My Town Monday - Pretending

Saturdays, Anna has a class in Louisville, a long enough drive that I find things to do in the city while she's at class.  I go to the library, and then sometimes head to a coffee shop, pretending to be the urbanite I'm not.  Lauren and I shared this stolen moment, and we sat outside, watching young couples pull their children in wagons, singles walking their dogs, and cars whizzing by.  Tiring of this, we browsed antiques and pawed through other people's forgotten treasures.

 

I found nothing to take, but that wasn't the point in looking.  

The river floated by, quiet and peaceful this day.  When I look on it, I always try to imagine what it looked like several hundred years ago.

Notes:

I have to clean the hen's nest today.  She managed to crack an egg, or perhaps an interloper did, and now it smells.  You see, though she is sitting on too many already, her hen-mates try to add to the nest daily.  We marked the ones we want her to keep with a permanent marker, and have to check daily for new additions.  These new ones will not mature in time and will only lessen the chances of the eggs in progress.

What we are reading this week:
Dh:

  

Me:
 and 

Lauren:


Anna:



William:

ACK!  I forgot earlier today to post a link to the My Town Monday site, that hosts all the MTM entries.  Go over there to read about interesting places.

Happy Easter!

Take a break from the normal ride today!

I sit on my front porch alone and watch the grass grow green.  Changes are coming.  And yet, it is okay.  For what is life except to know that you did the best you could, and there are people who share memories of a time when all was well and you were loved, of times when you felt safe and happy?  And then, times change.  But yet, you have always the memories of a time shared, of a good place with people you loved. 

Many people have come and gone on this Earth, many forgotten, many lives lived and unrecorded.  And yet, they touched this living place.  Perhaps it is not important that each person be remembered, but rather each moment be lived fully and good memories passed on.  It will be summer soon.

Reading

"Mom, what does "Happy Whore, 2 to 4" mean?" William asked asked as we drove about town yesterday. WHAT? His reading skills are improving leaps and bounds but I need to teach him how to read the word "hour" with an OW sound!  By the way, we were at Sonic, not at a bar.

Driving about town, he now reads each sign we pass, checking the odometer to make sure I'm going the speed limit he can now read, reading all the exit and road construction signs. He asks me questions about driving and the lines on the road, then chants, "Now they can pass, now you can pass, now no one can pass, now you can pass...." He'll be a well trained driver in eight years. OH! My baby will be driving in only eight years!

In other news, we attended a private reception last night at the local art gallery for a juried art show.  The first place winner could not partake of the wine and cheese party, as she was too young:

My friends and I tried without much success to contain our delight and joy that she won.  My friend, Becky, fanned her face to keep tears from coming.  What a night!  There were many wonderful pieces in the show, and I dared not hope that Anna would win.  It is now hanging in the gallery until June, unless of course, it sells before that time.

Notes:
A friend came by last night with six eggs for my broody hen.  We decided that the many eggs the bantam was sitting upon had already gone too far, a week already.  I have a neighbor with an incubator, however, and am going to ask him to hatch them out.  He's an old retired shop teacher who regularly begs composted manure from me for his spring plantings.  He wants to do something in return, and offers me chicks in exchange.  Like I need more!  But - my friend does.

I had quite a day yesterday.  It started with knowing I had to have another piece of Anna's finished art re-stretched onto a new frame.  She had painted the Ohio River painting on a gallery wrap canvas, which is too thick to frame, and the contest rules clearly stated that it must be framed.  Luckily, our small town is artsy and sports it's own frame shop.  I took it up there, and voila!  They fixed it up.

Design on a Dime

This past weekend, I came up behind dh as he was washing his hands in our master bathroom.  He turned to wipe his hands on the curtains.  Before you think him a bumpkin, I had taken down the real bathroom curtains to wash, and covered the window with towels for privacy.

"You like that don't you, curtains made of towels?"

He admitted that it seemed to be very efficient, especially since the window is right next to the sink.  I am wondering if Wal-Mart sells terry cloth curtains?

Notes:
Louise (the cat) loves feathers that the chickens cast off.  Last night, Anna dangled them over her head and got the cat to do two complete back flips!

Reading:  The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How.
Quote:  "deep practice x 10,000 hours = world class skill"

Our house is bare.  Anna's artwork is hanging or about to hang in four art shows in the month of April.  We also send dh to pick up some artwork, and found that one piece was not returned.  Didn't find out until later he had taken it to work to hang in his office.

Powering Down

Homeschooling two distinct age groups sometimes causes my mind to miss a track.  Lauren asked me what the difference was between "hibernate" and "sleep".  I began with how the body, say of a bear, would slow down its respiration and metabolic rate, a much deeper sleep.  William and I just read about this the other day.  I had to shake my head clear of these thoughts when Lauren clarified that she was talking about the computer, not animals.

I had never thought about it.  But indeed, if you go to where you shut down your computer from the Start menu, you have the choice of "sleep" or "hibernate".  Sleep shuts down power to all parts of the computer it can without losing what you were doing.  When you want to resume, assuming you remained plugged in or your battery did not run out, you can restart faster.  Hibernate, on the other hand, does save data, but the computer shuts off all power, requiring a complete reboot to start working again on your computer.  It saves more energy.  Huh, learn something every day.  Read more here.

Notes:
I get the weekends off on barn chores, and sometimes, because of that, eggs don't get collected.  I think I might have also, due to over-scheduling, not have done chores on Friday.  This led to quite a collection of eggs, many of them bantam which are now being warmed by a small black hen.  I don't want these chicks!  I need to see if anyone wants them.  A friend did want the hen to hatch some eggs for her, so maybe I can substitute her bigger eggs for some of these not so big ones.

William and I are reading the 1950s book The Enormous Egg by Oliver Butterworth.  I suppose you couldn't find a book better for a little boy familiar with chickens who loves - well, I can't spoil it for you and tell you what comes out of the egg.

Hair is coming off of the horses in curtains as I brush them each night.  In the mornings, the hair is gone, used to soften the nests of birds.  It is supposed to get into the 70s this afternoon and SUN!

Missing Link

My cell phone rang while I was out.  Lauren was at home, doing homework.

"Mom, did you know that the group that sang YMCA, you know, the Village People, were performing in gay fantasy costumes?  Why don't I know this?  What else don't I know?"

I suppose a homeschool education does have holes.  I suppose I should tell her about Woodstock.

And if a homeschooler is reading this, I am not talking about the bird in the comic strip Peanuts.

I need more sleep

Given the way my weekend went, I'm thinking of installing a revolving door in our house.  During one of my stops at home, I noticed part of the newspaper in the stack of mail with "read this" written on the top and a small article circled:  Man, 90, is accused of killing wife, 89.

I look over at dh. Why did he want me to see this? Well, it just goes to show, he says that enough is enough. After 67 years of marriage, the guy finally snapped, the last straw. Okay, so he has a strange sense of humor. Perhaps that's why we get along so well, although perhaps I should watch my step as we get older.

Last week, I began washing all the winter clothing from our mud room area in the basement. I prefer the house to not smell like horse pee all year. Putting away winter items virtually guaranteed that it would turn colder again, and sure enough, it is cloudy and in the 40s and 50s. Ironically, two months ago, I would have been rejoicing in the "warm" weather by comparison to the freezing temperatures.

Farm stores are filling with seed catalogs and small delicate green plants. I begin daydreaming of plowing up the garden and how I'll spend warm days in the sun, being domestic and bringing baskets full of fresh produce to our table. My family oohs and ahs at my industry. Pop goes the dream bubble. Dh "strongly advises" that I quit any thoughts of a garden this year before it gets out of hand. He knows that many dollars later, we'll have a $32 tomato and lots of weeds, all nicely fenced off of course. He's right.  Thing is, by the time I have time to garden, there won't be as many people around to eat the results.

After such a busy weekend, I am envying bears and thinking of going into hibernation for a month.

Overheard

William was playing video games with his friend, A, in the family room.  It seems that A was taking risks while driving his race car in the alternate reality.  I overheard William cautioning him, "A, don't go over that next hill too fast.  That would be sewer-cide." 

Perhaps there is an open manhole on the other side of the hill?

Pocket Protectors

I try not to be insulted when people ask how two engineers, my husband and myself, produced two artists:  Lauren, who is a pianist and Anna, who is an oil painter.  When escorting them to various events, I am often asked what instrument I play or if I paint. Confusion plays over their faces when I answer that I am not an artist, nor is my husband.

It is an interesting question and gets to the heart of why we homeschooled them.  (Okay, there was that incident with Lauren that sealed the deal, but I was already leaning that way anyway.)  We sought a family environment that supported the satisfaction and enjoyment of learning, the motivation to find and pursue interests, and the ability to focus and work hard.  It also enabled the time, the hours required to devote to developing those interests.  We tried to provide the best we could afford in their chosen fields.

Lauren was drawn to music early when a 100 year old piano was given to us and she asked me to teach her to play the song I was playing:  Minute 3.  She learned it, hands together, at age six.  Anna was drawn to violin, but to my regret, we told her no, that we had both a great teacher and a (now new) piano.  I was not going to put resources toward yet another instrument.

After a few years in piano, we found that the intense spotlight on the student and the need to perform did not suit Anna.  Visual art provided the same framework for artistic output without the intensity of working one-on-one with an instructor without personal head time.  Could sibling competition have been part of it?  Maybe.  Now, with two separate yet artistic fields, they are both each other's greatest fans and supporters with no need to compare.

What makes for a family that fosters talent?  Following my nose in reading some websites, I found Daniel Coyle's blog. He authored the book The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How.

I was reading in his blog this morning about 'how a single family can produce two unique and diverse talents".  He writes:

These families also help underline the importance of what we might call meta-skills — the larger qualities that form the foundation for all high performance: qualities like self-control, focus, ability to project toward a goal. As a neurologist might point out, these are also neural circuits; they’re also partly a result of the shared family environment. We could theorize that these families are examples of a kind of hothouse effect, where kids with a shared identity have a tendency to develop meta-skills in certain areas.  Then they diverge, as siblings tend to do, into their own narrower areas of expertise.


So that's my answer from now on when I am asked why we homeschooled:  to develop meta-skills.  Perhaps William will be the Ted Nugent of our family, but I hope not.

I share with you today a painting Anna (age 16) completed last night.  It depicts the town of Carrollton, Kentucky on the Ohio River as seen from the Overlook at General Butler State Park.

It's a New World - Or Is It?

Anna turned the house upside down yesterday looking for my Beatles CD.  We’ve not found it yet.  The urgency was due to Dvořák’s New World Symphony, which was playing at high speed in her head.  She figured the only way to cancel it out was the Beatles, new music from the old world. 

Several days back, the girls dragged out dh’s record player and vinyl discs into the main living area.  This past year, Lauren discovered that vinyl records have much better sound than CDs, mp3s and tapes.  We now listen, old fashioned, to records, some of them I purchased many years ago at age sixteen. 

My mom had returned to work, and I did the family grocery shopping.  Each week or so, they’d have a new record on a famous composer at the end of the aisle.  I used my own money to buy each one.  I enjoyed them, but did not play them a lot.  I was thinking of my future children when I bought them.  Honestly, and yes even at that young age.  Here we are, many years later.

Lauren plays them, I should clarify.  Anna has discovered dh’s old vinyls – Pink Floyd, The Eagles.  Still searching for my CD, she’ll have to use those for now to drown out the New World.

Notes:

Lauren's essay is the blog post that gets the most direct hits, mostly in Europe, particularly in the UK.  

Handfuls of hair are coming off the fuzzy miniature horses.  It will be warm soon.

I wormed three of the chickens.  As a result, their combs seem very bright red, more so than the other chickens.  

New neighbors moved in next to a friend of mine.  William went to visit and told me several times that day about rolling down the hill in the really big (moving) boxes.   Who needs toys when you have boxes?

Career or Hobby?

Looming college bills has me considering whether I can squeeze blood from this turnip money from this blog.  I'm guessing not, and that Lauren and I will have to consider other ways to earn.  (Dh jokingly suggested we get a webcam.  Desperate times might call for desperate measures, but there are limits.)

AdSense has a balance of $76 (which you cannot claim until it (or you) reaches 100.)  With 1224 posts, and if you calculate that I've averaged 30 minutes per post (although sometimes more, and not including "head time"), I figure I've made about $0.12 per hour.  Of course, making money this way depends on driving up traffic on one's blog and actually having visitors click an ad, which presents another dilemma.

Should I expose my blog?  Should I drive up traffic?  There is an article on Blogher.com called Strip Blogging:  How Naked Do You Get?  Now, before you think I've taken dh up on his suggestion of a webcam, this article discusses just how much of one's life should be revealed in a blog.  Obviously, I share only some parts of my life by blog.  We are not doing a reality TV show here (though that's also occurred to me).  I'm concerned - is there a danger?

I have thought of sending choice blogs to a local paper, asking only for a link to my blog as payment.  They get a free article, my traffic goes up.  Yet, the convicted felon around the corner bothers me (and he's one the one that got caught.  How many haven't?)  And if any of you reading this are creeps, I have a brown belt in tae kwon do.  And so does my husband.  Really.

I am looking at other writing opportunities, such as Suite101, and the reviews are mixed.  Some people make money, some don't.  It isn't exactly the type of writing I want to do.  It is, however, safer.  Or is it?  One side benefit to writing there is that it will drive traffic to your blog.

In the olden days, Erma Bombeck made a living writing about her family with her tongue in cheek.  Yet, few people really knew where she lived or had photos of her children.  On the other hand, the Internet allows there to be many (mostly undiscovered) Bombecks out there.  Perhaps it is time to break out of this small window.

LOL the Prequel

I had trouble getting this video to upload in my last post, so here it is in a separate post. Read the post after this for an explanation:

More LOL

Being classical music geeks, one of our favorite movies is Amadeus, but you can't really get the full effect unless you watch it with Lauren. In this movie, Mozart has an infectious laugh, and each time he does, Lauren laughs back.

You can find clips of the movie on YouTube. This evening, as we were watching a few, I challenged her to watch one without laughing. In this clip, Mozart comes in while Salieri is showing the Emperor his new composition. Mozart, thinking it a bit simple, spices it up. At the end, he laughs and so does Lauren, losing her bet! (I had hoped to show you a video of Lauren losing the bet, but it won't upload. I will try again later.)

Here is the clip from YouTube. Watch to the end to see if you can keep from laughing.

Innocence Lost

My Facebook image shows me topless. I've edited it to not show "anything", but then, given that it was taken when I was four, there was nothing to show. Dh thinks it is suggestive and I should change it. It was an innocent photo, taken in an innocent age.

It illustrates for me the change in the times. Looking at old headlines, many of the ones written in the early 1900s could have been taken straight from a newspaper yesterday. But mass media, technology, and the Internet has forever changed parenting. This is not the same world in which my parents raised me.

Think I overreact? Perhaps you are not familiar with ChatRoulette? While I'm aware of the dangers of the Internet, the ease with which a child can innocently come across images no child should see, an article on Blogher opened my eyes to to more than I knew existed. Evidently, anyone can go on this website when bored, (and children today often are since they are not needed to chop wood and gather eggs) and meet a stranger. Radical Parenting has written what parents should know about how children can see naked strangers in the comfort of your own home. Great.

And this week the news that less than one mile from my house lives a man who likes little boys and was convicted of sexual child abuse.

Has the world changed that much or are we just more aware of it through media?

I Once Was Lost....

...but now, my cell phone is found! I looked everywhere, remembered the last I saw it, and could only think that it fell out of my car at baseball practice - at a public park. I had scoured Eugene, looked in all the cracks, under the seat, even in the glove box where I would not have put it. No luck. This was serious, as maybe someone was at this moment using up all my minutes to call some foreign land. I imagine my bill ballooning to thousands of dollars. Aside from that, I felt naked without my phone.

I suspend my account, but not my search, and I check Eugene over and over, fruitlessly. Finally, yesterday, I looked once again under the driver's seat. No phone. A small canvas CD case was under the seat that used to belong to dh when he drove this van. Noticing it was unzipped, I looked inside - and there was my phone! Somehow, it had fallen under the seat, flipped backward, and slipped inside this pocket of the case.

I relayed my joy to dh (at work) by email. He amused me with this story about his dad, who was a dairy farmer:

I remember when my Dad was working on one of the big grain trucks when he was in his mid-forties. He used to keep his wallet in the top pocket of his bib-overalls and while bent over the hood the wallet fell out and lodged in the engine compartment. Of course he didn’t realize it at the time and only noticed his wallet was gone at the end of the day.

They found his wallet some 15 years later while they were rebuilding the engine..

Has something like this happened to you?

When I grow up....

....I want to be like Sister Rose Ann Fleming. At age 77:

"She rises at 4 a.m. for an hour of prayer and meditation. Then she usually spends an hour or more at the computer, often researching law cases that she takes on for Volunteer Lawyers for the Poor. (A law degree is one of several she holds, including Master’s degrees in English, business administration and theology, and a doctorate in education administration.) She exercises on an elliptical trainer, lifts weights and swims. Daily Mass is at 8. By 8:30, she is usually in her office, overseeing two other full-time advisers and two volunteers who help her track Xavier’s 271 athletes in 17 sports."

Better get working on those degrees though, I only have one. And of course, I'm all over the work out routine.

LOL

People who say their children don't fight are lying. Despite the obvious perfect family (cough) reputation we project, my sixteen year old girl sometimes gets into it with my eight year old son. He, of course, bristles under yet another person telling him what to do.

Like tonight, he was harassing Anna's cat, Louise. Not hurting, mind you, just following her around, and finally up the stairs. Anna asked him to leave her cat alone. He claimed to be doing nothing wrong. Back and forth. Mother is then unwillingly drawn in to determine the winner of this verbal spat.

William is asked to leave the cat alone, and to come down the steps. In my fairy tale, he says, "Yes, ma'am. Right away, ma'am. Can I take the trash out for you?" In reality, he says, "I'm not doing anything!" Get off the steps! "But I'm not doing anything." By now he's at the bottom of the steps. Come off the steps, no need to be there.

"But I have to go up the steps. [Pregnant pause.] I need to brush my teeth!"

At this point, all older house occupants bust out into a spontaneous LOL, totally embarrassing the son, who runs upstairs, presumably to brush his teeth. In reality, he for some reason finds his tooth brush to be a torture device invented by moms, even as his teeth turn green and grow fuzzy sweaters.

At any rate, it was a plausible reason to go up the steps with a cat, but perhaps not quite so believable.

A Sky with a View

I was over visiting Cloudia and her observations of the hawk in Hawaii. It put to mind the buzzards that I saw two days ago while riding my horse. They were spiraling above me, five of them, looking for the next meal. As Etta and I paused in our trotting around the arena, I noticed something. Each buzzard was at a different altitude, circling, circling slowly, looking. One was so very high, I wasn't sure if it was another buzzard or a smaller bird. But no, it was a buzzard. They flew, each one at a different level, to maximize the type of vision possible from varying heights. Perhaps the way-up-there buzzard could see far, far away, noticing something larger that needed inspection. The buzzard closest could see the smallest movement right below him, close up.

Would that humans would appreciate that we can all be at different places, see differently, yet appreciate that it collectively makes us as a community more successful at whatever we are seeking.

Notes:

What a long day yesterday! Supporting each child in their individual pursuits. All different, yet making us stronger together.

We had the most awesome (which my priest says means both "fearful" and "wonderful" at the same time) thunderstorm yesterday. It down poured hail! It passed us by rather suddenly, leaving behind bizarre piles of ice balls under the eaves of buildings.

Trying to "spring forward" but finding that my spring is sprung a bit.

Guilty by No Association

Fencing classes for William take place at our local community center. I was able to arrange for a coach to come to us homeschoolers from a nearby big city. Jason* works in the office there, scheduling the space in the building. In checking with him to add on another class time, he said he’d be happy to have our group.

“You watch your kids, and they are well behaved. Not all groups do that.” He went on to say that he had several home school groups that frequented the facility and that he found we were a much more diverse group than he’d previously thought. In what way, dare I ask?

Well, he had one group that always brought in their kids for PE in long pants, despite his preference that they wear shorts. “But I have that figured out,” he said. “Have you ever seen that show about the Duggars, that homeschool family with nineteen children?”

Well, no, I don’t watch that show, sorry. (Though I will admit I know who they are.)

“It’s all about modesty, I’m thinking. They don’t want their children to have their legs exposed.”

Do you THINK it might have something to do with the fact that (at the time this conversation took place) it is 2 freezing degrees outside and they don’t want to have to change all their kids' clothes for class and back again, when they can just wear sweat pants and be done with it? Goodness gracious, he’s learning about homeschoolers by watching Nineteen and Counting or whatever its called? Spare me.

In passing, I might note that most of the homeschooler moms in my area wear makeup and dress fashionably. Not a beehive hairdo in the group.

*Jason, though misguided, is a nice guy, and so I didn’t use his real name.

Art Appreciation Day

One day, when Anna was much younger, maybe nine years old, she showed her art to someone. Complimenting her, the adult (whose name is long forgotten) asked if she was going to be an artist when she grew up.

“I am already an artist,” she replied.

And you know? She was right. But often, we ask children what they are going to be when they grow up, neglecting to recognize the value of what they already are.

William reminded me of this when asking how I liked his most recent drawing. Would I frame it? He went on to imply that my framing of his artwork did not quite equal the oohs and ahs and subsequent expensive framing of Anna’s artwork. Would I make sure to frame his drawing? And I will not only frame it, I will share it with you.

Notes:

Lauren was academically admitted to her college of choice. Waiting on the Conservatory admission and scholarship/financial aid information. Waiting. Waiting.

My Cup Runneth Over (or perhaps it's upside down?)

It’s baseball season again. New coach, new kids, new parents to meet. Standing at the fence, “Which one is yours?” I’m asked.

“The one that is having a hard time adjusting to wearing a cup,” I answer.

“Oh, yes, I see him,“ the other mom says with instantaneous understanding. He’s easily identifiable, uncomfortable as he is. (And some day, he’ll so love that I wrote about this.)

Over the years, I’ve read articles about “your daughter’s first bra” and other milestones. Yet, this by far has been much more of an, uh, adjustment. This is the child who will wear only Wal-mart white socks with the green line, which must be carefully straightened over the toes. No buttons on his shirts. And gasp! The horror of turtlenecks! Tags must be cut out, and gloves are rejected because dirt or fuzz has settled in the end of the fingers. No elastic around the ankles. The fabric must not be itchy. And so on.

Sensory issues combined with the thought that everyone will KNOW he is wearing it, and it looks funny and how can he run and he “can’t believe I’m having to live with this”. Oh, the agony of being a boy. To have a mom that just doesn’t understand, who has NEVER had such an uncomfortable circumstance.

Like carrying an baby nine months. Yeah.

Update:
So I wrote this during baseball practice. Being a MOM, I'm not expected, indeed I think I'm not invited to participate in practices though I daresay, having grown up in Cincinnati during the days of the pinnacle of the Cincinnati Reds, I know a bit about baseball and still have a mean arm. Anyway, William gets back in the car, takes out his cup.

"Mom, does it go this way, or that way?" he asks, turning it clockwise.

"That way," I say. With the small end down.

"OH! So that's why it hurt!" he complains. "You put it in the wrong way!"

Maybe I did, maybe I didn't. I only remember arguing with him that it wasn't optional. Perhaps I assumed that his discomfort was just his sensory issues. Perhaps, I didn't check. As in all cases, it is always the mom's fault. At least, next time, it will feel much more comfortable, which in retrospect, may have been a good strategy.

WILSON!!!! I'm sorry, Wilson!

The kitchen was thoroughly cleaned, and yet, passing by it, I would catch a whiff of something "off". It was not unlike the experience of opening the refrigerator door and knowing that someone had forgotten some broccoli in the dark, back corner.

We have an open floor plan, so I looked under the loveseat nearby. Nothing. I scrubbed the sink again and put baking soda in the drain. Not it. And then, I looked over at the canister that contained Wilson, our sourdough starter. I have been so very busy, I had it on my list to feed and tend to Wilson, but just couldn't get to him. And, by rights, Wilson should have been in the refrigerator.

Maybe it is Wilson, I think to myself. I opened the lid and inhaled deeply. Anna said my face resembled that of a baby that has been given a vaccine shot, in those five seconds when they are so shocked and hurt and mad with their mouths hanging open but no sound emits as they screw up enough energy to burst eardrums. Ahgggg! I have NEVER smelled ANYTHING, anything, and believe me, I have smelled some bad, bad things, that smelled as bad as Wilson. It was B-A-D.

Guilt set in. I have been so busy, I let Wilson die. How could I? Fortunately, unlike the Tom Hanks character of Castaway, I did split Wilson and put some in the refrigerator. All is not lost.

Notes:

I am going to have to get a bigger calendar. I can't everything into the 2" squares on the current one.

Today, it is cloudy, but no rain (that's tomorrow). Lauren said the sky is pouting.

Anna is painting the Ohio River. She has finished a beautiful painting I would love to share, but it isn't completely dry or cured. Any attempts to photograph it shows this, and you can't quite see the beauty of the real thing. So, you'll have to wait. Her "Sky Over July" was accepted into a local art show/contest, though they didn't know that she is only sixteen.

Sunshine, On My Shoulders, Makes Me Happy!

Have we turned the corner? Kentucky is so unpredictable. One day, it can be freezing. The next, warm enough to motivate us to go on a hike through the woods.

How it is possible to go on a trail that is in a loop, a circle, and go uphill the entire hike, I have not yet figured out, but we did it yesterday. Entirely uphill. Doesn't life feel like that sometimes? As the boys scampered ahead, I began to feel my age. But I made it. The sunshine was luxurious.

Sweet William worried over me. "Are you alright, Mom?" But of course I was, just a little slower than an eight year old!

Note to William from the weekend: If you don't want to take a shower, don't stand behind the manure spreader while daddy is spreading manure.

Radical

Years ago, being a homeschooler was radical. Oh, it wasn't illegal like it might have been only a decade or two before. I didn't have to go underground. But it was uncommon. I was considered bizarre, if not weird, by many. There would be those that would corner a homeschooler at a gathering, running across the room to pick my brain. But dh and I have actually experienced a sudden global cooling in the room when divulging our educational choices. In those years, you might hear, "You do what?" or "Is that legal?" I kind of enjoyed my radical persona.

As the years went by, homeschooling became a "movement", if you will, more and more people opting to teach at home. The responses began to change: "Oh, my grandma's neighbor's sister-inlaw's cousin homeschools six kids!" Still followed by, "I could never do that." Now, everyone knows someone who homeschools. No longer am I radical. (Though I believe they still think I'm a bid odd.)

This past week. I saw that we've evolved a bit in the questions I've been asked over the years. I have often been asked about the "S" word: socialization. Although usually, the asker hasn't enough sophistication to distinguish between socializing and socialization, the "S" word is often brandished as a reason to question homeschooling. Because that's the purpose of schools, after all. Isn't it? Or perhaps education might be a goal? I digress. It was a given, my inquisitor said, that there are ample opportunities for socialization of homeschoolers, but in discussing this with a friend of hers, they wondered how these homeschoolers will manage when they are thrown into a college setting.

Now, here I must tell you I was in a bit of a tiff already. Standing in line to get my auto tags renewed and with only fifteen minutes to spare, I didn't feel obligated to explain myself or engage in a philosophical debate with someone that clearly already had an opinion. I just wanted my dang tags. Yet, I had made the mistake of bringing along William, which brought the inevitable, "why aren't you in school?" and the discovery that we were those kind of people.

I tried, really I did, to control myself. I am usually very calm in response to these questions. But this was a new one. My neck feathers raised up a bit. "Well," I responded. "My daughters have already gone to college classes while still in high school. They did quite well." I should have stopped here, I know. I didn't, God forgive me. "And yes, they do have a problem socializing with many public school kids. Many they find too focused on peers, less mature."

Ah, a window was open, my turn. I would be saved from telling her about Lauren's community college class where the students didn't show up for study classes, texted or listened to iPods in class, didn't respect the teacher or participate in group projects. At the first study class, Lauren sat there with several older adult students, no kids her age. Perhaps I'm not radical anymore, but I am different. My kids are different because of it. I'm glad of that.

The Life of Louise

Somedays, it's hard enough to get time on my own computer,
but is is going to be impossible now that Louise has started blogging.

Because We Had To?

Four-year old Lauren (who is now eighteen) skipped beside me as I wondered if child protective services would be called. During a tour of the local public school, they showed us what they thought would be a selling point: a "castle" in the library. Someone had constructed a castle-like structure so that children could climb up, find a hidey-hole, and sit to quietly read.

No children were there during our tour, but Lauren happily climbed up the short ladder as I listened to the public school employees giving the tour. Gasp! I saw a flash of fanny! Lauren was wearing no underwear under her short dress. Oh, no! How did that happen? Bad mother of the year award! Did they notice? I shifted toddler Anna to another hip and decided it was time to make a hasty exit.

Lauren skipped out to the car again, clearly happy in this environment. She would thrive, no doubt, in a school environment, eager to please, smart. Yet, I thought of her independent spirit, that she could already read, and that it was a sunny day, a good day to go to the zoo and to feel the cool air on one's bottom (LOL).

We made our decision to homeschool not long after that day. I could almost truthfully answer the oft asked, "Why..?" with "Because we had to. You see, one day, Lauren....."

Lester The Third

There is just something primal about having a rooster go after you. It kicks in some caveman instincts and I find myself in a rage. I clean his crappy cage, I feed him, I give his hens choice garbage from the kitchen. Yet he comes after me.

I'm thinking he is in the February dumps, too, and being overly caged from the snow, he is aggressive. Who isn't? Still, I find myself flailing and kicking at him. I'd kill him in that moment. Then, I calm down as he plans his next leap at me. When he does, I grab his feet and he now is hanging upside down. "Whose your daddy now?" I ask him, holding him aloft so he can look at my mean expression. He reconsiders his position in my flock. For this moment. He never learns and will likely attack again. Time to find someone that wants chicken-n-dumplins a la Lester.

Notes:
I see my Google ad today is for free recipes. How appropriate. Do they include Chicken a la Lester?

Chicken Butt

Dh paused over the rice, held up the large serving spoon, and said, "You haven't used this spoon to scoop out a chicken butt or anything have you? It's clean, right?"

Lucky for him, I was laughing too much to be insulted, but I inquired as to why he would think that I'd use our only good large serving spoon on a chicken (and just how one "scoops out" a chicken butt).

"Well, you have cleaned chicken butts before, and we do have salad tongs in the bathroom, so it's not inconceivable that this spoon has been used for something other than food." (I've now ensured that I will never be invited to a potluck again nor will anyone ever accept invitations to eat at our house.) And no, I've never used it to scoop out chicken butts. Not yet, anyway.

On Music and Listening

Today, I have a guest blogger: my daughter, Lauren.

On Music and Listening

I came up with an interesting theory the other day, and I am curious to hear your thoughts.

My mother and I were driving home from another college audition, and she began to read Aaron Copland’s “What to Listen for in Music” out loud to me. As I was listening, I thought about how listening closely to someone reading is like listening to someone playing a piece of music, or even listening closely to your own playing.

People have often told me that I “have a good ear” or “listen well” in musical situations. I’ve always wondered what caused me to have such a good ear, and whether it is something innate or something I have been trained to be good at over time. As most of you know, I was brought up in my musical education using the Suzuki method, and there was never a moment in our home when music was not being heard or played. My mother, as a good Suzuki parent, always ensured that I listened to good music. But she also did something else; she read to me.

When my sister and I were little, my mother read to us all the time. We would pile on the couch and listen intently as we looked at the pictures in the books. Perhaps that focus, that intent listening might have helped my brain become better at listening, not only when listening to someone read a book out loud, but also when listening to music. Wouldn’t it be logical that you would be using the same part of your brain in both situations?

When listening to someone read out loud, you are essentially multi-tasking. You must listen to the words you hear at the present, comprehend them, remember what happened just before that, and anticipate what is happening next. If your mind wanders off, you lose the story line and you forget where you were going. Of course, you still hear the words, but they pass through one ear and out the other without a second thought. I think music may be virtually the same phenomenon.

It is in my opinion that good ear can certainly be acquired. In my case, I think it is simply something I’ve always done. (Listened, that is.) That part of my brain has always been exercised and stretched from the time I was born, which has allowed me to listen so well.

What do you think?

Looking for Sunshine

It was like a phantom limb. All day, I was putting on the emergency brake that wasn't there and trying to shift a car that has automatic transmission. Seeing a stop ahead, I pushed the clutch to the floor, only it wasn't the clutch, it was the brake, causing Anna to grab the "oh, crap" handle. I suppose it will only take a few days to adjust to driving ol' Eugene again.

There are signs of spring. Roxie the miniature horse tried to rub off her hide in the barn yesterday, a sure sign of shedding. Taking a comb, I was able to remove several pounds of hair from her backside. There is mud everywhere. And yet, looking out the window, snowflakes are peacefully floating to the ground. At least, it would be peaceful if eight year olds were calm and quiet in the morning.

Navigation

Would it be too much to expect a little feedback? A "jolly good" or "brilliant turn"? I would even accept negative comments such as "you bloody idiot, I said turn left". But Mildred remains silent, unless she is "recalculating". Mildred, being our borrowed GPS system during our travels this weekend to yet more college auditions for Lauren. Mildred, if you haven't noticed, is British.

Could they not make these systems a bit more entertaining? I mean, you're in the car for hours sometimes. Could Mildred not tell me a joke? Perhaps chide us for not trusting her and taking another route that makes me more confident? "What, you don't trust me?" I trusted her yesterday, taking a "short cut" that took me off the highway and onto state highways, twisting and turning, and turning again. In the dark. No, Mildred, you don't always know best. Still, Lauren punched buttons and fed back to me information such as our arrival time, and it did help when we mistakenly put in the address at the 500 block instead of the 5000 block. Mildred got us out of the inner city.

Sometimes, we would change Mildred into Lola. "Recalulando!" Now, in Googling this, I see that one can sometimes record voices and sayings into the GPS. One guy programmed Karen, his Australian guide to say "Oh dear! You have gone astray". Well, I have to return this to it's rightful owner when our travels are over, so perhaps I shouldn't fool with it. What a surprise it would be to my mother (Mildred's owner) when Mildred cusses her!

I did not take Eugene (our aging van) on the trip, fearing it would just be too much for him. Instead, we took dh's car "Rex" with a manual transmission. Now, I've owned sports cars before with a manual transmission, so I wasn't completely out of the water, but was not thrilled to run into Friday rush hour traffic in a larger city and negotiating around three accidents. The constant shifting was getting to me. Less than subtle, I nearly popped a wheelie one time, throwing Lauren into paroxysms of laughter.

In case you were wondering, my dear daughter is auditioning to become a piano performance major and is doing quite well, thank you. We've enjoyed traveling together, comparing the schools and our insights into what it would be like to attend there. Not allowed to watch the auditions nor having to take placement tests, I have confined my observations to the quality of their coffee and toilet paper and perhaps how I like the buildings. From college to college, they are so very different. More on that another day.

Notes
Happy, Happy Birthday to my Baby Boy! You have brought nothing but joy to us!

Being Catty

Many men claim to not like cats, but I've got your number. It's because of the litter box. Jack, a red tabby who is very old, cleared the room (so to speak) the other day. I was, of course, notified. Why not just take care of it? Well, "I never wanted cats in the first place!"

But it is not true of all men. The sweet cat to the left belongs to my father-in-law when he is not enjoying the sunshine of Florida. And in dh's defense, he showed his undying love for me by cleaning the cat box each time I was pregnant. Even though he didn't want cats.

Notes:

Last night, the black hen, Aunt Mary, got up off her nest of nine eggs and abandoned them. One was broken and showed no development. I've not candled the others yet to see if they were at least developing some. Was it too cold? Interestingly, it was 21 days exactly. Can she count?

Each morning, there are two starlings in the dog cage where we keep the white silkie rooster. We open the door, and in a panic, they escape. The chickens do not seem to mind their wild companions, even sharing the food bowl. I will have to do a major cleanup of the barn come spring, for the starlings leave behind a great mess.

Gender Issues

Lauren mused that her friends frequently named their musical instruments and that she should name our piano. Since it was made in Japan, I suggested Michiko, a common Japanese girl name.

"It's a boy," she said solemnly.

"A boy? How do you know?"

"It would just be too weird to be running my fingers up and down a girl."

Bird Leaves

Birds filled the ash tree outside our house as I sat having tea with a friend. They kept coming, more and more, filling the bare tree until it looked like fluffy leaves were growing on it in the dead of winter.

They were robins! What were robins doing here? Are they not spring birds? Is spring around the corner? Please God.

It turned out that the tree was the waiting area for your turn at the holly bush at the corner of the house. It was a boiling mass of birds, flapping and grabbing, eating the red berries. Soon, the bush was stripped and the birds left. I wonder where they are headed?

Notes:
Always have an extra heat lamp on hand for the chickens, so that when one burns out, you don't find yourself at Walmart at 9 PM.

Today or tomorrow is the day that the chicks will hatch, if they will

I am asked about the horses. We've been leaving them in. It is too cold (23F), wind blowing, and up to their knees, higher on Jorgen and the minis, and there is no point. They just stand at the round bale and eat anyway. We do let them romp in the paddock while we clean stalls. Maybe I'll get a video of that.

Chicken Tortilla Soup

As promised, here is dh's recipe for Chicken Tortilla Soup:

Soup ingredients:

1 onion chopped

1 Tbsp olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 Tbsp chili powder

1 tsp oregano

1 - 28 oz. can diced tomatoes

48 oz. chicken broth

1 - 16 oz. bag of frozen corn

1 - 4 oz. can chopped green chiles

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro (or equivalent dried)

2 boneless chicken breast halves, cooked and cut into bite size pieces.

1. In medium pot, saute onion and garlic in olive oil. Stir in spices, broth and tomatoes. Bring to boil, then simmer 10 minutes.

2. Add corn, chile peppers, and chicken. Simmer 10 more minutes.

Serve with tortilla chips, sliced avocado, sour cream, shredded Monterey Jack cheese, chopped green onions, and if you are snowed in like me, a giant margarita.

Someone Has Moved Me To Alaska Without My Permission

Snow Much

Lauren's Recital

Lauren plays "Les Adieux" (Beethoven) February 14, 2010

Matrimonily Correct

It wasn't that I was jealous or anthing. She wasn't that pretty, but she was thin, and the go-go boots (a term that firmly sets how old I am) were hot. Her plaid skirt was short, almost shorter than the red scarf that hung down from her neck. Had she been going to a PTA meeting, all the moms would have been snitting to each other behind their hands. But it wasn't a PTA meeting, and she was up on the altar, a communion minister.

"Did you see the woman at church?" I asked dh.

"Which woman?" he asked cautiously.

"The one with the boots," I answered descriptively. "And the skirt."

"Oh, that woman. yes." Of course, he knows to carefully pick his way around the eggshells strewn through this conversation - acknowledging that I am right- that she was inappropriately dressed to be on the altar - yet not admitting that her attire was at all, shall we say, intriguing. "I was thinking the same thing as you," he said. "Honestly."

My dh is so smart.

Notes:
It snows more. People: get a new joke. We all know the irony of the snowfall and global warming.

This week was most stressful, and at the same time, rewarding. It is the season of endings and beginnings. Lauren continues to audition at colleges, looking for her new life. Anna was recognized by nearby city's visual artist association as an "emerging artist". Recitals, family visits, field trip. All good.

A Sinking Feeling

You never know what you'll get out of a field trip, and what memories you will retain. I'll remember the doors closing on the elevator and the laughter as I warned our packed group of twenty-three, "Don't anyone fart." (That was for the benefit of the boys.) I realized that I missed scuba diving, a wistful feeling, something I've not done in years. The name "Major Archibald Butt", whose crew must have had to call him "Major Butt". I wondered if his son was "Harry".

Still, it is somber experience to see the artifacts of the Titanic and realize, that although it was just a plate or toothbrush, some person that lived and died on that boat had used it. Some placards talked about how children were separated from parents, put in another boat. How terrifying. And of course, the heart wrenching separation of husband and wife.

Speaking of separation, I found this in the barn. No body was found.

The starlings are back. One seems to have misplaced his leg. Each night, they gather in the barn or get up into the heat lamp of the chicken coop. Each morning, they fly out the barn door, or run stupidly into the rafters of the barn.

A glacier has formed on our metal barn roof and has begun to slowly move. Icicles hanging down have turned inward on the barn as a result of the weight of the snow. The snow threatens the barn with its sharp points.

Snowy afternoon

Snow Cold

Children nowadays don't get the opportunity to do as much meaningful work as their forefathers did: chopping wood, gathering eggs, naturally feeling an integral part of the success and survival of the family. It's good for a boy to carry wood.

I've taught a friend of mine a little too well that duct tape can be used in almost any situation. Knowing that we rarely get enough snow to warrant buying snow pants or snow boots, she didn't, thereby ensuring that we'd get loads of it. It's her fault that my property is now two feet under. Her boy, pictured above, loves, as boys do, to play in the snow. It is very cold and when the pants get wet, it is colder still. What to do? Buy snow pants? Of course, if she did, the snow would immediately disappear. Duct tape! She took a pair of old sweat pants and covered them with duct tape. Instant redneck, hillbilly snow pants! They worked great. I'm a bad influence.

Notes to self:

If the forecast is for lots of snow, buy hay and chicken feed BEFORE it snows.

Happy Birthday to dh. You'll never catch up to me, though! Love you!

Louise the Lettuce Thief

Yesterday, I heard a collective gasp from behind me. "SHE HAS THE NEW FACEBOOK!" my daughters protested. "No fair!"

Truthfully, I couldn't tell the difference until they pointed out that my many unanswered notices were now at the top or something. I don't pay attention anymore. Facebook changes its "look" more than apparently some women change their bras. (If you are that woman, I don't know you.) I usually only check it once a day, so I'm not sure how I rated this special treatment. Some people are just blessed that way.

Notes:
I've figured out how to fix my problem with scheduled posts !!! Yes! Now I more consistently blog.

Somehow, Aunt Mary (bantam hen) got locked out of the barn today, perhaps as early as noon. If so, the eggs may have gotten too cold. They're not due until Ash Wednesday. If they don't hatch we'll have to try again. Dh says Aunt Rita NEVER would have left the nest to eat. Fail! Lauren feels badly, but dh says no, it was Aunt Mary's fault.

As you saw in the video, Louise really likes lettuce. She steals it from the scraps for the chickens. I guess she needs more greens in her diet.

Expecting 3 -4 inches of snow tonight. Stupid groundhog.

In Which I Make a Total Fool of Myself

My hands shook a bit as I took the syringe and jabbed it into the breast of the chicken. I tried to depress the plunger, but couldn't get it to budge.

"Mom, I don't think you even got it through the skin," Lauren observed. Sure enough, it was just through the feathers and pushing on the skin. Chicken skin is tough.

I pinched the chest skin and carefully inserted the needle. The syringe held enough of a drug to sedate a 1200 pound horse, left from Bay's fatal colic. I never got to use it on him. Surely, if it would sedate a horse, it would euthanize a chicken. I needed to dispose of the drug safely, and I needed to put this chicken out of her misery. Using the drug, I could kill two birds with one stone. (Sorry, it was an unavoidable pun.)

I was, in fact, a little nervous using it, having heard about a man who almost lost a finger after accidentally injecting himself. But still, the syringe would not work. I pulled it out. Dang. The needle was bent. Plan B. Remove the needle and push the liquid down her throat.

Removing the needle, I pried open her beak, and the liquid leaked out (I never could get the plunger to move). I'm not sure how much the chicken got, but a couple of cc's went on my hand. As I washed my hand, I looked over at the chicken. Absolutely no effect. I decided to go down to the house to wash up better. While walking, I began to wonder to myself if I could in fact absorb some of the sedative myself through skin. And I began to panic.

At the house, I began to feel a bit weird, like one does shortly before passing out. What had I done? My hands tingled. We should go to the emergency room, I decided, just in case. My mouth was dry, my throat felt tight. My heart pounded. As we drove, I finally had the foresight to call the equine vet. He laughed. Laughed! He'd had this stuff on him many times, and as long as I had promptly washed it, I would be fine.

I told dh to pull over to the Stuff Mart and get me a bottle of water. While he went in, I practiced my old scuba diving techniques of calming myself and controlling my heart and breathing. I had just freaked myself out. I drank the water, and after taking two years off dh's life, I was okay. We turned around and went home.

Lauren and dh later reminded me that I had two Excedrin in my system to fight a terrible sinus headache, and I'd already told both it had made me a bit dizzy and shaky. My slight cold had made my throat sore all week. It wasn't the horse drug. Still, it was a stupid thing to do. Headlines: Woman dies trying to kill a chicken.

In case you are wondering about the poor chicken in my account of "poor me", she had septic peritonitis, I think. She hadn't layed in years, and wasn't egg bound. She smelled like death. By yesterday, her eyes were closed, and she was not eating, hardly moving, but surprisingly her head was alert. Hard to euthanize something that still seems aware. But I think she was in pain.

So, today, at the advice of my cousin-in-law, I bought a can of starter fluid (after showing my ID - cough). It's made of ether. I sprayed the whole can in a plastic container with a lid and put in my sad chicken. Internet sources said she'd be asleep three minutes later, dead in thirty. FIFTEEN minutes later, the chicken sat looking around when I peeked. Will nothing kill the chicken??? I carried the container down to the house to shorten my distance to checking on her, perhaps stirring up the ether, which tends to sink and perhaps wasn't reaching her beak. She started dozing. And now, she is at the big coop in the sky. May she rest in peace.

Cauna lived at least six, maybe seven years and delighted us with double yolked eggs now and again that were the biggest eggs I've ever seen in my life from a chicken, and I thank her for that.

Notes:
My studies on how to humanely kill a chicken also revealed that I was indeed responsible for a chickie death. The chickie had lopped off its toe somehow, and thinking to clean it, I sprayed first aid spray on it which contains benzocaine, lethal to chickens. I didn't know. Well, that also might be a way to dispatch a chicken.

It is Super Bowl Sunday. I am going to play Scrabble with the girls and if you want to know my favorite team, you'll first have to tell me who is playing.

A Hidden World

8 a.m. this morning

"Mom, did you know that there are more dust mites in a house than people on the whole planet?" William mused while we drove one day. (In my house, I believe it.) This comes from watching science shows on TV rather than Spongebob. "They eat nothing but skin cells. Do you think they get tired of eating only skin cells?"

Honestly, that is something I had never contemplated: the boring diet of the lowly dust mite.

"Perhaps," I ventured, "each person's skin has a different taste for variety. And maybe different places on the body have a different taste."

As soon as I said that, I knew I'd headed down the wrong cart path.
"Yeah, like smelly armpit skin! How about skin from corns on feet? Or, how about butt skin?" Okay, time to redirect the conversation as we discussed the color of mites, how many legs, why they have so many legs, if you could see them with the naked eye, how long they live.........

Notes:
Lauren's audition at a college was canceled yesterday. Snow. See photo.
Anna was hoping to go to art class today. See photo.

I finally made sour sourdough. The secret seems to be not to rush. It takes more than one day to let the starter work.

Note to self: when making Tortilla Soup, diced jalapenos are not the same thing as diced green chilis. HOT!

Through the Looking Glass

From the fish's perspective.

Lauren has been multi-tasking lately, preparing for college auditions, school work, and a multitude of other activities. I knew it had taken a toll when she asked me if I knew where the "pole huncher" was. (Hole puncher, in case you are also on overload.) Laughing at dinner, Anna said, "That just sounds wrong!" William picked up on our mirth and began talking, "It's like you hunch your pole. Get it?" He did not, and thought our mirth was a direct result of what he was saying, rather than the fact he had no idea how what he was saying sounded. He kept at it, moving the words around to see the comedic effect, all the while not understanding why we were laughing. Finally, we got control and told him to STOP!

This reminds me of hearing that recently, the girls watched the movie Aladdin with William. After, they told me how much they enjoyed seeing it now, realizing how much had gone over their heads when they had watched it as children.

Notes:
Lauren and I are supposed to go to a music school audition tomorrow. They are expecting, however, 8-12 inches of snow. I'm not quite used to driving under such conditions.

Here, it is raining. The sound of it on the tin roof of the barn is very comforting. The horses stay in, munch their hay and stay out of the cold. The chickens keep them company.

Ah, trip cancelled. I will read to William and enjoy the rain.

Change the World with Facebook

Thousands of teens are spending brain cells this week searching the bandwidths for photos of famous people who they resemble. I first heard it from my teens who said they were, I thought, looking for a doppelwanger. They fell down laughing. Not a doppelwanger, they said. A doppelganger. How was I to know? Do I speak German? Anna again had to fall to the ground when I mistakenly referred to one photo of "Keith Ledger". What? Oh, yeah, Heath. Do I spend my days memorizing celebrity names? No. Anyway, I feel like Snape, and some mornings, look like him, too. Not exactly a flattering profile photo.

Recently, the Facebook craze was posting your bra color. If only we could get all this thought and brain power directed to world peace or writing music or doing HOMEWORK! Okay, I've just lost all my young adult readers, so I'll let you go laugh at the old lady.

BTW, doppelwanger is a real word having something to do with wallets or something really dirty, which is what my daughters said it sounded like.

"Ain't No Thing But a Chicken Wing"

"The capstone on my grave will say I was downed by a slimy green turd," complained dh at dinner tonight. His complaint was the "presents" left by our free-ranged chickens who roost in the barn. The world is their toilet, and they often leave droppings on the concrete. All of us who do barn chores know the heart dropping feeling of our feet slipping out from under us, only to catch ourselves but wrenching our backs in the process. I guess you had to be there, but we all bonded with our mutual bad luck of nearly cracking our skulls, nearly killed by a chicken.

Perhaps I could solve this problem, I mused. Lester Rooster has turned mean. I mean, really mean. He hadn't been, up until the day he ran up Lauren's back as she bent to fill the food dish. Surprised her a bit. After that day, he began attacking everyone, meaning me and Lauren. Except for a little concern for my eyes, I'm not afraid of him. In fact, I'm pretty good at catching him by his legs as he leaps up. Hanging him by his legs, his hen came to attack me in his defense. SO, Lester has to go. I'm sure someone wants Chicken-n-Dumplin's for Sunday dinner (don't tell William).

If Lester goes, Simon Peter (Rooster) can have the coop with all the hens but the bantams, who can have the smaller chicken tractor. Voila! No attacks by the rooster, and no cracked skulls on the concrete.

I must also find a home for Judas, the silkie rooster who is supposed to be a silkie hen. Judas is too small to let out with the other chickens, and is lonely. How do we know? Lauren reports he thinks her black glove is a bantam hen, if you know what I mean. Time to find him a home. Or maybe he can have the black bantams I have as his girls, but no babies! I don't need more chickens!

Aunt Rita's sister, who I guess should be Aunt Mary (since my Aunt Rita's sister was Mary and this hen is my hen Aunt Rita's sister), is sitting on 9 full sized eggs for a friend of mine. One week down, two to go.

And Cauna hangs in there, a very old chicken with a swollen abdomen. My Internet search indicated that she could die any day, but found a reference to a hen who lived with this condition for 3 years! Please, no. Not much to do though. I guess in the wild, the 'possums would have taken care of her.

Epitaph for a chicken farmer:

Here he lies,
Now he's dead,
Slipped on a chicken turd
And cracked his head.

I guess I better do something about the chickens.

Wilson lives in a jar on my kitchen counter top. I have to remember to feed him (her?) every two weeks or so, but lately it has been daily as I try to discover the secret of the sour in sourdough. Wilson is my sourdough starter, named for the volleyball "friend" in the movie "Castaway" with Tom Hanks. (My girls named it.)

I'm up five extra pounds trying to capture the true sour taste. Although the starter works and produces marvelous loaves of bread, only one so far was actually sour enough for me and I'm not sure what I did that time.

My sister accused me of sending her anthrax through the mail, because when I ordered Wilson, who is free of charge for a self-addressed stamped envelope, I put an envelope in for her as well. I thought it would at least come with some explanation. Rather, it came with a baggie of white powder and a sticker with the website, prompting her phone call. She'd recognized my handwriting, so if I do indeed decide to send a less benign mailing, I'll have to cut the letters out of a magazine and paste them on the envelope.

Wilson has an impressive genealogy, tracing his roots back to the Oregon Trail. You can order free Wilson online to make your own starter. Yet, there doesn't seem to be much difference between him and the sourdough starter that I made myself last year from wild yeast in the air. I'll keep trying, but in the meantime, that sour smell in my house? It isn't from old dishrags. It's just Wilson.

Notes
That old hen is still alive. Amazing. She's looking pitiful though.
Lester the Rooster has turned mean. Anyone want him to eat?