Ordinary Time

Well, I don't know about you, but after sitting through today's news, I have very little bandwidth left. I'm very much over the living-in-a-dumpster-fire feeling, but I don't see it getting better any time soon. So instead of taxing you further with more words, I'll show you the picture I took as I headed out to the barn yesterday evening.  I'm going to go do some knitting and then read a book. I suggest that each of you pause and do something to fulfill and soothe you. This is a marathon and not a sprint; we all need to conserve our energy and preserve our mental health in order to go the distance.  And just in case there was any question at all about my views:

Last week I finished reading, Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life by Shigehiro Oishi. It had many interesting parts in it, though it did continue to be in essence a list of various psychological studies. I had mentioned this when I introduced the book previously, but since the studies moved into ones I hadn't heard of, that was okay. (There are some psychological studies that I will be thrilled if I never have to read another synopsis of ever again.) In fact, some of them were so interesting, I marked them as something I might want to share with you, my readers. Then I realized that maybe a full week's worth of posts dealing with studies found in this book isn't really what people want to read, so I have chosen just one of them. This particular excerpt made the cut because it also touches on another favorite topic of mine which is reading good books out loud to your children.  I'll dive in. "While at the U...

Wear it out Make it do Or do without I think we need to acknowledge that all is us, as a society, are somewhat complicit in where we are today. This is not about who you voted for, but for ultimately what we created through our spending. The only way corporations can be as big as they are today and to have the outsized influence they do is because we fed the monster.  We bought into the marketing that said newer, more, better, faster, shinier, cooler, different, easier, and fancier was what was going to make our lives happier and less stress free in order to have time to do fulfilling activities and cultivate our relationships.  Has it? Are we happier? Do we have closer relationships? Do we have easier, less stress-filled lives? Not from where I sit. Even before the continuing coup, I saw people who were nearly frozen with stress and anxiety. People who never had time to do what they really wanted to do. People who mourned relationships that no one had time for. And the remedy...

As long time readers know, one way we can feed our family within our budget is to buy ingredients in bulk. For nearly twenty years my friends and I would order through a local(ish) farmer and make a day of it together going to pick up our pounds and pounds of food. My usual order included things such as wheat berries (to grind to make flour), oats, dried beans, popcorn (to grind and to pop), other bread baking ingredients, bulk spices, and dried milk (also for baking... and making hot chocolate mix). As people grew and moved out on their own, my need for such vast quantities of food went down some, but we currently still have nine people at home, so having large quantities is still really helpful.  And then the farmer stopped doing the twice a year orders and I lost my ability to buy large amounts of wheat berries for a somewhat reasonable amount of money. We'd make bread occasionally, but recently we'd kind of fallen off the wagon, even though nearly everyone likes our homem...

I have nothing to show you in regard to fiber projects. Nothing has happened since last Monday. Well, nothing in terms of fiber. Plenty of other things happened which is why there are no fiber projects to share. And today? Well, when I turned the page on my calendar this morning, I was surprised to find it fuller than I had remembered. One of those items, which I had remembered, was to take R. and H. to the neurologist for their somewhat frequent visit. I had really liked the neurology nurse practitioner we have been seeing, but she told us at our last visit that she was moving into a different field of medicine. I was disappointed because I liked working with her, and because it meant breaking in a new doctor. I have come to loath this process. So off we go, with me trying very hard to take the chip I could feel building up on my shoulder and stashing it away somewhere. I had no reason to believe that the visit with the senior member of the office neurologists would be any less than c...

I'm home safely and the conference went well. The weather was significantly better today, so after sitting through the sessions I was interested in, I slipped out to get outside. It seemed too bad to go to San Antonio and never actually see the Riverwalk even though my hotel was just a block away.  First I found the Alamo. And then I walked in the Riverwalk. I just realized I had my fingers in the picture. Remember you don't come here for the photography. I got back to the hotel just in time to arrange a ride to the airport and head home.

"Analysis showed that the more artistic activities they [students in the study] engaged in, the richer they reported their lives to be at the end of the semester. The other activities [meetings, sporting events, video games, volunteer activities] were not ultimately associated with psychological richness. Perhaps artistic activities challenge you to expand your perspective more than shopping, partying, or taking a short trip." -from Life in Three Dimension: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life by Shigehiro Oishi (p. 51) I'm only at the beginning of this book, but it is interesting, though I am unconvinced I really enjoy the author's writing style. I'm still pretty early in the book, so I'm continuing on, regardless. At the moment there is an awful lot of rehashing of studies, all of which I have already come across. I'm ready for some new content. But the above quote struck me, so I'm sharing it with you.  Art matters. ...

Wednesdays do me in. There's just too much going on. Enjoy these pictures J. took on a walk he and Kenzie took over the weekend. 

On Friday morning, I fly out to San Antonio, Texas to the Horses Helping Humans Research Foundation conference. It's been so miserably cold here that I was looking forward to heading south and being able to warm up a bit. When I checked the forecast this morning, though, it did not look as warm as I had hoped. In fact, it looked a little chilly. Now, I know that it will still be more than fifty degrees warmer than we are currently, but I was hoping to enjoy weather that didn't require a jacket of some sort.  I've lost track of the number of times this has happened; definitely more than a few times traveling to Arizona. You know, the Phoenix area which is in the middle of a desert and breaks heat records as a hobby? A few years ago, I had to run to the thrift store to buy a couple of sweaters because it was bizarrely cold. Yes, it warmed up as soon as I left. This is a definite thing for me. So I suppose it shouldn't really surprise me that I'm not going to be enjoyi...

And that would be laughably bad pictures even by my typical bad picture standards. Prepare yourselves. I had a bit of a Give a Mouse a Cookie moment today. A few days ago, since I had cut the horrible weaving off the loom, I had started to sley the reed with the warp for the blanket. (Translation: I needed to put each end of the warp through the slotted metal piece which determines how close each piece of yarn will be when woven.) I was taking my time, working on it when I had a free moment. Except this morning I realized I had some pattern drafting homework which required a flat surface and I needed it finished by Wednesday morning.  The problem was that my weaving project was taking up my entire work table and wasn't something I could move. The only thing for it was to spend a couple of hours today getting it sleyed so I could use the table. Which I did. And then I was able to move it over to the loom in preparation for threading. The threading is going to take a while since ther...

The big horses are just off. I don't know if they're just missing Java or if Java was the brave one of the three, because suddenly going out in the pasture is scary. So scary that even if it's cold and there are well-filled hay nets out there, the big horse's will choose to huddle by the barn instead of eating.  We've had a lot of snow, so that means the ponies can go out in the pasture, too. With the ponies out, the big horses are willing to venture forth and enjoy their hay. The ponies have no trouble running around the pasture, eating from the hay nets and then snuffling up any stray bits that have escaped even if they are not near the big horses. Brave ponies! Protecting the big horse's from all sorts of imaginary predators. Today, though, the wind was so relentless and biting that I left the ponies in because the big horses don't always share the barn overhang with them. This meant the big horses were on their own again. At lunch, I went out to feed eve...

Sometimes you look around you and realize that an aspect of your home has been vaguely irritating you for some time and it reaches a point where you are motivated to do something about it. Such was the case early last week with one of the living room rugs. This one to be precise. This rug was a bonus gift left for us when we moved into the Big Ugly House a couple of decades ago. There it lived in our bedroom, then getting a promotion when we moved to a more public area. It's not a bad rug; I've always liked how it looked .. when it was vacuumed. The trouble with it was that it had no pile to speak of and it's main hobby was collecting pet hair and trapping it so that no amount of vacuuming could get it all up. The best we could do was to aim for 'not disgusting'. Plus, it was a wee bit too small for the space we had it in.  I think it ended up being one of those small fixes we could make when there was so much else that was either out of our budget or out of our abi...

To Whom It May Concern, I am writing to share my family’s experience and to perhaps give support to the position that HB2827 is misguided and should not move forward. We have homeschooled our twelve children for the past 28 years. Before I continue, I realize that the number of children we have and the fact that we homeschool might lead some to make generalizations about our family. Because homeschooling encompasses a wide variety of beliefs and views of the world and because there is a stereotype that only conservative Christians homeschool, I feel I need to address these possible generalizations because homeschooling is very much a non-partisan issue. We tend to vote Democrat and our views of how society works are very liberal. While we are Christian, we belong to a progressive mainline church, and we certainly have never homeschooled for religious reasons. I am also aware that much of educational theory and thought is based on outcomes. Therefore, I am going to start with outc...

When I promised that I would share my family's homeschooling testimonial today, I had completely forgotten that it was Wednesday, my rather full day. So between my pattern drafting class, (unsuccessfully) chasing down vital prescriptions, telehealth appointments, plus all the regular parts of my day, I'm back to no bandwidth to write it. Maybe tomorrow? I guess we'll all find out tomorrow evening.  K. fed the horses at lunch time for me today and while he was out, got this picture of the sheep.  I love it! It looks as though Clark (the white sheep) is smiling. And I figure everyone needs to see a picture of a sheep smiling at them, especially if you have been doing really hard things like reading the news. 

Tomorrow when I have a bit more bandwidth and a bit more time, I'll be writing out our family's experience with homeschooling in Illinois to be submitted as evidence in opposition to HB2837. I'll post it here, too, but I will be calm and balanced.  Tonight? I'm not feeling terribly calm and balanced. You've been warned.  Here's the short version. There is an organization who has an agenda to make homeschool more regulated in all 50 states. Illinois is one of the least regulated states, so obviously we were in their sites. They just needed to find a shill to bring forth the legislation, which they did in the form of three Democratic legislators.  What is most disturbing about this bill is its vagueness which in turn would pretty much give District Boards of Education carte blanche to regulate the homeschoolers in their district however they see fit. For instance, a truant officer would be allowed to come to a family's home and demand to see a portfolio of wor...

Here is the current state of my studio table: It's a well-known fact around here that my desks are a pretty accurate reflection. While my working desk is fairly organized, my studio table, as you see, is not. This is the combination of planning for my Sheep and Fiber classes which begin tomorrow and a whole lot of flitting from project to project. It is starting to bother me, but it was also the result of not being able to settle. Figuring out why is the key to me being able to tackle the chaos and move forward with straightening things up.  Step one was needing to do some dyeing to get ready for the classes. It's no fun to learn to spin plain white fiber, so I always try to give students dyed fiber. I have 21 students coming through, so that meant I needed quite a bit of fiber. I had forgotten a bit how much I enjoy dyeing fiber. Over the weekend I dyed 300 grams of corriedale roving. I always find it very interesting to see the differences between what the dye pot looks like ...

It's going to take far too many trips to the hardware store to get the parts needed to install it.  We don't have a working dishwasher yet, but we're getting very close. There is at least one more hardware store visit before that happens. Maybe tomorrow. And why is J. installing another in a long chain of dishwashers over the years? (For the record, installing dishwashers is not J.'s favorite free time activity.) Because our good friend, P. Family Dad, had an extra one and he offered it to us. We went to pick it up yesterday and we all had dinner together which was lovely. We also came home with a dresser that works in Y.'s room. Y. needed more storage but because of the angle of the walls on the third floor, it is challenging to find furniture that works.  This afternoon Y. made room for the dresser, there was a general shuffling of appliances, and J. began the process of installing the dishwasher. Things are a little topsy-turvy, but it will be so nice to have a w...

Even though I have spent the day stewing about the egregious IL House bill which seems to regulate homeschoolers, I'm not sure it's quite safe enough for me to write about it yet. Believe it or not, you don't get the spewing very much here; you get the post spew version. Depending on the post, it gives you some idea of where I started. Anyway, there will be a post about it, but not tonight. (I didn't just stew, I did call my representative at both offices and will continue to do so every single day. Because that's fun.)  I think we need something lighter tonight. Here are a couple of posts about the War Horse puppet. If you aren't familiar with it, you're in for a treat. It is pretty incredible. Enjoy!  The War Horse puppet  The War Horse puppet meets a live horse

There is a meme going around which has a title that says something along the lines of, "Live in the moment." Below is an image of a person sitting in a chair who replies, "The moment stinks." (Or something like that. It's not verbatim, but you get the gist.) And I agree, this moment in history stinks. I could use quite a few other descriptive words to describe it which aren't G-rated, but I'm sure you can as well. And if we have a ghost of a chance of saving our democracy, we absolutely cannot put our heads in the sand and hope it all blows over, because if we do that, what comes at the end will be far worse than what we want to hide from now. We can't avoid this moment or avoid being present in it, I'm afraid.  We also all know that the meme was talking about a slightly different present than the person's response indicated. The disconnect is what makes it amusing. (And all references to humor at this point in time can pretty much be assumed...

Wednesdays have become the day of the week that are very full. I have my pattern drafting class in the morning followed by a somewhat quick turn around to get a child to am appointment in the afternoon. I've found myself mucking the barn at 5:00 pm, which is not my favorite time for doing this particular chore.  All that to say, there's not a lot left by evening when I usually write. I would do an old night throwback of Wordless Wednesday, but we all know it is impossible for me to be wordless, so I won't even try. You'll still get pictures, but with explanations.  I've been to the library a few times this week. There have been a few books on hold and I went browsing the shelves as well. I think I may have overestimated how much time I actually have to read. We'll see how I do getting through this stack.  The other day, when we had a hard freeze after above freezing temperatures, I happened to look at the ground as I was walking through the pasture letting the h...

Oh where, oh where have my readers gone? Oh where, oh where can they be? The numbers were high, but it seems I've gone wrong. Oh where, oh where can they be? I try not to do much navel gazing here, but I'm baffled. Before January 20th, I was averaging 1000 views a day pretty consistently. After January 20th? Well, it's just been over 200. I don't even think of myself as that political in content. J. tells me that I really shouldn't let my inner conspiracy theorist out of the closet, and I won't. She's too busy planning food supplies with my inner prepper anyway.  What's my point here? I don't actually know. But I do want to thank my small but faithful group of readers. I'll keep writing regardlessly because how else will I know what I think and what would we do without the family record? But it just seems weird.

It's February which means it's Black History Month. (It really is, even if this makes some people unhappy.) Every February, I try to read a book written by a Black author. (Actually, I try very hard to read books from a wide variety of different viewpoints and cultures throughout the year. How do we learn and grow if we aren't stretched by hearing ideas from people different from ourselves?) This February it just happened that I finished the Broken Earth Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin , closing The Stone Sky last night. It seemed fitting that I finished Ms. Jemisin's book as February began. I highly recommend all three books. While each book is self-contained, there are not many answers at the end of the first and second books. They are more a comma for what is to come than a period. I was relieved and satisfied to having a lot of the questions I had answered.  At the surface, the books seem like really interesting fantasy with a unique world that is well described. They are ...