Ordinary Time

I've sat down here to write because I have an article due by the end of the day. So what do I do first? Write a blog post. I'm calling it a writing warm-up exercise. Bristol arrives tomorrow afternoon, so this morning, J., M., and I put the final touches on the stalls that needed to be finished. Want to see? I think J. did a magnificent job on them, and it's quite a far cry from the finished, but very empty barn of several months ago.                                                      That's the same wall you're looking at. (This picture is from right before the barn was finished... when they were done it was a solid wall, but there wasn't anything else inside.) It is such a huge difference from seven months ago. K. continues to create with Legos. I won't overwhelm you with pictures of every single thing, but I wanted to shar...

It's time to do another installment of Adoption 101. This time on emotions... the parent's emotions, that is. Help moderate a group dealing with older child adoption, and as I read through some of the posts and threads, it occurs to me that there are some pretty universal experiences that never seem to be addressed in pre-adoptive education. Even me addressing these things here doesn't mean that the prospective adoptive parent will really listen, but I can still try. If you have reached adulthood, I hope you have figured out by now that emotions... how we feel about an event or a situation... are not always accurate. I'm not saying that we are wrong to feel how we feel, just that we cannot always count on our feelings to be good predictors of how something is ultimately going to work out. Sometimes this is good. When we feel deep love for someone, that feeling helps gloss over things about the recipient of our love that could irritate us. We see a person through a d...

The fact I even wrote that title as a beginning to this post cracks me up a little bit. I bet it is also making any close family members snort their beverage through their nose. This is because I am not patient. Really and true, cross my heart. My husband knows this. My children know this. My mother knows this. Heck, I am all too well aware of my lack of patience. It is an area where I am challenged. As impatient as I am, though, I am also far more patient than I used to be, and considering that just yesterday I was deciding that Veruca Salt in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory really has nothing on me, that's saying something. I get ideas in my head and I want to do them now. I see how our little farm could look in my mind, and I want to change everything now. When I am learning to do something new, I want to master it as quickly as possible. (Yes, I have given up new pursuits if I have not begun to feel mastery soon enough. Hello tennis.) I don't like to wait. (I should nev...

Yesterday, J., P., and I drove up to Wisconsin to the Midwest Horse Welfare Foundation . We had an appointment to look at some horses who were available. The couple who runs the foundation were very nice and spent several hours with us as we met and rode several horses. By the end of the day, we had decided that Bristol was going to be the newest member of our family. She is a 20 year old mare and a registered paint horse. She is very, very sweet and will make an excellent horse for teaching the younger people to ride. She will also be an enjoyable riding horse for the more experienced riders among us as well. We've signed the papers and she is ours, but we are still working out arrangements for her to make it home. I'll know more about that in a couple of days.

From my current book: "For a good portion of any day, we are bombarded with external forms of stimulation that require directed, as opposed to undirected thinking. Directed thinking requires that we concentrate our focus on a particular task or conundrum, whereas undirected thinking is neither coherent nor goal-oriented, but allows the mind to wander, as in dreaming and daydreaming. Unfortunately, our hectic and time-pressured lives rarely provide the space for a roving mind. Modern technology and digital forms of communication call for seemingly continual directed thinking -- we are inundated with emails, texts, Snapchats; each ping on our device demanding instant attention and response. We worry about wasting time, yet pore over articles on productivity, time management and super-achievers' effectiveness tips. Perhaps, being busy all the time, not thinking too deeply or letting the mind wander, are defense mechanisms -- don't think, just keep going, block out troubli...

I'm a little bleary (okay,  more than a little). R. was up most of the night doing her all-night-long-psychotic-fun-fest. Boy, I hope she sleep tonight. I am not hopeful. So, if what I write doesn't make a whole lot of sense, that's my excuse. It seems my tongue-in-cheek blog post yesterday didn't really translate from my head to my page. Those "wild" tomatoes? They are the ones I planted in the garden in May. Those pictures are of my supposed garden. It's not good.  I did get something out of the garden, though. Yesterday, I picked (after I found them) a whole lot of kohlrabi. I used them to make a kolhrabi, coconut, and lemon soup . It was well received. One good thing about letting the garden go to pot is that some plants are making a nice lot of seeds. These are plants that you can use the seeds to grow the same plant, so that's a good thing. This afternoon, G., L., and I spent some time collecting bok choy seeds.  I asked G. to take s...

Not many have heard of the wild tomato. Tomatoes conjure up images of neat and tidy gardens and farmer's markets. Plants grown purposefully and carefully cultivated. But few stop to think about those abandoned garden plots where no one weeds or tends to them. Past year's fruit, maybe having been missed in the picking, dropped to the ground, sowing seeds that work their way into the soil. Even without human attention, these seeds will grow and sometimes thrive, even in the midst of tall weeds and grasses. They are a tenacious plant and well worth searching for. This is our quarry. At first glance, there doesn't seem to much in this garden plot filled with waist high grass and weeds. Most people would overlook it and move on to more fruitful looking gardens, but we are intrepid searchers and know that the wild tomato grows in the most unlikely of places. It takes a practiced eye to look at a sea of green and be able to pick out the distinctive tomato leaf. In this aban...