Ordinary Time

"When the arts become a regular practice -- the way you might improve nutrition, increase exercise, and prioritize sleep -- you unleash an innate tool that helps you navigate the peaks and valleys of your inner life. And the best news is that you don't have to be great, or even good, at making art to experience the benefits. In a study, Girija Kaimal, assistant dean for special research initiatives and an associate professor in the creative arts therapies program at Drexel University, found that for the majority of people, making art is physiologically calming. Girija explains, 'The study was set up with an art therapist in the room who could provide support as needed to allow for authentic self-expression. There was no judgement or expectation, rather participants were encouraged to focus on the process and to feel safe, thus reducing stress and anxiety.' She reminds us that anyone can do this at home with simple materials if they create without value judgements.  The...

We have made it back home. I am feeling a little more balanced, but it was hard saying goodbye to a house we've created such meaningful memories in for the past 34 years. I'll write more about both later.  In the meantime enjoy pictures of Kenzie living his best life as a beach dog.  Note the ears blowing in the wind (Photo credit TM) (Photo credit for the rest MC)

It's with a broken heart that I need to tell you we lost Bristol this morning. I'm going to take a blogging break for a while to grieve.  Here's one of my favorite pictures of her giving a bird a ride. 

"Funerals, in fact, are one of the most powerful examples of collective pain. They feature in a surprising finding from my [Brené Brown] research on trust. When I asked participants to identify three to five specific behaviors that their friends, family, and colleagues do that raise their level of trust with them, funerals always emerged in the top three responses. Funerals matter. Showing up to them matters. And funerals matter not just to the people grieving, but to everyone who is there. The collective pain (and sometimes joy) we experience when gathering in any way to celebrate the end of a life is perhaps one of the most powerful experiences of inextricable connection. Death, loss, and grief are the great equalizers."  -- from Braving the Wilderness by Brené Brown, pp. 132 - 133 I said good-bye to a good friend today. It hurt.

Well, there are actually a lot of difficulties that come with a big move. Many of these I feel as though we have weathered and are finally at a place where we are rebuilding our social network. This struck me forcibly from our little month of seizures in December with R. I had (new) friends who checked in on me, sent me surprise Amazon gift certificates, and (tonight) brought us dinner. We also had our visit with our regular doctor today which seems to be a requirement. But I've now seen this doctor enough that I didn't dread the appointment. Instead, he listened to my take if woe, especially in regards to the psychiatrist, and told me I was right. (And we all know how much I like to be right.) He even apologized that a fellow doctor had done that. It was... healing. So things here are actually pretty good. What's hard about moving is not only the leaving of good friends (which is terrible, actually), but what's really foremost in my thoughts tonight is how difficult it...

Zinnias Tomatoes Cucumbers Basil Tomatillos Black raspberries Cherry tree Black raspberries which were made into jam today Photo credit: Brian Cassella, Chicago Tribune G. Lotus root This is no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave. If we were free, we could gather in public without fear of being gunned down. If it were the land of the brave, our legislators would enact reasonable gun laws including banning military grade weapons. But they are not brave. They are too afraid of running afoul of Trump and his ilk or losing their funding from the NRA. Every single Republican who refuses to vote for these laws is as culpable as the shooters they are tacitly arming. And frankly, every single Republican who has elected these spineless fearful law makers is equally as culpable.  None of my family were near Highland Park today, though it is close enough that my mother contacted me just to make sure. I grieve for the families who lost loved ones so needlessly. No one should ...

but this time, let's forget about all that 'again' business. Instead, let's actually get it right this time. We can make America great by actually voting in lawmakers who are truly pro-life and are tired of seeing adults and children gunned down every week.  (These photos are of my children in fourth grade. I am thankful I am not having to bury a single one of them.) We absolutely need gun reform laws. Because guns really do kill people. Oh, sure, there are people pulling the triggers, but without access to guns, it would be a hell of a lot more difficult to kill an entire classroom of children.  We absolutely need to elect lawmakers who are actually pro-life who will make universal health care —including a total rehaul of the mental health services — a priority. No one should have to choose whether to pay rent or buy groceries or seek medical care. No one should have to forego mental health services because they aren't covered by insurance.  We absolutely need to e...

[This is attempt at a post number two. Blogger is functioning far worse than usual (which is saying quite a lot), and after about five hundred words everything I had written completely vanished, despite it being saved regularly. Am I happy about this? No, not at all. I think the first draft was better.] Due to friends sharing pictures, I realized that today is the six year anniversary of meeting R. for the first time. It also means that on the seventh, we had the six year anniversary of meeting Y. for the first time. Six years has that both too short and too long feeling about it. It feels as though it has been an eventful six years. I know I have quite a few new readers here. What you may not know is that a week before we were due to travel to bring our daughters home, my father unexpectedly passed away. My mother's first words when I spoke with her (a friend had called to break the news) was that he would have wanted us to travel... so we did. I was grieving, our new daughters we...

Today we learned about volcanoes and why they explode. In areas of the earth's crust where either plates meet or the crust is rather thin, the molten magma can rise and hang out in chambers where it is under great pressure. This pressure is what keeps the gasses trapped in the magma stable, much like how the cap on a soda bottle keeps the CO2 from escaping. Sometimes though, there is a weakness in the earth's crust which releases a little of that pressure so some of the gas escapes, causing cracks in the crust which allows more gas to escape. When the gas builds up enough it can explode causing a volcanic eruption such as what happened with Mt. Saint Helens.  Why this brief geology lesson? Because in some ways people are very much like walking unexploded volcanoes, letting the pressure build and build and build until a crack appears and everything explodes. The adoption community has been devastated by the tragic death of one of its members over the weekend. She was a well-resp...

Two days.  Not three days, but two days. Let me explain why this is a big deal. For the past 5 1/2 years, anytime R. has descended into a disregulated emotional state that brings on seizures and psychosis, it would last for three full days before sanity returned. At the beginning, this would happen at least once a month if not more. Then it stretched out to once every couple of months. At the beginning of this year, it was once every four or five months. The stretching out of occurrences was positive, but the duration was always three full days. By day three all of us were pretty done in.  Today would have been day three for this latest occurrence. Today, while there were blips, R. participated in school, she ate all her meals, and I was able to safely leave for my riding lesson. This is an absolute first for her.  We've been doing a lot work naming feelings and then working on navigating those feelings. We talk about why she feels the need to run away from us when she is...

P. turned 21 on Friday, though we didn't celebrate until tonight. I don't have pictures of the blowing out  candles because P. prefers to not be sung to and not have candles. I can't believe this child is 21 already, but it also feels as though she has been 21 for a while because of her maturity. P. is currently working as a riding instructor at the stable where I take lessons and is doing well. Her goal is to be able to afford to move out and into an apartment; she would prefer sooner rather than later.  As much as I know this is the right next step for her, when it happens I will miss her. She is funny and smart and I value her opinions on things. P. has also been hugely helpful in the care of R. Take yesterday, for instance. J. and I (and A.) drove into Evanston (my third trek into the Evanston/Chicago area in two weeks) because we needed to attend a memorial service. I truly did think that we would be home in time for dinner, and this is what we told everyone at home......

Some of you might have heard that the Chicago area had a rash of tornado outbreaks last night. We are fine, though one of them did touch down a few miles north of us. I'm pretty sure we experienced a few minutes of derecho winds, though. It was incredibly loud in the middle of it all. Poor Kenzie was a wreck and ended up peeing in the house because he just couldn't bring himself to go outside. (This is the dog who will never have an accident inside. Ever.) But our biggest clue that we had some unusually strong winds was seeing this in the morning when we had daylight to see. This is was the gutted trailer that has been sitting around ever since W. decided he couldn't fix the leak and then turn it into a tiny house. We hadn't been quite sure what to do with it. Now, it looks as though we'll be calling someone our neighbor knows who can cram it into a dumpster. This was the only damage from the storm; nothing else was touched. Well, some tree branches, but when you ha...

Every day we receive the announcement regarding number of days left until TM ships out to boot camp. The number is horrendously small at this point. I actually don't like hearing it. It is very hard to imagine what life will be like with TM gone for months and months. I also know some younger siblings who are going to miss him terribly. He is the go-to brother for fun and activities. Today he took many of them to a forest preserve, stopping to get them drinks on the way home. He is always up for taking them to parks or stores or the library. For that matter, he is always game to run to whatever store I need him to. TM is fun to have around and we enjoy his company. I'm still trying very hard not to think about it too much. He is a quick example. Tonight we ordered out gyros for dinner. (Remember last week when I discovered I hadn't planned anything for Monday? Well, it seems I never quite got around to doing that.) TM offered to go pick it up and took R. with him. And now I...

R. started to plummet right around the end of dinner. I have no idea what flipped her switch, but it was flipped and she ended up lying down and screaming long, piercing screams. Fun times. This has never boded well for the rest of the night. At one point, she seemed to call my name after J. had left her room, so I headed in. (I'll take whatever small effort on her part to want me near, as this is still an issue. More often than not I cannot even kiss her good-night.) Here is when I decided to try an experiment and its success is why I'm able to sit down and write tonight. In my EFL class, we have been doing a lot of work with grounding exercises... purposefully breathing deeply while focusing on relaxing any tension in your body. This is because being in such a calm state communicates itself to the horses and encourages connection with them. I have certainly seen it work with Java because she is highly attuned to the state of people around her and mirrors them almost immediate...

J. and I had to drive into Evanston this afternoon to attend the memorial service for the daughter of friends of ours. No one should have to bury a child. It is just wrong. But that isn't what I want to write about. The service was held at our Evanston church, the one J. grew up in and the one I attended for thirty years. We have a lot of history there, just as we do with the City of Evanston itself. We have now lived away from Evanston for nearly three years. We are finding our place in our new home... making new friends, creating history and connections, becoming part of the community. It is slow work, but we continually feel as though we are putting roots down. Yet, both J. and I found that being in Evanston, being in our church, it felt as though we had been gone on a vacation and now we were back. It would have taken very little to convince either of us that we still lived there, it felt so normal. Of course, if this were the case, we would not have had the many conversati...

It's been an emotional day, for two completely disparate reasons. First, hug your children a little tighter tonight, because you never know when it will be your last opportunity. Friends of ours lost their daughter over the weekend, and my heart breaks for them. Humans were not created to have to endure death; it is antithetical to our very nature. It is so very wrong. Second, if you are a white parent, especially if you are a white parent in a place where diversity is low, please, please, please, expose your children to other types of people. A grade school child when confronted with a natural hair style of an African-American woman should never feel shock and surprise. Instead it should be just a fact of life. As I witnessed this, my heart broke over the beautiful girls and women in my life who would've been hurt by being told their hair is weird. Yes, I said something, don't worry, but really, it is not the child's fault for having no exposure. I lived in a div...

"Hospitality is not for the called or gifted. It's not for the gregarious extroverts with huge houses and overflowing bank accounts. And it's not for the people with angelic children, respectable roommates, or perfect marriages. Contrary to those spiritual gift tests that catalog hospitality as a special talent, nowhere in the Bible is it named as such. Instead, hospitality is a command (see Romans 12:13; 1 Peter 4:9). Hospitality is for everyone." (p. 114 from Invited: The Power of Hospitality in an Age of Loneliness by Leslie Verner) I used to be all about hospitality. When we lived in the Big Ugly House it was easy. I had a dining room which could seat my entire family plus the same number of guests. I had a kitchen which made it easy to prepare large amounts of food. I had a guest room and a guest bathroom separated from the other bedrooms which we used many, many times for both short and long stays of a wide variety of guests. We hosted international students...

You will probably be able to guess how life has been around here for the past couple of days by how many words I haven't written. It feels as though it's been nearly constant emotional therapy with R. I'm exhausted, but I think we are finally seeing real progress. I'll be glad if I can survive long enough to enjoy the fruits. In the meantime, enjoy these pictures that M. took of P. lunging Emmy the other evening.

(Ignore the horribly muddy pen. Here are three of the new ducklings.) Duck... (One of the Khaki Campbells) Goose! These are a pair of African geese, and the newest animal residents here at Bittersweet Farm. I wish I could be a little more excited about their arrival.  Remember back in February when the ducklings arrived and they came in the mail with a pair of goslings which my friend ordered ? Well, these are the same goslings, now geese. There was an unexpected and quick job transfer to the east coast, and the geese could not make the move. We are all kind of devasted since we will miss these friends very much. Finding another family where the wives, husbands, and children all get along doesn't happen very often, and to have found that again after having left close friends because of our move was wonderful. We will miss them very much, and I hope and pray that they find friendship, peace, and joy in their new home.  And we'll think of them ...

When one of your very best friends for the past 18 years is actually moving, you and other friends go and help as much as you are able. But then the morning comes where you realize that the truck actually drives away this morning and you can't be in denial any longer. Safe travels my friends. I hope we can manage to come out and visit some day.