Ordinary Time

It was late, like 2am late, and very dark, especially for those of us who were used to the warm orange glow perpetually cast by the city. For the past two hours the van's brake and engine warning lights had been going off and we are driving on small and hilly roads. We drove on and on, not being able to see anything but the road immediately ahead of us, and when we hit a patch of fog, barely even that. If felt vaguely dangerous and unsettling, never knowing if the brakes that kept us safe would continue to work. It was dark and unknown, never knowing when the road would curve or dip or rise. And several of us mentioned that we thought the scenery must be exceedingly beautiful along the stretch we were driving, if only we could see it. I was struck by how similar this drive felt to how life has felt for the past nine months or so. Scary, worrying, vaguely dangerous, unknown, and missing out on great beauty along the way. I haven't blogged much about it, or mentioned it to many...

I've done a lot of reading over the past couple of weeks, so have a lot of books to recommend. First up is Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language by Deborah Fallows. This is a fascinating book even if you aren't trying to learn Mandarin. In it, Ms. Fallows takes one aspect of the language and writes about broader cultural issues. I found the section on the differences between perceived politeness of different cultures to be particularly interesting. Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code by Margalit Fox is next in line. This was a fairly random grab off the library shelf when I was browsing one day and I unexpectedly fell in love with it. It says a lot for the author that she was able to make the work of decoding Linear B into a fascinating read. I was fascinated both by the characters involved and by the linguistics behind Linear B.'s decipherment. I think I read this book in about a 24 hour period I was so interested. ...

Last week nearly all of us drove to western Pennsylvania where we rented a couple of houses with some of J.'s siblings. There were two houses; here is the one we stayed in. K. The ladder up to the loft where K. and D. slept. K. loved this ladder and would go up and down it over and over and over and... The loft \ The lawn between the houses The gravel road to the main road We were right by a river. Here is one of the paths down. The river We were also right by a train track. See how close the train is? Trains a loud. Very loud. Cousins spent much of the week playing together in the river. One afternoon we treked to Ohiopyle State Park and played at a natural slide area. Looking into a cave they found. By the end of the afternoon, H. was finally getting comfortable enough to do a little playing. M. was able to join us, which was a treat and a lot of fun. She's pretty fun to have around. I...

This is what I did yesterday afternoon. That would be 7 quarts of dill pickles, 3 quarts of bread and butter pickles, 1 1/2 pints of fig jam, plus I have at least 5 pints of hot peppers brining to make more hot sauce. Let the compulsive-avoidant canning fest continue!

because I thought you would all like to know that we received our immigration approval yesterday! I think I will be taking a trip downtown next week to visit the Chinese consulate. HOORAY!

We're working on getting ready to head out of town again for the week. Well, some of us are going out of town, others of us are not... those pesky jobs, you know. It will make Gretel happier to have people here. Still, enough of us are leaving that it feels like a major operation to get everyone packed and everything gathered and stowed. Thank goodness for older children who can help the younger ones get their clothes together. I have been busy doing important things, such as paying bills and checking out recorded books from the library and buying food and collecting games to take. I've also been stock-piling my own books to take, because Heaven forbid I run out of something to read on vacation. And I'm really going to try and make it a vacation, so no blog posts for a week and I'm going to try to keep the computer in the bag as much as possible. (I have an article that is due that I will need to write at the beginning of our vacation, but that shouldn't take long...

I love to sew for my girls and when they are little it is pretty easy to find cute patterns and whip something up. When I was at the fabric store the other day, it became clear to me that it is going to become increasingly difficult to find patterns to make things for H. She is 12, and if you've ever tried to dress a child, either boy or girl, who is in between little kid sizes and teen/adult sizes, you already know that it is a vast wasteland. Trust me when I say that it is even worse when you 12 year old is still very much a little girl and likes little girl things. She wants pretty dresses, not the pseudo-sophisticated inappropriate overly grown-up bilge that one finds so often for this age. (Hmmm... think I have an opinion on that?) Yet even in pattern-land, it is difficult to find things that she would like in her size. Imagine my joy, when idling about looking at websites (because I was too depressed to get off my duff and actually do something and you never know when some ...