Glad I Was Prepared...

A while back (I'd link to the particular post but I am posting from the app on my phone and I haven't quite figured out how to do that yet) I posted about whether or not I should take off the diamond ring I've worn on my left hand for years as a sort of visual 'leave me alone' message.

I did remove it and put it away. And at Christmas this year I received the promise ring in the photo. Yes, it is a diamond. It is beautiful.

At some point I promise to post the whole story, but suffice it to say for now that Mr. Awesome and I dated in high school, lost touch with each other, proceeded to live very tumultuous and oddly parallel lives for the next 31 years, and at the end of October he found me online and we are now writing OUR history.

Merry Christmas, everyone, and here's to a New Year full of awesomeness for all.

Part of the Reason I Haven't Posted in a While

And if you look over there on the right sidebar, you'll notice there are more of us than there used to be.

Life is good. I am loved, as are my children. I have someone to love and share my life with.

Merry Christmas!

Squeezable, yes?

My oldest, his wife and their son came to dinner yesterday evening. Look at this chubby face! Isn't he the cutest thing?

International Menu Nights, 2011-12 Edition

A couple of years ago we did a series of international menu nights, in which we had one dinner per month with all the menu items from one continent.

In case you're wondering, we did include Antarctica.  We pretended we were polar explorers and had granola bars, chocolate candy, beef jerky and hot cocoa while sitting around the chiminea in the backyard. :)

This year we are doing individual countries.

Birdman made little slips of paper with the names of countries on them; four countries from each continent. We included Australia but omitted Antarctica. ;)

This month's country is:

Korea.

Stay tuned for the menu, recipes and a full report in a week or so!

Wearing the Dad Hat

This weekend we had shop class.  Remember shop? Girls had to take home ec, shop was purely a boy thing, and woe to you if you wanted to take the class for the other gender.

Here at the Collective, we're equal opportunity.

We have, as you already know, chickens. Their coop is converted from a wooden shipping crate. From our studies on how to care for them, I learned that coops need a lot of ventilation so the chickens stay healthy. To make the coop easier to get into and clean, and to provide more air circulation, we took the roof assembly off and added a 10" clerestory-ish window all the way around, screening with hardware cloth. Then we set the roof assembly back on the coop. We also moved the existing roost boards to hopefully eliminate poo in the nest boxes.

We'll have to make some kind of shutter system for really cold weather, but I have a few ideas for that little task. We also are going to add an outboard nest box and put vinyl siding on the coop to improve the appearance.

Birdman was a big help with this project. He helped disconnect the roof from the main part of the coop, and cut some of the boards for the window framing. He helped cut and staple the hardware cloth as well.

Velvet helped with carrying tools, measuring and holding boards as they were being cut. She also helped make sure we didn't squish any chickens when we set the roof assembly on the ground after its removal.

Lightning McQueen was a general fetch and carry person; holding screws and boards, handing me different tools, and asking all sorts of questions.

I had to disconnect the light switch wiring from the box when we took the roof off. It's been a long time since I did any electrical work, so to help make sure I got the switch wired up correctly when we were finished, I took a picture with my phone before I disconnected anything. (Sort of made that part of the job into an Ikea project, ha ha). Then I simply made the wires look like the photo, stuffed them back into the box, put the cover back on, said a brief prayer that I'd done it correctly, had Birdman plug in the cord, flipped the switch on, and booyah, it worked!

I meant, again, to take a picture of what it looks like now that it's finished, but once again the light got away from me and it's too late. I'll get it up eventually, I promise. Meanwhile, here's one from right before we set the roof back in place. And one of the light switch box, in case you ever need to wire a light switch.

Just Because

Someone finally took photographs of me that I actually like.

Lightning McQueen, Birdman, Rally-Man and me

Uncle Birdman with a smiling (!) Hatchling

Clockwise from upper left: Velvet, Lighning McQueen, Mrs. Rally-Man, Rally-Man, yours truly, and Birdman

Deo gratias for family!

Could St. Jerome Help Here?

The reason I asked about St. Jerome is that, in the very center of the photo above, is a hornets' nest. Hornets are known for their grumpy disposition and general unfriendliness when disturbed, and St. Jerome had a bit of a temper too.

This particular hornets' nest is overhanging the street beside my house.  It is in a maple tree that is in my backyard; the one that provides shade for my chicken coop.  It's NOT the one that's dying and needs to be cut down (isn't that always the way?)

If I had normal children I could say:

"See that? It's a hornets' nest. If you bother a hornet, not only will it get mad, but it's kind of like throwing a rock at a gang member; the hornet you aggravated will give the super-secret distress signal to his brothers, sisters, cousins and aunts and THEY will then be aggravated at you for daring to irritate their relative.."

And after that little speech, the normal children I do not have would carefully consider things and decide that a different spot would be better for playing in the street.

But no! (So I suppose I need a saint for wayward children too; any suggestions?)

MY children are outside, in the street, directly UNDER the hornets' nest, happily playing with paper airplanes, which they are carelessly flinging into the air with utter abandon, completely unconcerned that at any moment, given a wayward puff of air current, one of those paper airplanes could SMACK into the hornets' nest and

RELEASE THE KRAKEN.

Sixteen years ago, when living in another place, I discovered a hornets' nest on the eave of my outbuilding. I called an exterminator, and ended up having to pay for TWO sservice calls.....one to determine that it really was a hornets' nest (evidently some people confuse paper-wasp nests with hornets' nests, although personally I cannot see how that could ever happen, they look nothing alike), and then for the hornets to be exterminated and the nest destroyed.  Sixteen years ago that cost nearly $150.  I shudder to think what it would cost now.

Money I haven't a lot of.  Prayer, I'm kind of good at that, so that's what I'll go with this time.  Any other ideas?

In Which I Ramble Disconnectedly

There's a good point here in this article; I'm one of those Christians who knows about the existence of a LOT of things that make some of my friends cock their heads and go "wha--?"
Things I shouldn’t know exist. | Stuff Christians Like – Jon Acuff
Some of the things I know exist that I probably 'shouldn't' (although I risk being tyrannized by the shoulds) know about?  Pink, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Harry Potter, Lady Gaga, where to buy a good but relatively inexpensive strapless bra, the purpose of body tape (and where to purchase it), boutique denim.....

And as if that wasn't enough to think about in one blog post, here is a really sad story about what happened to a woman who tried (successfully, but REALLY, what she had to go through) to retrieve her miscarried child's remains from the hospital in order to give the baby a proper burial. That touched me because, way back in a previous life, I was pregnant and the baby died at 20 weeks in utero. The doctors tried all sorts of things to induce labor but nothing worked, so I ended up having a D&C.  I was young and confused at the time, and it never occurred to me to ask either the baby's sex or to have the body released to me so the baby could be buried. I did try not very long ago to see whether the hospital bothered to record whether the baby was a boy or a girl (because in God's Providence I happen to be friends with the wife of a person pretty much a grand poobah at the hospital in question), but records were searched and alas I will never know whether it was a Samuel or a Zoe. I'm not really even sure why that matters, but it does, a little.

I saw a guy running along the side of the road earlier today in Day-Glo green running shoes.

I met a gal for lunch today, with whom I went to high school. We hadn't seen each other in THIRTY YEARS (my heavens, there have been wars that were shorter.....). The server had to come back twice before we quit talking long enough to decide what we wanted to eat, and I'm surprised we ever got anything into our mouths. It was really great to reconnect with her, and I hope to be seeing more of her in the future. She said I haven't changed at all - she's a very good liar, ha ha!

Last Monday night was the university's Fall Fest thingy - they have bands come in and do concerts on the plaza of the student union, yada yada. Normally we can't get to bed until it's all over with, because we are about a quarter mile as the crow flies from the stage.  So our tradition the past three years is that we have Movie Night!  This year's movie was Soul Surfer, suggested to me by one of my Facebook (and real life) friends.  It's the true story of Brittany Hamilton, a young surfer whose arm was bitten off in a shark attack.  A really good movie!  My big thing about movies I let my kids watch is 'is it a movie that shows that perseverance, honesty and hard work are VIRTUES, and that doing the right thing is always THE RIGHT THING even though it's difficult?' This movie has that and more. Great scenery, good acting

'scuse me, there is a chicken in my dining room

now she is in the living room

and a wonderful story (even if the part where she gets attacked by the shark shows a LOT of blood, but it's all highly relevant to the story).

(Oregano has been escorted back out to the yard where she belongs.  I have no idea who let her in.)

Speaking of chickens, we've gotten three eggs every day for three days straight, and Drumstick has developed a limp.  We don't know what's the matter with her, so we have her in the puny ward (dog crate next to the coop with a tarp covering it) to keep her from running around and perhaps injuring it further.  We're giving her yogurt as a treat for the extra protein. She hasn't laid a good egg in a couple of months, one of the limitations of this breed of chickens - they lay extremely well but their 'career' is rather shorter than that of heritage or non-production breeds. We'll always have a couple of Red Stars, but I'd eventually like to have six hens and the other four will be heritage dual-purpose breeds - Dominiques and either Leghorns or Orpingtons (most likely Leghorns because they lay white eggs and we've had some requests for those).

I have more randomness but I think I've blathered enough! One last thing: Birdman turned 14 on Wednesday (yikes).

Home From the Fair

The fair closed last night with a really good Demolition Derby and a nice car show. Here are some photo highlights from Thursday (poultry show), Friday (Marty Stuart concert) and Saturday (car show and Demolition Derby):

Lightning McQueen with Oregano and Barbecue, at the livestock show barn

Lightning McQueen waiting to enter the show arena. Oregano won 1st Place and Barbecue won 2nd place in their class.

The smaller of the TWO Ferris Wheels at the fair, neither one of which I rode :(

Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives!

Love those old Mopars

Full-size class at the Demolition Derby. Studip lights!

Velvet's feline anatomy exhibit

Lightning McQueen's canine anatomy exhibit

Velvet's horse breeds exhibit

My Bayerische socks

Two Years In A Row

Lightning McQueen and I took a stroll over to the exhibit hall at the fair last night to see whether his and Velvet's 4H projects had won ribbons (and I wanted to see how my socks fared too).

Lightning McQueen:  second place for his exhibit on canine anatomy

Velvet:  first place for exhibit on horse breeds, second place for feline anatomy

I had entered my Bayerische socks:

First place!

Photos to come; we'll be at the fair the next three evenings - tomorrow is Lightning McQueen's poultry show debut, Friday is a concert I've been looking forward to for months, and Saturday is the car show and demolition derby.

Terse Tuesday

Evidence that my kids do not, in fact, fight ALL the time.

Happy summer!

Pool Party!

Saturday evening we went down to Clarksburg to River Bend Park to a pool party. Only one other family showed up so there were only 6 of us swimming in an Olympic-sized pool! A few highlights:

Velvet comes down the slide

Velvet after exiting the slide

Birdman tries the diving board

What happens when I pull this rope?  :D

Lightning McQueen off the diving board

Lightning McQueen comes down the slide

All in all we had a great time, even though we didn't get home until after 10.

Back to Tech-Free Tuesdays

For a while there our attempts at staying unplugged on Tuesday evenings were pitiful to nonexistent. But without a lot of fanfare (so as to hopefully avoid weeping and wailing, gnashing of teeth, and casting into the outer darkness) we had a pretty tech-free Tuesday afternoon this week.

I had a political meeting in the evening, and took Lightning McQueen with me, and even if I'd said not to watch tv, Velvet and Birdman would have had it on, scurrying to the back door every so often to see if I'd come home yet so they could turn it off without me knowing.  And I let Lightning play with my phone at the meeting: two sound recordings, a video, multiple sessions of Angry Birds and at least one visit to my Facebook page that I saw out of the corner of my eye.  Sigh.

So the revised plan is this: to have one evening a week off the technological grid.  It'll still be called Tech-Free Tuesday, but depending on our schedule it might happen on Monday, or Thursday, or even Saturday. (It's my day and I can call it whatever I want. :-p) No tv, no computer games, no blogging or facebooking.  Radio permissible.

Now, in other unrelated news, remember I posted about some mom who came ranting to my doorstep about my kids terrorizing the neighborhood "for weeks"?  Well, a bunch of kids were roaming the streets around my house today and it turns out they are the kids whom that mom says my kids were so mean to. These are AWFUL, unruly kids.  Two of them were riding their bikes up our driveway, turning onto the walkway that goes from the driveway to the back door and then on to the side street!  Didn't their parents ever tell them that's trespassing? I know a lot of kids who seem to have no idea about how to respect other people's property; what are these kids' parents teaching them?  That it's ok to just go wherever you want because it looks interesting and you're having fun? Next thing you know they will be helping themselves to the produce from my garden; they were running through my yard outside the fence already. (For the record my kids were not outside playing with these kids, they were doing their chores and finishing up a bit of schoolwork). I don't care that these kids were riding their bikes around our street, but they need to STAY ON PUBLIC PROPERTY unless they are in their own yard.
Yes, it seems I am turning into a real grump. But from the way those kids' mom talked to me, I can just envision one of them falling off a bike and running home to say it happened on my driveway and there we are with a ginormous lawsuit.  So don't go where you're not invited, children, and if my kids aren't out, stay OFF my driveway, sidewalk and grass!

The second job goes well.  I think I will get my first paycheck next week.

Mute Monday

Two weeks old today.

Just About Tired of Trying

I got the photos uploaded but life happened and I haven't had time to compose a post to accompany them.

I started a second job today, as a seamstress at a local casual-clothing store in the mall (mostly hemming jeans).

Some woman I've never seen before in my life came to my door this evening and told me that "every day for weeks" my kids have been abusing her kids and her neighbor's kids, that one of my kids tore up her daughter's expensive bicycle, and pushed her daughter and hurt her wrist so that she has to take the child to the Urgent Care. She said she is contemplating calling the police. I did ask the woman why, if this has been going on for weeks, did she wait this long to come to my house to say something.  She said that 'the older boy told me he was telling you everything.'

And my mom said it wasn't anyone else's responsibility to check on her and my kids last week.

Ever feel like crying but know that it's just not worth the effort?

Well, THAT Didn't Work So Well...

From Tuesday of last week until this morning I was in lovely East Aurora, New York at the annual Confraternity of Penitents Retreat and Conference, held at Christ the King Seminary.  The retreat was great, and full of many graces and blessings, but I'd forgotten (if I ever realized) that the dorms are brick-veneered cast concrete, which means that in order to get a signal on my phone I had to either go outside or sit in my windowsill.  So therefore no posts while I was gone; it was just too much trouble.  It was all I could do to keep up with my email inbox and check in to Twitter occasionally!

Our retreat masters were Fr. Pio Mandato, an eremitical Capuchin Franciscan priest, and Sr. Veronica of the Capuchin Sisters of Nazareth.  Fr. Pio is related in some way to St. Pio of Pietrelcina (sp?), and at the end of his final conference we were privileged to be able to venerate a glove of St. Pio's which Father used to impart a healing blessing on each of us.  Sr. Veronica is the daughter of our Minister General, and is a really lovely person.

I simply must figure out some way, short of not attending, to not be so adversely affected by the heat and humidity at the retreat.  One year it was so chilly and rainy that we had to call Housekeeping to get us some wool blankets, but normally it is in the upper 80s with heat indices in the 90s.  Thursday's readings for this year were a high of 94, with a heat index of 103.

It's very difficult to figure out how to dress for both comfort and decency in weather like that!  (Sr. Veronica says that they say in the convent "hell is hotter" which helps a little).  Normally, when the thermometer reads above 80 at home, I'm in either an above-the-knee skirt or shorts, and a tank top.  With flip-flops.  Not exactly appropriate attire for a chapel. (And the chapel is NOT air-conditioned, YIKES!) So I took a linen shift that I used as my "I can't stand it any more" outfit, and the rest of the time tried to go about looking all serene when really I wanted to go jump in the pond on the seminary grounds.

One thing that DID go well was my presentation!  I partnered with another CFP sister and we did a presentation on fashion and clothing as it pertains to Confraternity members (part of the Rule of Life we follow includes the wearing of certain colors of clothing).  She covered the "theology" of clothing and fashion, and my portion of the conference was about choices, fit and how to choose good things from places like thrift stores - I'd much rather spend $4 on a blouse I can wear for 5 years or more than the same amount on a blouse that will be in rags after a couple of seasons!

Another thing that didn't work out so well was that my mom stayed with the kids, but it was just as unbearable here and they ended up in a hotel because my house has no air-conditioning.  I should have laid the groundwork with a few air-conditioned friends, but truthfully I (a) didn't think it would be as bad as it was, and (b) I mistakenly thought that perhaps one of my friends would either try to reach me about my mom and kids being stuck in a non-air-conditioned house during what amounted to a heat emergency, or at least go by my house to see how things were - I always think that everyone else will do what I would do in a certain situation, lol.

So anyway, Fr. Pio told us that a person ought to take away at least one concrete thing from a retreat to work on, or change, and I have to admit that it was really HARD this time to think of my "project"!  In fact I'm still deciding.  But I did get a chance to talk to him about a problem I've been having and got some advice on how to try to deal with it - it will be very difficult to carry out what he suggested but I will give it a try.  It involves really being quite vulnerable to a few people and it could turn out really well, and it could end up a huge mess.  We'll just have to see, won't we?

I've got some pictures of the grounds but I haven't uploaded them to the computer yet.  It's really a lovely place.  But I've missed you all, and am glad to be back and posting again!

The Next Generation

Meet my new grandson! (Which means I'm now a Meemaw).  He needs a blog name.......he arrived via c-section and weighed 9 lbs. 4 oz.  His mommy (my DIL), my son the proud daddy, and he are doing well.

'Scuse me while I go do a happy dance!