying thing about my extant forks was that the space between the tines didn't match the size of object I was picking up. Small ponies create small poop. Poop that is small enough to fall through the tines of the fork. This is doubly true if that same pony then walks through all the poop breaking it up into even smaller bits and spreading it all around. This new muck fork promised both less space between the tines and a larger carrying capacity. This felt so important in the moment that I ignored the hefty price tag and purchased it anyway.  It arrived yesterday so today was the fi...

Often parts of my day involve talking to various family members (adult children or my mom) on the phone, texting with a child, or having conversations with the family members here at home. Spending my time this way is important; probably one of the most important things that I do. Yet I realized today that these types of activities never make it to my to do list for any given day.  This got me wondering a bit. Our society is so incredibly disconnected from one another. People express feelings of loneliness at extremely high rates. Social organizations have significantly fewer members. And perhaps most importantly, the degree of fear people have for strangers and people different from themselves is huge. Of course, it's hard to connect with someone you fear, but it's easier to fear people you never connect with. It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem there. I'm fascinated in the whole phenomenon.  But back to my to-do list. Am I alone in the lack of relationship buildin...

Tonight the conversation at dinner veered to capybaras, our collective love of them, and L. searching "capybaras for sale near me". We then collectively wondered why we weren't capybara breeders.  The conversation then turned towards animals we did or didn't like. Some children expressed a dislike of dolphins. I like dolphins (no doubt growing up watching Flipper contributed to that) and said so. A child then turned to me and announced, "Do your research. Mother!"  I did laugh, both at the statement and the fact that I can't think of a time I have been accused of not doing research. In this case, though, I am going to continue in what I assume to be ignorant bliss because I do like dolphins and want to continue to do so.  But it was also interesting to learn that you could purchase two capybaras for less than I've spent on a pony. Just sayin'...

The past week was so booked that there was only a tiny amount of time to work on projects. I did a bit of weaving. Yesterday I had hoped that I could carve out enough time today to finish the scarf on my loom. But I was virtuous and paid the bills instead. I'm really excited to see it off the loom.  Here is the back of the loom. When those knots move ahead another five inches or so, I will hem the end of the weaving and take it off. One productive thing I got done was to cut the fabric linings for the bags I'm going to be selling. I've decided doing it production style instead of one at a time makes more sense timewise. And I'm just about five inches away from having this band woven on my inkle loom. This is some really odd silk yarn that I bought on sale a while back. I am not enjoying weaving with it and you'd never know it was silk to look at it or feel it. I'm very curious to see how it changes after it's washed. It's going to have to be a pretty ext...