August 26th, 2010
Chicken Days of Summer
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.
August 2nd, 2010
Plenty
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.
July 12th, 2010
I am a Super Fun Mother
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!).
May 27th, 2010
What. A. Bummer.
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.
April 20th, 2010
Actual Quote from my Only Son
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.
April 13th, 2010
Things We Think We Know
Do you know the words to “Teddy Bears’ Picnic”? I thought I did. I don’t know what inspired me to launch into this particular song tonight at bedtime, but it seemed like a good idea. I thought the kids would like it, and even though I haven’t sung it in YEARS, I felt confident heading into the interlude. And then…
Watch them wash their underwear! Those little Teddy Bears are having a wonderful time tonight! See them wash their underwear! As they picnic on their holiday!
My children dissolved in laughter. ”Mom! That doesn’t make any sense! Why are they washing their underwear on a picnic?”
I didn’t know. But weren’t those the words? Hadn’t I sung them all my childhood? My hippy, hippy childhood where we learn things like this song and all the verses to “Riding in my Car” plus everyone sang “Octopus’ Garden” even before seeing it on Muppet Show? (As a side note, the last time I remembered singing these songs was around a huge bonfire out in a field at a sing-along.)
I looked it up. There is no washing of underwear at the picnic. It is “Watch them, take them unawares”. Who knew?
April 5th, 2010
I want to garden and yet…
It’s too rainy.
I started turning soil over back in Mid March before the torrential rains set in. I managed to carve out 6 sections in a different layout than last year. This is so that I can “rotate” crops without really thinking about it too much. I am also trying to account for a big walnut tree that will leaf out sometime in May and start to create too much shade for most seeds to germinate.
I have such a little tiny space to garden in, but I jealously guard every inch of it. I laugh about this space too. In my mind, the first year I gardened here was to be the last, as I intended to have a new garden shed in this spot “within the year”. Three years later I am still turning the soil, with no shed nor even possible shed in sight.
The kids have high hopes for what they will plant. Zephyr wants carrots (hard!), beets (easy!), and bless his soul, brussel sprouts. I hope those don’t get demolished by aphids. I had better put in my order for beneficial nematodes right now!
Francis wants lettuce, lemon cucumbers and sugar snap peas. The peas are in on the trellis you see on the back. The boat owner is not so sure of me fencing him in, but his kid likes the sweet peas as much as mine do, so I figured it would be okay.
I’m growing all the stuff that the rest of the family SHOULD eat, but maybe no one would actually choose to eat: kale, spinach, swiss chard, and various squash family things. Yes, I am going to pack it all in there. Just watch me. And then when it is finally sunny out, I will poke tomatoes in too. Ha!
I am grateful that the kids are excited about the garden. I am SOOOOO grateful that they actually eat vegetables. My parents have this amazing thing called a TV, (that’s short for television), and it projects stories, like in moving pictures! And there is sound too! Anyway, while I was out visiting, I watched this program called “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” and there was this super depressing part where he visited a 1st grade classroom and showed kids various vegetables and they didn’t know the names to ANY of them. It was the saddest thing I have ever seen. I was so depressed after that, even though I know that my own children, even the proto-lingual one, know the names to most all of their vegetables, maybe except the kohlorabi.
April 2nd, 2010
Whole Lotta Rain
It is suppose to rain…. a lot…. this week. The weather report icons line up in a nice, uniform row. Each one shows a cloud and rain. For fun, they threw in some lightening bolts. I hope we get some lightening and thunder. That would mix things up.
After making it through one day of solid rain though, I wonder how I am going to “exercise” the kids. I know this is silly, but I am fairly convinced that children need a good solid run each day to keep them from freaking out…or maybe that is just me. Yes, I do think of them like dogs. Yes, I do like to “exercise the baby” just in case.
Thinking that rain is not a big deal, I took Zephyr and Inez on a shortish walk to a local bakery (about a mile). By the time we made it there, we were pants-soaking, thigh-chilling wet. It sucked. We’re going to have to come up with some way to get out of the house this week without getting drowned. Wish me luck.
All smiles at the beginning of the walk.
March 16th, 2010
Francis… en Espanol!
Francis wrote this great essay for school. I was so proud of her, I thought I would put it here:
En mi familia plantamos un jardin. Todos en mi familia tiene un cuadrado para plantar. En mi cuadrado yo quiero plantar calabazas, espinacas y muchos flores. Mi hermano quiere plantar zanahorias y melocotones. Mi mama quiere plantar lechuga y guisantes. Mi papa quiere plantar los mismos cosas que mi mama.