$180 worth of groceries (yes, I bought expensive cheese AND chocolate covered almonds):
$20 Chair from a Rummage Sale!
Nope, I didn’t take a picture. I was too freaked out about biting it while riding the 2 miles home. Hey, I made it! And check out my awesome chair!
Every now and then one of the kids nabs my camera and takes pictures that I don’t find until later. Often the pictures are fairly poor quality. Often the total number is COPIOUS (like in the hundreds). Sometimes the photos are also sort of interesting.
Here is what I found this week:
I wish the army guys luck.
This is the tent in question
WHERE IS THE TENT?
Ideas and suggestions are appreciated.
I bet you are all DYING to find out what is up with the chickens these days! It is actually pretty quiet around here. With the good weather, chickens quit dying and started taking it easy. They spend a good portion of each day stretched out in the sun, wings all askew, looking sort of dead. In reality they are resting, which I love (but you all know how I feel about resting). It strikes me as funny that animals nap. I don’t know why, but when I first noticed that the chickens seem to take a nap at exactly the same time each day when I am tired, I just felt so close to them.
The “chicks” are looking all grown up now. I suspect that one of them might be laying, but I can’t tell whom as I also re-acquired a big blonde Orpington that I had previously chicken-sat. Remember Fattycakes? Now I will live to regret naming her such because my friend Pam asked me to take her after losing her (Pam’s) other remaining chicken. Chickens don’t like to be alone. They get physically sick. Isn’t that interesting? Birds of a feather flock together….and if they don’t then they die! Well, maybe they don’t die, but they do get depressed. A chicken will never be a Uni-bomber. Take that tidbit and tuck it away for your next cocktail party.
It has been a bit of a struggle getting all the hens to roost on the roosts at night. This is a dumb problem, but not unique to this flock. It is always hard to bring in new chickens, especially young ones, and get them to cozy up next to big hens who peck them in the head. My henhouse is relatively large, but the roosts are sort of crowded, so the hens have little choice but to cuddle together. The smaller picked on chickens don’t have much of a place to go to get away from their tormenters (sort of like my high school actually), so they end up huddling on the edge of the nesting boxes or in the actual nesting box. And that makes for a big poopy mess.
After a couple weeks of me moving chickens nightly, they are starting to mostly end up on the roosts at night, which is a good thing as it gets tiring dragging chickens out of the nesting boxes while they fight me beak and wing. I took this photo at night while they were sleeping:
It is still interesting to me how the relationships are obvious in the company these birds keep. They are one flock, but they spend most of the days next to the same birds. They have bird “friends” or “sisters” or something, and you can see it even on the roost. From the bottom left- Sunflake, Lily, Pumpkin Pie (5 month old pullets, raised together), middle roost by herself- Fattycakes (1-2 year old, added to flock), top left- Hasty (2 year old, added to flock with 3 other chickens who are now deceased), Rosey, Agnes (4 year old, original chickens), Lyra, Starlight, Moonshine (1 year olds, raised together).
I think that is interesting. But I guess that is why I keep chickens, right?
And all my kids are in bed.
It’s true. I am very good at putting kids to sleep. I believe in it. Here are my techniques and how I put them into play today:
1) Tire them out. Ride the children all over heck and gone even if you have no particular destination. We just got one of those cool cargo long-bikes, so we took it out for a spin today. We decided to go to St Johns to check out their sidewalk sales. It wasn’t a real destination—more just a place to go that was more than 6 miles away.
Here is our bike! I have wanted one of these for so long. It is essentially just an elongated bike where you can haul heavy cargo over the back wheel. Apparently these were designed for less developed nations where people might need to haul coffee or other crops.
We will use it to haul kids. I rode it home from SE Portland with all three on the back, but that wasn’t really such a desirable ride. There was a little fish-tailing and the weight! The weight! It is best with just the youngest two, but I love the flexibility of being able to throw anyone on there. I could probably toss Brad one there too. The bike bags extend so I could even figure out how to strap my guitar on. I think I will try it tomorrow morning for church.
Anyway, we rode to St Johns. Francis rode her own bike. She is really good at it now. Zephyr is up on his own bike too, but not as predictable in traffic. It’s nice to put him on the back of the bike.
2) Take regular naps and quiet time. If you teach your kids when it is time to go and when it is time to chill, they are better able to make those transitions throughout the day. Francis is 8, but still goes to a 2 hour quiet time each day during the summer. She is in her room playing, reading or sleeping (which she rarely does). I don’t care if she is bored. I think boredom is good for you. She does really creative things during this time. Plus during this time I read and nap. I am important to this family, and I need A LOT of sleep. In order to make sure no one gets beaten, I must get my rest.
3) Take the kids to dinner REALLY early. Brad and I are great believers in eating early. If you eat early, kids then feel the next natural thing to do is to go to bed, so we try to start thinking about eating at 4pm. No really. On the weekend, when Brad is around, if we are going out to dinner, we start out walking there around 4pm. Today we went to a Gospel choir picnic at 3:45pm. It was awesome.
Those ladies (and men) can sure cook. And they love to eat and visit in a very low-key way that is quite satisfying.
4) Provide necessary intellectual and natural world stimulation. Seek it out if necessary. Someone in my choir said that she thought she saw a dead coyote in an empty lot alongside MLK, so we went to find it. Ahhhh nature!
Yeah, that is weird, I agree. What is a coyote doing in the middle of the city? The kids were fascinated; Brad was disgusted and refused to get out of the car, even though I begged him to help us go find it. I am not sure that I have ever seen a dead coyote even in the country (not counting taxidermy). This was pretty interesting.
5) Put them to bed 30 to 45 minutes before you might hope that they would be asleep. (And please, don’t be a dumby and put your baby to bed at 10 or 11pm. It is not that your kid “isn’t a sleeper”. I hate that shit. It is that you have not figured it out and do not have the humility to go to the freaking library and get a parenting book or to ask your parents how they put their kids to bed. And if you have asked your parents but you are still putting your kid to bed at 10pm or worse, letting them fuss and cry on your shoulder until they fall asleep while everyone watches you wondering WHY THE HELL YOU ARE TORTURING YOUR BABY, WHY THE HELL YOU ARE TORTURING THE ADULTS IN THE ROOM, then you don’t want to listen to the answer. And why is that? How much resolve do you have as a parent? Some? None? Put them in there. Leave them alone. Don’t worry about what they do after that, i.e, screaming, being stupid, crying, whining. They are in bed, they are safe , they are developing healthy sleep habits that will assist their physical and mental health their ENTIRE LIFE and they will eventually fall asleep. (Reference Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth).
Woa. Sorry. I started ranting there. It’s just that kids not getting the sleep they need REALLY, really bothers me. I think it is because I need so much sleep, and because I am so saddened when dealing with young people with social problems, addiction issues, depression, sickness, etc…. they all have sleep disturbances too. So put your kids to bed. Please.
This summer thing is working out just how I had hoped it would. At the beginning of the summer, I sat down with the kids to brainstorm what they wanted to do. In reality I wanted to lay down the law (and present what they wanted to do as the carrot). They wanted visits to grandparents, bike rides in the neighborhood, playing in the sprinkler, popsicles and berry picking. I want a quiet time every day where I can nap or read. All has gone according to my (evil) plan.
Mid June we went out to my parents’ place in Sheridan. The weather was only so-so summery. It took a long time to warm up in Sheridan, which is even cooler than Portland.
As it was, the plan to “sleep out on the deck” with my childhood friend Maria became a midnight “haul the kids in out of the rain”. My parents have two dogs who love nothing better than barking their heads off every night. Mom and Dad don’t mind. They claim to not hear a thing, which I would attribute to hearing loss if there weren’t complaints of city noise when they stay in town. Anyway, midway through our sleep out on the porch adventure, I heard strange scratching noises on the scaffolding underneath the deck. My dad had been pouring a new footing that day and had beams strung under where we were sleeping. The dogs were freaking out, and it quickly became clear that SOMETHING was hanging out down there. I jumped up and yelled over the edge and the unknown lurker tumbled down through the hop trellis, taking half the scaffolding with him (or her). At that point, I was thoroughly freaked. Although I knew rationally that a raccoon is not going to climb back up the deck and into bed with me, I felt vulnerable with all those kids strewn all over the deck. And I guess I am afraid of raccoons after seeing them go after chickens so enthusiastically. I was actively talking myself out of being scared of a raccoon when it began to rain steadily. Thank you RAIN! Now I could wake up my friend and tell her we needed to move inside without sounding like a scaredy cat city girl! Yes!
Maria and I managed to move 4 sleeping children into the house without waking a single one. Actually I am not sure that Maria was awake herself.
In the morning, this one slept on:
My dad is amused by us. I love how relaxed my parents are about their hospitality. Some people fuss over you when you come to stay, and in their fuss, make you incredibly uncomfortable. I once stayed somewhere where the parents wanted to give ME their bed, which embarrassed me to no end. My parents just figure that people can find some nook or cranny where they can be comfortable, and because they’ve been so flexible with their views, over the years I have brought scores of people out to crash on the floor. Mom and Dad just flow along with it.
The next day it was a visit to a chicken breeding farm out in Sheridan. Even though this farm had my same town as the address, it was so far in the hills that it took nearly half an hour to get there. Once there though, the rewards were great! I learned a lot from the farmers. They were incredibly generous hosts and we saw some gorgeous birds.
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In the afternoon we were off to Sheridan Days parade, which is sort of weirdly charming and strange at the same time. It is mostly emergency vehicles with their sirens on and protestant church groups angling for more fish in a small pond, attempting to show you how much fun their youth groups are having by sitting in pick up beds singing along the parade route. When I was a kid there were big log trucks with the biggest tree they had cut down that year, but those are mostly gone now. Remaining are bagpipe groups and a smattering of rodeo queens from small towns, plus some freaky clowns from the coast and this really strange group of old dudes from Lincoln City who dress like devils, pull women out of the crowd, take them to their “float”, put them in a stockade and stamp “SEXY” on their cheeks. I am not kidding. They are called the “Red Devils” and I suppose they are a social group of some sort, (but I do NOT want to know what they do for fun at their secret meetings because their public outings already give me a heart attack). Half my life I have been afraid of the Red Devils. The other half I have been pissed at them. Perhaps for this reason, I have never been picked by them. They are not dumb, and surely they know to avoid the woman yelling “sexists!”. Maria was picked though, and she, being a better sport than I, allowed a devil to escort her to where she was branded “sexy”. He was polite about it, but I couldn’t help but be worried about her as she disappeared around the corner with the Devils. For Maria’s part, I figure she knows she is sexy. She is just allowing the Red Devil the mistaken pleasure of thinking it was somehow his discovery.
I need to not be so ernest, but that is a life long struggle for me.
The sun set on much candy gathering, and as you know, I am a gatherer. I have taught my children my unique skill set.
Too bad you can’t make this crap into jam.
It was a terrible time. Children were coated in dust, choking on it actually. The country had been thrown into a deep depression and families slowly loaded all their belongings on an old pick up truck and headed out to pick fruit in Califor—-
Oh wait. This was last week on Sauvie Island. Pickin’ strawberries. It’s a wonderful life.
My grandmother passed on last week, and the kids’ art teacher also left this world, and as with all deaths, it has made me introspective. I have all these thoughts about life that seem so profound (but really aren’t). I found myself in front of the computer, late at night, tears running down my face looking at pictures of the kids. ”It’s just like that!” I was thinking like a stoned philosopher. ”One day we’re little kids AND THEN WE DIE!”. Sunrise sunset. Or something like that.
Anyway, I am sick of myself when I am like this, but this is my way of grieving. I am fascinated and fearful of death, so I try to get myself right in there as close as I can to it. Maybe then I will understand it better.
Anyway, my uncle asked me to write my grandmother’s obituary which has been a distinct pleasure. I feel like I learned something about her while reflecting on how to depict her life (in 70 words or less!). And I appreciate things about her that I never noticed while she was here. For example, she was sort of a proto-feminist. She had to fight to keep working, and she did keep working, even while raising 5 boys. She believed in good manners and had high standards for society. She knew what she wanted and she recognized what she needed to do to go out and get it. And she knew the value of a husband who could dance! Good job Grandma.
Here you go:
Frances Wilma Parmeter
Frances Wilma Parmeter was born in the dry grasslands of Eastern Washington in Eltopia, near Pasco, March 10th, 1916. Her parents, Newmaris and Grace Lloyd, were wheat farmers and Wilma along with her two brothers and three sisters, was well-familiar with farmwork. Perhaps this is why she devoted herself so enthusiastically to her studies. Breaking the mold for rural young women at her time, she graduated high school early and entered Eastern Washington College of Education, where she received her Special Normal Diploma in 1937.
At her first teaching placement in Nespelem, Washington, she met Silas Parmeter at a dance. She was the new teacher in a tiny town; he was the best dancer. This was the beginning of a long, affectionate marriage. Wilma and Silas began their family while struggling to eke out a living in the dairy business. Wilma continued to work throughout this time, and finished her bachelors of arts in education in 1950.
She had clear ideas of the quality of life she wished for her family and she knew that they needed the stability of her income. Plus, she was sick of riding in that old farm truck. In 1961-62, the Parmeter family moved to Beaverton and had their fifth child. Wilma and Silas joined the Beaverton First United Methodist Church. She taught at Bonney Slope and Vose Elementary.
Wilma was quite the social librarian, always engaged in what was happening in her circles, the loves and interests of her sons, and the fluxes of fashion and popular culture. She loved to shop and continued to buy Christmas presents for everyone even as the family grew with many grandchildren. She loved the coast, baking, traveling, and painting. Wilma was a loyal Democrat and philanthrophist, giving faithfully to Democratic campaigns. She will be remembered as quite a lady, with impeccable manners and commitment to decency. Her children consider her even calmness and good nature a great gift to the family.
Later in life, when dementia began to quietly claim her, she retained her sweetness, humor and enjoyment of people around her.
She lost her husband Silas in 2004 and was preceeded in death by all her siblings. She died July 2nd at home, 95 years old, and having lived a life worth celebrating. Survivors include sons Douglas, Stanton, James, David, and Richard, 10 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. A memorial wake will be held July 20th at 5:30pm at the Parmeter residence in Beaverton.
This is what the kids like to do all day...gallons of water later....
Summertime! Or at least school is done. My older sister has eagerly been awaiting school being out for summer, but I can’t say I share her enthusiasm. It is nice to have less schedule, but the openness of the time sort of terrifies me for a couple of mixed reasons.
First of all, there are tons of kids on the block and they all LOVE our house. This is cool, really, and I am pleased that we have plenty of fun diversions to offer on our tiny little plot. I like being the fun house on the block… until I don’t. That is, I have tons of patience and love and understanding for kids… until I don’t. It is just that when I don’t, it is bad. I am sort of a mix of strict and allowing. I don’t mind kids doing things that might get them hurt, so in that sense I am lenient—Could break their arms? So what. Could fall off the roof? Maybe they won’t climb there next time. Wacking each other with swords? Just make sure everyone is equally armed.
On the other hand, I am sort of a neat freak. I don’t want the sand from the sandbox in my kitchen. I don’t want the tools strewn all over the lawn. Please don’t throw my pea gravel or river rock….it was hard to carry in there. Did you just step on my poor, suffering wisteria vine? Why, you terrible little kid! (I don’t say this; just think it.) And get out of my garden! Or at least walk on the walkways and not the lettuce. So what happens is that occasionally I just snap and need to shout, “Everybody OUT! Time to go home!’. Kids with nicer parents are freaked out and teary.
Yes, I need to RELAX a bit. I am working on it, believe me, but I also feel like I need a little piece of the summer that belongs to me… and I am a tired, hardworking mother who needs a couple hours each day to just zone out and not be responsible for anyone. Wherever the kids go, Inez goes trooping after them, and often they leave her in the dust. Truly I want to take a nap without fearing for anyone’s well being. I want my kids in predictable places where they are relatively safe. And I don’t want to have to deal with anyone else’s overly-tired children.
In order to maintain a summer plan that works for me, I gathered the kids around the coffee table and put in place some summer rules. First, chores each morning. No arguments there. The chores are quick and easy. Second, quiet time, in their rooms reading each day from 1pm to 2pm. No arguments there. They like this. Third, extended quiet time from 2pm to 3pm where they could play outside, but only in the backyard and no visitors. Total UPROAR. ”Unfair!” Francis protested. ”That’s just another quiet time and we already did one!” Zephyr added. ”I want to play on the swing in the front! Why can’t we just be done at 2 and go play where we want?”.
Because. Mom. Is. Tired. And Mom likes to have the first hour of quiet time to do computer stuff (like this blog) and the second hour to sleep or read, because often the first hour gets sucked up with dishes or laundry or really boring things like that.
They eventually accepted my rules, or at least tired of arguing and got sick of being forced to sit at the table during our little summit. It occurred to me that I have raised independent kids thus far which means that they are smart, expressive, and not afraid to be completely defiant and disrespectful. Yay me, right?
I need to think of how to communicate this plan to the neighbors so that the two only children nearby our house are not ringing the doorbell at 1 and 2pm each day. They are sweet kids, but being only children, their families are able to function each day with a certain level of flexibility. I have heard their parents say, “What do you want for lunch?” and “Maybe you should take a nap” which are things that have never been uttered in my house. My good friend across the street will be all on-board for our schedule, and I think some nearby neighbors will get it too, although I fear I will look like a total control freak for putting it into effect. Oh well. It’s best to accept who you are, right?
Zephyr with neighbor Ben. We need a bigger bucket.
A couple weekends ago I took a bas-relief clay carving class with artist Maria Simon. I had watched her work for a few years, always finding her at the Ceramic Showcase and checking out what new things she had come up with. Her work is simple, elegant, and organic, full of movement and sensuality. Each piece is carved from a slab of semi-dried (“leather hard”) clay. She then fires it and “glazes” with a technique called Terra Sigllata. It is a clay slip that achieves mellow, earthy tones rather than the shininess of mainline commercial glazes. She then has her work mounted on black wood backgrounds and framed. Sometimes the background is cut around her piece, (it looks arduous to me), which makes it appear to be moving toward the viewer. In short, this is work for the wall that is jumping off the wall.
Her work is so gorgeous. I find myself standing in front of it, wanting to dance, wanting to touch it, breathless with admiration for her skill and vision.
So I took a class from her.
I had considered taking a class for a couple years, but the timing never quite worked. Finally I saw a weekend course that would fit my schedule, convinced Brad to work from home Friday to cover my responsibilities with the kids, and signed up.
This was a really fantastic opportunity for me. I keep doing my own art work, and I enjoy what I am messing around with, but I have few opportunities to really explore more advanced techniques. My work continues to be pretty unfocused, and I accept that as a necessary part of where I am as an artist and mother. It is okay. All the same, it is such a joy to get away from my duties at home, to get to hang out with other artists and geek out about tools, and to get to stick with a piece for a chunk of time.
The technique that she led us through was pretty cool. First we found objects that were interesting to us. Here was mine:
Then we were encouraged to photograph and look deeply at our image. She had us use digital cameras and then zoom WAY in to just a little piece that we would try to capture in clay.
Then the slabs came out and we roughed out our work.
Brad was asking about the consistency of this slab and as I was grasping for words, he supplied, “like really cold butter?”. That is a perfect description. It is easy to carve leather hard clay, but it also has an integrity to it, so you can use both traditional clay tools and tools more commonly used for stone and wood carving.
I wanted to capture the structure of this rhubarb stalk, but keep away from getting too tree-like. I love tree images, but I tend to go back to that image a lot, so I wanted to focus on more of the ruffliness that made this look like a leaf rather than a large tree branch.
The process involved both carving down and building up. Maria encouraged us to look closely and keep our images from getting flattened out, so I needed to build up as I went, which was interesting to me as it felt so different from the carving that I had done before in stone. This was forgiving! Did you take off too much? Doesn’t matter! Put it back!
Eventually I reached a place where I had to get rid of my image and start working with the spirit of the object. It felt silly to be so nit-picky with where the leaf ruffled, where veins ran across, etc, so I tossed the rhubarb in the compost and just started looking at my carving.
It was so wonderful seeing how Maria worked with her tools. She truly had both amazing sight and intelligent touch. I found myself shocked at how she could make small adjustments to my work that were JUST PERFECT. In that, I mean that she would point out somewhere that needed a slant, a line that needed to suggest where it started, a raised point or a terminating point, and those little touches made that tiny place on my work RIGHT.
This class was tiring because it was three 8 hour days of standing on concrete and carving, but it was just what I needed, and Maria was a very kind, gifted teacher. It is such a joy to get to do art along with other people who are eager to learn and have interesting things to say about their process. It was so nice to make something, rather than just do things that need to be redone tomorrow (i.e, dishes, sweeping, diapers, cooking, and laundry).
I came out with two decent carvings and one piece of crap. I kept the piece of crap to practice glaze techniques in the future. My better work will be dried over the next week or so, then fired, and you can check it out at my house in its finished form (I didn’t seem to remember to photograph anything actually finished!). Here is my second project half way through and upside down because I needed to turn it a lot to get inside each petal. Yay carving clay!
