New Life Old Farmers

I went from one extreme to another this weekend, from pitch forks to party frocks.  Okay, so I did not actually wear a ‘frock’, it just sounded so good and I did wear pearls, which is almost the same thing.

Saturday morning Our Friend the Farmer called.  The Girls (my cows) were ready to come home from the prom.

“Did I want to update their shots since they could easily be in a squeeze?”

‘Oh, yes, thank you…’

I grabbed the syringes, the inject-able wormer and vaccine.  It is a bit easier to give the shots whenever my lovely beasts are in a squeeze, because believe it or not, but telling cattle to ‘stand still and this won’t hurt a bit does not actually work’.

Our Friend the Farmer balances ‘getting the job done’ and ‘teaching his city-born neighbor’ with great insight and gentle patience.

“We’ll run the cattle in…”

‘So this is where I stand back and stay out of the way?’, which earns me a smile and a nod.

Once the three girls, Agnes, Clara and Eliza Doolittle are in the shoot, I step up to give all the shots.

“Don’t put your arm through the bars, go over the bars to give them the shots, because sometimes they jump up and can trap your arm…..  Make a fist and bump them in the neck then stick the needle in and give them the shot.”  8 shots in all and I am learning, but they do all get done and my girls returned to our farm.

I get cleaned up, prepared to drive over the mountain.  I have a party to go to, oh yes, and half a pig to deliver…and it was snowing.  Ut, oh…I have done my best to not have to drive anywhere in the snow, but now I must, so I load up the half a pig, my party frock (pearls) and an emergency bag of peanut-butter M&M’s and commence pretending I know what I am doing.  Mostly I drive carefully, slowly and stay back from anyone else who is driving.  In the first 20 miles I see 5 cars that slide off of the road, which is a club I do NOT want to join!  Somehow I stay cool, calm and collected until…I reach the place where the snow was really thick and my windshield is sort of filling up with snow and the review mirrors are snowed up and there is a flashing sign.

CHAINS REQUIRED!

ALL VEHICLES, PULL OVER TO THE RIGHT!

EXCEPT A.W.D.

I have chains.  I am not sure they go to this car…and I am sure I do not know how to put them on.  I call My Loving Spouse, just a tad panicky…

“What’s A.W.D. and do I have it?”

This is when I learn that it means…’All Wheel Drive’ and yes, I have it and all I have to do is to keep driving slowly in that darn snow.  I do get off of the mountain, only to then drive in the dark, rainy freeways of Seattle where I accidentally went in one special bus lane off ramp and one HOV lanes.  I get the half a pig dropped off at my cousin’s house where their freezer is waiting, arrive at my destination for the evening and am very happy when they offer me a glass of wine!

Growing up in Southern California 50 plus years ago, it was very common for people to not have extended family nearby.  My parents gave us all a gift.  They along with 8 or so other families formed a ‘club’…it was called “The Darn Club”, partly because they were funny and partly because sometimes the mom’s would get together and mend or darn the kids clothes.  The Darn Club became a family….a very special group…  I was joining 3 Darn Club sisters in Seattle to fly down to Southern California for the Darn Club Christmas party…just for the day.  With most of our parents gone…and most of us older than our folks when the club all started there was much reminiscing of days gone by…  Extremely special hugs…The day was tiring, up at 4:30am to catch our flight, a gift from one of the Darn Club ‘kids’, a flight attendant who’d flown us up and down for the brief day.   The day was emotional and very special.  Traveling and spending the day with the sisters was nothing short of an amazing treat!  I am so grateful to our parents who gave us all this gift of belonging to one another…and to reconnect.  Some traditions returned…like the Chocolate mice that hung on the Christmas tree……and I am blessed.

The great pig pick up phase two happened yesterday.  I high tailed it out of work to drive over the hills and through the rain an hour to the butcher’s shop.  I was picking up our latest pigs.  Ya, ya, ya…if you are a Vegan or a Vegetarian or a ‘I cannot believe you are going to eat those pigs-atarian’, then it might be better, if you do not read this post.  For the rest of you…it is beginning to smell a lot like bacon!…and pork chops!  The Christmas ham is all picked out….and all I can say is…

‘yummy’!

My bacon boys are pretty darn excited!  (I just love these two…so I put this picture in!)Words I never thought I’d ever say…

“I like raising pigs!”…

and we are blessed!

We’ve spent the last many weeks being busier than normal, although I am honestly not sure what normal is any more.  We’d committed to 2 craft/home spun/bazaar type activities.  It was a welcome change for us both to just be creative for a while.  We moved My Loving Spouse’s scroll saw into the pantry so he could get more done.I was sewing up a storm, pursuing ideas on Pinterest and jumping from one idea to another.  Snowmen became a fairly constant theme.Almost every part of the house was affected in some way by the creative mess.  It had been awhile since we’d actually used the table to eat a meal.I was grateful we’d moved the scroll saw into the relatively warm pantry as I gave it a go re-purposing some out of date texts into more snowmen.  There was a debate whether the chalkboard snowmen needed red scarfs or not….The Library window at school was the recipient of Snowmen Books. There was a small break to play in the snow with this little man.…and we have just finished up…and we are tired.  I am too tired to tell you how great it was to bring so many people through our home and share the space with other creative souls.  Too tired to make sense with wonderful pictures of the tool caddy’s, Christmas quilts and table runners and all those items that were a big hit and which were sort of a big flop.  Too tired to really even write a decent blog post to show you what we’ve done…

It was absolutely worth it!  Am I going to worry or have a plan for that which did not sell?  Well, I thought about it…but, I think for now, we are going to celebrate Advent.

Advent…that season of waiting…

Grateful for what we have done and grateful to now slow down…

Merry Christmas!

My Little Sister’s birthday is today.  (Excuse me, favorite little sibling, but if you are turning 48, then you are making me feel old…sheesh!)  The past few years, I have sent her home-made gifts.  I was wondering what to make her this year and had an original thought.  Perhaps I should make her something she actually wanted, so I asked her.

‘Is there anything I could sew you for your birthday?’  The implication being, something I knew how to make…ie: a bib or a table runner since I do not really know how to sew many things.

“Oh, how sweet! I’d love a small cross body purse!”

Seriously?  I didn’t know how to sew a purse, cross body or not.

I found a pattern and a website that spoke in English, not in ‘sewing’, since I do not speak ‘sewing’.  Number Two Son and My Loving Spouse helped pick the fabric colors…I began learning…the pockets were super easy and I love the two-tone look.Luckily, I could keep the website handy as I worked away.  (Thanks, Snips & Spice, you were amazing).The truth is that the bag was very fun to make and not as hard as I’d thought.  I am a little bit sorry that My Little Sister got my first one, since there is always a learning curve.

This is a random, but impressive display of the carrots I pulled from the garden to make My Girl some soup…My Girl then agreed to model the messenger bag…complete with modeling attitude…The other side… a bit wrinkled…oh, well… this is a true life blog (more modeling attitude).Then I looked back at the original request from My Little Sister and realized she wanted a ‘small bag’…oh dear!  Maybe I should have just sent her a bib….but she likes it!Love you Sis!

It says in the bible:

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house…”

Hmm, what about “thy neighbor’s insulation”?

Okay, I am guilty, completely and honestly of coveting…not even ‘better’ insulation, just any insulation.

It is cold.  Seriously, 14 degrees on our way home from church cold.  Our home is warmer than 14, but sometimes not by much.  I am convinced that the coldest place on the farm is our pantry….step through the kitchen door and you are hit by an Arctic blast and you can see your breath.  The pantry, fat room/dog room has 10 inch walls that were filled with sawdust for insulation…the important word here is ‘were’…as in no longer.  Most of the insulation fell out when we jacked the floor back up because the room was literally falling off of the house.  The rest of the insulation fell out this summer when I pressure washed the house in the great paint prep.

It is so cold in the pantry, that the dog’s water bowl froze.  We took pity on the pups and let them sleep in our bedroom again.  At any given time in the night there is a steady cacophony of dogs and people snoring.  We filled the dog’s water bowl last night, left it in the kitchen and went to bed for the snore fest.  The water bowl leaked, spilling water out on the kitchen floor and  it froze….solid….hard…slippery…cold.

We took the heat gun to the ice rink, as well as a portable heater.  This eventually worked to where it was defrosted enough to chip up the ice.It is not even officially winter yet.

Want to come and visit?

I will admit, that often these days I feel like a very small person in a very big world.  I attempt to keep an open mind as I read the opinions on Face Book…about our world…about people that have no land…  ALL of it overwhelms me…the situation and the intensity of arguments and  opinions!  My head and my heart hurt by it all.

I am going to try to live the story of the starfish… about the beach that was littered with hundreds of starfish.  A man walked down the beach picking up starfish and throwing them back in the sea.  A young boy asked why he was doing this, as he could not really make a difference.  As he threw a starfish back in the sea, he said, “It made a difference for that one.”

This is my own little small blog in a big world challenge…

Let’s live the starfish story.  Let’s notice others and do something for them.  Intentional acts of kindness.  Something different from your norm.

The very best way I know of to feel better is to do something for someone else…

It can be a secret, but if you are excited by how it made you feel or you’ve got a great idea…feel free to share it here as we try to Dream of something better and Do some little bit for someone else…everyday.

I am and have been blessed by Those Friends.

You know, Those Friends that have been…there!

Those times…

The friend who literally stood by my back.  Held me as I sobbed, after the doctors and I agreed, we needed to take my mom off of the machines.

The friend who brought her famous macaroni and cheese and her tears and her hugs after my dad died…even though she never knew him.

The friends that would take your kids without question, because you needed help.

The friends that knew when you might need coffee or wine or both, just not at the same time.

I have been blessed by Those Friends…

but what do you do when you do not have Those Friends?

…or life has moved you to a place and now you are isolated…

…and do not like to ask for help.

How we know this family is a long story, but they trust us.

There is the Mom who has brain cancer…a 14-year-old, a 10-year-old and a toddler.

I had Veterans day off.  I had big plans.  I was going to go to the parade and I was going to sew.

God had bigger plans…

…and humbled me by my ‘problems’.

We got a call to be Those Friends.

The Mom was having vertigo and had taken Dramamine, and the toddler had gotten into it as well.

We met them at the ER.  My Loving Spouse fed the older kids and took them home, so they could be the kids, not the adults.

I stayed to be the adult…to be transported in the back of an ambulance with somebody else’s child.

Hearing Jesus’ words…

“When you have done it for the least of me…”

The truth is…it was easy to do it, to care for the child, he was going to be fine.

It is harder to look at their life.

I cannot fix brain cancer.

I cannot fix broken families.

I cannot fix much.

I like problems that can be fixed with ice cream…or coffee or a glass of wine.

As I said to My Loving Spouse as he drove me home that night,

“How do relief workers do it?”

The enormity of the problem…the situation…

I lean on wise words shared with me…

Just for today…

Do what I can do…just for today…

Always grateful for Those Friends of mine.

Fall is beautiful.  Even with most of the leaves on the ground, the sky is stunning.  Crisp and clear the days are letting us know that winter is on the way and I love it.Fall is in full swing and so is school.  I had my best Trick or Treating candy haul in a long time, as I reminded my kids  not to forget that My Librarian likes Almond Joy and Miss Ellen likes Tootsie Rolls.  The candy did come rolling in!  Mostly from the older girls with one surprising exception.  A boy who is known for trouble, making trouble, getting into trouble and generally causing problems also contributed to our growing waistlines.  That Boy lit up like a light bulb when I walked into his room, reached into his desk pulled out a small gift bag of candy for us along with a poem he had written.

It was a tiny thing that had made the difference.  I’d let That Boy check out one of the new books we were holding on the shelf.  I remember saying to him,

“Yes, you can check it out.  I need you to bring it back in one week, so someone else can check it out.  I know you will because you are a good guy.”

…and he did…and he is…I can see it now…

It makes me realize that I have a very, very dangerous job…and I worry about the kids I interact with daily…the quiet ones, the ‘good’ ones, the annoying ones, the ones that seem like thugs, the funny ones, the smart ones, the ones that are easy to like and the ones that are not…and what if I miss an opportunity to offer them grace, because some days some of them get consequences.

I arm myself daily with this prayer…

“Lord, please help me to be a blessing to those who especially need it today….and help me not to do harm.”

When it goes well, it is because others have first loved me…and I am blessed.

‘To God Be The Glory’….

When it does not go well, I am given a new day…and grace for myself.