Ordinary Time

It's just me binge watching the Great British Sewing Bee (because I have teens who know how to find these things), compulsively making things, compulsively reading non-demanding books, with maybe a bit of rage cleaning thrown un for good measure. Sometimes I read the news because I should stay informed, but an never very happy to be informed, so go back to my previous activities. On the plus side, I've been very productive... many things made, many books read, and my house is generally tidier than it usually is. But, boy, I really wish I did not feel the need to keep the state of the country out of my mind. How are all of you holding up?  And for the curious who are not on Facebook, here is where I found a home for my new spinning wheel. I only had to find a home for the table which used to be in this space, and I was able to do that since it was a little smaller. 

It was a good day, but a lot of peopling. Enjoy a few past posts if you need something to read that makes you smile. Gretel locks  You must like to cook Block City

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. 

I was taking a weaving class for much of the week and tonight was the Inclusive Game Night that our church hosts once a month. This means I don't have a lot of extra energy for writing. The weekend also promises to be busy, so I'm not sure you should expect too much for the next couple of days, either. Maybe Monday things will go back to normal and I'll have brain space to write.  I did get some nettle leaves dehydrated today, though. 

The right to due process... the knowledge to know what you are charged with and the right to a fair trial is a cornerstone of our freedom. It was one of the causes of the American revolution because Britain was not granting due process to colonists. Yet we now find ourselves in a place where due process has ceased to exist. Innocent people have been taken by force by unidentified men, then shipped out of the country to concentration camps. The Supreme Court has unanimously declared that at least one of these men must be returned to US soil, but what does Felon47, who imagines himself a dictator do? Ignored the courts verdict and instead tells the so-called president of El Salvador to build more concentration camps because more will be arriving, including homegrown citizens. If that doesn't chill your blood, them I suspect you don't actually have a heart. At this point neither your citizenship nor your color will protect you. A line has been crossed.  You cannot look away from t...

I'll dive right in. I actually have no idea how long or short this will actually end up being  I've been thinking more about my experience in the self-driving car , especially in light of having having used a Lyft the month before. I realized I actually felt far more comfortable with the car driving itself. There were a couple of reasons. The first is that as a woman travelling alone it is always odd to be in a vehicle alone with a male driver. The drivers I had in San Antonio did absolutely nothing to make me feel concerned, but I was not 100% comfortable just because of the situation. The self-driving car was more relaxing. The other reason I found it more comfortable is that the car is programmed to drive safely. This would be unlike the driver who got me to the airport in record time because I swear he was going 90. If I were flying into the Phoenix airport and didn't have someone picking me up I would opt for the self-driving car over a ride share.  The sugar snap pea...

I am spending the entire day tomorrow judging at a piano festival, so there is no way I can join a protest. But what I can do is walk around with this card hanging out of my purse. One of the things that my clients find so interesting in the summer while we're in the pasture working with the horses, is watching the little song birds protect their nests from the red-tailed hawks that are prevalent in our area. The little song birds, often sparrows, will join together to badger and pester the hawks until they make them fly away from the area where their nests are. The hawks are many times bigger and many times more powerful than the little sparrows, but time and again, I've watched those sparrows chase away tye hawks. Being purposeful together is powerful, even if the thing attacking your family and home and well-being seems huge.  We must join together. Our families, lives, and well-being are at stake. 

This will probably be a bit brief because there really hasn't been anything unusual or noteworthy going on here. I'm not complaining, mind you; I strive for boring. It does make finding blog topics a wee bit more challenging, though. The weather has been gorgeous. Today I sat in the sun and did nothing for an hour, just enjoying feeling warm while outside. I had brought a stack of magazines out to read, but really I just wanted to sit.  Earlier this week, I headed out to the horses to give them breakfast. As I was walking by the sheep pen, I realized that Everett had a bucket around his neck. Somehow, he had gotten his head through the handle of the bucket and was wearing it like a necklace. Then I noticed G. trying to lure him over with food. Now little Everett is the most skittish of the three and knew something was up. He was not going anywhere near that food. I when and gave Buddy his medicine and then went to help G. We ended up putting all the sheep in the trailer and clo...

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...

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...

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...

It has been a very long time since I've done one of these.  We've had rain and rain and rain today. I would have been happier if it had been snow instead. The problem with rain after such a long Arctic cold snap is that the ground is still very frozen. Frozen ground does not absorb water. There is standing water everywhere. To make it worse, our pastures slope slightly from north to south. The ponies' stall is on the north side of the barn which means all the water fills their stall. They are currently living in the aisle because this morning their stall was fetlock deep in water.  Either all my usual or somewhat usual readers have hunkered down and are avoiding the computer for personal sanity reasons or I have finally hit the end of the public's interest in the blog. The stats are (low)  numbers I think I haven't seen since the first few years. It's very odd. Or is it context and no one wants to be confronted with reality? Clearly I'm still writing, but I ...

I was a huge M*A*S*H* fan when I was growing up. (I think I'm still a bit traumatized by the final episode.) There is one episode that  particularly sticks in my head. I can remember being disappointed in it when I first saw it because it wasn't funny. Now, I think about it often. The whole show flip flopped back and forth between what was happening in the hospital unit in a war zone. Lots and lots of blood and death and destruction. Then it would move to what was happening state side in the early fifties; light hearted normalcy. I particularly remember lots of people dancing in fancy clothes. It wasn't funny, it was just jarring. As I said, I didn't like it. Now I don't like it for a completely different set of reasons.  I don't know about you, but that jarring difference between horribleness and absolute normalcy has been flirting through my head a lot, often on an hourly basis. I do something normal such as hang with my horses and muck stalls, then something ...

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...

The certificate training is going well, but it's also tiring. I'm pretty wiped out by the end of the day. So instead of writing something, I thought I'd share this Ted Talk video I came across a week or so ago. (Plus, this way you won't forget entirely that I have a blog.)  I'm always interested in things people can do that can mitigate loneliness. This video caught my eye because the speaker uses the idea of clothing and dress for increasing social interaction. Plus, I love her outfit. Enjoy!

I actually had to get a light coat out of the coat closet today and decided the breeze coming in the open windows was just a little too brisk for comfort. It looks as though we'll actually have autumn weather... at least for a few days. This also makes me remember all those things I was going to do before winter, such as sorting out my winter coat issues.  The main issue being that I don't actually have one. I haven't actually had a real winter coat since three winters ago when my good LLBean winter coat's zipper stopped working. The next winter I made due with a heavy duty lined hooded sweatshirt with a wind proof vest over it. This worked surprisingly well, but at the end of the season that zipper broke as well. (That actually wasn't too much of a surprise given that it used to be W.'s, who wore it for years before I started using it.) Last winter I sort of made due with a too big fleece and that same vest. I was never quite fond of that combination, but it wa...

No. Nothing. I see friends posting amazing pictures and what do I see? Planes. Many, many planes approaching O:Hare. We'll try a little later on... maybe we're too early? I even tried looking through the camera on my phone. No Northern Lights. I really want to see them. Anyone got any hints? 

I have nothing coherent to say, so you're stuck with extreme randomness. I have canned twenty quarts of applesauce in the past two days. This is well over double what I thought I would get. We're pretty much set for the year. Zorro is an excellent rooster. Three times this week he has spotted a coyote and sent his hens running for safety as he stood watch. J. and I have both caught this, alerted to the distinctive danger crow we are now familiar with. As far as we are aware, no hens have been lost, but I'm afraid they will all be on lockdown for a bit while the coyote decides there is nothing to eat around here. Here is my Public Service Announcement for the week. People cannot read your mind. Even someone else loves you cannot read your mind. There is no such thing as "but they should just know". If you can't say what you want out loud, you don't get to be annoyed when your loved one doesn't know. (This is just in general, we're good here, though ...

I was going to skip posting tonight because it's been a full day and this evening was our church's inclusive game night which ends late. But I didn't post yesterday and some people get concerned if I'm silent too long. Then I thought I would share pictures of sheep. Because they're cute. But I had asked G. to take some and that hasn't happened yet. So no sheep pictures. Really all you get is a short post saying we're fine, but I have no energy to write. Fascinating stuff, I know. But it's also a post just a bit over one hundred words long instead of heading into the thousands. That's got to count for something. 

(I have so many favorite hobby horses, you're probably wondering which one it is this time.) It's been hot here again. I'm really kind of done summer. Actually, I'm done with sweating while doing very little physical work. Hot weather is just not my favorite. It also means that I pay attention to what I wear in order to remain as comfortable as possible. It's not unlike in winter, just coming at it from the opposite direction.  From experience, cotton is the most comfortable. Linen is great, too, but I own one nice linen shirt and I don't really want it to become a barn shirt. I even have a thin 100% wool T-shirt that actually is pretty comfortable, too. The key is breathability. All of these natural fibers allow heat and moisture to escape from your body.  Last week due to the weaving class I took, the laundry definitely didn't happen. Over the weekend I was down to the second tier of my wardrobe. This is why I found myself wearing a poly-cotton shirt on a ...