Crazy and Fast

Life is speeding by crazy-fast and I can't seem to get a block of time big enough to compose a decent post. I've started several interesting posts that remain unfinished (limestone lithograph plates, barn signs, a natural weed killer recipe, cloth diapering info. etc.) But since I don't want to leave the blog dormant, here's a list of tedious "recents" that are noteworthy: 

A hummingbird got trapped in our screened-in gazebo and had to be freed. I think it went in to check out the shiny glass cup that my husband had left there. We feed them, and so they check the windows (since we have a feeder suctioned to the dining room window) and they check out shiny bottle-like things too, as we have a glass feeder suspended from a tree.

My oldest saw a 5 foot black snake wound around the downspout when he was mowing. He walked over to check it out and it dropped in a coil to the ground and managed to disappear. We have yet to figure out where it went, and think that it was a black rat snake.

My husband and oldest helped bring in our neighbor's hay. They pay to store it in our lower barn. It was a bumper crop! My husband threw the majority of probably 350 square bales up to the loft for storage. My 14 year old drove our pickup in the field when the load got too tall for him to heft bales on.

The aforementioned child also attended a week of sailing classes. He did some solo sailing, and often had the tiller when sailing in a group. He loved it, and knows more sailing jargon than I do now. He is attending robotics workshops this week. Later today the Lego robot he programmed with 3 other boys will compete against 5 other teams. I hope to go watch the competition.

My husband took our small, wooden sailboat out on the lake on Father's Day weekend for it's "maiden voyage". The pond is 2 acres, but fingered, and not roomy enough for sailing, so he rowed it. He reported that it is super fast and lives up to the name of "swift" carved into her side.

Additionally, his "start-up" company has been dominating our lives lately. He's been traveling, has worked long days, is texting/e-mailing frequently, and has worked evenings and even on a weekend. He's always "behind" as the workload is heavy, timing is all-important, and there are a handful of employees. Despite his busyness, he managed to put together an over-sized swing set though, for which my children are grateful. He also bought more play sand for me to spread in the over-sized sandbox he built last summer and took down the giant Christmas star from the back of the barn, etc.

My 4 month old is doing some serious teething. Thankfully he is still a mild-mannered and happy baby, but he's been fussy and his sleep (and mine!) is suffering. He also seems very interested in food.

The tractor saga continued. The repair place had promised us free labor on the wring harness due to their involvement in its demise, but when he went to pay for the part cost after it was replaced, they charged him for the extensive labor too, because it was "more work" than they had "anticipated". He pushed the issue and only paid for half the labor, but this was very frustrating and expensive for us. At least we can mow the pasture and such now.

A possum has now found the grill, and along with the 'coon makes it part of his nightly rounds.

One of the over-arching items in the last weeks has been my latest and ongoing bout of kidney stones. I was diagnosed with a milk of calcium stone about 5 years ago after I had an attack that required hospitalization during my pregnancy with my youngest daughter. It was described to me by the urologist as being a diverticulum in my kidney filled with a slurry of calcium and stones. There is no set treatment for this rare condition, so I adopted a "wait and see" approach. I have experienced kidney pain and random frequency/urgency issues for brief intervals over the years, but nothing major- until I started passing stones on Memorial Day weekend (when my in-laws were "camping" here in their RV.)  I have continued to pass stones on and off since then. Just the other day I passed a stone the size of a green garden pea! I was urinating and heard an audible "plink". Upon further investigation, I was shocked and disgusted buy the size of the thing. I'm hoping that was the climax, so to speak, and I will no longer be cramping painfully, peeing crimson, feeling the need to go when I can't, or feeling the need to urinate so frequently. I have been imbibing vast quantities of cranberry juice, which I dislike. Hopefully that helped. And at least I was able to avoid the hospital and the massive painkillers that would have been problematic for my nursing son. This has allowed my husband to work uninterrupted, allowed me to continue breast feeding the baby, and saved us money, etc.

The other over-arching item of the past weeks has been my father's health. He suffered two "micro-heart attacks" this month (although we did not know what they were at the time, as he showed no signs of heart damage during subsequent testing) and is scheduled for an open-heart valve replacement surgery next week. He made a quick visit here to say his "in-case-I-die" goodbyes. And I intend to take the baby and travel two states away to "help". This leaves my husband caring for the other four children for a longer time than he ever has, and squeezing in some non-postponable work in the evenings. It will be good for them though, as he's been all-consumed by work for the past three years. They need their daddy. And he needs their distraction.

Other than that, I think that everything else is commonplace: the endless and profuse laundry, the constant and copious dirty dishes, the meal planning, cooking, and clean-up, the "schooling", etc. The rainy weather has continued, and the loooong driveway is nearly impassable. The insects are terrible. The humidity is nearly unbearable. And we're all getting a bit of cabin fever, despite it being June.

So, to wrap up, please pray for my safe travels, for the success of my father's surgery and recovery, for the end to my kidney issues, for family unity, and for help with keeping up with everything. Thank you! 

A Bit Thick

Remember my post about stuff- about the endless onslaught of stuff? Well, the current rough patch is getting a bit thick, as the British saying goes. I had hoped that the weekend kidney stone incidents were over. They were not. I hoped to submit my quarter grades this week. I didn't. I had hoped to reconnect with my dear husband a bit, but in 4 days he worked well over 40 hours. He missed dinner for three nights running and was late for the 4th work day. (Monday was Memorial Day.)

The biggie was that I got an e-mail from my mother informing me that my dad had another and longer "episode", was admitted to the hospital, and would be undergoing a bunch of tests. Then I got word that it was determined that he had a malfunctioning heart valve and required open heart surgery. I spent a couple days updating family members, checking my phone and e-mail messages, and figuring out how to make an emergency trip a couple of states away if the surgery was imminent. I was helpless hundreds of miles away and would only be a bother if I descended upon my parents house with my brood. We wouldn't all be able to fit into a hospital room at the same time anyway. Stress.

Then we got a piece of good news, the clutch replacement on the tractor was done, and the work came in a couple hundred dollars less than the sizable estimate. My husband stopped in and paid for it. He was promised that it would be delivered this week. 

Yesterday I got a call. They "had a bit of a mishap when loading" the tractor. The wiring harness "sorta melted." It's an old tractor, so the wiring wasn't great. Maybe they let it soak outside in the rain and then fired it up wet and that caused shorting problems. Maybe they hooked it up wrong when they put the two sides of the tractor back together. Who knows? They probably did something wrong, given the "mishap" comment and the fact that they are only charging us for the cost of the part. But we're kind of over the proverbial barrel. The tractor is stuck there and now we have to sink another $400 in an underpowered tractor that my husband was hoping to get something out of to put towards a bigger one. (He thinks that the flail mower is probably too heavy for the little tractor and exacerbated the clutch problem.) But without a clutch or a wiring harness it is worthless.

It continues to rain. I think we're hitting another rainfall record this spring. The local river is expected to exceed flood stage for probably the fourth time in a month. The fire bowl on my patio filled with rain water just overnight! The grass is high. The undergrowth along the wooded drive has been weighed down and is hanging in the path of vehicles, despite having been trimmed back once already this season. And the hay.... the poor hay. It is heavy with seed, past the prime time for cutting. It has been beaten down over and over again, and at some point will no longer stand back up. There is no haying window in the future weather report. And we are second on our cutting team's list this year. It's not looking good for our hay crop. 

My father's surgery is not scheduled until the end of June. That is worrisome, but meant that no short-notice trip was needed. My husband had a disappointing week at work and will be out of town testing all next week. I need to take care of a long list of mundane things like returning a rental violin and stacks of library books. I'm just hoping for a little more sleep and that I feel a little more in control this week. I KNOW that I'm not in control, God is, but I'd like my kids to see that mom is self-assured and not on edge. But like the pope just said, 

"When a Christian has no difficulties in life -- when everything is fine, everything is beautiful -- something is wrong." 

"You cannot remove the cross from the path of Jesus, it is always there." 

And that is a truth that resonates with me and my "always something" philosophy. So I embrace the cross. But like I said before, I sure hope that I have the stamina to make it through this rough patch called life.

New Low

Well, I've officially hit a new low. This morning, after being kept up all night by a thunderstorm, torrential rain, and a teething baby, I finally decided to commit to being awake. I slipped on my clothes, donned my glasses, brushed my hair, changed and dressed the baby, and headed out at 5:30 to do some grocery shopping. I figured that since everyone was sleeping, taking the infant elsewhere to make noise would help them to sleep longer - and they needed more sleep. I also thought that if I was up, I might as well get something done. I couldn't correct school work with a big wiggly babe in arms, nor could I empty the dishwasher quietly, etc. So I packed him into the van in the twilight and headed through a downpour to the store.

I used to always have a menu/meal plan, generate a shopping list from it, and shop at multiple places. But of late, circumstances have prevented such organization and efficiency. Yup, I was winging it. My husband is leaving for a week of work in a different city on Sunday. If I didn't want to have all five kids in tow with me later in the week, then I needed to get food when I could with only one.

The little man made it to the bread aisle before he would no longer tolerate being cooed to in a seat on the cart. So I picked him up and continued on. I managed to make it all the way through the store- yay! I thought I was doing good. I was being efficient.  Most people weren't even out of their beds.

As I was about to unload my groceries, the cashier asked me if part of my order was WIC. I guess the rolling out of bed, wearing ill-fitting and out-of-style clothes on my postpartum body (because who has time for clothes shopping or excercising) and carrying an infant while grocery shopping was enough to warrant this question, but it hit me hard. I replied in the negative, sheepishly placed my organic milk on the conveyor belt, and tried to act like I was used to being asked that. 

I live in the poorest county in the state. There's a slight possibility that WIC program recipients are such frequent shoppers there that this particular cashier asks all women with children this question. But after going to this store randomly for 2 years, no one has ever asked me before. So maybe I just look bad? And if I look that bad here, I look bad! I mean, the last time I came back from the store my husband teasingly asked me if I saw "any lookers" when I complained about being the only woman shopping with a bunch of lost-looking, middle-aged men. So I told him about the gentleman with greasy, bed-head, and sock-less feet in blown-out loafers who was wearing a dirty T-shirt that didn't cover his belly, and baggy sweatpants with an unfortunate hole in them. Let's just put it this way. I know he wasn't wearing underpants. And then there's my previous experience.

But I started thinking about it. I can't remember the last time I got my hair cut. Was it last spring? My hair is long, so I've just made do with it getting longer. I think that the only (and few) clothes that I've bought for myself in the last 3 years have been from the nearest Walmart. Generally, I make it a rule not to shop at Walmart because they drive the local business under, etc. But it's the closest store that sells clothing, so you can tell that the few purchases were desperation-driven. Maybe I have sunk that low.

Yeah, I know that "I've let myself go". People say that like it's due to laziness, like since I don't go to the office every day I hang out in my PJs eating bonbons with bed hair just because I'm unmotivated. It's SO not like that. I am just BUSY people! To me, letting myself go was a form of self-sacrifice. Little peoples' needs were more important than my own. That phrase has always bothered me a little bit, but I didn't "LET myself go", I CHOSE to put others first, so I didn't get hung up on it.

I'm not immune to societal ideas of beauty and success. It's not that I don't WANT to be attractive and "put together", but when I'm weighing what's more important, Botany or styling my hair, washing laundry for a family of seven (plus one in cloth diapers) or applying make-up, preparing wholesome food or clothes shopping, etc. etc., my personal appearance comes last. It's as simple as that. I settle for brushing my hair and pulling it back into a pony tail every day, putting on lip balm instead of a face-full of make-up, bobbling the baby while tending a myriad of tasks instead of hiring a babysitter for 5 kids, driving 40 minutes away, and spending time and money on clothes shopping and make-up so that I can get respect based on how I look.  

But clearly my exhausted, postpartum self is looking extra bad lately. What can I say? I AM pushing 40. I HAVE borne 6 large children. I HAVE burned the proverbial midnight oil for more than a decade. I DO try to do more than most people consider reasonable. My husband IS gone a lot. My family DOES live far away. I DON'T have any babysitters. 

Maybe before the next school year starts I can work in a haircut and a few new "going to town" clothes between my husband's long days, business travel, and work on our homestead, between my oldest boy's sailing classes and robotics workshops, between my youngest son's nursing sessions, etc. etc. The only caveat is that my oldest still has a quarter of his school work to complete before we're done with THIS school year. So I guess I'll look like a WIC program recipient for a little while longer. Sigh...

Rough Patch

I'm in the screen porch. It has become my springtime refuge on occasion in the evenings. Because of the near incessant rain this year, the roof is often needed. Due to the resulting sogginess the bugs are often unbearable, and so the screen is wonderful. Since it is next to the baby's room, its location is ideal. I get to breath in the fresh air, listen to the birds, the wind, look at something other than the endless dirty dishes, the perennial laundry baskets, the stack of papers needing my attention, and decompress for a few minutes sometimes in the evenings.

Tonight the frogs' throats are thrumming down by the pond. A mockingbird is wrapping up his last songs. A catbird is mewling in the dusk. The barn swallows are twittering as they swoop over the hayfield catching the last insects of the day. The crickets are warming up for their night-long symphony. The tulip poplars' large leaves are rustling at intervals in the wind. A humming bird is buzzing around the impatiens flowers behind me. The first bats are circling. And I sit, sit and breathe, collect my swarming thoughts from the scattered edges of my mind.

It's always something. That's what life's made up of, an endless onslaught of, well, something. Last week it was things like the storms, the power outage, ticks on the kids (including the 4 month old), a coon in the grease pan under the grill, a miserable teething baby, and and over-tired and acting-out preschooler. This weekend it was stuff like kidney stones: the intense pain, the passing of crimson-colored urine, the worry about whether it could be something else. It was making cookies for the gentleman at church who always hands some out after Mass- but just has shoulder surgery. It was the in-laws camping on the land and visiting.

Today it was the printer. I needed to print off and send in my oldest son's assignments. He's remotely enrolled this year, for the first time ever, in a private school. I need to submit a bunch of end-of-quarter paper work and the printer is probably inoperable. It is my sons, unable to settle for bed, singing and yelping and raising a ruckus until too late at night despite my intervention. It is my husband, overwhelmed by work and still at the office, leaving me with all the evening chores... again.

I'm really not surprised. Like I said, the endless string of stuff is life. That's why heaven is called, "eternal rest", the "heavenly banquet", and "paradise". Nothing is perfect "here below". The respites are few and far between. So I try to embrace my proverbial crosses.

Everything is dark now. The only thing I can see is the sky above the tree line and the occasional darting bat. Just now a dim shape walked only inches from me alongside the porch. I hissed at it, and startled, a raccoon scuttled along- only to return shortly thereafter to the grill to fiddle with the cover. I had to chase her off again. I guess that is my cue to return inside and get done what I can before the baby rises again, my husband returns, and I'm a complete jelly. I'm just hoping I have the stamina to push through this rough patch, this bit called life.

Outage

Yesterday was eventful, as usual. I awoke at about 2:30 in the morning to a flash of light and a crashing boom. The storm had caused our power to go out. I got up and called in the outage and spent the rest of the night getting in and out of bed to tend the 3 month old. We didn't have electricity for over eleven hours yesterday. Luckily we have a generator, which we turned on periodically to keep the refrigerator cold and to flush toilets and get water. (Our well pump is electric.) It was a first world problem, for which I am only grateful. It makes me appreciate what we have on a daily basis. My children got a kick out of seeing the repair men too. But it still complicated my day.

Additionally, the tractor place came and hauled off our tractor for repair yesterday. It needs a new clutch, which my husband can't replace himself because it is part of the tractor's structure and requires special stands and such to complete. A giant flatbed came and took it away.

My oldest boy installed the new belt on the riding mower yesterday as well. My husband had made the long drive to the big city to pick up a new belt from the dealer earlier in the week. They gave him the wrong one. He found this out only after trying to put it on. But he went back and got it exchanged, and my son put it on. Unfortunately, the intermittent rains we've been having are seemingly never ending, so between the delay in lawn mower repair and the tractor repair being completed by someone else who is "scheduled out a few weeks", the place is getting rather jungle-ish.

After the power kicked back on, I washed laundry and dishes like crazy, and the children flushed the toilets with abandon. After the tantrum-ing preschooler wound down and the teething baby fell asleep, we finally got around to collecting another water sample last night also (water quality issues, well repair/modification).  The jar has to sit for 48 hours before we can read the results. Hopefully it turns up clear. I'm tired of the brood washing and brushing with the filtered water at the kitchen sink. Oh, and I took a much-needed, long shower. That was nice.

gratuitous photo of my teething 15 week old

I did discover that the telephone line is down, though. I hadn't thought to check it earlier, assuming that the cordless phone was out of commission due to the lack of electricity, so something unusual was saved for today. What would it be here on the homestead without a daily adventure, anyway?! Besides, I get swallows over the hay field, the screech of baby birds being fed, the smell of French Toast, baby smirks, and cool breezes to tide me  through today. 

Mechanical Failure

So to add proverbial insult to injury, not only did we recently replace the sewer line and just install a new well pipe, the clutch on the tractor broke. Ordinarily my handy husband can fix mechanical problems, but in this case, the clutch makes up part of the structure of this tractor. So the tractor literally needs to be split into two parts in order to get to the clutch. This requires a special stand and 4 floor jacks. So, although the part "only" costs $200, the labor is outrageous. Ouch.

The clutch went out yesterday as my husband was using the flail mower. (Flail mowers are awesome by the way!) So tonight he got out the riding mower in order to do what he could with it. And.... the belt broke. Nice.

Plus, we still haven't gotten the water quality for the well tested again. After the disparate test results of yore, we no longer trust our local lab and sent away for do-it-yourself test kits. I was too cheap to pay for expedited shipping, so the tests haven't even shown up yet! It's still jugged water and brushing our teeth at the kitchen sink with water from the faucet filter. Ugh.

But we did manage to put together an over-sized swing set! Now if only my 3 year old wouldn't freak out every time the 5 year old wants a turn with the half-bucket swing. Argh.... or when he wants to be lifted into it..... or to be pushed constantly....  This new baby/daddy travel/big sister "schools"now thing has been hard on him.

These are some of my "first world problems" today. That's what I console myself with in moments of stress. "It could always be worse."

Nursling

Snuffling and seeking
As if in a panic
You nuzzle and nudge

Warm lips suckling
You relax in satisfaction
As I cuddle and croon

I rock
As your fuzzy warm head
Just fits in the crook of my elbow
Your chubby arm
Tucks snugly between my breasts
Your round tender belly
Nestles neatly beneath them
Your chunky legs
Wrap gently around my side
And tuck securely under my arm

We fit like puzzle pieces
Nestled together
You
Curled in my arms
Me
Cradling a perfect parcel
Of love incarnate

Well

Before we put an offer on this place, we sought out and contacted the couple who had lived here the 17 years before the fly-by-night folks that were listing it for sale. Amidst the information we received was that they had "never had any trouble with the well." We knew that the owners at the time had replaced the well pump. That wasn't too surprising since it was 40 years old. We thought it was one less thing for us to worry about. We had a comprehensive water test done, and the quality was better than the water co-op to which we belonged at the time. We thought we were good (as long as the nearby quarry didn't mess with the water table.)

As it turns out, the contractor the previous owners hired to replace the pump broke the bolts off of the well cap when they removed it. So when they were finished, they just covered the top of the hole with the rubber seal... and covered it back up. Yup, the well head is buried. I'm sure the gentleman who built this home designed it that way so that there was no unsightly pipe in the front yard. The down side was that when the submersible pump failed, the well had to be unearthed. Digging it up every 40 years is probably not too unreasonable. It's not too deep.

Since the cap was not replaced and the well left unsealed, we of course ended up with water issues after a time. I noticed them a few weeks ago when we had some torrential rains in a short amount of time. Although the water tested positive for E. coli initially, a second water test (before doing anything) came up clear for E. coli. That's impossible if we had actually had a contamination before. Maybe our initial sample jar was contaminated?

I'll spare you the details, but we had a trusted well guy unearth the well and add a pitless adaptor. Cha-CHING! That was pricey. So now we have the muddy path from the new sewer line in the back yard, and the muddy patch from the well extension in the in the front yard. At least they match, right? Well, except for that big ugly pipe that now sticks out above ground. We'll see what the next water test turns up before we do anything else. And we'll have a DIFFERENT lab test it. 

Oh, and I learned the the pump is 350 feet down. That's great news. The well man was impressed by the depth. And who knows how much deeper the well is?! 

Mornings

Mornings are brutal here. In general, the run-down goes like this. I go to bed late. I don't sleep through the night. The sleep I do get is poor and fraught with nightmares and weird dreams. I get up early. 

Mornings really, really hurt. I sort of scrape myself from the bed by force of will. I always wake up sore and with a head ache. And the general goal for the day is to keep busy/moving so as not to face having to get myself going again. Am I doing something wrong? Maybe. Should I change what I am doing? Probably. But I am too busy holding on for dear life! Besides, heaven is called "eternal rest" for a reason, right? 

Anyway, my mornings are currently mitigated by baby smiles, bird song, and views like the one above. I snapped the picture early yesterday. The humidity here culminates in morning fog that quickly burns off as the sun hits it.

Oh, and that mocking bird from a previous post? It sings for all it's worth in the morning too! And when I can manage to in the midst of MY morning fog- I sing too.

Mockingbird

If I am lucky, I sit in my screened porch in the late evening. One of the lovely things about this is the nightly serenade by a local mockingbird. His song is lusty and long-lasting, exuberant and confident. Instead of the softer evening calls of other songbirds, the mockingbird is more of a showman. He often likes to sit on a bare branch in a nearby copse. Then I see him silhouetted against the silvery evening sky as he cycles through all of the songs he has assimilated. 

I can't help but to smile somehow as he brazenly belts out all of the melodies and sounds that he knows. His repetition of everything that he has found inspiring and worthwhile is uplifting. Like the mockingbird, I hope that I can reflect to the world and amplify all that I find that is good and beautiful. Like him, I may not be a perfect imitation of that which I seek to emulate. Like him, I may stand out or be different, but I hope that the way I live  also causes others to experience a bit of beauty and the unquenchable joy that is life. 

In the meantime, the mockingbird's song resonates in my soul like wordless vespers, and I send this aspiration as a petition to the heavens alongside his indomitable songs.