Ordinary Time

L., our budding astro-physicist, really wanted a telescope for her birthday. Thanks to W.'s mad Marketplace skills, we were able to find one for an amount within our budget. L. was very excited. The problem was that the skies were overcast for the next several days. She was finally able to get to use it last night. It seems to be working well, though we need to replace the battery in the star finder. I'm pretty sure that after the sun finally sets tonight, she will be back outside using it.  And a Happy Birthday to D. today! We celebrated last week because he's out of town right now with P., visiting the H-S Family. One more birthday and one anniversary to go and we will have made it through another June birthday season. 

Over the weekend I did something to the muscles over my right hip and could barely move for several days. Monday was definitely the worse, with yesterday being a little bit better, but that was probably because I didn't really try to do all that much. Today there is still a little twinge, but I'm functional again. Yesterday, when I was doing all that much except sitting uncomfortably, I binge read Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. Yes, I'm a bit late to the party since it was published in 2017, but I rarely pick up super popular books at the time they were popular. I don't actually know why I put it on my library reserve list, but I think I came across a synopsis and it sounded interesting. I ended up really enjoying the book. I really liked the character of Eleanor, including her disdain for texting shortcuts. If you don't know the book, the character of Eleanor is the story of a person with significant past trauma including being in care for mu...

I'm currently reading the book, Imaginable: How to see the future coming and feel ready for anything -- even things that seem impossible today by Jane McGonigal. It's fascinating. You will probably be reading more than one blog post about it as I work my way through it.  One of the exercises she suggests is to think about what your life will look like in ten years. To get a sense of how much can be packed into ten years, it made me think about what life was like ten years ago. It turns out we've had a lot of change in that ten years.  Ten years ago, we were knee deep in our ongoing fight with the State of Illinois as to whether we would be able to bring home Y. and R. It was definitely not a sure thing and it was incredibly stressful.  Ten years ago we had ten children, ages 6 to 22, with three in or about to start college and seven children living full time at home.  Ten years ago we lived in the Big Ugly House and had no idea how long we would continue to be able t...

Family lore, according to my father, has it that we had an ancestor who participated in the Boston Tea Party and helped dump British tea into Boston Harbor. I have no idea if this is accurate or not, but family records indicate that we did have family who had already immigrated to the Colonies at that time. Since family lore also says that an ancestor ended up here because of being transported after being convicted of sheep stealing in the border matches, it seems likely that that particular branch of the family held little affection for the British monarchy.  All this to say, I come by my need to protest naturally. Protesting doesn't mean you dislike your country, it means you love it enough to want it to be the best country it can be. When it falls short, there need to be people who are willing to encourage it along. Disagreement is a healthy thing. It provides the opportunity for wrestling with different ideas and thoughts. The end result is often better than if disagreement and...

I have a lot to write, but for now I'll just share some photos that HC took of B., G., and L. on their birthday hike. They all share a birthday, which is tomorrow, and had planned to spend yesterday together hiking along with HC. 

It's been a full day. The horses' feet got trimmed. I had a consult with R. with a new specialist that ended up going very well. Luke worked with his first client. And I am pooped. I'll stick with sharing pictures of a couple of the plants that are blooming around here and some K. took at a local forest preserve last evening. 

Our new chicks arrived this morning. They are so cute and much less skittish than done we've had.  These two were so cute cuddled up together taking a little nap. And they have teeny, tiny feathers on their feet. They are buff brahmas, which are supposed to lay well in the winter. We'll see. We are also crossing our fingers that these five were sexed correctly and we don't end up with a third rooster. No one needs three roosters. 

I've been reading quite a bit, so of course I have books to share. This is the last one for a while, so I'm sure there will be something different tomorrow. The book I want to tell you about tonight is  Re-Regulated: Set Your Life Free from Childhood PTSD and the Trauma-Driven Behaviors That Keep You Stuck by Anna Runkle. This book was recommended to me by a friend who is a therapist and knows my interest in childhood trauma.  If you have read The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk and found it helpful to explain what was going on with you due to past trauma, I highly recommend you now read Re-Regulated. This is a much lighter read than van der Kolk's book. His gives you the why you experience your life as you do, this book gives you the what now piece of the puzzle. I think it contains a really accessible game plan for moving forward. The author is someone who has experienced childhood trauma and has overcome it, so she is a very good companion to have along the w...

I just finished reading The Religion of Whiteness: How Racism Distorts Christian Faith by Michael O. Emerson and Glenn E. Bracey II. It's a short book, but still, I finished it in less than 24 hours because I found it so compelling. I also cannot begin to do justice to the authors' arguments in a blog post because there is just so much research, both quantitative and qualitative, to back up their conclusions. There is a lot packed into this book. I don't think it is an understatement to say that the year 2020 was tough. The juxtaposition of Covid, the brutal murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter Protests, the perpetual spiral of the current president combined together to create national trauma. But I need to take that back a bit, because my experience was that some parts of the Christian church didn't seem affected at all. In fact, life just seemed to go on with only a slight hiccup. For myself (and actually more than a few people I know), t...

Today is my birthday and I had a lovely day, most of which was spent doing demonstration weaving. As I promised yesterday, today I am going to write out all of the different offerings I have here. You could give me a lovely birthday gift either by taking advantage of one of these offerings or by sharing them. Children and family offerings are listed first followed by adult offerings.  I'll start with the two which desperately need one or two more participants so I have enough to run the class. The first is the most dire and could really use another sign up immediately.  Sheep and Fiber classes  These are two 1.5 hour classes. Participants get to interact with the sheep, then learn about processing raw fiber, different types of sheep's wool, and have a chance to spin on a suspended spindle. All fiber is provided. Ages 8 to adult. Cost: $60/student plus the cost of a suspended spindle if you don't already have one. I'm willing to order at cost. I have a class scheduled fo...

We have water! And we have a new well pump, which doesn't get an exclamation point because it wasn't on our current list of things we wanted to add or upgrade. Not unlike the new alternator in the van. But if we wanted running water, which we very much did, getting a new well pump was out only option. I will say that everyone around here has a significantly greater appreciation for water that comes out of a faucet when you turn it on.  The good news in all of this, besides the running water but, is that our well looks really good and I can put to rest any vague worries I might have had regarding it. But because a new well pump was not on our 2025 bingo card, it also wasn't in the 2025 budget, such as it is. I briefly thought about starting a Go Fund Me, but really, if I were to pick up some more business clients, that would have the same effect. So brace yourself tomorrow because I will be writing a long post describing all of the different possibilities for people here at ...

I'm going to stop moaning about not having blog fodder when life is calm, because inevitably things change. Today G. and I were due to go meet the lambs we are adding to the flock. We drove out, visited the lambs, and then the shepherd and I started having a rather 'who's on first's conversation where we both thought the other wasn't making a whole lot of sense. It turns out she thought we were picking up the lambs and not just visiting. If they were ready to go, and we were set at home... we all looked at the back of the van where I had a large blue tarp kicking around. They would easily fit and would be safe and we wouldn't have to make the long drive later, so Meet Timothy (on the left) and Caspian (on the right.) They are 2.5 months old and are so sweet. We weren't sure what Fred and Clark would think, but things went well. Things went well until G. went to fill up a bucket of water at the hydrant. A hydrant which did not pour forth water. Weird, but we...

When you only have teens in the house there is a shortage of cute children stories, so I need to resort to animal stories. With transitioning a new horse into the herd, I at least have material in that realm.  Adding Luke into the herd is going well. All three big horses are sharing the pastures, albeit grazing far, far apart from each other. This is not Emmy's choice. She would be as close to Luke as she could get if it were just her. But Major is there as well and he definitely does not want Emmy to hang with Luke. My incredibly easy going horse is not so easy going at the moment. It's a different side to him that I hadn't seen. So far Emmy is putting up with it, but my money is on her growing weary of Major telling her what to do. In the interim, she is allowing herself to be herded away. But I think she is growing tired of it all.  At night the big horses typically have access to the stalls and the dry lot. Since it is not a terribly large dry lot and there's not re...

Fluffy and Duck  Duck and Fluffy They are an odd couple, but the best of friends. Duck (yes, that's her name) goes up to the barn every day to visit Fluffy in his bachelor rooster digs. They hang out together and sometimes take walks together.  Fluffy and Duck Duck and Fluffy 

J. had some vacation days he needed to use, do he took today off work. And while there are plenty of projects here, it is also not a terribly fun use of a vacation day. We decided to load everyone up and have an outing. J. decided on White Pines where he and some of the children have camped before.  When we arrived, some people opted to hang out at the trail head and read and eat snacks while others of us went on a hike. The trail we chose crossed some water multiple times. This was the first crossing. You see R. looking at the steps put in to cross and not feeling overly enthusiastic. Getting up on the step was well in her capabilities, but sometimes when she is consciously trying to do something she can't put all the pieces together.  Here you see R. giving me the stink eye from having insisted she figure out how to get up by herself.  Crossing wasn't as tricky as just getting up on the step.  The map just called this "The Chimney". So of course L. had to climb it....