Ordinary Time

We always do some sort of museum trip to kick off our school year. Usually this happens on the day after Labor Day, which, I think, is when school should start. This year is a bit different. A homeschool mom arranged a group price to see the exhibit that's in the area which had an original print of The Great Wave, so I jumped at the chance. Today was our day to go see it. Because we were with a group, we also had one of the museum directors give us an introduction to what we were going to see.  The actual name of the exhibit is Hokusai and Ukiyo-e: The Floating World at the Mcininch Art Center at the Collage of DuPage. This was a very well done exhibit. The first gallery has the history of the artist and the art form, another gallery had a lot of various prints and other Japanese art. This was where The Great Wave is exhibited. There was a street scene recreating early 1800's Edo (Tokyo) that you could walk through. A third gallery held an immersive manga exhibit because Hokus...

Life has been pretty calm around here. I'm not complaining, but it does make it a little challenging to find things to write about. Drama makes for a better story. Next week things will changed a bit as we head into a different schedule. I think everyone will be relieved by this as time has seemed to be hanging heavy for more than a few. (Not me, I should add. Having nothing on the calendar fills me with glee and I am more than capable of filling that time.)  Thus, this may be the last photo based post for a while because the more people do things, the more there is to write about. We'll be back to my 1000+ word posts before you know it.  In lieu of so many words, here are a few photos from this morning in the barn. First, a sparrow egg that I found on the ground.  They are teeny tiny eggs. And the side where the hatchling emerged. I just hope this next round of babies managed to stay in their nests. And next is just a sun-bathing rooster. Note the outstretched leg. ...

The flies have been bad this month due to our rotten hot weather. I don't think Major really likes his fly mask and is firmly aligned with me in wishing the temperature would drop about thirty degrees.

I was co-leading a training session about providing Equine Assisted Services to young people for Athena this afternoon. This is something my co-leader and I do somewhat regularly. This was the second session and part of the homework from the first was to watch a short video by Bryan Post. It made me realize that I have probably never talked much about Bryan Post and how pivotal he was for me while I was in the process of rethinking everything I thought I knew about parenting. If you work with children in any capacity and haven't yet met Dr. Post, then I strongly urge you to watch this video. Six minutes that can change your child's life (and yours)

I'm now working on the samples of the guest towels I'm going to weave for the holiday market. I'm pretty excited at how this is turning out because I created the draft for it myself.  Here is a view of what they will look like on the towel.  Before I get completely excited, I still need to wash it to see what it looks like then. Because what good is a towel if it can't be washed? I also have several more designs to try... I have a snowman and a star to do, plus I want to do an all over red and white design. Then, once I've done all that, I'll start weaving the actual towels based on my sampling.  I also finished spinning another skein of yarn this past week. This will also be sold at the market. It's 100% Shetland wool (no, not from our sheep) that I dyed, combed, and spun. Its about 92 yards. If I can get to it, I have a gradient in these shades that I dyed that I would like to spin and then sell the skeins together. We'll see. I often have bigger plans...

Early on, when I finally bit the bullet and could admit to myself our family needed outside help, I wrote many times that I realized something. And that something was: The more you find yourself saying things such as, "I think things are getting better," there is a direct correlation to how not better things are. I reminded people of this often because if I had been willing to seek help sooner, we could have avoided some extremely unpleasant seasons; that by waiting, the issues at root grew exponentially.  I feel this needs to be said again because in the past couple of months I have worked with and spoken to many families that are trying to hold it together, but the age of their children and the issues now at hand are pretty significant. I find myself wishing I could go back in time to help them and their now older children find a different path earlier in the process. So much hurt could have been avoided if I could do that.  Instead, I will issue this plea again. If you fin...

I read an article the other day about undirected attention . (I linked to it in case you want to read it.) Essentially, due to being constantly connected to our phones, our brains get no rest. If we have to wait for a few minutes for something, we are likely to pull out our phones and start scrolling. (Yes, I'm as guilty as anyone. It's all rather insidious.) Instead of having pockets in our day when our brain is free to wander and rest with no demands being placed on it, we fill those moments with... well, whatever happens to catch our notice on our phones. If your feeds look anything like mine, not only are we not giving our brains a break, but at the same time we're causing huge releases of cortisol into our systems due to the nature of current events. This makes it even worse than just not having a break.  I think I found this particular interesting because over the past few months, I have been listening to very little as I clean the barn each morning. It kind of felt a...