At Home on Hill Haven

Fare Thee Well!

2011-01-03T20:35:00.001-05:00

In case I needed one more little kick in the rear to feel great about leaving this house, I caught another brown recluse spider a couple of days ago, traipsing up my bedroom wall in the middle of the morning, happy as you please I suppose, if spiders have emotions... perhaps the spider is the perfect Buddha, no attachments, no suffering, enlightened. Live while living, then die, the end. Hm. Wait, isn't "perfect Buddha" redundant?

So I'm a little sad to leave this blog behind, lost in cyberspace as it will be, but it seems to be the thing to do. We will be moving in a few months (probably less than three, maybe just two months from now) and well, it just won't be hill haven anymore. And to be honest, it hardly ever was. I might have suspected when the hawks left the hill a few years ago that the time to leave was coming sooner than I had planned. I've faced some major challenges thus far in this house. I've dealt with financial train wrecks, the perils of pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing, starting and losing a business, losing and finding myself. Through it all I've had anxiety and panic as my constant companions, keeping me hypervigilant about anything and everything, always worried about potential crises large and small, figments of my imagination over which I would have no control if they did come to pass. (So far, none did.) I've even dealt with a major infestation of brown recluse spiders. Distractions. Drama to avoid facing the banality of living day in and day out, wiping noses and bottoms, being married long enough to start losing track, getting older, accomplishing so little in terms of measurables. I am a driven woman, and mothering is something I take (far too) seriously, and although I love my children beyond all measure it is not enough, so I thrash about and flail and struggle and sink and thrash and flail and sink and find my feet and finally walk into the shallows and sit down, where I can at least breathe and see around me, even if I cannot yet get out of the water entirely.

Not that I wish any of this were different. Let me be perfectly clear that I do not. Even when it is painful and difficult; especially then. I don't need to pretend I don't have pain, that I don't struggle. I do. That's life, and it would be abnormal otherwise. Suffering exists, and even if I could manufacture some seemingly perfect existence to insulate myself from the reality of impermanence, eventually suffering will come to visit. Modern medicine has pathologized everything normal so that we as a culture seem to think we're never supposed to feel bad. Are you kidding me?? Here, take your soma?! Was no one paying attention to Brave New World?? Helloooo!!

So the final word from Hill Haven is, it's not always okay, and I'm okay with that. It will change, so if it's bad now, maybe that's good :)

Here's my new blog, on WordPress:
http://lefthandedinarighthandworld.wordpress.com/
Come on ovah! :)

Planning Ahead

2010-12-19T23:25:00.000-05:00

I like my new title, but as far as I know, I can't give this thing a corresponding new url... I also think a fresh start is in order. So, I'm thinking new year, new me, new blog. I may switch to Wordpress; if I do, I'll let you know :)

See, the thing is, we're moving. At some point in the next six months, probably sooner. We are letting go of this house that has become an albatross. It's a long story, and perhaps merits telling, but for now suffice to say we're leaving "Hill Haven" so it makes sense to me energetically to end this blog and begin a new one. The timing being what it is, it has me thinking also about resolutions. Many years I'm not much for resolutions at this artificial marking of time, but some years it feels right and this is one of them. I'm mulling over the myriad things I aspire to, distilling ideas down into concrete processes with well-defined steps and goals and deadlines. Lots of writings and evidence exist to support the notion that the more clearly you define goals, the more likely you are to achieve them or at least make progress in the desired direction. So, I mull, and distill. For the purpose of helping my tired mommy brain, here are some of the objectives I'm kicking around:

Health. There are so many ways I need to improve in how I take care of myself, and the health of those around me has me really focused on this lately. Exercise and yoga, instituting a "real foods" policy, supplements to restore balance and heal deficiencies, drinking enough water and getting enough sleep, taking good care of everyone's teeth... the list is long, but each piece is important to the whole.

Writing. I need to write very frequently; I desire a writing career of sorts. I really, truly want a successful blog, as well as experience with successful freelance work. I think I may also have books to write, but those will reveal themselves as they go and I currently don't feel the need to make commitments around that aspect.

Finances. By default, this will be a year in which we as a family make major shifts in the balance of our finances (thus the release of the house). My goal is that the result will be a regularly balanced budget and a year in the black!

Meditation. I know I need this, and my children need me to get it. I am an anxious person. As if that weren't enough motivation to train my mind, there are a gazillion other benefits to health and longevity, and absolutely to parenting peacefully and mindfully. I have thought about this for years without managing the discipline of a regular sitting practice. I need that discipline developed, too, for all my other goals in life, now and in the future. I really can't afford to continue to squander time without this practice in place.

Shamanism. This is how I move through the world, and whence my greatest gifts emanate. I offer intuitive counseling and have the ability to move people through stuck places and enable empowerment through transformation and compassionate understanding. It's what I do without thinking. I'm also medically intuitive. It is an insult to the gods that I do not offer this professionally. I need, want, and deserve to earn a living, and I am obligated to Those Who Empower Me to use my gifts in service to the world. I have no idea how to convey what I do to the right people so as to begin taking on clients and doing this work. I just know there's no sense in continuing to wait. It's time. Helpful suggestions are welcome!

Ahh, I feel better now. What are you kicking around?

Frabjous Day

2010-11-27T01:59:00.000-05:00

See what happens when I break my stride? Off the wagon I fall, BAM! (Insert gnashing of teeth.)

Funny things happen to me sometimes. (Actually, I would postulate that funny things happen to everyone all the time, but that is not my point at the moment.) My top funny since my last post was that my little Jehovah's Witness friend showed up again. This is a young girl, earnest and naive, who does not truly know why she wants to keep coming back to my house again and again to witness to me. I can't decide what's funnier, my shapeshifting into someone she thinks she can relate to, or her blindness to the call of the Goddess she's hearing through me :) Hee hee, I do so love being eeeee-vil (use your best Doofenschmirtz voice there, please).

Alright, back in the game, I guess, and since it's 2AM I'll call it good enough. Goodnight!

Celebrate Yo'self!

2010-11-21T11:57:00.003-05:00

I'm off today to celebrate a wonderful momma friend of mine who lives where I used to, which means a short road trip with the one-year-old. (Wish me luck.) I love that I am doing this, that I am able to, and what it means to celebrate a friend. Life is not easy (although the purveyors of antidepressants want you to believe it should be, so you'll feel shittier about your life when it's hard and buy their drugs) and we deserve to joyfully celebrate our very existence. Sometimes it feels fake, and when that happens, it just means we're doubting our worth, or celebrating falsely. If that's the case, fake it 'til ya make it, and trust that you really do deserve to be celebrated!

We each exist for a unique purpose in this world. Who is your unique, authentic self? Have you come out to play today? What would celebrate you the best today? My wish is for you to make that happen. Enjoy!

Random Nonsense

2010-11-20T23:47:00.004-05:00

I'm wondering about this blog. Much can be said about "Hill Haven" morphing into "Hell Haven" or "Hill from Hell" or something, but at any rate, we're leaving in the fairly near future (hopefully, oh-so-hopefully AFTER the farmhouse has been gutted and restored) and I don't know what that means for this blog. Perhaps I'll write here until the nebulous move actually comes to pass... I really do like this blogging concept. I guess I'll figure this out as I go, just like I do everything else in life :)

Today's "shout it from the rooftops" discovery pertains to stomach acid, of all things. I first heard about low stomach acid on this fantabulous list I'm on about nutrition. Did you know that the symptoms of low stomach acid are the same as the symptoms for high stomach acid? Me neither! The medical history is a rather long and boring story, but suffice to say I concluded that low stomach acid was something I have going on. Today, I added ACV (that's apple cider vinegar to the uninitiated) with my meals and poof! No more heartburn! I am seriously impressed. This may be the root of my sensitivity to gluten, dairy, and who knows what else. I am so excited!

More to say, but duty calls...

Just a Footnote

2010-11-19T22:45:00.002-05:00

Well, I promised myself to push through this hinderedness and post daily until I no longer feel it's necessary. Apparently it's still necessary :) I loaded the recycling this morning, got all the kids buckled in, then discovered my car wouldn't start. I'm hoping it's only the battery (it certainly should be, it's got 120K miles on it) and not anything else, but it didn't behave exactly like a dead battery should...

Niftily enough, a friend called and wanted to come up to visit. Her son is a great buddy of G's too, so we got to have a playday anyway, housebound and all. Now G is complaining about his nose being stuffy, though, and Iris is utterly whiny and wretched and needs to be in bed. And, my battery is about out. So, to bed!

It's Only Love...

2010-11-19T00:30:00.002-05:00

Love keeps coming up in conversations all around me lately, and it has me thinking. One friend, in the context of a relationship that has ended, pondered whether it was better to be loved or needed. Another friend was asked by person B for childhood stories as a gift for person C, "so he can know how much he's loved." I asked my friend whether person C would even want that, and she said no (which I suspected). How, then, does this mechanism of knowing one is loved work? Clearly, different people have different ideas about this. We all use this four letter word, and we assume we mean the same thing, but do we? What does that word really mean?

I have read that in Sanskrit (I think, and I'm just mouthing off here so I could be wrong) there are many different words for the different kinds of love. In English, we use adjectives, but I'm not sure we don't fall terribly short in our lack of vocabulary for this emotion. We learn platitudes that love "never changes" or "is forever" but I'm not sure that's true. If it is, then every single relationship that ever ended has to say it wasn't love in the first place because it's gone now. How shitty is that?

For me, I think feeling love from another means feeling acceptance, non-judgment, and an embracing of all of who I am. While I'm sure some others would share my opinions, I by no means think this is what love means to everyone. Some might believe love is that fluttery excited feeling, which in my world is infatuation. Others might think of love as a more solid, constant caring, maybe something I would call friendship but maybe not love. The range of possibilities must be as varied as we individuals are. Then, if that is true, how in the world do two people ever come together in a relationship and manage to communicate at all?

The thing is, if I am going to feel loved, that is about me. I have to feel it. And in order for that to happen, I have to believe it. It's that simple, and that complicated. If I don't believe it then nothing anyone else can ever do for me will make me feel loved, because I believe I am not. I determine my reality. If, on the other hand, I do believe that someone loves me, they can actually do very little, and I will see it all through the lens of that person loving me because I believe it to be so. People in relationship may not like this-- often othey would rather keep score and cling to their version of the truth. They hold up their interpretation of experience as if it were solid fact: "See? She doesn't love me because she cheated on me!" "See? He loves me because he bought me flowers!" But these actions are only actions, and are not in fact fastened to any emotion on the part of the actor whatsoever. Maybe she doesn't love you because she cheated, or maybe she cheated for a million other reasons that people cheat. Maybe those flowers mean love, or maybe it means he hopes you won't notice how late he is or he'll get out of the doghouse or he'll get laid. People are very vested in believing what they want to believe about their experience, and they'll go to great lengths to justify their conclusions with so-called evidence. But my interpretation of reality does not constitute evidence of anything other than the interpretation itself.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter. For now, I'm losing focus, so I'm calling this one done for tonight.

Not So Good

2010-11-18T12:02:00.002-05:00

Here's what happened yesterday. Nice face plant, kid.

The best part of the story was how it all went down: baby is eating dog food. Three-year-old is pantless outside, screeching, "WIPE MY BUTT!" Almost eight-year-old is wailing at the top of his lungs, "WHY, WHY, WHY?!?!?!?!" over a dropped silly band that he can't find. Mom is valiantly resisting her impulse to curse at the big boy for flipping out over such a useless little shred of polymer, trying to be heard over the three-year-old, hands dirty now, when baby spins out and tumbles off the stoop, face first so he grinds it into the sidewalk really nicely. Thankfully his teeth are fine, and a bonus was that he spat the dog food out in the body roll rather than choking on it. Good grief.

Nonetheless, I had this half-composed post on love I was all ready to work on last night, but then the disasters of bedtime ensnared me and I surrendered. Since I've promised myself daily posts for a while to oil the writing joints, I'm going to attempt to post twice today. We'll see later if I follow through...

Wrong Way Around

2010-11-16T20:00:00.004-05:00

So I homeschool, right? And I homebirthed, twice. And we homestead, sort-of. You might say I'm a homebody. You might expect that of me, you might think that's what I like best; after all, these are my lifestyle choices. But as it turns out, that's not exactly true for me. Most of my "mom friends" are stay-at-home moms. They seem content. They certainly seem happier than me. Maybe they're all on Prozac or Zoloft or whatever the latest generation of antidepressant is. Maybe I should be. But I'm not content. My kids piss me off frequently. I don't know if this is the right thing to do. And I know, beyond any doubt, that I want More out of my life. I even know some of what that looks like. But I can't see how to get there from here. My kids need me relentlessly. They are little, even the "big" one. They need, need, need, all the time. I am never "off." I hate my husband, not for doing anything especially wrong (which he sometimes does), not for being an insensitive jerk (which he sometimes is). I hate him because I resent him for not being my replacement. There is no way around this. Do I love my children? Hell fucking yes I love them, like stops-my-breath love them. Do I wish I hadn't had them? Don't be fucking stupid. But these constraints are real, and sometimes it just sucks.

After breaking my writing silence yesterday, and noticing how impressively ginormous was my writer's block, I have decided that it would probably be a good idea if I forced myself to write here daily, even if it's just two sentences of utter drivel. Hell, no one is reading this damn thing anyway, what difference does it make? I could say anything, who's going to see it? Sure, I secretly wish I could make a small living blogging, but how the hell could that happen when I go for more than a year without writing? Stupid. So I'm going to write crap into a vacuum and see how often I can manage to do it. Gah.

Once Upon A Time...

2010-11-15T21:04:00.003-05:00

... there was a writer who became a mom. Then she became a mom again, and then again. Then a whole bunch of other shit happened and it seemed the writer disappeared. But the mom felt crazy without the writer, so she had to go looking for her. She looked in books, she looked in movies. She looked in her purse, her car, and her diaper bag. The mom couldn't find the writer anywhere, and without her she didn't quite know what to do with herself, or what to say. She kept looking. Eventually the mom found the writer, but she almost didn't recognize her, as she had been wandering penless and paperless for a really, really long time, and she was starving and thin (you might say paper thin) and exceedingly thirsty. In fact, at first the mom just saw a starving woman, and felt sorry for her, and offered her some water and a little bite to eat. But then, as the writer began to flesh out once again, the mom realized who she was. And so, the mom welcomed the writer back home, and sought to discover the ways in which she had gotten lost in the first place, in hopes that she wouldn't let it happen again...

I Heart Deadlines!

2009-05-11T00:42:00.002-05:00

A scheduled outage is, erm, scheduled in 18 minutes. (Make that 17.) On blogger, that is. Naturally that makes this the perfect time for a new entry!
It is an established fact of physics that liquids held in a container of some sort will assume the shape of the container. As it turns out this frequently is also true of people, especially watery people like me (that's an astrology reference there). Thus the highly useful nature of the deadline-- it serves as a container for a project, provides something to push against, something that increases the pressure enough (there I go back to physics again) to get the reaction, the project, to completion. Deadlines also have the power to be delightfully liberating; projects with no deadlines can remain unfinished forever, but projects with deadlines actually END, whether complete or not. Isn't that just fabulous?! Now the trick is to create deadlines for projects I *want* to finish that I can believe are real, whether those deadlines will be externally enforced or not.
This, to me, is one of the greatest failures of the public education system (ack! six minutes!). With externally imposed deadlines always looming and my extreme need to please/fear of failure as a child, I performed excellently in school (you could say I'm a very skillful hoop-jumper) but I languish and suffer horribly when put in charge of my own activities. The liquid has no container! I can only speculate but I do believe that in the absence of that focus (for decades of my young life) on externals I could have developed my abilities to follow my passions and complete projects without this need for external reinforcement. That's my theory, anyway.
Two minutes to go, and calling it done! WOOT!

I Just Don't Know.

2009-01-12T21:10:00.002-05:00

So I haven't been blogging; if you know me, which I expect most of you do (otherwise how did you ever find me, right??), you know why. (Not to exclude you if you don't: I've started a natural grocery/coffee bar. Yes, in this economy. Yes, I am completely insane, but that is so not noteworthy anymore.) Every now and then, even with my lack of posting, I'll get a new comment on an old post (as just happened) and I'll think, I should go write something. However, I write so damn infrequently now that literally thousands of little word-children clamor to come out all at once, with such a ridiculous cacophony that I can't hear just one storyline and get a quick blurb out that's remotely coherent. So, I sigh, and mutter, and grouse, and don't write. Thus the title. I don't know what's going to come out, and I doubt I could figure out what to call it even after it's done, so I decided to not let that get in my way. Now here I am writing sheer drivel for the sake of posting, lest this blog become completely dead. Ah well. Perfectionism is for those who wish to avoid actually doing anything. (Ask me how I know.)
Needing to know what something will be before attempting to produce it-- now that sounds ridiculous, does it not? But I have done this my entire life, and I am experienced enough (note the avoidance of any reference to actual age there) by now to know that I am not alone. What is that about? Can you think of-- no, can you admit to a time when you've done this? Why did you do it? A need to be in control? Fear of failure/success? Fear of reprimand/repercussion(s)? Sometimes I think I fear not failure, but mediocrity. What if the writing doesn't suck, what if it's just blah? And of course, by extension, what if I am just blah? Say it ain't so! What if it serves no purpose, changes no one's life? What if-- dare I even type it-- no one ever reads it? Was it worth the effort, the overcoming of physical and mental and emotional obstacles to produce one tiny morsel of overly edited prose, for it to remain unread?

Homemade Marshmallows!

2008-11-09T22:52:00.003-05:00

Ta-da!
Special thanks to my friend Lisa Stevenson for sharing the recipe on one of my "mom" lists. This comes from the Kid Friendly Food Allergy Cookbook by Leslie Hammond and Lynne Marie Rominger (2004). Here's the basic rundown of what I did:
I put 3 cups organic sugar in a saucepan with 1 1/4 cups not-organic corn syrup (does anyone even bother to make organic corn syrup??), a little salt, and 3/4 cup water. While this heated and boiled for a few minutes, I sprinkled 4 envelopes of gelatin on another 3/4 cup of water in a mixing bowl. This turned into fairly solid-feeling goo rather quickly. I don't understand the purpose of this step, but oh well.
Next, I was supposed to be able to pour the hot syrup mix into the gelatin in a thin stream while mixing. HA! Only if you have a stand mixer, friends, otherwise this is, as I discovered, hopeless. So very hopeless. So, I poured rather quickly, in a moderate stream, and got the heavy pan set down so I could mix.
Now I was supposed to beat on high for about 28 minutes!! Are you crazy??! How bad do I want these frapping no-artificial-color marshmallows?! Well, that did NOT happen, and I never quite got to true stiff peaks, but I stuck with it for several minutes, taking breaks here and there as required by my children and arm fatigue. Some where during that time I also beat in some vanilla extract, although the recipe called for powdered vanilla, which I didn't have.
I had greased a pan earlier, and so poured the liquidy marshmallow goo into it when I got fed up with mixing. By the next morning, voila! Solid marshmallow goo! I cut them into squarish shapes (frequent oilings of my knife really helped) and tossed them in powdered sugar.
They are fantabulous!! The only disappointment is that they do NOT roast well. Perhaps if I had beaten them longer, made them fluffier? But at any rate this batch was a bust for roasting. On the other hand, they taste so good I don't need to char them to make them palatable. Next batch I'll hopefully have a stand mixer, and I'll drizzle some with melted chocolate and sprinkle some others with cocoa powder... mmmmm.....

Who Said Parenting Was Easy, Either?

2008-10-07T22:50:00.002-05:00

I am just getting slammed no matter which way I turn, I tell ya. Sheesh. Can't a woman watch a news clip without getting into a discussion of death by car accident with the almost-six-year-old? Damn those headline writers for catching my eye in the first place with their highlights from the VP debate, anyway. I cancelled TV last week and so only listened to the debate on NPR. I was curious to see how the performers looked onscreen. Is that such a crime?? And why, oh why, do I have to have such a sensitive and astute observer for a child? (Those who know me, stop laughing and SHUT UP.) Beautiful little darling, that child of mine. So you might have guessed by now that Galen picked up on the story of Biden's immense loss of wife and baby 36 years ago. Sitting on the bed holding his eyes as wide as he can to keep the tears from spilling, what can I say to make him feel better? I can't make it go away, I can't make the world devoid of tragedy, and he knows I can't. We are up against something intractable and infinitely sad. He cannot sleep now. We talk for an hour about how much safer cars are now, and how people used to not wear seat belts all the time and didn't have to use car seats, even though I know nothing of the details of Biden's wife's accident and even though I know people still die daily in accidents with seat belts fastened and air bags deployed. I will not mention this. I describe all the wrecks I've been in (I think seven at last count) and how in some the car was severely damaged but I was always okay. It's not enough, but it's all I've got. I can't explain statistics (he's too young) and unfortunately or not I can't quite lie, so I feel pretty awkward and dreadful. He is worried, and I begin to think that every lousy borderline syndrome I have is genetic-- and dominant. He seems to have inherited every mental, emotional, or psychological issue I have. He can't stop talking. We take breaks, switching to silly email pictures and Disney ads of all things, but we keep going back to facing the risk of death. He tells me he has to worry because he loves me and he loves the whole family. I need to cry too. I resort in the end to my own mother's tried-and-true: a promise of shopping tomorrow. It seems to distract him, but then Daddy comes in to go to bed and I am asked to tell it all to Daddy and so it starts over. Finally we simply insist he stop talking so he can go to sleep before it's already tomorrow. Now I sit here wondering if I did a good enough job: should I have reassured him more, should I have said something else? Am I failing him in his spiritual upbringing? Does he need more structure, more ritual, more (some) Sunday school, more faith? Is he going to be ok?? I have no way of knowing. All I can do is cross my fingers, hold my breath, and wait to see how melancholy he turns out to be. Nooooo, that's not nerve-wracking at all...

Marriage: Not for the Faint of Heart

2008-09-28T23:13:00.003-05:00

Belief is built on an incredible mountain of lies. Now, that sounds bitter, and I'm feeling a mite pissy at the moment, it's true. But I mean this in earnest, not in bitterness. Previous generations simply did not strive for accuracy. We were taught how our parents thought things should be, how they wanted us to be, by way of statements that implied that ideal in their minds was how things were. Children construct their worldviews based on the teachings of their parents, and these worldviews are not at all fact-based but rather are constructed from a set of beliefs (albeit a very difficult-to-access set of beliefs, as ingrained in our thought patterns as they are). One of my beliefs, based on never witnessing any of my parents' marital challenges (and although I still don't know what they might have been I do know now that they must have had them), was that "good" marriages didn't have challenges. And, based on how disparagingly they spoke of others whose marriages failed, I also quite erroneously concluded that people with marital struggles shouldn't have gotten married in the first place. Oh, that fictitious world was so delightfully simple! And so nonexistent! I don't know if it will be of any benefit to my children to have less wool over their eyes, but it has been a great challenge to me to discover that all marriages of all kinds have difficult times, and that a failed marriage often is just too many things being too stressful without a break for too long. Condemnation on top of that is much worse than not helpful, it's cruel. Marital failure can happen to anyone. In fact, it's much easier to fail-- at anything in life, including marriage-- than to succeed. Success requires such constant uphill work, even when things are just in maintenance mode. With all we modern humans are trying to juggle it is physically impossible to keep it all going. The least squeaky wheel will get the least amount of oiling, until-- surprise! It rusts through and falls off, leaving you stranded in mud, utterly bewildered. (Yep, that's me, knee-deep in mud.)

Just for tonight, as a gift to myself, here's what I'm going to do: I'm telling the voices of my parents and anyone else in this highly dysfunctional culture that pass judgment left and right in my head to go f**k themselves and shut the hell up. I don't need their lectures anymore, thank you very much. I am a tired, broke, overworked mom of two and I am giving myself permission to be real and human and not have anything held together anymore because superglue I am not. So there.

Unschooling and Meditation

2008-09-16T12:29:00.003-05:00

I just found the coolest thing by total accident: http://www.poodwaddle.com/meditation.htm
Then, in the process of me playing with this, an astounding thing happened. I managed to explain meditation to the hyperactive almost-6-year-old-- briefly enough that he listened!-- and then since I was doing it I asked if he wanted to try. (Baby was asleep.) I lit incense, we both sat on the zafus and I set the timer for one minute. He totally copied me and I am pretty sure he kept his eyes closed the whole minute. When the gong went off he was just peeking to see if I was looking, then gave me his total charmer smile :) I asked if he wanted to do it again, and for how long, and he said 2 minutes, so we did it again. Then he says, in a protesting tone, "MOM! this will make me forget about all the things I want!"

!!!!!!!!!!

He figures this out after three minutes of meditation. My child is the Buddha.

And what a thing to realize, to choose not to forget those things-- to choose actively to remain engaged, rather than being a victim of your thoughts-- what a completely different place to be in!

The OTHER miraculous thing he said today-- as if that wasn't enough-- was this about the dog digging under the chicken fence (as he was perched on a ladder saying "go Pedro go!"): "Mom, to get him to be a good dog we have to encourage him to do what he wants to do!"

Maybe I'm succeeding at this unschooling thing after all.

2008-09-09T20:22:00.003-05:00

Iris says: "Eat yogurt, it's good for your complexion."

She is walking now, and fairly well, too. This morning she woke up, looked at her still-sleeping brother, and announced: "Bwuh-vah. Nye-nye!" (If you don't speak baby-ese, that translates to "Brother. Night-night!")

She is so. stinkin'. CUTE.

Run, Chicken, Run!

2008-09-07T08:17:00.006-05:00

More of the chickens, including their new run, which Brad built from studs salvaged from a wall removed from his parents' house, plus pressure-treated 1x6's and 4x4's where it contacts the ground:

This run is much too heavy to put wheels on and make movable, so hopefully I can talk Brad into building a "chicken tractor" over the winter. I love the idea of letting the birds do some of my gardening work for me!

Atlanta Botanical Gardens

2008-09-05T22:33:00.008-05:00

Too often I'm trying entirely too hard to write something impressive here. Not today! I took the kids to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens yesterday, where they have a special exhibit called "Sculptures in Motion" (which, you might infer, consists of sculptures... that move...). Not only are the scupltures quite nifty, but so are the kids, if I do say so myself. Enjoy!Not part of the "motion" exhibit, this blown glass piece is a permanent part of the gardens. Galen poses in front of the fountain near the cafe.

A giant easel, with mirrored rectangles suspended by wires that sway in the breeze.

Galen pushes a massive revolving rock.

Huge mobile over a small pool inside the orchid house (or whatever it's called).

Galen calls this one "the big 8." One of his favorites. This picture is to show Daddy how big the 8 is (since he didn't go with us this trip).
My personal favorite. I want to make one of these.

A second favorite sculpture, and perhaps my favorite photo, not only because it's so fantastic, but because Galen took it! Isn't it great?!

Galen wanted multiple photos of his new toy :)

Galen took this one of me and Iris. Wow, my arm looks really buff! lol

And now, the "Iris is so stinkin' cute by the Japanese garden" series:

Eating a rock!

Kicking away at the rocks under her feet-- see the bare spot on the ground?

What?! Who, me??

New Chickens!

2008-08-27T20:58:00.004-05:00

Ten new girls!
Iris lurvs them :)
Straw is cool.
She points to the chicken coop and says "boc-boc!" Too sweet!

These hens have just a bit more growing to do before they start laying, possibly by October. Brad will have to make them a run to keep them safe from Pedro, who is quite the punk about chickens (and cats). These a friend ordered and gave to us, since she got more than she needed. They were sold as a "rainbow mix," meaning that there are a variety of breeds that all told will produce the spectrum of egg colors: brown, blue, green, and white. So far we are certain of a few of them: two are turkens, also known as naked necks (unmistakably ugly); two we're pretty confident are white rocks; and two are most likely shaver reds. The other four we can't tell yet. Two look a bit like Ameraucanas but they lack the facial feathers, and the other two are of the "I have no idea" varieties. We'll see soon enough :) All look to be bantams. One is molty-looking but appears to feel fine; she might be a mottled cochin, that's the closest match. I can't wait to be getting a lot more eggs on a regular basis!

Oh, and from researching these, I've determined that our resident Henrietta is an Ameraucana, not an Araucana as I previously thought. Araucanas have tufts rather than beards, and have no tails. Henrietta lacks tufts, has the muff and beard of the Ameraucana, and most certainly has a tail. There you have it. More than you ever thought you'd care to know about chicken breeds.

Butterfly Addendum

2008-08-14T13:46:00.004-05:00

I just looked up a few more butterfly details (to confirm that yes, we do have a monarch sipping from our zinnias today!) and found that the gender of the black swallowtail can be determined by observing the coloring. Turns out the females have a broader band of blue, with the red dots minimized, while in males the blue is diminished and the red dots are larger. So, looking back at my photos, I shoud have said "she" rather than "he," and I'm pretty sure the second was female as well. Go girls!

We also have a large number of tiger swallowtails and painted ladies now, as well as another orange type I haven't identified yet. Such a beautiful season :)

I've Been Labeled!

2008-08-13T21:43:00.002-05:00

Here I thought I was being clever with all my little driving tricks, coasting whenever I'm on a downhill slope, letting off the accelerator when approaching a stop, etc. But lo, these mileage-increasing habits of mine have a name: I'm a hypermiler. So much for originality. But hey, I was hypermiling when hypermiling wasn't cool, dammit, and that's fer sure.

What's your mileage??

And Another!

2008-08-11T08:49:00.004-05:00

I knew we had an escapee from the butterfly cage, but had assumed it had died somewhere in the playroom, since I didn't find it on any of the plants. Not so! It made its cocoon in a very safe place, turns out-- on the back of an upright board that luckily didn't get disturbed for the duration of its metamorphosis. I found this one, even earlier post-hatch than the first, on the next day after the first one hatched:

I released this one outside just like the other. It amazes me how trusting they both were when neither could yet fly, climbing right onto my finger with no hesitation. I could be intending to eat it! Perhaps it knows somehow that I won't?

I also learned, after this one, that a precise amount of time after hatching and before taking first flight, butterflies must always pee. And these, at least, have white pee, which they spray in an arc with quite a bit of force for such a wee thing. Now I may add to my abundant list of experiences that I have been urinated upon by a butterfly, twice. Hm, should I add this to my resume?

Emergence!

2008-08-06T15:43:00.007-05:00

If you ever desire the experience of observing caterpillar metamorphosis, I highly recommend planting carrots. Turns out the black swallowtail butterfly lays its eggs exclusively on members of the carrot family (Queen Anne's Lace works as well), so if you've got a stand of carrots, as we do, you're quite likely to find these beautiful caterpillars fattening themselves on them. I read that these are easy to raise, and it proved true. We picked some carrot greens and put one of the little fellas in our butterfly "cage" and within a couple of days he had formed his chrysalis. I taped the carrot stem to the inside of the top of our cage. Yesterday I noticed that the black of his new wings and body was visible through the chrysalis, which had looked solid green until that point. He emerged not too long before we got up this morning. I found him with still-wilty wings, pumping them slowly. We took the cage outside. Opening the top, I offered my finger for him to climb onto and brought him out of the cage. After a few more pumps and some minutes in the warmth of the sun, he was ready to go, alighting on zinnias and rudbeckia on his way.

The newly-formed chrysalis. Too bad the viewing screen is kaput on the camera, I would have tried to get a better shot of it.

Still wrinkly this morning after hatching inside the butterfly garden...

Another view before taking him outside...

His wee feet gripping my finger and defying gravity. Galen did NOT want to hold him!

Wish I had thought about focal length when taking these. Again, drat the broken screen!

Pumping up the wings some more...

Last shot, just seconds before liftoff. Yay!

The empty chrysalis (with the nicely focused chicken coop/ storage shed in the background :S).

Negativity: A Different Perspective

2008-07-30T23:44:00.001-05:00

Earlier today I was swinging with Iris (13 months old now!) outside, having some impatience about "all that" which was clamoring for my attention that I couldn't work on. Among those who think about thoughts and life and what we create and what we attract, the word "negative" comes up often. We talk about eliminating negative thinking and such, and there is usefulness in this practice, but like many other practices we can get carried away, even to the point of judging ourselves for "still" having these negative thoughts. However, as with emotions such as fear, what we may label as a negative feeling serves a purpose. I have seen this concept presented by many authors, most recently Byron Katie, languaged in various ways. Paraphrasing Katie, our so-called unpleasant experiences are wonderful gifts when viewed as signposts showing us needed changes. It was given to me, in that moment on the swing, a different interpretation of the words "negative" and "positive" in regards to experience. What is an experience that makes us happy but an experience we want to maintain? And what is a negative experience but something that we pull away from? These forces are merely opposing flows, ebbing, swirling, opposing each other to create interesting little eddies in our lives. When I observe that I have a "problem" in my life, something that I am displeased with, it merely shows me an intention my soul has yet to finish acting on. After all, if I am hungry, do I get mad at myself or do I simply go and eat? Dynamic homeostasis!

I'm a Ravenclaw!

2008-07-26T23:36:00.003-05:00

I'm
a Ravenclaw!

OK, maybe I'm just a nerd :) but it was recently my birthday (I'm a July baby like Harry Potter, although he's technically a Leo while I am a Cancer) and to celebrate my annual solar return I ordered the HP movies on DVD. Thus it should come as no surprise that I've got HP on the brain a wee bit, and if you know that I knit then it should also come as no surprise that I have the HP knitting book, Charmed Knits by Alison Hansel (which is wonderful fun, whether you're knitter or HP fan or both). The upshot here is that I was thinking how I would so be in Ravenclaw rather than Gryffindor, and should therefore use Ravenclaw colors when I knit up my quidditch socks. Ahem. What's hysterical here is that my dear sweet friend Tommasina, who likes to play around in my head, fired off an email to me calling me "dear Ravenclaw" with no knowledge of my recent train of thought! When I told her, she found this online sorting hat... how could I resist? And lo, Ravenclaw I am! Ha!

Shifting Gears

2008-07-13T18:29:00.004-05:00

Balloon (jeez, is that right? French ruined my spelling, I swear) flowers, a Chinese medicinal and truly blue flower, and weeds.

I started a post for the fourth of July. I had all this clever snarky stuff to say about freedom and what we're really free to do in this country and culture and all the ordinary things we're not free to do unless we're willing to fight our way upstream to our very last breath. Then, things changed.

I have a dear friend named Lisa. (Well, actually, I have two dear friends named Lisa. But I digress.) This Lisa has a beautiful daughter named Chelsea, who turned 17 on the third of this month. She is truly amazing, budding into womanhood. She is now also in critical condition, having survived a very, very serious car accident on the 4th. So far she is doing what could be called "well" under the circumstances: a little pneumonia, liquid foods through a tube, pelvis pinned back together, a ventilator still as her ribs heal. In that moment everything changed. Our group of mommas has pulled together to give her as much support as we can, and it's helpful, I suppose, but none of us can give her that day back, that five-second shift that could have created a divergent path.

Events like this throw things into sharp relief, at least for a while. We are reminded about our mutterings about our priorities and spending more time with loved ones and being nice and all that. We might even remember to be grateful for our blessings, which are countless no matter how meager our existence. But then, after a socially appropriate amount of time, we'll slip back into unconscious complacency again, grumbling about the price of gas and the foibles of our spouses and toys with small parts left within reach of mobile babies. All this long before Chelsea is walking again. I know this is true, because I am living it right now, while she's still on life support, for chrissake. I have been livid at my idiot spouse for staying out late and being too tired to function today, furious with my 5-year-old son for his inability to put caps back on markers and keep them out of the floor away from his baby sister. To what end? Did I change anything for the better with this anger? Have I enjoyed my Sunday, kept company by nothing but my fury, too removed by it from my life to actually experience it? What if one of us has that wreck tomorrow? Will I be happy about how I lived today?

Now I've Heard Everything: Carbon-Capture-Storage

2008-07-02T11:55:00.004-05:00

In today's news from the Discovery channel:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/07/02/carbon-capture-storage.html

I have to say that this is the biggest load of horseshit the oil industry is pushing, even bigger than their allegations that they give a damn about anything other than fleecing their pockets at the expense of whatever stands in their way, including our own potential future survival. What this article describes is a proposal to trap atmospheric CO2, compress it, and pump it underground for storage. The best part of the story, I think, is this line: "Capturing and storing CO2 is the only realistic way of reducing emissions while delivering the energy that the world needs to prosper," this from Jeroen van der Veer, chief exec of Shell.

Oh, really?

So, Jeroen, you're saying that we can't deliver the "energy the world needs to prosper" without maintaining our current CO2 emissions via consumption of oil? We can't reduce our emissions by reducing our emissions? We can't get our energy from some other source, like, for instance, THE SUN?? My dear Jeroen, if you are truly this stupid (which I am confident you are not), then you must be suicidal, or at least extremely depressed, for surely you have noticed by now that oil is what's known as a non-renewable resource, which means, dear man, that it's going to run out at some point (unless we simply quit using it before we use it up). And in your implied scenario, that is depressing indeed-- no way for the world to prosper without it, with the "without it" part being only a matter of time. I think what you meant was, no way for your company to make gazillions of dollars while destroying the planet without it.

Meanwhile, this carbon-capture-storage concept is still in its infancy, with shaky and as-yet-underdeveloped technology behind it (and most likely, although I have not verified this, the very companies promoting this as a solution are not yet devoting many research dollars to remedying this little snag). Hmm, what about alternatives? Oh yeah, solar and wind power are already in use all over the globe, have been for decades. Microhydroelectric is also already ready-to-go. So how is it you've decided the only way to fuel prosperity is with big profits for Shell and lip service for the environment so you can keep on with business as usual?

Funny Way to Find Myself

2008-06-29T22:31:00.003-05:00

So I'm testing a link to one of my posts here and, taking my usual circuitous route, I searched on "hillhaven.blogspot.com." I discovered that I am linked to, via the word "shalt," on some word search thing (along with other references to Christian literature) thanks to my "Thou shalt not think on Mondays!" post. A few hours later, I can't find this bizarre reference again to properly credit the site, no matter how I phrase my search. Isn't that strange? It's as if this beast existed only this afternoon... the fact that it ever did exist, and found me to connect with that particular word, is even more bizarre. I don't get it.

The curse of attempting to blog on a near-daily basis is that you're gonna produce some serious drivel. (Yes, I know. This post is well qualified for that label.) I remember hearing that whatsisname who wrote R is for Rocket (at least I think it was him, and what the hell was his name??) said you have to write a thousand words a day, every day, because (and I seriously paraphrase) that's what it takes to get the bullshit out and get to the good stuff. You'll throw away 90% of all that work, most likely. Ohh, so painful! But, true, and my attachment to my silly little words doesn't really get me anywhere, nor does it save the world, so there you go. Drivel for yer Sunday evening entertainment. And, I think I'll shift my expectations to less than daily so as not to run everyone off before I even get going.

OK, Ray Bradbury wrote R is for Rocket, but that didn't sound like the right name, so I searched encore and Jack London is credited with saying he wrote a thousand words every day... however, that stands alone, so I can't be sure if that's where the idea came from about getting the drivel out. Hm. Now I'm on a mission to find this out...

Birthday Girl!

2008-06-27T22:58:00.002-05:00

Birthday party pictures! Above, my aunt Camille holds Iris, with my mom and brother in the background. Below, we were entertained by trying to capture a photo of Iris with the "birthday princess" hat on, which she loved to take off as soon as it touched her head :)

Below, Iris approves of her all-organic strawberry cream cheese icing (strawberries from the family farm). "Mmmmm!" she says.

Those eyes!

Camille pointed this out: look at her feet. She was curling them up in sheer enjoyment!

And just so you all know how manic I truly am: I cleaned the porch (which was a truly disgusting job, involving much chicken poo and steel wool), Brad killed and dressed the chicken (in the oven as I type), Brad finished painting the kitchen cabinets, and I straightened the house before the party. I enjoyed myself and now I'm rilly enjoying the house. I just sit and stare and absorb the finally finished state of the cabinets... ahhhh.

This time last year my contractions had gotten serious and I was laboring in the newly installed tub, waiting for the midwife to arrive. What a beautiful birth, and what a beautiful baby girl. I am filled with gratitude.

Mom Held Hostage by Birthday Plans

2008-06-26T16:02:00.003-05:00

I do this to myself. This is my choice. I do this to myself. This is my choice. I do this to myself. This is my choice...

Saturday Iris will be one whole year old! (Do you hear the same whooshing sound I do??) Tomorrow is her party, and I have been cracking the whip on myself and Brad all week. I started last Sunday and it still won't be enough time to finish all I want to finish, but it has been a good week so far nonetheless. I love to use hosting as an excuse to fix things up. When I'm really on my game I do a great job and then get to enjoy it after the guests go home (and, I do enjoy throwing a good party, too). So far this week we have:

cleaned out the junk room completely
cleaned the office
caught up on six months' worth of filing
cleaned the bathroom
washed, dried, and put away four loads of laundry
cleaned the bedroom
painted the remainder of the upper cabinets in the kitchen
started painting the lower cabinets
bought a new mower
mowed the grass
cleaned up the entire yard (trash, empty buckets, compost, gardening implements...)
kept up with ordinary house and garden maintenance
cleaned up after the puppy (grr)
took recycling and donations, went to the bank and grocery store

and Galen even had a playdate! Now we just have to kill one chicken, clean off the front porch, finish painting the lower cabinets in the kitchen, make the cupcakes and the icing, clean the kitchen, mop, and straighten, and we'll be ready enough for tomorrow. HA!

Carrots!

2008-06-24T09:43:00.005-05:00

OK, so they're not really ready, but they needed thinning anyways, and Galen was so excited to discover that there were really carrots under there :) The planter he's standing on is filled with "rainbow" carrots and the one on the right contains "purple haze," both from Johnny's. We've learned from our periodic thinnings that the purple color on the purple haze carrots develops last (they have an orange core, really beautiful), while the rainbow carrots are solidly orange, yellow, or white. Cool!

The Menagerie Increases

2008-06-21T22:19:00.002-05:00

The momma cat nursing some of her babies...
Two of the kittens, Ash (on the left) and Stripey...
And Pedro!

Evidently Tuesday of this week was national bring-home-a-new-pet day at our house. I, being the reasonable mother, simply brought home a new tank-cleaning fish for the aquarium, as the sides were getting rather funky. This, you see, reduces my workload. But Brad, dear Brad, brought home a puppy. We are now up to seven cats (!!!), two dogs, four fish, and three (soon to be two) chickens. Indeed.

Thou Shalt Not Think on Mondays

2008-06-16T11:20:00.003-05:00

Clover in the oregano, above. I set a goal for myself to blog every day, which I've been at least 80% successful with since setting it, not too bad. I also set a goal of writing one "green" blog each week, which hasn't happened yet, so I'm sitting down to do that now, but all I can think about is a scrap I had with a family member yesterday. As Byron Katie would point out, who is being more cruel to me, the person who hurt my feelings yesterday, or me, replaying the insults over and over in my head? Urgh.

Writer's block is a funny thing. I talk about greener living on a near-constant basis, but then I sit down to write a short blog and my monkey mind dashes hither, thither and yon, resisting the formation of so much as one sentence. I could write about laundry-- since getting off the electric dryer I've had revelations galore-- but it doesn't seem to want to happen. I could write about my ideas of revamping society to no longer be centered around commuting and the automobile, but the thoughts just won't gel. I give up!

All hail Mercury retrograde Mondays! Thou shalt not think today!

To Build A Dragon

2008-06-12T13:04:00.004-05:00

So far today (by 2 pm) Galen has had three chocolate-covered ice cream cones and Chef Boyardee dinosaur-shaped Spaghettios. That is all. Guess I won't be winning any best nutrition awards today.

There is a theory widely promoted among the "crunchy" crowd that watching television inhibits creativity in children, and that given the opportunity, kids will consume the "TV drug" all day without ceasing. I have seen friends of my son behave in this way. At our house, the only restrictions on television stem from the natural limit of having to share it with everyone else in the house (we only have one). To honor my own environmental ethics, I do encourage turning it off when no one is actually watching it to conserve energy (and I always explain this as I do it, and ask first, showing my son the same respect I would show anyone else). The friends who turn into screen zombies have been only those with limits on their TV consumption at home. To take this "zombie effect" as evidence to support the need for limits without considering that it might be the limits causing the zombie effect is to commit an experimental error. There be bias in that there data!

The TV has been on all day here. We have watched or listened to "Back at the Barnyard" (which I hate-- what idiot put an udder on a bull?), "SpongeBob," "Max and Ruby," "Fairly OddParents," and "Pink Panther" (one of my favorites, gotta love the Boomerang channel!). During all this, Galen has mopped the kitchen floor (yes, really, and yes, by his own insistence-- "I want it to SPARKLE!" he said, and yes, it's extremely clean), gone to the mailbox with me (about ten minutes round trip, down and back up a very steep hill), and rediscovered his abacus, on which he designed a dragon, figuring how to arrange the beads to make feet, legs, wings, body, neck, head. My little engineer. Now, he's playing with Hot Wheels and an old motorcycle that turns into a helicopter (it was my brother's when we were little). He is directly in front of the TV, and is not looking at it at all. He has told me all about a movie he imagined about a dragon egg being found by a Viking, who helps it to hatch, then it grows into a grown-up dragon... there are two leaders, a good guy and a bad guy, both Vikings, both with dragons. The good Viking had an ax, which he lost, but the dragon and Viking together find a dead Viking (eek!) and get the dead Viking's ax, and go on with their adventures, finding chess pieces and crystals, and at the end there is a big battle and the good guys win, "'cause the good guys always win," he tells me in that tone that says "Duh, Mom!"

Now if you'll excuse me, Popeye is on...

A Three Hour Tour...

2008-06-10T17:23:00.002-05:00

So I'm obsessed with my To-Do list. Big deal.

The listmaker I'm using has a length feature where the amount of time a task will take can be estimated. So naturally I spent who knows how many minutes today entering lengths on my tasks. I noticed an "estimated time total" at the bottom of the page-- 51.5 hours so far. This gave me the idea to add up my times for daily tasks. If I manage to limit daily blogging and email to 15 minutes each (riiiiiight), I have three hours of dailies on my list. Nowhere in that total do I account for diaper changes, nursing, meals, baths, or brushing of teeth. Nowhere do I estimate minutes for soothing boo-boos, cleaning unscheduled spills (how dare a spill occur outside the schedule!), or wasting away in front of the internet. (Damn.) And none of that three hours creates space for any of the weekly, monthly, or one-time-only tasks. That's just the mundane chores I listed that have to happen every single day. Yeeps.

No wonder I never finish anything!

The Infinite To-Do List

2008-06-09T10:10:00.005-05:00

I have made the perhaps grave error of discovering online to-do lists. It dawned on me a couple of weeks ago (yeah, ok, I'm slow as molasses about some things) that such a beastie must exist, so off I went into Googleland ISO said thing. Lo, there are many, and what a treat for my OCD self! I could spend hours entering data and not making one iota of progress toward completing any of the actual entries. Heh. Now I get an email daily, flaunting my unfinished tasks in my face. It's really much tidier than all my scraps of paper and I never lose my laptop, so I'm getting reminded of what I'm trying to accomplish at least...

The single biggest discovery I've made, though, is that it is in fact a physical impossibility to do all the things on my list for any given day. I suppose this is good to know. I don't even have any of the myriad tasks that comprise constant child care, meals, or personal hygiene listed. So I find myself waxing philosophical (as I am wont to do), this time about this annoying aspect of human behavior that causes us to expect impossible things of ourselves. Have we been so brainwashed by societal mandates that we now believe we must be able to daily achieve the Herculean? Did people torment themselves this way a hundred years ago, or fifty? Where did I acquire this sense of urgency that is now my constant companion? Must. Do. All. Things. Must. Be. All. Things. To. All. People. Ack!

I thought I had stepped quietly out of the rat race, moving into a rhythmic, expansive space, filled with the spiritual and mundane routines of maintaining a basic existence. Instead, I seem to have brought the race with me, if my lists are any indication. How can I shift this? How can I take my foot off the gas when I'm racing in an invisible car?

I welcome ideas and discussion on this topic. Stay tuned for more musings...

Sunday Morning Thoughts

2008-06-08T08:22:00.006-05:00

Sitting on the swing outside this morning, I thought of those well-intentioned comments people make about my parenting when they see me with what's considered a "well-behaved baby." People see me with Iris, who is just off-the-charts darling, and they say "You're such a great mom!" The thing is, my babies always make me look good. Both have been sweet, adorable, and cuddly. I wear them most of the time when we're out, so they are generally content. Even when they get mad, well, it's a baby, ya know? Babies are just too damn cute no matter what they do.

What the heck is a "good baby," anyway? How does one go about being bad at being a baby?

Now don't get me wrong-- attachment parenting is important, and crucially so. But there is huge risk inherent in taking too much credit-- or responsibility-- for the behaviors of our kids at any age. So much of who our kids are is completely outside our control. As they grow older and more and more into themselves as individuals, they will make choices that will differ from the ones we would make for them. (Don't think so? Think attachment parenting will protect you from this heartache? Guess again!) They will behave differently than we expected. We may be tempted to take credit for their accomplishments and responsibility for their mistakes, neither of which are ours to claim. And that, fellow parents, is deadly dangerous. Taking credit for what our kids achieve steals power that rightfully belongs to them, weakening them over time and reducing their ability to continue to achieve for intrinsic reward. And taking responsibility for their mistakes disempowers them even further, not only teaching them they can't solve their own problems, but worse, implying that someone else is always to blame when things go wrong and they can't craft their lives for themselves. Now there's a prescription for time on the therapist's couch...

And with that, I think it's time for a second pot of coffee :) Happy Sunday!

The Lady Makes Her Maiden Voyage!

2008-06-07T16:48:00.005-05:00

Ta-dah! This is actually almost a month old, but what can I say, that's life with (small) kids. This day was flawless for laundry-- breezy, dry, and warm. Diapers went up first and were 80-90% dry by the time the washer finished with the second load. (I can fit up to three loads on the lines.) Now that we're back to typical Southern humidity those absorbent darlings are taking much longer, and the load left out and caught in a surprise night rain was hopeless, but I still marvel at my stubbornness in embracing this change before. As each load dries by the effortlessness of evaporation, as I bring in each load, I think, "WOW, I can't believe I was paying money to do this all this time! That was so stupid!" The clothes are crunchy, as expected, but instead of that bothering me it has turned out to be a source of pride. Crunchy clothes are not a sign of self-deprivation in the name of the environment, as I had feared, but rather an indicator of money not wasted, literally, on hot air. At risk of being uber-cheesy, I must say that's pretty cool :)

Must. Remain. Sane.

2008-04-27T16:48:00.002-05:00

Just in case anyone was wondering, it takes a ten-month-old under five minutes to completely empty 50+ CD's from a shelving unit. But they're so shiny!

The thing about babies is that they are so darned cute when they are in the midst of total destruction. Five-year-olds, not so much. Today we instigated a pay-per-offense regime in an effort to curb the few supremely irritating habits Galen has that are constantly occurring. How very NOT unschooly of us, you might say. And verily would I reply, you're darn tootin' it ain't, and it's working so far, and thank God because otherwise I was soon to have to call DFACS on myself. (Not really, but I have been well beyond perturbed for way too long.) It may be argued with great validity that I need to work on my issues behind having such a short fuse; it may be argued that medication for me would be better than violating the unschooling principles for him, breasfeeding baby notwithstanding. But, I have decided and therefore decreed, that unschooling in this house does not mean that I am a doormat to my child, however his age limits his ability to reason and remember, and so there must be a way to facilitate his process of learning how to get along with others without driving them insane. In fairness, everyone in the house has to pay everyone else, so both I and Brad have lost our share of quarters today too. It seems so far to be calling the appropriate level of focus to the issues (such as "Stop hitting me when I say stop") without adding too much drama. We'll see.

In other news, the new clothes dryer arrived yesterday. Woot! Now I have to go pick up some sack-crete so Brad can install it. (No, I'm not going to do it myself.) Of course, it's rainy. How utterly predictable.

Earth Day Resolutions

2008-04-23T20:30:00.005-05:00

The urge to resolve hits me at different times... for many years running it struck on my birthday (which is, after all, my new year). Ever the rebel, I seized the opportunity to flaut tradition, ignoring January first almost completely and making my lists and checking them twice every July 19th. This year, with climate change heavy on the minds and hearts of many, myself included, it seemed appropriate to make some Earth Day Resolutions. Since I have made it my business (literally, it's called Georgia Green Living) to provide individual and group consulting and workshops on sustainable living topics, I have been incubating ideas for "upping the green ante" in my own life. When we make changes, I teach my clients that we have to incorporate sustainability there as well-- many changes vast and sweeping may sound, and even be, fantastic, but if we push too far we'll crash and burn, likely dropping all of our great efforts in a reaction to overextension. Thus, I limited myself to three feasible-right-now-for-me changes. I can't remember much more than three things consistently; less than that and I'd always think I had forgotten one. And note that phrase: feasible right now for me. This is crucial to successful change, and a little self-knowledge is crucial to accurately evaluating what you can and cannot do right now. I include this as a disclaimer so that if you feel inspired by this, which I hope you do, you'll do what you need to in order to be successful with your resolutions. Without further ado, here are mine (drum roll, please):

I resolve to hang my clothes to dry.
Using the dryer has been a guilty pleasure (if laundry can be considered a pleasure in the first place) for some time; I feel I've reached the tipping point with the guilt now. So for Earth Day I ordered one of those old-fashioned umbrella-style laundry dryers to put in the yard. The one I ordered from Stacks and Stacks was competitively priced and one reviewer claimed it held two loads of laundry. I even squeezed in on a 15% off deal. Although I expect some adjustments in making the transition (I know line-dried clothes tend to feel "crunchy") I am excited about it. I'll report back on the impact on our power bill-- since we use cloth diapers I expect it will be fairly substantial.

I resolve to drive more gently and slowly, and to coast as much as possible.
I used to do better on the coasting, seeing how high I could push my mileage (I already get at least 42 mpg out of my VW Jetta wagon TDI-- that's their diesel engine-- and I've gotten as much as 49 mpg). But lately I've gotten out of the habit, and I've been driving more, running later, and (blush) speeding like a madwoman. I already keep my tires properly inflated and my car tuned up, and since I drive a manual transmission I don't accelerate too rapidly, all of which add up to fuel savings. But my cruising speeds, and consequently my braking for the unexpected, have been costing me (and therefore the planet). Nothing but a change of habit is called for here, something I can stay motivated to do pretty easily what with diesel being over $4 a gallon already and, it seems, only going up. Sheesh. Can you say "revenge of the dinosaurs"?!

I resolve to build community locally.
This one is kind-of a part deux to the previous. Driving all over creation is just not in the budget anymore, and with the environmental impact of driving being what it is, it really never should have been. Ugh, more guilt! On the return trip from my current teaching gig (once a week I attempt to guide a small handful of homeschooled teenagers through something that resembles high school biology), a full ninety minutes (almost 70 miles) one way, I decided there must be people closer to home that I can connect with. Add to this my need to find some relief from the isolation that small children naturally create, and voila, I am determined to create some real community in my own community. I'm not yet clear what this will look like, but I trust the vision to come in its own time. I'll keep ya posted on that too.

There you have it, my thoughts from Earth Day. If you like this idea, I'd love to hear your resolutions too! The more we share our ideas, the more momentum gained for positive change, so keep the conversations going! And happy belated Earth Day to you!

Blog Action Day: Water Leaving the Enchanted Land?

2007-10-15T20:55:00.000-05:00

It has hit the news that the Atlanta area will be buying water from "elsewhere" by December of this year. Here is today's blurb about it from The Daily Green:

http://www.thedailygreen.com/2007/10/15/atlanta-expects-severe-water-restrictions-due-to-drought/7814/

My father-in-law has not seen it this bad in over thirty years of farming. This year marked the first time irrigation was required at planting time in spring. At our house near the farm, we have watched all the shrubbery die and it looks like we may have lost a few trees as well. We intended to remove the shrubbery anyway, so it's not a painful loss per se, but it signifies something that could become a very painful loss indeed: the destruction of the climate and ecosystem I have known well and loved deeply all my life.

We are beginning homesteaders here; every day we work to increase our self-sufficiency and reduce our ecological footprint, and we're always planning the next project that will increase our independence from industry, fossil fuels, and other unsustainable practices. But how can I plan what to plant when I don't know what climate I actually live in? Should I plant apples and plums, like I have always wanted to, or will they die? How much hotter will it get, how much drier? Should I plant citrus trees? Or perhaps succulents? Will there be enough water for us to grow food in the future? You may take your grocery store for granted, but as someone whose family grows food for others I don't have the liberty (or perhaps the gall) of forgetting the intricate marriage of crop and climate. Listening to people complain about food prices from the driver's seat of their 15 mpg/ $35,000 SUV's, I have to wonder where our priorities went so dreadfully wrong. After all, we're growing your FOOD. Don't we deserve to earn a decent living, as hard as we work, considering that your survival depends on farmers? Shouldn't your spending go more towards that which sustains your life, and not so much to what carts you around?

Where I live was once the heart of the Cherokee Nation. The Cherokee capital, New Echota, is less than thirty minutes away. My road is named for a Cherokee chief whose burial site was discovered here. In my forays into and about town, I travel on portions of the Trail of Tears at least once a week. (If you are an adult and don't know what I'm talking about, I hope you're extremely ashamed and that you promptly go educate yourself, preferably as soon as you finish reading here.) When the Cherokee were forcibly-- and illegally-- removed from their "Enchanted Land" to reservations in Oklahoma, this is where they began. How does this pertain to climate change? Some predictions suggest that with changing rainfall patterns, Georgia will become like Oklahoma and southern Texas, while Oklahoma will become lush and verdant. Now wouldn't that be something?

Crazy Spider Karma

2007-09-26T10:44:00.000-05:00

I was just reading blogs (translation: wasting away in front of the computer) when I came across a post about scorpions. I had to comment, and, realizing how pitifully infrequently I post (the birth story is almost done!), felt compelled to share here as well. We haven't had many scorpions in this house (three, I think), but here those are fairly harmless, like a bee sting (unless you're allergic). What I'm loving here in the woods are my darling brown recluse spiders. You know, the highly poisonous ones without an antidote whose bites take many months to heal and leave gi-normous scars? I've smashed something like ten or more this summer. Lurvly.

And when my almost-fiver touched his first spider this year? A black widow! It went like this: I'm weeding in the flowerbed by the back door. The screen door is standing open. Galen comes out and says, "Mom! I touched a spider! See?!" I feign to look and say, "Yeah, wow!" Not fooled, he insists: "No, come LOOK!" Annoyed at the interruption, I obey. There it is, a small black spider stuck on the screen door. I show him, "See? I could see it from over there," moving the screen door to show him that the spider is visible from the other side... and there is the red hourglass. Oh. My. God. HE TOUCHED A FRIGGIN BLACK WIDOW!!! I can only guess that it was already dead, as he obviously was not bitten. I calmly explain that this kind is a poisonous one so I have to smash it, and "We shouldn't touch ones that look like this," and after demolishing the little critter with my Birkenstock I retrieve his spider book from the living room and show him the pictures of the black widow and brown recluse spiders with copious explanation about how we don't want to get bitten by those ones. Good grief, Charlie Brown!

Little did I know how clear I would get on what the brown recluse looks like, too. The first one was in the playroom (good place for it, huh?). It was kind enough to stay still long enough for me to study it and discover, oh, there's the fiddle marking! All this time I thought it was on the abdomen, how silly! Convicted, sentenced, executed. Whew. The socond one was on a dishrag in the kitchen sink, which was full of dirty dishes (perhaps that goes without saying?). It could have been lurking anywhere, just waiting for an innocent and unsuspecting finger to bite. Thankfully Brad was home so he could gently take it outside and save its little life, since he didn't believe me when I told him it was a brown recluse. Doubtless it has now gone on to reproduce zillions of times. The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth ones were in the bedroom, mostly in the closet. At least now we have good reason for not putting our shoes where they belong. I left two of their dead bodies as a message to their kin. Number seven I paced past during the night, with bare feet, bouncing Iris back to sleep. I don't know how I missed it, or what possessed me to turn the light on whereby I discovered my near miss. I start wearing shoes in the house. Number eight was cruising the periphery of the kitchen (probably headed for that dirty dishrag he'd heard about from a friend on the outside). Nine, ten, and more were discovered by Brad (who no longer doubts my abilities in spider identification) in the playroom, most behind the freezer. I don't know exactly how many because he confessed that he didn't tell me about "some" because he "didn't want me to worry." Oh goodie. The umpteenth was upstairs in my craft room, with friends in both closets, some of whom got away and I am positive are plotting even now to avenge their compatriots. The most recent one was in the tub. Great. Now I need shoes for the shower.

I must have some crazy spider karma, that's all I know.

The Birth of Iris Aurora

2007-08-30T19:32:00.000-05:00

Now that Iris is four months old, perhaps it is time for me to finish writing her birth story. I started writing this two months ago. It's a challenge, as it feels like I'm stealing time from her in getting it written, but already I fear I'm forgetting things, so negligent or not, here I go...

Wednesday (June 27) began with my by-then standard flurry of nesting activity. Already suspecting that today might be the day, I loaded the car full of recycling and donations for the thrift store, tasks I knew would never be taken care of after the birth. A phone call from my mom with the admonition, "No babies tonight!" added to my suspicions... I loaded Galen in the car and set out.

After unloading a trunk's worth of detritus, we headed to Provino's in Rome. It felt a bit like cheating, but I went for the eggplant parmesan treatment. I figured if it wasn't time, it wouldn't work. I had already eaten half a pound of pineapple a few days earlier to no deleterious effect. Galen had pasta with red sauce; as a thunderstorm unleashed itself outside, I began contractions before I finished my eggplant. Dessert? Um, no thanks, I think I need to go home to have this baby. (I didn't actually say that, but I should have.)

Although the cleansing storm seemed highly significant, I consciously chose not to get excited. Early labor had lasted more than 16 hours with Galen, and I had since learned of "prodromal labor," which this could have been (but was not). I stopped at Kroger in Calhoun on the way home, stocking up on drinks and snacks. My mother-in-law called me and asked how "It" was going. Judging by her timing, I think she somehow knew things were getting started, but I didn't want to jinx myself or feel like a watched kettle, so I didn't let on. I got back to the house at around 4 in the afternoon.

After putting the groceries away, I timed the contractions to get an idea of what was going on. They were good and solid, always about a minute long, but very sporadic: six one hour, two the next. Nothing serious yet. I cleaned the kitchen and ran the dishwasher. I called my midwife, Claudia, at 8 PM to let her know what was going on, just in case things got busy during the night. She agreed with my assessment, that it might be nothing or might be something, and advised me to try to get some sleep. I took a relaxing bath in our snazzy whirlpool tub (Brad just finished the bathroom remodel less than a week earlier), then put my headphones on and listened to my pregnancy relaxation CD in my comfy chair, which always put me to sleep.

I dozed, but each contraction woke me up. Galen went to bed around 11 pm. By midnight the mounting intensity was undeniable, so I returned to the tub and told Brad to call Claudia back. We timed some contractions on the phone, which were a few minutes apart, and she agreed that it was time for her to come up. She called Rachel, a new apprentice who had agreed to handle the video camera (thank you Rachel!). I called my friend Tommasina, who in turn called other friends, giving me the energetic support of the web woven by my blessingway. I wasn't sure whether I could handle having family present prior to this point, but when I realized active labor was underway and wouldn't stop no matter what, I gave Brad the go-ahead to call my mom and his.

At this point things began to get blurry, as I moved deeper into the birthing process. With each contraction, using Ujjayi breathing ("upward victory breath," a yogic breathing technique), I focused on the sensation of it, visualizing the pain pulling my cervix open. The power of moving toward the pain, contrasted with pulling away from it as I had done during Galen's birth, was phenomenal. By the time Claudia arrived, I was dilated 7 cm and fully effaced. She and Nicole offered to set up the birthing pool we had borrowed from Brad's brother and his wife (who had birthed her first child in it last summer). That they set up in the middle of the kitchen. I spent time in the tub, on the toilet, kneeling at the foot of the bed, on the birthing stool in the kitchen. I needed Brad by my side for each contraction, putting very light pressure on my lower back. As the night passed, he would try to step away to attend to different tasks: moving Galen to his bed, making coffee, but always I would be yelling for him to come back before he could finish. A part of me remained the observer, noticing how I was progressing, marveling at my unhindered ability to know exactly what I needed, to move from room to room, even to walk while having a contraction well towards the pushing stage. I remember also being able to answer questions about where things were, such as tapes for the video camera and birth kit supplies. I remained aware that I was moving through a process that would end with the birth of my baby, something I was unable to stay connected to during my previous hospital birth.

I spent some time in the birthing pool near the end of what I now can call transition; for these contractions, I had to squeeze Brad's fingers as hard as I could and vocalize (a low "Ohhhh") to get through them. I learned later that during that time my mom asked about me getting to transition, and Claudia said, "Oh, no, she's way past that now!" I know they were standing in the kitchen where the pool was, but I heard nothing.

At the end of transition, I exited the pool to go to the bathroom. I commented that I kept waiting for the urge to push, but it hadn't come yet, and I thought I should have the urge to push by now. That first pushing urge came in that very trip to the bathroom. Claudia came to the door and said, "Congratulations! You're pushing!" I may have completed a couple of pushes on the toilet; I don't remember. I do remember that Claudia checked me again at some point in the early part of the pushing stage, noting a slight lip on my cervix. I don't know how she knew, but something about the way I was pushing seemed to have tipped her off. She checked it through a contraction and confirmed that it wasn't getting in the way. I moved to the foot of the bed for a while, then, after my knees got sore, onto the bed, where I could rest between pushes on a big pile of pillows. I think I spent most of my pushing time there. Throughout this phase, I stayed connected with my baby, knowing we were working together toward the common goal of her birth, talking to her about it in my mind, asking her to work with me and let me know what to do. The observer part of my mind noticed that there was a great deal of variation between the pushes and the contractions. Some of the contractions and pushing urges seemed to go on and on and on, with perhaps only a few seconds' break before another began; for others, I found myself resting so long in between that it crossed my mind to wonder when the next one would come. I actually enjoyed the irregularity of it; it seemed to be exactly what my body could handle. Just when I would begin to feel I was at the limit of my physical ability I would get a nice "long" break. About midway through the pushing process, as I had done with Galen, I broke my water during a really good push, kneeling on the bed. Claudia saw this coming and I am told caught almost all of the water on her shirt! Some pushes later (I have no concept of the passage of time during all this), the ring of fire began. I was struggling against myself, resisting the pain, and Claudia knew it. I was breathing and vocalizing to release some of the intensity upward instead of down. She told me, "This is the part where you begin resisting. What you're doing is called..." vocal pushing, maybe? I can't remember now, but at the time I thought, well that's a perfectly descriptive name for that! She continued, "...and that's fine, but if we don't get much more progress after a few more pushes we're going to change positions." It was the perfect way to say this to me; I didn't feel like I was being judged or doing something wrong. I also knew exactly what to do to finish the birth. After a couple more pushes, I asked for the birthing stool. I think Nicole may have brought it in. I moved to it once it was set up at the foot of the bed. Those final pushes were incredibly intense. All this time I had kept my throat open and my noises low (low notes, not necessarily low volume!), but for these pushes, I had no choice. I shrieked. Loud. I think it was the first push on the stool when Claudia told me, "I know, it hurts. That's what you're supposed to feel. This is what you have to do to have this baby." Again, exactly what I needed to hear. She let me know that what I was feeling was fine, that it wasn't too much, it didn't mean I was shredding myself to pieces. It hurts like a you-know-what and that means you're doing it right. I think it was the next push she was providing counterpressure to make sure I didn't tear, and I remember swatting her hand away, unable to speak more than "Argh! Clitoris!" because I was overwhelmed by the contraction. Now that's embarrassing to say in front of your mother and mother-in-law. So, I shrieked right on through and I think it was on the next push that my beautiful baby girl was born.

Her cord was around her neck, so Brad, positioned just right (behind me), flipped her around to unwind it and handed her under me to Claudia, who then handed her to me. She was so calm, just looking up at us, taking it all in. She was born right at dawn, so we chose Aurora to be her middle name. Since she was still "on the cord," as Claudia said, we were able to allow her a very peaceful transition into her life as a creature of earth and air. I birthed the placenta some minutes later, which we kept in a bowl with the cord still attached for the first two hours or so. (Four months later, it's still in that same bowl, in our freezer.) Her birth day was blessed with a gentle rain as we nestled in our bed, a new family of four.

And I thought I was an advocate for homebirth before!

A Day (Or Two) in the Life

2007-08-01T09:40:00.000-05:00

In my insistence on trying to write things in chronological order (meaning that my birth story should come before any events that occurred after June 28) I am managing instead to write absolutely nothing. Perfectionism strikes again... thank you, Chronos, now please may I write?

Yesterday I attended robot school (where one learns to build robots, of course). Looking around the room, the instructor indicated the materials to be used in the construction of the robot: a switch like this (pointing to the switch on the infant swing in the classroom), flower feet like this (indicating the picture on the computer screen of a cluster of daffodils). After receiving these minimal instructions, bequeathed with an air of formality, I was to begin. I considered the universal nature of this training and wondered whether I could learn to apply this knowledge to other areas of my life in sore need of attention: could I drop my preconceived ideas long enough to see my surroundings with fresh eyes, to take inspiration-- artistic or otherwise-- from random objects in my line of vision? It was like McGyver meets shamanism.

Today I begin with chef school, and a lesson in improvisation as applied to baking banana cookies. Again I am confronted with universal lessons: go with the flow, trust your instincts, pay attention, use what's at hand. Is there a hidden camera somewhere? I am uncomfortable with these lessons. My instructor pushes my most sensitive buttons, ignores even my simple requests, tramples my boundaries. Why do I tolerate this? Martyred at the feet of my guru, slavishly pursuing some enlightenment ideal? This is supposed to be about making cookies!

In fact, it isn't at all about cookies, and the camera is imbedded in my instructor's memory. Only twenty or thirty years from now will I see whether I learned anything useful. In case you haven't figured it out by now, my instructor is my son, Galen, who is four years old. Also yesterday (Haha, Chronos! I defy you today! Tomorrow you kick my ass! Ha!) I spoke on the phone with my dear teacher and friend Francesca De Grandis. We were discussing how I've been managing Galen's reactions to his new sister. She made the comment, "What do I know about parenting?" (Even though she is a mother herself.) Later I thought, I don't know anything about it either, I'm just learning what to do from my kids. And so I realized in a very solid way that it is fact, not opinion, that our children are our teachers, and not the other way around. No one, no matter how much they read or study, knows how to parent before doing it. And even after doing it once, no one knows exactly how to do it the next time, because all children are different, and because we change in the process. It sounds ridiculously trite, but I can assert from experience that it is also perfectly, and often painfully, true. I think it is a Buddhist saying that you can never step into the same river twice...

The cookies, by the way, turned out rather nicely, a cross somewhere between a scone and a cookie, perhaps a bit like the British concept of biscuits (although I wouldn't know, having never been to England):

Try them sometime, if you dare-- the ingredients are as follows: two bananas, white sugar, whole spelt flour, 2% milk, baking powder, baking soda, vanilla, and brown sugar, all organic where possible. There are no measurements, no ratios, and no instructions, other than baking at 375. Observe, and enjoy!

Oh, and it helps to have your guru with you.

Iris Aurora

2007-06-30T13:50:00.000-05:00

Iris Aurora is earthside!

Born peacefully (well, Mom wasn't so peaceful! :D ) at home June 28, 2007 at 6:03 AM

7 pounds, 11 ounces

20 1/4 inches long

We are enjoying our babymoon as a family of four. Birth story forthcoming!

Blessingway, June 23, 2007

2007-06-30T13:40:00.000-05:00

My blessingway, June 23, 2007. I may have set a record for the shortest time between blessingway and birth! A beautiful evening, with beautiful friends filling my home with blessings, love, and laughter. My flowers are courtesy of my friend Lisa...
Henna courtesy of my friend Kate...

Now that's a belly!

Closer to the Edge

2007-06-19T09:15:00.000-05:00

Depending on who's counting, I'm either 37 weeks, 5 days, or 38 weeks, three days. I started to include a more happy-faced picture, but this one where I'm squinting probably captures the moment better...

And yes, in fact, this is quite painful-- some of these stretch marks have oozed blood a few times!

The hint of brown there is not from lack of bathing, that used to be my belly button. I am curious to see how my belly recovers this time... this has been a much more physically challenging pregnancy than Galen's. I would consider saying it has also been more emotionally challenging, but in fact almost all of the emotional processing I've done (which has been volumes) has been residual material from Galen's pregnancy that I didn't deal with, so in truth this one has created space to contain and create more emotional health than I had when I started. That's a good thing! Perhaps I'll find the time to expound upon that later. For now we're off to deliver grits and meal to St. John's Retaurant in Chattanooga, TN-- a simply lovely fine dining establishment if you're ever in that area. They strive to buy local organic meat and produce, and we are hoping to supply them with our stoneground grits, cornmeal, and spelt. Mmm.

Honey, I think I'm pregnant

2007-05-16T16:36:00.000-05:00

Here I am, 32 weeks or so. I'm just a teensy bit uncomfortable, har dee har har.

Everywhere I go, total strangers make lovely comments such as, "You're due any minute, right?" and the infamous, "Is it just one in there??" Thanks, folks. I already knew I was huge without any comments from the peanut gallery. It is a fairly widespread taboo in this culture to comment on a woman's weight and/or size; I cannot fathom why the rules go out the window for pregnant women. I suppose it's related to the phenomenon of strangers suddenly thinking they are allowed to touch a woman's belly if there appears to be a baby in it. Oh, wouldn't I just love to be a fly on the wall if some non-pregnant woman were to have that happen, and she hauls off and decks the person in response! Ahh, pregnancy hormones...

19 Days Until Spring

2007-03-01T21:46:00.000-05:00

My order of bareroot plants and bulbs arrived today from Burgess. (I'm trying them out this year because their stuff is cheaper than all the other seed catalogs in my 8-inch-deep stack; it remains to be seen whether their quality will suffice.) I now have five sweet Darrow blackberry, two mock orange, fifteen blue potato, eight hosta, and two Pixwell (get it?) gooseberry plants to dig holes for, as well as 120 gladiolus bulbs that will have to go somewhere, probably on the family farm since they are to be part of my organic cut flower crop this summer. In addition to all these goodies, I already received my seed packets from the same order, and really I'm a bit late getting them started. Brad rounded up some plug trays for me today and now the bulk of the work stares me down: fill tray with soil, distribute a bajillion seeds, repeat, followed by keeping all of them wet and warm and happy until they get big enough to set out. I am 22 weeks pregnant today and things are about to get really busy around here.

Growing up I was always a "fall person," and still am-- see my previous entry in which I had cut my hair in sheer girlish giddiness over the glory of autumn (which was, by the way, a mistake-- the haircut, not the giddiness). However, with age I've become more susceptible to the frozen moods of winter and as such have developed a greater appreciation for the spring thaw. Planning the garden, poring over seed catalogs, imagining this here and that there, dreaming of getting to know new plant companions, gets me through dark days and freezing nights like nothing else can. So I guess now I'm a "spring person," too.

I still haven't placed my orders with Johnny's, Burpee, Richter's, or Parks, not to mention possibilities from several other suppliers who specialize in different flora, such as fruit-bearing items or landscape trees. We really can't go spending hundreds on so many plant varieties that we'll never get them all in the ground (although the credit card company will gladly oblige). But how can I choose one over another? The basic vegetable garden is nearly covered at this point: a mixture of heirloom tomatoes, a separate packet of brandywines, ornamental gourds, luffas, yellow crookneck squash and zucchini, Black Beauty eggplant, Lumina and Howden and jack-be-little pumpkins, butternut squash. From Johnny's I'll also get tomatillos, cucumbers, cayenne peppers, Antohi Romanian peppers, and possibly Golden Rave and San Marzano tomatoes. A few more peppers varieties (serrano, anaheim, poblano, hot wax banana), some roma tomatoes, and perhaps some spinach from Burpee should round out the veggies nicely. There are also some other varieties of fall/winter squash I want to try, but I may need to curb my appetite before I buy so many seeds that I have to use the neighbor's yard to plant them all. (Although we have five acres here, it is almost entirely wooded.) Then there's the herb garden, flower beds, and my cut flower enterprise (which will serve also to supply much, if not all, of the flower bed requirements, I hope). That last project calls for seeds by the thousands, zinnias and rudbeckia and cilantro and four types of basil. For the herb garden, I'm starting essentially from scratch, having only had time last season to start bergamot, catnip, and lemon balm. That calls for nettles, chamomile, yarrow, and echinacea at a minimum. There's also a ditch bank of sorts that I think lavender would really take to, but it's so easy to kill that I'm not sure how much to invest in the attempt. From Park's I want to get a mushroom kit or two, beautyberry, and a couple of New Dawn climbing roses, but I'm not sure if I should wait on those until I'm really certain about the amount of sunlight in different areas of the yard. Besides, with my hands too full I could end up killing my investment, and no one wants to be a plant murderer.

I suppose if I were a logical type I could set a budget, rank plants according to some scheme based on returns or perceived value, and make my final choices. But logical I am not, and so I have vacillated, and still do, not certain who to toss from the shopping basket, or on what grounds to even make such a decision. But I need this one for this, and I need that one for that. How can I decide? How can I value the contribution of one over another? How can joy and pleasure be ranked? Each plant offers such an individual combination of benefits. At this rate summer could end before I made up my mind. But that is the beauty of the season: it will not wait for me. And so, indecisive as I am, I am forced to make the call and commit. Only nineteen days until spring!

SNOW!

2007-02-01T10:41:00.000-05:00

Welcome February! Our first snow at Hill Haven! Galen is beyond ecstatic. Today he has discovered that snow is, in fact, ice, and I have discovered that he has a pretty good throwing arm for a four-year-old. Visitors from the North may scoff at calling this snow, I realize, but this is as good as it gets in Georgia, except for the occasional major storm which happens about once a decade (or at least it used to, before global warming started changing the local climate).

I am pleased to see the weather take this turn; for a little while, I can pretend things aren't changing too fast. Although I have often lamented the fact that I have never had a non-Georgia address, there is value in spending long periods of time in one geographical region. By even only mildly paying attention, one's consciousness absorbs nature's trends when immersed in the repeating cycles of just one place. Transplants complain of the unpredictable weather here; for me, it is highly changeable, but perfectly predictable, at least until recent years. Climate change is already underway, and this longtime Georgia native can no longer place high-stakes bets on her meteorological savvy. At this point, I can only wonder how far it will go before settling into equilibrium again.

But for now, at least today, all is as it should be.

Ahh, fall!

2006-09-17T20:36:00.000-05:00

Ahh... finally regaining momentum after a major (computer) meltdown. Never doubt that computers need to be warded. The transistors on my motherboard were oozing and bubbling! Two hundred and eleven dollars later we're all better, thank you, except I lost some software in the process that I have to repurchase if I want to still have it, unless I can find the disc somewhere... grr.... but, at least I didn't lose my files. Four years' worth of photos... glad I didn't have to deal with that!

The season of my greatest joy hath returned! I love fall, I love fall, I just get positively silly and goofy over fall!
Today I gave myself bangs, on a complete whim. I love it all-- cheesy decorations and everything. My mom brought me a bouquet of painted metal sunflowers and a painted metal pumpkin for my front porch. I love them! Now I just need a metal cutout of a black cat with its back arched to put in my flowerbed...

Speaking of my flowerbed, it is consummately unruly now, and I love that too. The sunflowers are drying up, their stalks going every which way, and the zinnias are growing all over the sidewalk, forcing us off into the grass as we make our way to the back door. Already I am getting excited about winter yard work, the time when we can build our raised beds and do some of the hardscaping I've envisioned, planning for the next growing season. It is also time to plant cold-weather crops here. On the family farm my brother-in-law did some replanting this weekend of collards and broccoli raab (evidently some of it got too much of something-- rain? heat? drought?-- and died). It's time for us to build some beds so we can grow lettuce, collards, kale, and arugula (my favorite!). The compost is doing nicely; we've switched to the second pile so the first can rest. And, I've begun collecting the rocks I will use to build a labyrinth over by the trees. Can you feel my burst of renewed vigor?! Woohoo! I LOVE FALL!

What Does It Mean to Be Green?

2006-08-09T10:03:00.000-05:00

A discussion on Crunchy Unschoolers regarding renewable energy began with a question about green options on utility bills, and touched on the relative merits and demerits of wind and solar power. In participation, I posted a version of the following:

We have a green option on our electric bill, but I haven't enrolled yet (we've only had two billing cycles in this house). I feel conflicted about it and must sort it out before deciding. Ours is through TVA (TN Valley Authority). We can buy as much green energy as we want, in blocks of 150 kWh for $4. This is of course in addition to our bill. They specify the types of renewables that will account for these kilowatt hours to be wind, solar, and landfill gas (garbage farts?!). My issues with the program are as follows: one, it feels a bit like paying a premium price for a "natural" product because they know they can charge more for it because it's popular with a certain crowd of which I am admittedly a part. Two, it's not like *my house* is going to get the green electricity I purchase per se. It only means I create an accounting demand of sorts. In other words, the way it works is, if customers pay for 100 blocks of green energy, the TVA has to make sure they pull that amount of kilowatt hours from green sources to the grid. The rest of what their customers consume is supplied by nonrenewables (such as the ever-lovely coal-burning power plants). They won't buy any more green power than customers pay for and just have a higher percentage of renewable electricity; it has to be demanded by the customer. I understand the business logic of this, and the infrastructure and supply and demand factors, but nonetheless that irks me. If you're really trying to make a difference and not just a profit off folks with a guilty conscience about fossil fuels, why not buy as much green power as the sources can supply? But, on the other hand, as long as we're not energy-independent and since we are on the grid, the least damaging thing we can do is create the demand that our kWh's be from renewable sources... then if we enroll in this green switch program, I have to decide how many blocks to buy. Do I want to try to buy enough green kilowatt-hours to cover 20% of our total electricity? 50? 100? I can't really go 100%, since it's in blocks and once you sign up the amount you pay for is fixed. In winter our bill will be negligible, since we don't heat with electricity, meaning I'd just be handing the power company a twenty every month-- for what, being on good behavior? I don't even do that to my kid!

So what can I do? What can you do? What I'm really asking is, how do we take on the machine? That's really the question du jour, n'est-ce pas? (Isn't my French pretty?) My first profusely obvious step is to drastically reduce the amount of energy I consume. Even if I'm "buying green," it's less money to the big guys (I find that spite is a wonderful motivator). We ditched our dishwasher, use compact fluorescents (looking forward to the price coming down and availability going up on the new LED lights!), keep the thermostat high when it's hot and off when it's cold (we use wood heat). Keep the lights off, turn off appliances that have stand-by modes... we can't figure out how to adjust our hot water heater's thermostat because we flat-out can't find the damn thing, but it's old enough that we will replace it soon. Our new one will be tankless, supplemented by a solar water heater as soon as we can afford it. The old one will then become our biodiesel reactor. Then there's the dryer... perhaps I can apply my spite technique to getting motivated to stop using the dryer.

Next will be the addition of some PV panels. Our roof serendipitously has multiple well-placed surfaces for collecting. I don't know if this house will ever supply 100% of its own energy, but seeing that goal as a convergence point for a multi-pronged approach keeps me hopeful.

Another renewable concept I'm wondering about involves collecting the sun's heat. I was daydreaming about this earlier this summer, thinking, "Can't I harness this god-awful scorching blaze off my roof, keep it out of my house, and run some appliances off of it?" Magically the latest issue of Mother Earth News arrived with a blurb about just that. So it is possible! But so far no one is selling that technology to private homeowners. All good things in good time...

So Far Behind, I'm Getting Ahead of Myself

2006-08-08T08:44:00.000-05:00

I keep a running list of topics I want to blog about, but lately it seems that list only gets longer while nothing is added here. So, today, just for right now, I'm going to ramble.

It is Tuesday, CSA box-packing day at Riverview Farms (my in-laws' organic farm, in case you're just tuning in-- the link is listed at left, but I'm not responsible for the website!). I helped out a couple of weeks ago, weighing out one-pound bags of field peas from the sheller, folding bushel boxes, moving up and down rows adding paper bags of potatoes and tomatoes, loose squash and cucumbers, onions and garlic. There were also melons (two per box), bags of okra and green beans, and corn (several ears per box). It took five of us well into twilight to finish, when we could no longer see whether this box was missing its potatoes or that one was missing the onions. Then the boxes had to be closed and loaded into the reefer truck (refrigerated, silly), which has to run all night so the peas won't sprout and the melons won't rot. I wondered whether the members realize just exactly how spoiled rotten they are, getting these diverse boxes of just-picked organic produce packed neatly and delivered the day after coming out of the field. I want to be a CSA member!

The heirloom tomatoes-- early girls, sues, and some brandywines, I think:

These are tomatoes you will never see in a supermarket because they can't be shipped like that without getting positively destroyed. If you've never smelled rotten tomatoes you really should come visit. Meanwhile I am waiting impatiently for the technology that will allow me to photograph smells.

This is the pea sheller. Field peas go in the hopper on the top. It turns and vibrates and makes a huge racket, and the peas fall out the bottom into a mesh chute and bounce along to the end, where they fall into the black bucket. Magic!

Remembering to empty the hopper of hulls at the end has been found to be a crucial step in the success of subsequent shellings. Ahem.

Here are the hulls from one shelled batch:

Now that is a lot of fiber. I wonder what all can be done with pea hulls? I'm thinking spinning, weaving, wearable art...

Weekend in Savannah

2006-07-29T23:17:00.000-05:00

It has taken two weeks to recover from a three-day "vacation." I am seriously questioning the meaning of this word. The good news is, it's over, and I'm getting back to at least approximating having my head above water. Now, don't get me wrong, it was a good idea, it's just impossible to not fall irrevocably behind on practically everything by leaving home for a few days. Sheesh.

We (Galen and I) spent a long weekend in Savannah, Georgia, visiting my baby sister Rose (who at 23 is too young to be married and out of college with a job, dammit!) with my mom. After driving down Saturday (five hours, ouch), we spent Sunday morning on the beach at Tybee Island, where this adorable picture was taken...

These signs (it says "Turtle Xing") can be seen all along the road to and from Tybee:

Then we came back into Savannah to Fresh Market to pick up lunch, bags and bags of junk food (read: candy for Galen), and my birthday cake, a cappucino hazelnut cheesecake:

You think it looks decadent! I'm certain it must be illegal in some states.

Just in case that wasn't enough, my sister had made this astounding seafood dish (I have no idea what it was called; it was marinated, it had artichoke hearts and shrimp, it was fabulous) and my mom grilled scallops wrapped in bacon (were they competing for most cholesterol?). Wow.

Galen became very interested in the digital camera on this trip and took quite a few photos, including this one of me in the car:

and this one of his own feet, which I especially like the composition of:

I was really impressed with the quality of many of the pictures he took. Of course, I don't know that he really composed them, but the portraits must have been composed or they wouldn't have worked out so well, I think.

My dad is famous in the family for always buying "el cheapo" this or that, so this gas station photo is for him:

Although I don't see what's so el cheapo about nearly $3 a gallon for diesel fuel. Yikes!

Monday we went shopping on River Street and at the market area in downtown Savannah before beginning the long drive back. A real whirlwind tour!

While I was gone my sister-in-law Charlotte snuck off and had her baby, Graham Carter Swancy. Graham is Galen's first first cousin (he will be getting another later this year, a girl), and my new birthday buddy (born three days before my birthday). He was born with ease and speed at home, and the new momma and baby are doing fabulously. Here he is, just hours after birth, with his Nana Beverly:

Now if I can just get caught up with my writing!

The Staff of Life

2006-07-12T09:19:00.000-05:00

The utter unsustainability of purchasing bread at the grocery store, combined with the fact that I cannot even get organic bread at any local supermarket (and supermarkets are all there are here), chafes me much lately. I always ask my husband to bring back bread from his near-weekly forays across the state into Athens, GA, where we used to live (he still has work there). "Natural foods" is more the assumption in Athens, rather than the eccentricity it is here. Looking at the label on a loaf he brought back recently, I read that it was "produced and distributed by Rudi's Organic Bakery, Boulder, CO." The plastic bag (to be thrown away when you're done with the bread, of course) is stamped all over with "certified organic" and a kitschy description of "the legacy of the artisan baker." I could reuse the bag for vomit.

I don't mean to pick on Rudi's. They make good bread. But the sad fact is, organic doesn't mean much anymore. Sure, all the ingredients in this commercial loaf were grown without synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or synthetic fertilizers. (Note that I do not say what is commonly said, that they do not use "chemical" fertilizers. There is no such thing as fertilizer that is not a chemical; all molecules are chemicals, including those in manure, which organic farmers most certainly do use! But that's a soapbox all its own...) Sure, this is an improvement over conventional farming practices and the ingredient list bears no items of questionable safety. But now that organic is mainstream, we realize that it is not enough. Shipping bread from Colorado to anywhere outside Colorado, let alone to me in Georgia, is not sustainable. Organic flour grown thousands of miles away (currently producers are not required to reveal the source(s) of their ingredients, so in the global market, flour could be from Argentina for all I know), milled hundreds or thousands of miles from the field, then baked hundreds or thousands of miles from the mill, is not sustainable. The consumption of the plastic bags (which were likely not produced in the US), even if I recycle or reuse them, is not sustainable. And what about the inks used to print the bags? What about the workers who make the bags? Economically this sends money right out of my community, and it never comes back. And for all this, I pay a premium price for my bread, because the farm (or, more accurately, the corporation that owns the farmland) paid for USDA organic certification.

And lest anyone remains deluded, don't think that it's a family farm you're supporting just because it's organic. Nowadays organic means big bucks, and the industrial-production agribusinesses are right in on it. They are the ones who can afford to pay for the USDA certification, with its high pricetag and minimal guidelines. So you still have to question the treatment of the farm workers and the sustainability of the farm, even with the organic label. It just doesn't mean what it used to...

All this adds up to me being pushed out of my comfort zone. My solution? Become the artisan baker! Proudly presenting whole grain organic spelt bread, made by hand, by me! I created this beauty start-to-finish last night. It is my second loaf (in my excitement the first loaf was devoured before I remembered to take a picture). At this point in time, my ingredients still come from faraway lands, but I have the power to change that, poco a poco.

Here's my recipe:

1 cup warm water (straight from the tap)
2 tbsp granulated brown sugar (Note that this is not regular brown sugar; it's also not turbinado sugar. It's sugar, it's granulated, and brown in color.)
one packet Red Star active dry yeast
3 cups organic whole spelt flour, plus more for dusting the kneading surface
sea salt
organic 2% milk
organic canola oil

I put the warm water in my mixing bowl, stirred the sugar in, and sprinkled the yeast on top. I left it alone for probably 10 minutes (longer than intended; I was distracted by Galen needing help with poop). I then added all the remaining ingredients, loosely measuring the flour, then eyeballing the others. The salt I poured into my cupped palm to measure about 2-3 tsp; the milk I poured in directly, about a 2-3 tbsp splash; ditto for the canola oil. I stirred with a wooden spoon to mix. When the ingredients had agreed to mingle all together into a single entity no longer recognizable as any one component, I turned the sticky blob out onto my floured kitchen counter. I began kneading. Checking the time to make sure I hit a minimum of five minutes, I folded and pushed, making monkey faces in the developing dough. I had to replenish the flour on the counter frequently, and ended up pulling some oat flour out of the freezer when I used up all I had left of the spelt. After about five minutes of kneading, I oiled my same mixing bowl (without cleaning it; what would be the point?) with more canola and put the dough ball back in, rolling it around to coat it. I covered the bowl with a kitchen towel and set it outside on top of my husband's truck, to be sure it was getting plenty of warmth from the sun. I set the timer for an hour and went about the business of cleaning up after myself and being a mom.

When the hour was up, I checked the dough, which had risen plenty. I'm not sure if it had truly doubled or not, but I decided it was good enough. I punched it down, covered it, and set the timer for 30 minutes. Not long after that my husband brought it inside. He and Galen had been playing with the water hose and had sprayed the towel. I set the bowl on a chair in the hottest room of the house, still covered with the wet towel. (It wasn't soaked, just damp.) In thirty minutes I punched it down again and prepared the dough for the final rise.

I oiled my 9" x 5" glass loaf pan with more of the canola, then oiled the counter with some not-very-tasty olive oil I didn't mind wasting and turned the dough out on the counter. Following some guidelines I found a few days ago (I'll have to edit this later to give credit to the website, which I can't remember at the moment), I pressed the dough out into a large rectangle, then folded that in half and pressed it out again. I folded the ends to the middle, pressed again, and rolled it back and forth a bit to shape it into a cylinder, pressing the ends together somewhat. I plopped it into the loaf pan and covered it with the towel for the last rising before baking. I set the timer for 30 minutes again and turned the oven down to 425 degrees (we had baked cornbread at 450 for supper).

When the time was up for the final rise, into the oven it went, and baked for around 30 minutes (I started checking it at 20, not sure how the oven performs). Voila! Bread from grain! The loaf stuck a little, as did my first, so I will probably switch to butter for greasing the sides of the pan. I think the oil slides down the glass too quickly, leaving it essentially ungreased. But I extracted it with little trouble by running a table knife around the sides. Magnifique!

Now, I still don't know the origin of most of my ingredients, and they doubtless came from at least hundreds of miles away. But I know where the bakery is, and there's no plastic bag, not to mention the quality is far, far superior than anything I can purchase. And the nonmaterial value is immeasurable: the spiritual nourishment of working the dough with my hands, of taking pride in my craft, and sharing the process with my child, who will not grow up thinking bread comes "from the store." He helps me knead, tastes the dough, punches it down, asks "is it ready yet?" It is a good beginning.

Steps I plan to take to further increase the sustainability of my breadmaking:

Growing my own grain (this is not as big a step for me as it is for most, as our family has a 150-acre organic farm, Riverview Farms, which is twenty minutes from our house)
Grinding my own grain (we have just purchased a grain mill-- look for it in a future post-- to add cornmeal, polenta and grits to the Riverview Farms product roster. Thanks go to my dad for the no-interest loan to purchase the mill!)
Using local organic milk (Riverview Farms CSA sells raw milk from nearby Carlton Dairy)
Keeping bees to make my own honey for sweetener/ yeast food
Switching to sourdough

My ultimate goal: the completely local organic loaf. I am excited to be on this journey.

Sleeping Babes

2006-07-09T13:16:00.000-05:00

Although you can't tell thanks to the flash, it's actually dark in here. This was taken of Galen a few weeks ago, his first night in his own bed. I almost didn't think to take a picture until Brad reminded me. Oh yeah, this is a landmark! Meanwhile, we can't stand it. We have all slept in the family bed since, well, conception, and we miss him! Plus, he still wakes up during the night and could far too easily fall out of bed or worse, down the stairs. So that leaves us on the leaky air mattress on his floor, which we pick up and move out of the way during the day, futon-style. The past couple of nights he has climbed quietly out of his bed and onto the mattress with us, sometimes without me even knowing. And that's just fine with me.

There are so many things about prevailing custom that are downright insane, not to mention completely contradictory, and numerous expectations of our children top the list. We want our kids to form secure attachments (specifically to people-not-things), to be able to have healthy relationships, to be connected to others, to be kind. Yet we are expected to thrust them out on their own as babies when their very survival depends on our attentive presence. "Don't let them sleep with you, you'll never get them out of your bed," or "You'll spoil them!" (whatever that means!) are common comments. Then later the same parents complain, "They never listen to me!" "They don't care what I think!" Does it not stand to reason that if you don't care about them, they are under no obligation to care about you? Am I the only one paying attention here??

Thankfully, I am not. The tides are indeed shifting. Folks are less and less afraid of loving their children, a great and wonderful development. Shopping in Target recently I noticed they now carry cosleepers and slings in the baby section. In Target! Now that is mainstream! So you know it's permeating the culture at large. The peaceful and loving will prevail, bwa-ha-ha-ha!

A Beginning

2006-07-08T16:46:00.000-05:00

Okay, okay. I'm blogging, dammit. You asked for it!

Today at Hill Haven it is slightly overcast, 81 degrees (Fahrenheit, stupid) on the back step in the shade, feeling pretty cool for July in Georgia (U.S., not Russia!). You might wonder why we settled on calling our place Hill Haven. Well, you know I'm about to tell you, whether you were wondering or not. It's pretty obvious. I'll give you some hints: it's on a --- and it's our ---. Get it? Now don't you feel clever figuring that out all by yourself?

Now really. It is our own little haven, a word we found ourselves using repeatedly. Home, to me, means refuge from the world at large; my cocoon, my safe, warm nest. And so this is, completely enclosed, invisible from the road when the trees are fully leafed out, our little five-acre spot to nurture and be nurtured by. And it is on a hill, quite a steep one, actually. It's a great butt-burner just trekking down and back up to fetch the mail. We have a hawk's nest in an oak alongside our driveway partway down, and we thought about naming it Hawk Haven, or Hawk-something-or-other, but all those we could come up with were just off-the-charts on the cheese factor. Whereas Hill Haven wasn't cheesy at ALL! :)

Why even name a place? Why do people name their homes? Why did I feel this was so necessary? I'm not even sure I can explain it. Naming gives identity, and implies that the named has some value as an individual, apart from others. I experience the spirits of place, and value my connection with the land that sustains me. So, I named the place that I and my family are calling home. Hill Haven.

By the way, this little guy/gal to the left here is one of our hawk babies, still in the nest. This photo was taken in late May. There were two babies, both of whom have long since fledged now, but I just got around to editing the pictures to find out if they could even be seen (no zoom lens at the time). Both babies (now juveniles) and their Momma are still around, and occasionally come back to the nest to share lunch. There's no place like home!