the morning is nearly gone

The morning is nearly gone. It began with my Husband and our humorous reflection of punk business people thinking they’d pulled a fast one. Then frustrated reflection about other business people who are bulldogging a situation. Y’know … that all is what it is. And we can only control our circumstances. And, if the Mayans are correct (even though they missed their whole Spanish demise) then does it really matter?

But my Husband left to earn our keep and the day progressed. We’ve made a fresh carpet for the playhouse.

We’ve baked a gingerbread house sans buttered molds…

(perfect for morning snacking)

And a house with buttered molds…

And another in the oven now.

We’ve set the sprouts out to dry and green. Kelly Mae found just the right spot for good light.

Rebekah Anne has helped me work the yogurt

and she has helped me feed the sourdough starter and make the dough for its first 24 hour rise.

Kelly Mae taught Sawyer to latch hook while Rebekah Anne and I worked in the kitchen.

Reade was at the table doing a Physical Science experiement.

And when Laura Lea finally woke at 1038a, she ate some crumbled gingerbread and Sawyer taught her to latch hook and she’s been busy since.

I suppose now we’ll begin to pick up the house and then have a yummy lunch.

Not sure what our afternoon will bring… Does it matter? No. Life is good. Even if it’s about to end Mayan-style.

a patient piano teacher

On Monday evenings our precious piano teacher spends 2-1/2 to 3 hours in our home working with all five kids after his full-time job. He is one of the most precious people we know and we love him.

He is patient and firm and flexible and tolerant. He is unlike any piano teacher story I have ever heard. Did I mention patient.

So patient that he can listen to stories about failing to practice that include:

I had hiccups.

My hands told me they needed rest.

My mom didn’t write it in my lesson book.

And those are the kind and reasonable excuses.

There are only two areas I outsource – music and art. And art less and less with each passing month because I am growing more comfortable with learning and interpreting for myself and guiding the children to do the same.

But music… I appreciate music tremendously. That I can share. But Every Good Boy Does Fine and FACE and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” in a very slow c-chord is all I’ve got when it comes to playing music.

And while there is no way we can compensate our piano teacher for his love and patience and dedication, I still try. I try by sharing dinner with him on these long Mondays of his.

But today I was unprepared. I planned nothing for dinner. And a hike with friends became a sit-and-knit on a rainy afternoon with friends. And dinner remained unplanned, unprepared and unmade.

The piano teacher arrived. The children began working. My Sister and her family left. Still no dinner.

And then I decided to make pasta and marinara and whipped out my trusty The Stocked Kitchen recipe book and made the marinara sauce. Mmmm.

A couple of pounds of pasta, some salad greens shared with us by our Dogwood Farm friends and dinner was ready for our family and our piano teacher in about 30 minutes.

{this moment}

{this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Share your moment here and look for others at SouleMama.

a tie for first

There are two things that tie for first of my favorite things to do for myself. Useful Handwork and Useful Gardening.

Reade and I just pulled up the sweet potatoes. Not as good as last year’s harvest, but good enough for Thanksgiving. A couple missed carrots, too. Now our garden is down to only peppers, kale, and greens. Kind of makes me sad. Planning for next year has already begun!

My hand is for reference of size of a couple of the potatoes. Only planted 6 plants, 4 survived so not bad. And I have my own slips for next year!

random Saturday thoughts

Last night my Husband and I went to an evening with my high school classmates. The NCSSM class of 1992 is celebrating our 20th reunion this weekend. I wasn’t going to go because some of my people, including my Husband, were going to be gone and well, they’re so much of me it just wouldn’t be right. To me. Part of those plans changed and we went. And I learned two of my classmates live about 10-15 minutes from us. And have! For a long time. Wow.

“Can you believe it’s been twenty years?” Yes. And praise God from whom all blessings flow that it has been twenty years. And I mean it. It doesn’t feel like it was just yesterday. It feels like Science and Math was EONS ago. And it has been. Again, praise God from whom all blessings flow!

It was a real treat to see these friends. I hope to see and learn more about them in the time to come ahead.

Next random thought.

The public schools really are screwing kids up. And I am certain that private schools and home schools do their share, too. It’s just that with 88% of the school-age population enrolled in public hand-outs, er, education, the public schools get the biggest part of the blame. How do I know the schools are screwing kids up? Well, just google that yourself. But in addition to the search results, I see it. These last many weeks I have been joyfully engaged in helping many students prepare for the SAT I. Many, not all, of these kids are struggling emotionally. They feel like they have no idea what they’re doing with lessons, much less the SAT. Fortunately, I can give them a plan and strategies. But that only helps with the SAT I. What about their lesson work? I can comfort them that this too shall pass. And that is it. With my few study-coaching kids, I can share more. But mostly I cannot. These kids are overworked with petty information. These kids are overworked with competing teachers. These kids are overwrought with anxiety about their place within their graduating class. Who cares? Not me. Not the world. I hate this part of education. It is why I don’t give a flip about posting our 13 years old’s writing on this blog. He is his own person and he will make a difference when he recognizes the significance of the difference. You cannot teach a person something he wishes not to know.

Another random thought.

I really, really, really, like that we live outside a city limit. It means we can have a fire pile of tree tops and stumps burn for a week and no one can do anything about it.

And the last random thought.

I was asked by my most precious friend Elizabeth for a vitamin recommendation for one of her children. But I forgot. Then I remembered just before I wrote this that I needed to write her. And that reminded me to take my vitamins, which I had forgotten this morning. And so I took them. They are really good vitamins that I am fortunate to purchase wholesale. And I swallowed them with sweet tea vodka and cranberry. I think that may have undone the “really good” part of the vitamins. I am OK with that.

I should write Elizabeth now.

nothingness

Today is a day of nothingness. A full day of rain. Lovely!

But what is nothingness? For me it was no plans to be anywhere at any time nor do anything at any time.

So, I made biscuits with sausage and eggs for breakfast.

Then we sat at the table for a while as I did, well, I actually do not recall now. It was, afterall, about eight hours ago.

When we officially called off our plans to tailgate today, we had lazy, served-on-your-own-desire-to-make-it sandwiches for lunch.

My Husband and a few kids left for the game in the rain. I don’t mind rain. I mind rain and cold. It is 61F outside. I qualify that as cold. So a couple of kids and I stayed home and made a brief trip out for butterscotch drops. And we made oatmeal scotchies, my Husband’s favorite. We mixed the sour cream and best EVER organic onion soup and dip mix for chips and sliced the tomatoes and cleaned and tore the lettuce for grilled chicken sandwiches tonight. We cleaned up the kitchen as we went so it felt like we really hadn’t done anything. There was no timeline and no expectations.

Then I perused a few sale catalogs. I perused a few sale websites. I placed a couple of sale orders. The kids meanwhile watched Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. And well, I figured I might just record this nothingness for posterity. I don’t do nothingness much.

Family returned as a whole. And now, here I sit with 9% battery power on the ipad while my Husband is working a sudoku next to me and the kids are now watching a History channel show about the country’s accents. We did all pause for the pieces on “y’all” and Ocracokers’ own language. We do really yearn to be Ocracokers. Yet we sit here. Doing nothing.

So, the ipad is now at 8% so I suppose I will trade it for knitting. After I refill my water. Maybe.

PS – I finished the post, published it, and then realized that I had also planned the children’s lessons out for five to seven days. That’s kind of something. But I am gonna call it nothing. Because it will probably take them ten to 20 days to complete those lessons…

don’t call me SuperMom, either.

Here’s just a fun blog post about the reality of mothering. Well, how about the reality I know and obviously this chick knows, too.

And as a reminder, because I know and love and appreciate how my life is pretty dreamy, I am sharing at least two of my less desirable qualities. I know there are others within this blog, but these are the only two I can remember off the top of my head. And that bruise (I refuse to call it a varicose vein) is still there this many years later.

One of my Rumplestiltskin Moments.

And here’s clarity that I haven’t only had one such moment…

what I am too busy doing

Right now I am too busy doing a lot of things.

I am hurriedly knitting. I have yet to completely repair the loss of about 50 stitches over 4 rows of 650+ stitches when a circular needle broke. It takes hyper-focus and I don’t want to have that right now. So I work on that and then work on other projects.

I am hurriedly reading. I am finishing books I’ve been dribbling on and beginning some books I’ve wanted to read on my own, without interpretations made for me as they were in school. THe one I am enjoying most right now is The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. I feel like I am reading it for the first time. And really, I am.

I am hurriedly deleting things from our calendar. And loving it! I sang that last sentence, by the way.

I am hurriedly appreciating my friends. They give me so much joy while I give them so much frustration. I know it isn’t easy being friends with me. I always have (too) much to say. And they listen.

I am hurriedly loving my family. Through the sass, the wasted milk, the sudden dislike of whole wheat bread and crust, I am loving them and savoring the moments that they give me.

Why am I doing this all in an hurry? Because life is fast. Doing these things fast causes me to pause. I know it makes no sense to most, but it does to me. So, in these things, I stop and look around so I don’t miss it.

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Ferris Bueller on his day off.

my brain feel like mush

So, here is an assortment of starts of blogs my brain has created thus far this week. I am not capable of expounding on the ones upon which further discussion may be warranted.

Not-so-great-things come in threes. One would be Sawyer’s innocently beginning virus that now seems to be bronchitis. Another would be Kelly Mae’s freshly broken scaphoid bone. I cannot help but wonder if the third will occur as my Husband crosses the border to return this afternoon.

I am becoming afraid of the dentist. After having a headache for much of the time the past two months, I no longer want to even sit in the office and wait during Reade’s orthodontic visits. And now there is this thing called occlusal equilabration. Shut.The.Front.Door. NOW. Not sure I can go through with this. No matter how nicely the dentist makes it sound and no matter how much he guarantees my headaches will go away, it still just shaving pieces of tooth off. What’s gonna be left?!?

There are tons of excuses in life. I use them, even. I sincerely try not to. My life is the result of the choices I’ve made. It’s the same way for everyone else in this world. We’re all born into some determined circumstance. It’s a choice to stay in that circumstance. Make a change. Don’t whine. Don’t complain. Find a solution and move on.

And lastly, the Chicago teachers striking and the Islamist extremists attacking the US Embassys… They are the same people. Not physically the same people. The same philosophically. They are adults throwing tantrums because they believe that the world must believe and accept their individual opinions. Not.Gonna.Happen. Get over yourselves.

{this moment}

{this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Share your moment here and look for others at SouleMama.