Ordinary Time

K. turned 17 today in a rather anti-climactic celebration between siblings being sick or needing to work due to the storms passing through. And them the power went out. We may have to have a do-over in a little bit.  That's it for the evening as my phone is about to die. Hopefully we'll wake up to a fully electrified house.

You know, sometimes there are things that I desperately want to write about, but because they feel so scary and hit so close to home, that I have absolutely no words to share. This is currently how I feel about anything having to do with the state of the nation about the LGBTQ+ community and specifically the trans community.  What I will say is that this is hard, and frankly terrifying.  How would you feel to know that a great number of people think your child shouldn't be allowed to have basic rights? How would you feel to know that a great number of people believe that your child is a danger to others?  How would you feel to have an increasing amount of hate directed at you and your child?  No, really, stop and think what that would be like. Do you enjoy the feeling? I imagine you don't, because who would?  Yet, there are a great many people out there, most frighteningly law makers who are playing God, who think it is just fine to demonize a whole people group...

Every year I say I'm going to get the cold weather seeds in early and every year I'm trying to grow things like spinach and snap peas in weather that is a lot too warm. But not this year! We're having a quasi spring break this week, just doing lighter work, so I have a bit more time. This happened to correspond to a pretty decent day and I took advantage of it.  It helped that I had lettuce seedlings that really needed to be set out. (I had been hardening them off hoping the weather would cooperate.)  I'm happy to report that all the seeds are planted!  I'm trusting all the gardening books that "plant as early as soil can be worked" is really what they meant. I also wanted to give a brief update on how my new soil blocker is working. As of right now, the little soil blocks are working very well. A few days ago I transplanted all the pepper seedlings that I had started before I bought the soil blocker. When I transplanted them it was into the soil blocks. L...

There is a fantastic fiber store near my mom's house, so of course I had to visit it while I was there. I was paid for the piano judging I did and had a little bit to play with. Here's what I found. This is what I went in for. It is more of the silk and Polworth wool blend that I bought last year and loved. There were also blue braids, but I've been working with a lot of blue recently and decided to venture out to another color.  Then I bought some supplies for next year's spinning class. This Jacob wool was fantastic for beginning spinners. I'll dye the white and leave the natural brown as it is. I had also planned on getting these. Then comes the unplanned purchases. First there are these two skeins of fingering yarn. I don't often buy yarn these days, but these were so pretty and soft, there they were in my basket.  I'll probably also take a bit of them apart to figure out how they made it... number of plies, how they combined colors, etc. Because I could...

On Saturday we had salmon for dinner. This is a rare meal for us, for while we all live it, it is often too expensive to be able to buy enough to feed everyone. That is until you are doing your shopping and happen to see this. Yes, that package of salmon cost less than a dollar once the $5 was subtracted. Plus, there were more in this same price range. I bought five. For once everyone got as much salmon as they wanted. It will be a long time before I find a deal as good as this again.  When I was checking out, the checker and I had a pleasant conversations about my very cheap salmon, which brings me to the title of this post. Aldi, along with practically every grocery store I shop at, has torn out the bulk of manned cash registers and replaced them with self checkouts. Unless I am buying one or two items that don't need to be weighed and don't require an ID, I actually loathe self checkouts. There is something about the impersonal machine telling me that I did something wrong t...

I'm not doing a weekly update today. There would not be much to say except that I scrambled all week trying to get ahead of all that I needed to do. Normally I don't feel as though I'm scrambling through the week. In fact I work very hard to be sure I'm not because I am not happy when I feel rushed. But there is something about being gone all weekend and Monday to have all of that fall apart. I'm feeling a little less harried today and am looking forward to a weekend with very little on the calendar. Instead I though I would share something I wrote to a struggling parent today. It might be useful to others even if you aren't feeling at the point of crisis. This is an excerpt with other details deleted. <<I find it useful to have essentially a triage list in my head for dealing with upset between children. It helps me to remember the order of importance when dealing with multiple upset children at a time.  1. Comfort the wounded. In real time this means I d...

This would be a vague counterpart to yesterday's voice in terms of education in our country. Well, Florida at least, that forerunner of the state with the largest population of the lunatic fringe. So it seems a principal was forced to resign for showing sixth graders pornography. Sounds concerning, huh? Well, until you realize that the "pornography" in question was... Wait for it... Michaelangelo's statue of David.  I'll just let that sink in for a moment. What on earth?  Among some of the many things a large potion of Florida's populace needs is access to a dictionary. But maybe those have already been banned because they might contain... Gasp... Bad words.  But I digress. The definition of pornography is: Printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings. I guess the pearl clutching began right after the word "organs" (can ...