Ordinary Time

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 ...

Yes, we are a few days late, but sometimes you need to be flexible for what works for everyone's schedules. A few adult children joined us, Y. made dozens of baozi, we had our traditional treats bought at the Chinese market that we had no idea what they were, and lots and lots of laughter.  The bouquet was made by HC for the holiday. Nefertiti has taken to sitting at the table with us, hoping that by looking cute she'll get food. It often works.  Some of the few remaining baozi. I give them until lunchtime tomorrow at the latest.  Happy New Year to you all!

More from Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath: "Rare's success [in the previous chapter the author's told about a conservation organiztion which saved the St. Lucia parrot by creating a sense of identity and responsibility for the parrot in the St. Lucia population] in motivating people in fifty countries suggests that something universal is at work here. Confirmation of that comes from the research of James March, a professor of political science at Stanford University. March says that when people make choices, they tend to rely on one of two basic models of decision making: the consequences model or the identity model. The consequences model is familiar to students of economics. It assumes that when we have a decision to make, we weigh the costs and benefits of our options and make the choice that maximizes our satisfaction. It's a rational, analytical approach. This is the approach that Paul Butler knew would fail with the ...