ingrid

I like the phrase “dog days of summer”.  I realize that it is talking about the dog star being visible in the night sky and has little to do with actual dogs, but it still makes me think of dogs, lying under a tree in the shade panting.  It makes me think of my childhood and this obnoxious but lovable dog we had named Bilbo.

We have chicken days of summer around here.  I tired of stinky chicks in the house after a whole week.  That might be a world record actually.  The baby girls were banished to the henhouse last night.  I felt pretty proud of myself in this respect.  I rigged up a nice little place where the chicks can “hang with the big girls” without being pecked or smashed to death by the big girls.  You have to introduce any new members to the flock with care and consideration; that goes double for the little ones.  I had read enough horror stories on on-line chicken blogs, (yes, it is not just me), about baby chicks being killed by adult hens.  Other blogs suggested that new members could be introduced by the “seen but not touched” method.  Usually this would be by putting the new birds in caged off area where the established hens can get used to seeing the new birds for a while.  I think I may have accomplished this with the chicks by fencing them in above the nesting boxes in my storage place.

The babies still need warmth at night, so I ran a light out to the henhouse using my NEW outdoor plug.  I know that most people probably have one at their house and TAKE IT FOR GRANTED, but I do not.  We have not had anywhere to plug anything in to for the last 5 years.  Finally with the bathroom remodel I had them stick a plug through to the outside and now I have all this freedom to plug shit in!  How should I waste electricity first?  The possibilities are endless!  (I am thinking bouncy house!)

Unfortunately this is going to be a source of worry for me.  I wish I weren’t like this, but I imagine it will be a few nights before I can sleep without worrying about burning the henhouse down.  When I first got a running fountain outside I worried about raccoons getting in it for two nights.  What would they do there and why did that matter?  I don’t know, but I worried about it.

Besides chicken matters, little is going on these days.  After a summer jam-packed with fun and running around, my children seem to want to go nowhere and do nothing.  For the second day in a row I offered fun options, including requisite bribery.  They didn’t take it…. even for a pastry at the Italian bakery, even for a trip to the fountain downtown, even for a stop at the library.  What do they want to do?  Stay home.  Play with legos.  Dress up their animals (and sister) and pretend they are going to a wedding.

I’ve been vaguely frustrated with this because I am go-go-go!  I want to get out to Ikea and buy a new bookshelf for Francis’ room, hop down to Powell’s and pick up Suzanne Collin’s Mockingjay, (can’t wait to read that one!), get the right sized screws to finish mounting hardware in the bathroom, and we are all out of milk so we need to grocery shop.

But I am trying to go with the flow, and the flow seems to be a trickle, so I need to be hip to that.  I am trying to not push it so much, stay quiet and enjoy this lovely time of peaceful play.

2 Comments | In: Current musings, My super freakin' cute kids, chickens, family | | #

It’s good to remember that for as many times as everything goes wrong and the day is a total mess, sometimes everything goes wrong and the world is unperturbedly perfect.

We decided to go berry picking on Sunday.  I had been out there earlier in the week and had affirmed that there were still berries to be found.  I was sure that there would be even more by the weekend as all the red marionberries would have ripened up.  Wrong.  We got out there and the fields were picked clean.  I had never really contemplated the phrase “slim pickings”, but that is what we found row after row after row.

You had to keep moving to find the smallest marionberry.  You also had to look all the difficult places—underneath, behind big thorns, down low on the ground.  In short, it sucked.

But still it was beautiful.  The farm was empty.  The island (Sauvie) was quiet.  The sun was preparing to tip over the edge of the earth, the birds were swooping through the air, and there was a sweet and light breeze making everything young and fresh.  Not many berries, but it sure was great being out there.

The kids got tired of picking fairly quickly so I sent them off down a row to a field beyond.  Inez toddled after them for all she was worth.  They found a barkdust pile and some ripe blueberries and were happy.  Brad and I could pick and chat quietly and we were happy.

This is of course when disaster struck.  Now that I think about it, it looks like the first stages of disaster are captured in this photo!  Inez decided to take off her diaper which was dirty.  Not being able to remove her overalls properly in order to escape the diaper, she manages to wrap clothing and diaper and sandal up in a horrible net of shit.  And then she stepped in it.  It is what our family likes to call a “shitastrophe”.  The older kids started screaming.  I come running (although slowly, I admit).  We didn’t bring any diapers with us as we like to live on the edge.

I try to extract the child from her excrement and then try to wash her up by dumping full water bottles over her backside.  Unfortunately for her they were ice water.  (That’ll teach her to excrete!).  I put her shirt back on her, wash up my hands over and over again, and get back to berry picking.  The kids amuse themselves throwing barkdust and flowers at us.  We tolerate it reasonably well.

After we quit tolerating it and both yell at them for throwing bark in the berries, they run off out of view to the next field and Brad and I consider chucking it in.  We have a pants-less baby, a nasty diaper, poor picking conditions, and questionably clean hands.  I call for the older kids.  No kids.  I call again.  Nope.  I decide that I need to go find them.  After wandering across a field of blueberries, I see a side field that looks promising.  Francis and Zephyr are standing in it, shoveling handfuls of thornless blackberries into their mouths.  The field is SO AMAZINGLY FULL OF BERRIES.  There are tons.  I send Francis back to fetch Brad and in the next 20 minutes we pick more than we had picked in the previous hour.  We fill bucket after bucket after bucket.  It is awesome.

Back at the farm stand, we pay for our berries, use soap and hot water on our hands, and improvise a diaper out of a sunhat and a clean onesie.  (Luckily we do find a clean diaper wrap in the car, and when you have one of those, you can shove just about anything in it and make it work.  Once at a movie, I removed my camisole from under my sweater and crammed that into a diaper wrap to get the kid through the next hour.)

Sometimes the world is great.  We’re dirty, we’re tired, but we have plenty berries, plenty joy.

9 Comments | In: My super freakin' cute kids, family, food | | #

My sister Anne and I share many interests; composting, growing things, running (sometimes), art and fabric, weird exhibitions of language and learning, and bitching about why people can’t get their shit together.  For me, perhaps one of the most fun and surprising of our shared interests is our enthusiasm for eating…. most anything.  My most recent trip to Kobe was a great opportunity to indulge our shared love of good and pretty simple food.

When I first met up with Anne right off the plane, she had a long list of “things we would eat”.  Whereas many travelers might arrange their week around things to see, our week was shaping up to incorporate “the best sushi in this little shop”, “okonomiyaki that this old woman makes near my house”, and food on sticks in China town and at a little alley yakatori.

First stop after dropping off my wet luggage at her place was okonomiyaki, a fried pancake of egg & vegetables topped with sauciness.  I think they usually have meat in them, but Anne has hers “like the monks”, which essentially means vegetarian.  It was full of those long stringy mushrooms which I think would have been better if they were of a larger, less ropey variety.  Anne eschews meat, but admits she is a sucker for mayonnaise, an ingredient I have something of a weakness for to.  The whole thing was great!  The shop that she took me to was charming—an old woman worked over a grill in front of us so we were able to watch her creation while drinking super cold beers.  Anne kept up a comfortable banter in Japanese with the owners and I felt like a bit of a superstar to get to be eating okonomiyaki in a tiny hole-in-the-wall in Japan.

4 Comments | In: family, food, on the road again | | #

Actually I don’t always feel that way and neither do my kids, but today it is all stars for me.  We are taking off on our annual trip to Ashland to “get culture”, and I figured that as I hate driving anyway, how about taking the train the first leg to Eugene and letting Brad schlep his way down the freeway in the car tomorrow after work?  Viola!  Kids are beside themselves with happiness.  Now all I have to do is get ready for a big trip a day earlier, but hey— I also get to get out of here a day earlier!  And I figure this might be a bit like wedding planning—-if you give yourselves 2 years for planning, you are seriously going to RUIN that 2 years.  Better to get it all over with.

So off we go to Ashland via Amtrak Cascades.  We’re pulling into Eugene and my sister’s house at about 9 pm tonight.  If I am really organized, the kids will have a nutritious picnic dinner on the train.  If I am not, $6 corndogs in the dining car everyone!  Either way, I am about breaking my arm patting myself on the back.

Have a great week!  I’ll be back next Monday or so with all new tales to tell (and a wrap up on Japan—-sorry!).

4 Comments | In: My super freakin' cute kids, The Arts, family, on the road again | | #

On the Shin Kobe Ropeway

You know how sometimes you have to ditch the husband and kids and just take off for foreign countries?  Well, that is how awesome I am.

I’m in Kobe Japan with my sister Anne… I traveled all by myself and it is awesome.  Anne has been here for a year and a half and I knew I needed to get over to see her life while she was still living it in this locale.  This was the right time to go, while the kids didn’t have much going on and could safely be sequestered at their grandparents’ houses (Thanks Mom and Dad & Dennis and Sue!).  I have had some pangs of guilt, but not many when I think of them having the time of their lives being all spoiled and entertained in the country.  Inez is probably being licked by a dog right now.  Scratch that.  It’s 1 am Oregon time, so that baby had better be sleeping!

Anyway, I don’t intend to be updating this blog much while I am here, but I did want to let people know where I am.  Eating awesome food!  Chatting non-stop with my little sister!  Going running with Kobe Hash Hound Harriers!  In Freakin’ Japan!

In the herb gardens at the top of the rope way

7 Comments | In: Awesome!, family, on the road again | | #

Okay, so this is Parmeter.net, so maybe it is a bit self-serving to devote a blog entry to this, but I do just need to tell you all about how talented my uncle is (and YOUR uncle is if I have an adequate grasp of the bulk of my readership).  Yes, Rick Parmeter is good at what he does, and as I live in a house that has millions of problems needing to be solved with finesse and cleverness, I am a big fan of a craftsman who can solve them.  He thinks through things in a very interesting way that manages to be thorough and yet fluid, practical and yet still creative.  He is picky with details and yet open to different ways to solve problems.  Here is the reading nook that he created under our stairs in the basement:

Where once there was chaos and cardboard boxes stacked in dusty piles, now there is something pretty…. with storage space!  Victory!  We spend a lot of time here now.

Another Uncle Rick creation is poised and ready to go.  The bathroom isn’t quite done yet, but the cabinets for it sit in the dining room, preparing themselves to launch into their new and long-lived service.  (They have sat in a corner of our dining room for over a year because we weren’t really ready to start the actual remodel.)  Will I miss them from that corner?  Not really.

Next up is the stairs to the basement.  Everything is so nice down there, but the entryway is not.  It hasn’t helped that we knew we would replace them and sort of purposely abused them.  (“Don’t bother putting down that paint drop cloth!”  ”Don’t worry about the stairs!  They can be ripped up!”).  They look really bad next to the daybed nook, but Rick is on it!  Here is a view I will not miss:

Can’t wait to show you what he’ll come up with!

6 Comments | In: Awesome!, family, projects | | #

I’ve always prided myself on the ability to quickly assess situations and judge whether it is a real emergency or not.  My background in social services and teaching has further assisted me in those frenzied moments as a parent, ostensibly “the one in charge”, when I have to decide if we are grabbing a big cloth to mop up the blood or grabbing the big cloth AND racing to the emergency room.  I have found that I am a master at keeping my mouth shut at those times, and rather than gasping and screaming, “Oh my Jesus!” I am able to remain calm and neutral as I inspect the head wound.  Although I am good at these things, I have also learned that I tend to under-react.  I am quick to say, “s/he will be FINE!” and “Buck up kiddo!” and slow to make the doctor’s appointment.

This last week Francis got poison oak…. badly.  The kids like to play in a pretty spot of the woods at my parents’ house, right on the edge of our property and the neighbors’.  Unfortunately, it is full of the stuff.  I did see it, but as I seem to be immune from the stuff, it didn’t occur to me that it could hurt any of us.  Wrong.

On Monday Francis had a rash on her face.  I didn’t immediately think of how we had been through poison oak.  By Tuesday it itched.  Her school sent her home.  While on a shopping trip at New Seasons, a nice man instantly diagnosed her rash in the shampoo aisle.  ”Of course!” I thought, and bought the product he suggested (Tecnu).

I brought her back to school Wednesday with some calamine lotion slapped on there.  The school was not hearing of it.  They wanted her to go to a doctor.  They weren’t going to let her come back to class until she brought a note.  ”What?!  For poison oak?  That is ridiculous!” I said, muttering under my breath how this would never happen in the county.  Haven’t these silly city people ever seen a rash from poison oak?  They wanted to know how I knew it was poison oak.  They didn’t like my answer much.  (I guess growing up in Sheridan does not grant you medical credentials, nor does chatting with a nice guy in the shampoo aisle.)  So we went to the doctor.

Good thing we did.  Francis’s rash got worse throughout the day.  By the afternoon her eye was swollen shut.  An icky crust formed over the rash which the doctor diagnosed as a secondary staph infection.  Yuck.  Prescriptions ensued.  The good news is that she is feeling better and was allowed to return to school.  The bad news is that maybe tomorrow morning it will be her other eye.

6 Comments | In: How strange, My super freakin' cute kids, family | | #

Hey Folks,

So my camera is broken and our house is ripped apart for a bathroom remodel.  (Did you ever think about how all the pipes from all over the house all need to get to the bathroom?  I didn’t.)  Life is a bit chaotic right now, not bad—- just chaotic.  We have no dining room table, and we stupidly gave away the highchair last week because it seemed we were done with it.  Now we all sit around the kid table—you know, like the one a foot and a half off the floor?  Brad and I sit on stepping stools.  It is ridiculous.

Anyway, a friend just sent a picture he took of our family at Easter.  It’s nice and we look calm and peaceful so I thought I would share…

3 Comments | In: family | | #

I have a babysitter for a few hours every Friday.  This is a life-saver.  Even when I don’t know what I am going to do with myself, I treasure those short hours of solitude where I can just be firmly in my own head, not listening to anyone, not talking to anyone, and not needing to consider anyone’s needs except my own.

My own needs at this juncture in my life are enough to balance.  I have come to accept that I actually need a lot… and I am not going to get it all at once, (or I hate to admit, maybe not at all!).  I have accepted this, but I am well aware that if I am going to get anything at all,  I had better prioritize.  Here is what I have figured out that I need for optimum happiness:

• solitude
• feeling independent
• being artistic
• being intellectual
• exercise
• a house that may not be clean but is at least not disgusting
• spiritual time to contemplate the Divine
• time to space out, sit in a cafe and read the newspaper or a magazine
• accomplishing some tasks that are either necessary or make life easier

Can I fit this all in three hours once a week?  Nope.  It is a balancing act, this motherhood thing.  I want to do an art project, but my body is screaming for exercise.  I want to read my book, but there is grocery shopping that must be done.  I want to stay home and clean but the kids are there with the babysitter.  I can’t have it all.

Today I went for independence and accomplishing tasks.  I did some light birthday present shopping, had a double latte AND attempted to read Ulysses, but my mind was completely wandering and I totally could not understand it.  So much for intellectualism!  On a whim, I hopped out of the coffeeshop and decided to go take a jaunt on the Wildwood Trail above Lower Mclaey Park.

Oh lovely, lovely, lovely.  I don’t know about you, but there are some things in my life that are so transcendent.  Singing in gospel choir is one of them for me, as is watching theater.  Sitting by running water is another, as is listening to early morning bird song and smelling the midsummer wild roses in bloom.  Wildwood Park is right smack-dab in the middle of Portland.  From some stretches you can hear the work on the waterfront and the cars zooming through downtown and St Helen’s Road, but from other places you can hear… nothing.  Nothing except the birds.  This morning I walked for a few hours, letting my mind go blank, dreaming of things, (specifically, how to hike the Pacific Crest Trail with kids and how I might get over to Japan this year to see my sister Anne).  Half way through this hike, I felt my chest lighten, my brain lift out of my head, my breathing become slow.  In short, I was really, really happy.

I am not an unhappy person, but I think a lot about holding on to happiness.  Why is it that sometimes we are so joyful and full of life, and then another day things seem flat?  It isn’t what is happening to us; somedays nothing at all happens and I feel so great.  Others, not so much.  I wonder though how to get back there to the happy place.  Why can’t I live there all the time?

I know that we hear this all the time, but we human creatures NEED nature.  We need the woods.  I returned home peaceful, tired, ready to meet my little ones and make some grilled cheese sandwiches.  Recharged.  Ready for another week.

3 Comments | In: Current musings, Environment, family | | #

Mom, you are totally screwing up again and leaving diapers in the toilet!

That is absolutely what I say to myself when I see that I have not shaken, rinsed, and wrung a dirty cloth diaper out but rather left it in the toilet for “later”.  ”Later” is unfortunately when I really, really need to use the bathroom.  Yes, welcome to my world.

3 Comments | In: My super freakin' cute kids, family | | #