Family Style

We took the weekend and packed it full of family stuff. It was nice, reconnecting with just us and carrying no outside plans. We made organic blackberry applesauce, using our own blackberries. I should say that this time, all I did was turn on the stove and mash the product. The kids did all the work.

The tongue of concentration

P-daddy even acquiesced to go to IKEA-- on a Saturday-- so that was a huge deal for him. We have some interior redecorating to do so we're desperately in need of some inspiration for furniture placement for a home-based lifestyle like ours. (I am just not finding it online so if you want to spam me, feel free to do so in the comments!)

D-meister always dresses for the occasion. The perfect outfit for IKEA? Eurotrash!

They're clearly stunned by the Vibrancy

We tried to wear them out

Day whatever-it-is of being snowbound with kids and a vacationing hubby.

Determined to escape cabin fever-- which I admit to starting to feel-- I started the day with a giant batch of pancakes for everyone. We had sausage, eggs and orange juice to go with it.

We all went ice-hill sledding again, this time with some inflatable sleds I'd purchased two years ago when I thought we were going up to Hurricane Ridge. Oddly enough, the baby-pull-along sled still fits D-meister and SCREAMS downhill faster than any of the others. The child is fearless, which is a good thing considering our near miss today. With three extra sleds, P-daddy and I were sledding too. We can't aim worth a damn, let's just say, and the three year old is clueless about "off the lane!" I was in one of the inflatables and D-meister was worse than a deer in the headlights-- he was completely nonplussed at my big behind barreling down the hill towards him. As he wouldn't get out of the way and I had no control whatever of the inflatable kiddie sled on a downhill ice slick, I scooped him into my lap as I bore down on him. That motion spun us round and round, faster and faster downhill. It was FUN, even when we crashed into the cliff wall, and the D-man never relinquished his hold on his own sled.

One of us needed to go to the bathroom, so we left. The kids sojourned outside, with P-daddy whipslinging them down our own icy road while I made the royal icing. We did our gingerbread house. Sometime after that we painted glass ornaments, another craft project I've had squirreled away for a couple of years. There was more kiddie craft stuff-- even this evening, when everything is supposed to be fresh on my mind, everything is beginning to blur. Today I chose not to take pictures, mindfully deciding to not have the camera as a distraction.

The big thing for me today though, aside from the sled scoopage, was my canning project at dinner time. Every year my Grandaddy made a mustard-based barbecue sauce and gave it away at Christmas. I suppose to the uninitiated, that sounds like a really weird Christmas gift, but I have first hand knowledge of the ferocity of our friend and family's desire for the stuff. As awful as it was when he passed, Christmas really seemed odd without his sauce on everything from the collard greens to the pulled pork. The last time he made it, my then-fiance was there to help him out. When I inherited the kitchen aid mixer I used to blend it, I had to clean the sauce splatter off of it. For beekeepers, the honey gets everywhere. For us, I guess it's the BBQ sauce.

My Grandmother gave me the recipe some time ago but I haven't had the heart to make it. Grandaddy had scribbled it down on a little spiral memo pad in his distinct script with no instructions. As far as I know, he never canned it. He funneled it into leftover ketchup or mustard squeeze containers and stripped the labels off. Heavy on the vinegar, I suppose the sauce didn't really require canning(we still had some of it when we moved to Washington) but I wanted to make sure. I made ten pints of it this evening while I roasted some chicken. (Only D-meister tried it but then he lapped it up like a little guinea pig.) I'd like to send these jars home to Charleston and brighten some kitchens, and maybe remind them of some Christmases past.


From yesterday-- the igloo is finished:

Wrung out

If you've ever hand washed anything you know you can wring a piece of fabric until it is almost dry. I feel like I have been doing that to myself. It's been great, don't get me wrong, to live this much but I am so tired. I am ready for the moody blue of winter to come in and still us somewhat.

Canning more peaches this week.

Took the kids on a 5 hours jaunt to the zoo with the C-family, where we were treated to some funny sights. There's little more amusing to me than watching an ancient porcupine (at one show I think they said he was 12) lumbering down a sidewalk without his leash. They got to see a polar bear really showing off his tasty treat, as he kept bringing his bucket closer and closer to the window through which they peered. And finally-- the walrus. One of the walrus females hauled up to the viewing net where the kids were just hanging on, and she doused them completely through. After gazing at her handiwork for about thirty seconds, she filled her mouth with pool water again and just let fly. The viewing area was as wet as if a man had thrown a twenty gallon bucket of water onto the kids. It was FUNNY and I was so glad the kids were laughing as hard as we were.

We started "school" this week, which for us just means paying a bit better attention. I have been working on phonics with G-girl and lettering with the small one. N-man has been picking words out more and more. We did a bio-sheet on walruses after their zoo escapade, and have started talking morning walks to energize us for the day.

I've returned to a way of eating I really used to like, in part because it worked so well for me, but after two weeks at even it's strictest "setting," this plan is failing me. I am not sure what is going on but I don't think I am going to last. Despite mindful attentiveness at times, steady exercise for months and even months where I ate whatever I wanted, I have held steady at the same (fat) weight for the last year (it's September right?) and I am beginning to despair. Nothing I do for the good or bad seems to be changing my weight or appearance. SO I am just going to choose to eat for health and suck up the ugly, I guess.

One of those easy to report weeks

It's "back to school" for us and it's been a fun week. I can't say we went out of our way to do anything differently; we just pay different attention to our lives, so that we can remember to report it. We attended swim classes, went rock-wall climbing and worked on some story writing. We had a tie dye party and finished up the structural work on the treehouse. When we finish the week up, we'll have had guests five out of seven days. It's been busy.

This day in particular was funny because it was the middle boys leading the charge on a full-out project. It's days like this that make being an "eclectic homeschooler" really enjoyable. I knew they were picking berries. That's standard fare around here. I had no idea, initially, to what task they had set themselves.




The boys picked copious amounts of blackberries, huckleberries and strawberries. As evidenced by what they did with them, they've been paying attention to all the canning we've been doing. They even set aside a smaller bowl of berry mash and let the three year olds eat that, so the big boys could continue working unmolested.

One of my berries was THIS BIG!

Slow and controlled!

Almost done!

DEElicious!

Mr. Man also lost his second tooth. Sniff sniff. He was more interested in showing that off than displaying his handiwork.

When Niki came home to her children, she asked her son,
"How did you get berries in your hair?"

Community of mothers: full circle

This is not an easy blog entry to read. Please clink on if you are feeling sensitive today.

Today was an emotionally exhausting day. We've been prepping, full-tilt and with the not so insignificant assistance of friends, towards propping up the house and making it look like we actually live here. The retro-closet look is so out, after all. Today we had plans for another massive project and instead, after canning a batch of peaches, I chose to ferry my friend out to Silverdale.

She'd never been to Tuesday Morning. Oh no, said I, no homeschooler should do without Tuesday morning. So I gleefully took a break. My spirits improved and we did what we needed to and all was well. Until the van wouldn't start. In the hot, so hot parking lot of treeless Silverdale shopping. After about half an hour of cajoling, I managed to convince the thing it was not in alarm mode, and it started. We continued on to the waterfront park.

As we spread our blanket and the kids tottered off to play, an older Asian woman who was cradling a child called out to me. But what she said, urgently was "Mom! Mom? Mom! Can you come here?" As I approached and climbed the gazebo I called out to my friend to be on alert for the rest of the kids. The girl in her arms was much older than I first thought. Sized like a pre-schooler, she was probably eleven or twelve, maybe older. Her arms were drawn up in a pose characteristic to muscular dystrophy and the woman had her face down on her lap. She was appearing to vomit, but it wasn't her stomach. Given our own medical background I recognized she was expelling large amounts of mucuos, from both her nose and her mouth.

The woman was frantically trying to pull it out of her, away from her passages. Given what she had to work with (not much, we found out later), she was doing a fine job of keeping the child breathing. She introduced herself as Anita, caregiver to this child (she told me her name but I won't write it here) and said "Is she breathing? " She kept asking me, "Is it working? Is she breathing?" I knelt down beside the child and took a napkin I had brought from our lunch and cleared the hair from her eyes. She was seizing slightly, or having a nervous tic, as her head kept shaking slowly as if she was saying "no." I murmured, "It's OK, it will be alright. We're getting you clean."

I stood back up and told the woman she was breathing but clearly not doing well. "Is she verbal? " I asked.

"No, no, she cannot talk."

"What happened to start this?" I asked, looking over their table. There was an unopened salad, some orange soda and a swarm of yellow jackets all over the table. A bowl of melon chunks lay on the ground underneath the table.

She gestured to the bowl and said "She ate that then started to vomit. I call the father but he is not answering. I keep waiting..."

"Have you fed her melon before?" I asked her, helping to clean the girl off again, becoming more convinced this was an allergy reaction I fully dread.

"Yes, many times." To myself, I thought "That leaves the bees." They were THICK, and the girl was completely incapable of speech. At this point she thrashed a little and I could see her face. She was more lucid than she had been, and her eyes focused on me, a stranger. She began to moan and I backed up slowly.

"My name is ~L~ and I am not going to touch you. I will help you but I won't pick you up. I am helping Miss Anita to help you." She faded out again, mollified I guess, but went right back to voiding the mucous, working her damnedest to breathe. She had no hives, no visible edema, no vomit left in her.

The cell phone on the table rang and Anita talked to someone on the phone. I heard her say "No, I don't know what to do." At that point I'd had enough. This reaction was BAD. All I needed to spur me on was a conversation long ago with a National Park Ranger; he had spoken to us regarding our own daughter's allergy and how bee sting had a much worse outcome with regards to time-to-treatment.

"Have you called 911 yet?" I asked her, and she shook her head and said "I ...I...no, I cannot" and I realized her language barrier was holding her back. "Do you want me to call them? Can I call them for you?"

"Yes! Yes!" I sprinted back for my cell phone and dialed it in. We were very close to a fire station and I knew it, so I wasn't surprised to hear the sirens before I even got off the phone. The entire interaction I'd had with the woman and girl had taken less than three minutes, if that. While we waited for the first responders, I packed the woman's things and cleared their picnic. I continued to help clear the girl and watched helplessly, having done everything I could do.

I called over to my friend, who was on the blanket not five feet from the gazebo, "You might want to tell Cecily (4) and D-meister (3) what's about to happen." They'd never seen that big of a red, wailing truck that close, and it was coming to their picnic.

When the EMTs got there, I got out. I went to the park bathroom and washed my hands and only then did I get out of the-business-end-of-Mom mode. That's when I had a jolt as I realized that I hadn't used our epipen on the girl. Should I have? NO, I thought, I shouldn't have... but would they be able to get anything out of Anita? I sprinted back to the site and spoke to the medic who was taking notes from Anita. I asked him if they carried epinephrine, and he said they did. I told him what I saw, what I thought about the bees, and that the girl was nonverbal. He paled, said "I'm on it," and sprinted back to the medics who had taken her. Right about then, her Dad rolled up and I was satisfied I could release the situation.

The whole thing was a fantastic blur. Was this why my van failed me today? To put an allergy Momma right in Anita's sights? The medics were so fast, so competent, and truly responsive to the changing situation. They didn't blow me off, and as it happened, I was spot on, so they probably saved her life today. Anita came back to me later to thank me. She looked so tired, so small, but she was smiling. "Dad came. He knows, he knows what brings out her allergies," she gestured.

"The bees?"

"Oh yes," she smiled.

We went back to the park situation, my friend and I, while I struggled to stop thinking about anaphylaxis as the elephant in my room. I spoke about how grateful I was that Washington state allows their paramedics to not only administer but to carry epinephrine (they did not in SC), and how interesting it is to me that mothers just turn into everybody's mothers when it falls upon us. How frustrated I felt that the parents had not prepared that woman in any capacity to contend with a known life-threatening allergy. How grateful I was that our children can tell us what the heck is going on with them.

Maybe I shouldn't have said that last bit out loud. The hour ground forward as my friend's son Raeden started screaming from down the hill. The play structure was visible to us, but it is situated just below a little hill so we could hear him, but not see him. He lay screaming on the ground, "Mama! Mama!" as we booked it down there. He'd been stung, also, as one of these crazy swarm had crawled into his sandal. Crazy indeed-- a moving 6 year old boy on a playground does not an attractive hiding place make.

Pascha carried him back up to our blanket where we did our version of first aid on him. He got benadryl, arnica, green goo and Mama hugs. His friend N-man gave him a feel-better toy and he seemed to rally. Bee stings hurt, so it took him a while, but N-man stayed with him until he was ready to roll again. Before that could happen, however, we were approached by a couple of other mothers.

"Is he feeling better?" First Mom asked. "I was hoping to see him again, because bee stings are so hard. They hurt so much, don't they?" she directed to Raeden. Back to my friend, she said, "My little guy is allergic to nuts and so we really watch out for stuff like this. Did you give him benadryl?' Second mom came up and First Mom indicated that Second Mom's family was allergic to nuts AND bees. Basically, they refused to leave until they were assured that Raeden had been administered both painkiller and benadryl.

I sat there, ready to pack it in and leave Bee Park, but I was struck by how quickly I had shifted positions. I had been that Mom, less than an hour earlier, stepping up to make sure someone else's child made it through, survived. I felt very included, along with my friend there, in a community of mothers. Despite the Mommy wars, beyond parenting techniques, there are very basic issues that will tie us together, and you can never be sure when they will appear. But they did today, and I was grateful, so very grateful, for it.

Kitchen More Functional

A friend of mine's blog provided the last "aha!" for our kitchen drying endeavor. P-daddy and I know where we'll be hanging our wild-crafted and gardened herbs to dry now, and we're looking forward to it.

I canned two batches today, a Strawberry-lemon marmalade and a Rainier Cherry-Raspberry conserve.

The sprouts are coming along nicely. Between my new sproutmaster and a library book, I fixed the final two problems I'd been having and the sprouts are doing GREAT.


I do have a homeschooling post coming but I am currently obsessed with food production and preservation.


I am not alone. I have been getting a lot of traffic from RegularMom because of her recent awesome post "America's National Eating Disorder." Check it out.

VS the links

My current project involves making some practical, measurable changes in our lives. Putting our money where our mouths are, so to speak. Rather than going into boring details right now (well, the details probably aren't boring to the people interested in self-sufficiency), I will just list a few links that have been integral to the online portion of my immersion. Most of our home time, however, has been spent in our woodlot, in our garden and in our kitchen, where we have been practicing our skills clearing, growing and canning.

Living in the season out here in the PNW requires the utmost patience during the long blue, and fervent action during the wild flash of summer. I'm game!

http://www.foodnotlawns.com/

http://www.simpleliving.net/main/

http://www.pathtofreedom.com/

http://www.kitsilanofarms.com/

http://www.azurestandard.com

http://www.treehugger.com

https://wholesale.frontiercoop.com/whslpubl/FrontierWholesaleCatalog.pdf

First Strike! Strawberries!

1/2 flat of organic, local strawberries: 11.95

1 bag of leftover pectin from last year: I forget so it's free

Making 3 quarts of strawberry jam and 3 quarts of preserves with your 8 year old girlie: priceless


{PS: "Can I lick that?" was the happy refrain of the afternoon!}


(no pix because of forgetting to pass broken camera along to the Cesco for repair: expensive!!!)


This is from 2004 when we went strawberry picking in SC. Another bonus to this post: cute, old pictures. She is three here-- one month to go before her birthday.

My Grandaddy's Kitchen

I have been thinking about him so much lately. So, so much.

Here's his kitchen:

First Day of Autumn

Yesterday, that is. Despite feeling like Washington forgot to have a summer, I took the weekend to celebrate the onset of my favorite season accordingly.

Friday night I gleaned the blackberries I could find from our own thicket. It was dusk by the time I got out there, and the blackberries were the same color as the twilight shadow. I am sure I missed a few. Nonetheless, I spent Saturday morning in the kitchen. We made blackberry muffins, lemon squares and pancakes. That afternoon, Paul picked up a crate of apples and I made a huge deep dish apple pie. Sunday, I canned apple butter. We still have about a dozen apples left. I can't decide whether to use them or let the kids have them. They've eaten at least three a piece since Saturday.

Learning how to can has brought an unexpected benefit. If she sees me take food out of the waterbath canner, G will eat it. She despises cinnamon and refused to eat the apple pie, despite it's sugary goodness. The apple butter however, she tore into, and swears it is the best thing ever. Same apples, same seasoning, NO sugar. Go figure.

Of all the peaches I canned, I only have 4 quarts left.

I need to get a steam canner! She'll eat like a normal person then!

P-Daddy and the rockin' out day

Something I left out of my big long post about the G-victory hike was that during the last half of it at least, I couldn't put D down. The D-meister is not a small child for his age. He's the one who looks skinny but is made out of something dense, like industrial grade rubber. Anyway, he was hot, scared, cranky and tired during the bushwhacking and the easiest thing to do (believe me at that point, it was) was to nurse him while I walked. This put an unbelievable strain on my back, as I had to hold him at waist level, while stepping over brush and fallen trees, crawling through brambles and dodging spider webs.

Fast forward to a sore Saturday, but an even more strained Sunday evening after working 8 hours on my feet cooking salmon for the masses. By Sunday night my back was crying, I wasn't moving too fast and I was kind of dreading Monday morning. I would have an extra baby during swimclass while Schnaygirl went to a very important appointment. Problem? Both toddler boys know and love the pool and for the first time for Schnaybaby, wouldn't be in it. We'd gone just Friday night, so I knew D would be a pain. The thought of restraining two active toddlers on a pool deck while the big ones attended class was not appealing. It was a close second in potential suckdom, though, to waiting out in the entrance to the pool building. The foyer is a 14 x 14 glass box with one long, wooden, slatted bench and a drink machine. It has two exterior doors, two doors into the locker rooms and one leading directly to the pool. NOT A TODDLER FRIENDLY PLACE.

Anyway, last night P-Daddy decided to stay home and he took the kids to swim while I stayed with the energy cousins. By the time he got home, Schnaygirl was back. He said "why don't you take my car to get an oil change...and then maybe go for coffee? I'll keep Schnaybaby here."

oh

my

god

Do you think he had to twist our arms?

It gets better. While we were gone, strolling GH waterfront and sampling tastiness of all sorts, P-Daddy was picking blackberries and making jam. He tired the kids out and even did the dishes. after he fed them all lunch.

He rocks. He really does.