Ordinary Time

The Internet tells me it's International Horse Day, so it seems a good time to get around to the post I promised about how the horses are doing.  Bristol's death hit us all hard, but probably Java most of all. Since she is nearly blind, she really relied on Bristol to get her through the day. I've written before about how reactionary (and not terribly safe) Java was when she first arrived here. She had come so far and was doing so well, I was extremely worried about her through the summer. More often than not, when I came in the barn I would find Java with her head down facing into a corner of a stall. Emmy would often be hanging around outside the stall keeping her company. It felt like deep, deep grief.  As time progressed, Java did this less and less. Adding Major was a small distraction, but herd life still felt very unsettled. Major was going through his own grieving process it felt like, with me finding him with his head down, just standing by himself behind the barn....

I showed you last week how the scarf I was knitting with the natural dyed yarn was nearly finished. I might also have mentioned that I was glad I was nearly done with it because I didn't really care for it.  Over the weekend I washed and blocked it. It is still probably not something that I would wear, but I don't hate it nearly as much as I did before. The blocking really, really makes a difference. Here it is all pinned out. You'll notice that each color has a long end that I didn't weave in. That is because for the art show submission, each end will be attached to a picture of the plant or animal that it was dyed with. I got those nearly done as well this weekend. There is still some pen work I need to finish, but the hard part is done. The last thing I have to do (before Friday!) is get it all put together so it can be displayed. In my head my idea will work, I hope in actuality it is successful.  Then there are all the things I can't show you because they are g...

R. has been doing a lot of drawing recently. I haven't paid too much attention because her drawing consists of little circular squiggles with which she covers pages and pages of paper. She will often show them too me saying what they are supposed to be, but I'll be honest that while I'm encouraging of her effort, they all pretty much look exactly the same and not very like the thing she says it is.  This evening while we were fixing dinner, R. was showing J. her drawings. Instead of the usual script, J. says, "E., have you looked at these?" I admitted I hadn't really looked at her three pages of drawing from today. So J. shows them to me and I actually gasped in astonishment. A few of her drawings were completely unexpected.  Here, I'll show you. First, we have some ducks. They actually look like ducks. If you were forced to guess, you could have a chance of guessing correctly. But here is the one that made me gasp. Completely on her own, she drew a person...

We decorated, we are snacks, we had fun. All we were missing was D. who is still at school. 

We're at the end of the first week of December and I'm not panicking. Yet. I make no promises about next week. I think I'm in the denial phase of Christmas preparations. Today I spent the afternoon organizing and cleaning my studio. I could maje the very tenuous argument that it will help me complete the rest of the gifts I have to make, but this would be patently false. I've worked in the rather dirty and disorganized space for months now,  three more weeks wasn't going to kill me. It is nice to have it clean and organized, though. I also spent some time today washing and ironing the linen napkins we used at Thanksgiving. This doesn't really count as preparations as I probably won't use them at Christmas. It is the first time ever that the linens used at Thanksgiving are put back away before Christmas.  The sunsets continue to be lovely.  My children have lost count how many times I have shouted at the car in front of me at a round about that it is not a fo...

For a moment I couldn't figure out why my blog numbers were bizarrely high when I sat down to write this evening. Then I remembered, oh yeah, the documentary was re-aired tonight. This time around was more pleasant as there were no interviews to go along with it. I could conveniently forget about it.  But it seems I have some new visitors, which seems to warrant a brief introduction. I've been writing this blog since 2005, which is coming perilously close to twenty years of writing. It also means there is a lot of content here... probably several book's worth of words. To help you navigate, look at the tabs right underneath the header and click the 'more' option. Those will take you to lists of older posts. The 'About' tab will identify who is who, as I use initials instead of names here. Yes, I realize it's a but confusing and annoying. What seems to be a good idea with five children doesn't grade up so well. And then when you start to add spouses,...

I had an update on the horses all planned out to write tonight, but I was away all day at meetings and appointments, so don't have the bandwidth. Maybe tomorrow? We'll see.  There are two items I can share with you that may be if interest. The first is that we have named our stuffed Christmas hedgehogs. (This counts as vital information, doesn't it?) They are Holly Christmas and Jolly Christmas. Holly is the one with the shirt with holly on it, of course. Maybe you need a picture of them to remind you.  They were well worth the splurge and have sat on many laps today. I got home from my meeting this morning to find G. and L. sitting on the couch each with one in their lap. And they make me smile.  The other bit of information is to let you know that Hayden and her Family will be rebroadcast on the PBS World channel as part of America Reframed tomorrow night at 8/7c. If you haven't seen it and are interested. When I see the footage from it these days, all I can think is ...