Links 2009

Just placeholding. I think this is PERFECT for our family: http://www.commonsensepress.com/GSA-sample_lesson/gs-lesson.htm

They're seen in action here: http://handmadehomeschool.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/tiny-books/

Along with these, which I think are fabulous as well! http://kindovermatter.blogspot.com/2009/03/kind-over-matter-books.html

A Sunny Father's Day

And summer finally showed up!
P-daddy and I were around for this marvelous day-- it was what he wanted to do for Father's Day, after all-- but I am not showing beach pix of us. No thank you!

I still don't know what it was. Don't care to know!

G-girl's repose on a floating dock.
They normally wouldn't be able to reach it, but it was an unusually low tide.

D-meister the firebender

So love the cooperative housing thang

Diffendoofers at the Library

Peninsula Library was kind enough to offer us a tour of their library, inside and out. The children enjoyed seeing the secret spots as much as the adults did, I think. Those who didn't have them were allowed to sign up for library cards. It was a good event, and a nice way to reconnect with our homeschooling friends after a tough spring for most of us.

First meal of the year

Of the gardening year that is....

Last night we had a stir fry with pak choi and basil from our garden. :)

Medium Thing Really Loves Chicks

N-man really has a lot of affection for the chicks. I hope his eagerness to care for them continues after they've lost their down and their sweet little peeping voices. Given his behaviour regarding our friends' chickens, I suspect he will, and will continue down this path to become a Chicken Master. Even before we got the chicks, I took him to our friend's house so he could commune with their chickens. Her daughters are responsible for the care of their flock, so he has some good precedent in there.

After having met her flock, he pined for them. One of her children gets all moon-eyed over the chickens as well, so the two of them can be all chicken-loving together. He refers to this little girl as The Chicken Master, and she quite modestly goes about the business of showing him how to do everything from feeding and watering to gathering eggs. She's happy to instruct someone, it seems, who 'gets it."

Me, I don't get it. I just want eggs and some garden fertilizer. I do talk to them and hold them. They're cute! I just won't wub them. They know me pretty well, too, although I address myself as Big Thing. "It's ok, Big Thing will fix the water." They definitely recognize me as the Big Thing that brings the water and food. A few days ago, while I was doing dishes, I heard N-man come in to talk to the chicks.

"Hi! It's Medium Thing!"

This is the new improved brooder, which we went to after the Screeching Chick incident at the sleepover.

Gardening is Up

pictured: pak choi, five varietals of lettuce, celery (under cloches), acorn squash, vidalia onion, marigold, nasturtium, beet, tomatillo, spaghetti squash, spinach, fennel, black valentine bush beans

Here are some shots of the front gardens. My ailing camera went kaput on me, asking for more energy (shaw! who needs recharging?) so I really didn't get much taken today. Even people who know me well will see things they won't recognize. P-daddy and I have been very busy during these troubling months. Focusing on life and beauty helps us through.

Our Lady of the Spent Rhododendron

We took Food Not Lawns seriously and built a number of raised beds in the front yard. We're experimenting this year with square foot gardening. I have been pretty enthusiastic about it, doing everything Just Right. Shortly after I installed everything in the front, I began reading Gardening When It Counts, written by a PNW gardening guru who founded Territorial Seed Company and now resides in Tasmania. He leads his book with why bio-intensive gardening (SFG) is a Very Bad Idea in poor economic times. Le Sigh.

The fruit trees in among the garden boxes.
Foremost tree is from the Cherry Deer Incident.

I still have huge honking garden beds in the back, and I had already planned to row plant them anyway. It assuaged my anxiety as I read the book, making me feel like I wasn't totally off the mark. I haven't ready something so down-to-brass-tacks about horticulture since college. This is a garden writer who takes the reader seriously, which I certainly appreciated.


The Rose-Herb Garden remains a thorn (haha!) in my side. Reclaiming this huge, broad bed from the manicured rhododendron-in-beauty bark bed that was there before has been a monumental task. We haven't spent one month ignoring it since we moved here nearly four years ago, and we're still slogging it. This particular bed will have the biggest visual impact of anything we have done when we get it finished, but it's the worst kind of thankless work getting it there; it's the sort of task-set people who don't like to garden think about when they say "I don't like to garden." Fortunately, I do like to garden. To that fact, add that I also love herbs and roses AND I like a good challenge, and it's ~L~ versus the garden bed. Along with some (finally! finally!) earthworms, ~L~ may be winning at last.

Rose bordering the herb gardens

pictured: salad burnet, lemon thyme, culinary thyme, chives, oregano, chocolate mint



A few from the back:


We're trying to grow some tomatoes upside down this year. We have two topsy turvies, with a roma in each. In the background you can see the sunflower house and beyond that, the net we're planning to use to grow the snap peas we have started and waiting.


The sunflower house is all volunteer this year. The cherry-eating deer literally slaughtered our sunflower starts. (We have to start them because of the slugs there in the rock wall adjacent to the sunflower patch.)


The strawberry patch is perennial now. It needs some weeding attention, but otherwise, it pretty much does its own thing now.

Happy Birthday Baby

Except I think she's officially a tween?

She chose a slumber party this year instead of the chaotic backyard affairs we normally put on. She must love her mother. G-girl planned the menu and the activities (battle rings! hiking) while Mom ran waitress duty. There was a particularly sweet moment, for me at least, when the girls asked me what I was doing.

"Clipping roses. I have made you a rose bouquet for your birthday." They responded with much giggling and twittering, a little too excited about the roses.

"That's what we're doing!" they replied in unison. "Becca decided to give me a birthday bouquet too!" They'd been in the forest gathering wildflowers while I'd been getting the roses.

The girlies had a good time while P-daddy (mostly) kept the boys occupied. After D-meister went to bed, I was grateful that G-girl invited N-man to watch the movies with them. He returned the favor by being quiet as a mouse, grateful to be included. He was so quiet, I was unaware of when he went to bed.

Tired girlies who don't look very tired at all!

The girls had a blast-- staying up until about 2 am (that's when I finally gave up hanging out with them)-- and then being awakened a wee bit too early for anyone's taste at 7 am by a recalcitrant chick that had flown the brooder. They rescued the screeching peep and then were right back at the party business of giggling and chatting. P-daddy said it sounded like we had two flocks of chickens in the house.

Around 11 am, after a huge actual-birthday breakfast of sausage, fruit salad and strawberry shortcake, we took 2/3 of our guest girlies into town for the Maritime Festival, where they got to enjoy a parade and the kiddie section until they met up with their Moms. It sure was nice of the city to throw G-girl a parade and a party for her birthday!

The "Berthday" girl and her friend!

I remember little you......

She didn't do this with her cake this year....

she still gives us this expression when we interrupt her....

Peep Peep

From one farm animal to another this week, I suppose!

It happened. I am THAT woman.

It's 92 degrees outside, on what Jesse calls a chaos cleaning day. I have enough done in my garden that I can take one day (well I did plant three herb transplants and fertilize some containers, but that's nothing) off from burning the doohickeys out of myself. Laundry it is.

(Interspersed with a Netflix on demand festival for the children of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Keeps the computer occupied so I will actually, you know, clean!)

Anyway, I was walking from the back, recycling the bathroom reading materials when I saw it out the front door. It was eating my cherry tree. Right in front of my open front door. If you know me, you know what a misdemeanor that is. I screamed. I dashed my recycling to the floor, saving one magazine for rolling it up and brandishing it as a weapon.

Picture then, if you will:
a middle-aged, overweight blonde woman in a sports bra and khaki capris,
screaming and chasing a deer down the street.

Happy Birthday N-man

We love you so much.

And

Thank you, all our dear friends, who could share the day with us. It meant a lot!

I remember little you.....

Chrysalis

As might be expected, the subsistence issues dominate my thinking. We have plenty to update on homeschool terms, on gardening terms, but everything feels so up in the air. Well, everything IS up in the air, and it's a pretty harsh damper on my writing efforts.

Still here. P-daddy has a couple of offers but they involve changing our lives pretty drastically. We're still figuring it out.

Hard decisions

Hard decisions are better than no options.

Boboli

Probably not a word you'd expect to see on my blog. I would have taken pictures, but they ate the productl.

During our run to T-town, I knew I wouldn't be cooking when we got home, so I picked up some individual boboli crusts and sauce packets from the bread store. We came in and I set to shredding mozzarella. The kids were thrilled with a "project" done so swiftly. While we make pizza fairly often, we usually have to wait for the dough to rise, etc. This time, I only had cheese and sauce to offer so the kids decided they wanted more topping.

"What would you like?" I asked, open to anything at that point.

N-man decided he wanted shredded carrots, because he'd seen that on a show. So we shredded a carrot and he AND our picky, picky daughter put that on their pizza. Then she piped up and suggested I chiffonade some spinach for their toppings. I admit that I was agog at this point, pretty surprised and fully prepared to gloat to anyone who would listen. Yet when I put goat cheese on mine, and they followed suit I about fell off my chair.

YAY! Finally! Wheeeee! Are their palates catching up?

Yes, you cynic, I know what you're thinking. Yes, you over there, I hear you!

They DID eat it, vegetables and all! Although G-girl did go on and on and on about how she was briefly worried while hers baked that she wouldn't like it after all. She is a strictly raw-vegetable kind of girl, unless it's a green bean and she is wielding a chopstick. "You can't even TASTE the vegetables! This is SO GOOD!"

So let's pretend things are perfectly normal, shall we?

Today it was an off-to-Tacoma kind of day, despite the guilt that went along with it. I spent the morning moping, cleaning and applying for jobs. Heartened at what's out there, despite it's ill-suitabilty for my lifestyle. I wish I could find a "applying for federal jobs for dummies" thang. I want to sequence into environmental lovins. If I have to work, ok. But I'd really rather not run a home daycare. Really. I will if I have to (gratefully!)!

So anyway I took our digital cable box into the comcast store today. I have had this planned for, not kidding, a year, for homeschooling / family lifestyle reasons. Now that I have an added impetus, I finally made it in. I forgot the stupid power supply, so P-daddy will have to take that in tomorrow, but I did finally do it. The boys visited Barber Jon, who they love so velly velly much, and while D-meister was disappointed that he didn't come out with "thorny hair," N-man is well satisfied with his close trim.

So crazy Mommy decided to try just.one.more.stop. Moms of littles, do you hear me? That voice that says "you can do it," despite knowing that the buzzer has gone off, the expiration date has passed, for good behaviour in your kids. We went to Trader Joes. The kids actually did quite well, despite the clear necessity for toileting in unison mid-trip. They found the stuffed dog and claimed their reward, life was good. It was only at the checkout line that things got interesting.

"No, please stop touching that. No... hey, come on now. Dude! PLEASE go stand at the front. Right there, yes, ok THANKS, man!"

From the big sister, a very stringent, "No! D-meister, N---" that was cut off by the blaring of the fire alarm. Yes, yes, the fire alarm that blasts throughout the store, scaring small children and the elderly. The system that flashes lots of pretty lights. The system that calls the fire trucks instantly. The fire alarm that can't be silenced by merely setting the same switch to off. That one. They had it muted by the time we left, but not "off."

And you know what?

I had D-meister apologize (I wasn't mean, and he was plenty aware) and the managers, neither of whom apparently had the code to shut it down, were so so nice to him. I LOVE Trader Joes and whoever decides their hiring practices.

More good news today on the economy front; a good friend has been rescued from her own impending unemployment. In her case, truly bigger and better. It can happen!

The company lost the contract

I don't want to talk about it, but I immediately got four people asking about the blog when I closed it down like a crab darting into his shell. It's just easier to do it this way. I don't know much of anything at this point.

So how does one "update" life this crazy?

Maybe not catastrophic (for us) anyway but crazy. A friend of mine just bulleted through, so I suppose I should too. In no particular order of chronology or importance:

I went blonde. Blonde. Like, really blonde and slightly reddish on the ends, as is the fashion, don't you know. Blonde, as in the first time since I was three years old that I was lighter than a muddled burgundy. I despise that it makes my skin light up-- I look so much younger, they say, and even with my behind still fat and my hair chopped short (to accommodate the perfectly expected damage from such a gigantic chemical step), I get a lot more attention. Go figure. It makes me look good. It does suit my coloring. The color worked very well and looks nice. I hate it. Ugh! I can't determine whether I despise the cut, or whether I am just so resistant to change that the stranger in the mirror makes me uncomfortable. I will leave it for now.

Twilight. Nearly everyone around me has caught the bug. I rented the movie and read her online tome, (what there is), Midnight Sun. I have to admit that it is engaging, but not one to suffer from spoilers, I read ahead and I can't buy into the whole dead-guy-still-makes-active-sperm thing. I do like her take on the Vampire as an animalian subspecies, not a soulless, dead-but-not entity. I have one friend in particular who should lay some bricks when she gets to book 3. I can't wait.

Our garden is growing. P-daddy and I have been working together nicely to shore up the homestead. He built fine, square foot gardening boxes in the front yard. We mixed fill soil from our own compost, store-bought vermiculite, sphagnum moss, and Tagro a friend of ours scooped and delivered to us for free. All told, our garden beds cost us around $72.00. I know we would have done this years ago had we known! We tied them off in grids together, and have recently put in all our starts and our things we are willing to start from seed. Typically, once there is the slightest outside activity, I abandon the computer, so this is what partially explains our absence. The other is that my camera is all funky, so even on days when I would normally have great, wordless blog entries to share, ah, shucks.

Just today, the kids started their own children's gardens. When he built our primary garden beds, P-daddy used our leftover Trex board from building the treehouse and gave each of the kids a 2 X 2 box of their own to fill as they see fit. G-girl and D-meister chose to put them in the front yard with ours, but N-man placed his in the back, close his original garden and adjacent to Presley's grave. He says this is how he will grow flowers for Presleydog. They will still have access to the side gardens, but we have to get P-daddy's yard waste* out of there.

The neighbors moved for real this time. It has really saddened me on a number of levels; we will miss the little girl terribly, we enjoyed having neighbors so close to us in age and family composition; and we would like it if they had left on a completely voluntary basis. Most of all, though, it causes me some discomfiture to benefit so greatly from their departure. They moved offshore, so they left an amazing amount of things behind, including big ticket items like a chest freezer, a 10 X 10 garden shed and a yakima roof box. They gave their swing set to a friend of ours, and they gave us all their lawn furniture, which is great for us because the winter decimated ours. The kids in particular are thrilled with the influx or yard and sports toys. P-daddy has spent the past three weekends helping them sort their last things and then rebuilding the shed over here*. It's been abject chaos, and I am working so hard to be mor egrateful than I feel guilty. My guilt makes little sense, even to me, because when we moved across country, we did the same thing. We gave away or sold things I miss to this day (like our freezer!), so it's nice for some of it to come back to our family.

Interrupting all of this was a month-long illness on my part; I finally caught the flu / pneumonia / bronchitis beast that took out half of Puget Sound. Thankfully, all our family was better when it took me down. I have never needed an inhaler in my life, and needing one, plus antibiotics, plus weeks of absolute stillness to heal this, was truly startling. The illness prevented me from doing a lot of my planned work for the garden (never got my grow lights hung or my cold frame built) and it made dealing with the suddeen windfall from next door very inconvenient, despite how welcome it was. I simply haven't been fit for anything, much less extra putting-away.

I am having issues with challenging kids, my own and my friends'. My children have been celebrating spring by being mouthy and willful, scrapping with their siblings, disputing my authority and ideas on a daily, if not hourly basis. That's hard enough to deal with from just the three of them, but the thought of adding friends has become so very untenable. With a few exceptions, most of the children I know right now are half-deaf and completely bonkers. Combine that with the extreme physicality I have noticed lately in all of them, and people are getting hurt. Being bullied by my schoolmates and abused my some family, I am very sensitive to getting "beaten up." I am not very tolerant of verbal sparring either, but I really have a very hard time drawing the line between acceptable rough-housing and its resulting misunderstandings and out-and-out bullying. I think because of my awareness of my own sensitivities, I err on the side of letting it go too far. I am fully sick of stick-fighting, whoop-screaming, rock-throwing**"fun". They're all getting hurt, actual bleeding, bruising, why-won't-you-stop-I-said-enough! hurt. I don't know how to handle it; I am not willing to do some of what I've read I should do (remove the offenders from your life-- how does one do that when ones' own child is a full participant?), and furthermore a lot of that advice doesn't apply to our lifestyle as homeschoolers. While it's not natural to get cooped up all day with 35 others of your same age and real estate, its also not natural to just be able to shove people to the curb when you feel like its just too hard, either. Community means being stuck with the same folks sometimes. The goal here is to work forward towards some form of maturity and you know, having FUN when we get together or need to babysit. I'm working on it. The other Moms are good, smart people and do see what I see, so it's all good. I am hoping it's just a rough Spring on the heels of a brutal winter.

**D-meister broke the window out of my van during one of these festivities of "fun." He had a compatriot in the rock-throwing glee, but lucky for everyone it was actually my kid who broke my window. Lucky him I actually DO think spanking is a bad idea. Witholding dessert? That is something I am perfectly comfortable dishing out, especially for 200.00. (get it? Hardy har.)

The economy, in a very direct way. My husband works for a state contractor doing pretty integrated work with the department of corrections. I can't elaborate more on that here, but I can say that both the contract (every 7 years) and the state budget were up in the air this year. Anyone who lives here knows that Washington state has a 9 billion dollar shortfall in it's budget for the forthcoming year. That's a LOT of cuts, a lot. Even if his company does win the contract (fairly likely) which was decided in secret last week, the state budget will have to be appropriate to fund the work. It's been a potentially disastrous, completely perfect storm of happenstance-- the real estate crash, the stock market decline, the state budget crisis, the unemployment rate, the contract renewal date-- that has all these factors working together to a climax to come this month. It's been wearing on us for six months now but I haven't wanted to write any of it out here. All our life savings is in this house, which of course has lost all of its equity from the last four years. If he loses his job, that's it. We start over, middle-aged with three kids and three degrees between us. No home of our own, no job.

So I do what I can, I focus on gratitude and on ways to mitigate the changes for the children, if the worst should come to pass. We have very basic goals-- keep the family together, try to stay in Washington (even better, in this house!) if we can. We will see. Again, that Dalai Llama quote: "If you have fear of some pain or suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it. If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry."

My son celebrated Earth Day

by throwing a rock through the passenger side window. Yay!

Susan Boyle Saves the World

Go here to listen to this crazy wonderful YouTube video: Susan Boyle

Aside from the rather cynical satisfaction I received from watching someone gobsmack Simon Cowell and make Piers Morgan express genuine emotion, this middle-aged, lonesome cat lady brought the PIPES. A jaded, mocking audience rose to its feet within seconds of her even beginning the song. Clearly unafraid and confident, living solely in the moment of fulfilling her dream of singing to a gigantic audience, she delivered an intense and professional delivery and then promptly walked off stage. She came, she delivered, and she left.

They called her back for her accolades, but the reminder it brought me (and judging from the instantly viral youtube of her performance, millions of others) was of sheer joy. The whole underdog thing, the pleasure the arts bring us all, the whole "something is still going right in the world" just brought me to tears. This is for everyone who has hidden their light under a bushel, anyone who has been misunderstood. I hope you'll watch it and get a lift as well.

Happy Easter

I think she's trying to match the silly expression she drew on the egg.