Ordinary Time

I don't know about you, but I'm never quite sure what season I'm in these days. One day it's 85 degrees, the next struggles to make it to 60. How on earth is one supposed to get dressed in the morning? But, we've still made it to Friday. My mother arrived today for a brief visit. We will be having a fall break from school in honor of the occasion. J. managed to get both the dishwasher and dryer installed last night. And they both work!! The dishwasher is significantly quieter than our previous one, and by all report, the dryer works equally well. I wouldn't know, since as soon as people were able to do laundry again, all my older children budged in line to get theirs done, and I still haven't tackled my pile. TM and D. have been playing duets on their instruments together (combinations of piano, violin, and cello). I enjoy listening to them as they figure out how to play together. They have moments of sounding really quite good. We made math monsters e...

There are just some facts of life that you can't get around regarding farm life and large family life. The first is, if you have free-roaming livestock, you will lose some of them over time. The second is, when you have a large family, appliances don't last as long as they might otherwise. I think you can see where both of these things is going. I'm sorry to say that Rooster, the rooster, is no longer with us. Tuesday night he didn't come back to the coop with the rest of the chickens, and we had our first suspicions. Then yesterday morning, TM and P. found some feathers that are most likely Rooster's on the edge of our yard. I like to think he valiantly sacrificed himself saving his hens, though just as likely, he decided to attack whatever was coming after him instead of hiding. Either way, it was his final moment of glory. We all have very mixed feelings about this. Since we raised Rooster from a day old chick, and since he was a particularly beautiful bird, we...

getting a new appliance feels kind of like Christmas. Let me introduce my new freezer. It's the one on the left. Our second refrigerator, which is standard sized, is on the right, looking more shabby than usual. I'm thrilled because it doesn't stick out as far as I had feared it would. (There is a PVC pipe behind it that goes to the well, so it couldn't be put flush against the wall.) It's very fancy, and even has an LED read out on the door, and alarms if the door is left open or if the temperature inside gets too high. Look how nice and shiny!  It's much bigger than our last one, and much bigger than I was anticipating. It very nearly didn't make it through the utility room door. I'm glad that such an occurrence never popped into my head as something I should worry about. Not bad for ordering a freezer over the phone without having actually seen it in person, huh? (And to the list of appliances on the fritz, we can add the d...

Yesterday our church hosted a block party for the neighborhood. Food trucks, carnival games, line dancing... it was quite a blow out party. We had brought Aster since she couldn't stay in her crate quite as long as we were going to be gone, and the whole thing was outside. Having a cute puppy in tow is kind of an instant ice breaker. At one point, I had Aster on the leash and several of my children were standing with me, including R. Our senior pastor comes up to say hello, and to pat the puppy. Now, first you need to know that R. has never met this man in person. Being the gregarious child that she is, she immediately says hi to him, and he says hi back. R. then blurts out, "You in movie!" There is a pause, because it was a fairly random comment, and our brains were working to process the statement. As he chuckles because it seems that she is telling him he is a movie star, it dawns on me what her real meaning is. (I've had a fair bit of practice at this.) She is t...

My hot spot is back! It does make life a bit easier. It's been an expensive week around here. Earlier this week we had a whole house iron filter installed. We have well water, and it is very heavy in iron. It tastes... not great, and stains everything orange. I was afraid that it would start to rust out the appliances. So, we decided to bite the bullet, and have one put in. I know we will appreciate it, but it was a hard bill to pay. The result is that our children will now drink the water. It tastes completely normal now. P. will no longer have to carry water bottles with her whenever she was going to be near a drinking fountain, so she could fill them up with non-iron heavy water.  Along with the iron filter, I also bought an upright deep freezer. Our current freezer situation is just not workable, and since I ordered a side of pork, I really needed somewhere to put it. It will be much easier to see what I have, but once again... the money! Of course, because we thought we w...

Nearly everyone has run out of their hot spot from their phones, which means that access to things such as laptops is completely out of the question. TM still had a tiny bit left, which is why I'm able to get on to write t a brief message saying all is well.  J. has tried every internet service provider who is out there, and short of raising our own cell phone tower, this is the best solution we have. Since we run out of hot spot before the end of the month, it is clearly a not terrific solution. In the meantime, life goes on pretty much as usual. Dinners continue to happen, though with 13 usually at the table, it can get loud. M. got this picture of the end of dinner tonight. People were pretty much finished, but were lingering and enjoying the "conversation"... or whatever it was. This is the description that M. sent B., since he wasn't here to enjoy it all. A. is yelling about how she is still scared of auto flushing toilets. Y. just spit milk out of her m...

Every so often I feel the need to point out that I am not some super human person. It's not that I am under any illusion as to my less-than-perfectness, but after enough comments from others to that effect, I know it's time for another reality check. Because the truth is, I'm far from perfect. Here's a snippet of life from the past day or so, which is far more representative of life than whatever glossy magazine version people might have deluded themselves with. We started school late yesterday morning because I sat in bed too long drinking my coffee and replying to things on my phone. We started so late that we had to skip a couple of things that we usually do. I declared yesterday Moaning Monday at one point while trying to do school, because of the outrageous amount of moaning which was going on. One child crumpled up the dot-to-dot I had given in lieu of the regular math lesson because it was perceived to be too hard. Other children decided to leave the table in...