Fall musings...

November is here!  Among other things that means it is National Novel Writing Month (http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/) - Kali and I both find ourselves in front of a computer right now, me to do some much needed writing and Kali to get going on her story.  She'll need to write a hundred words a day to meet her goal.  I'm eager to read it!  While we both write, Alida is getting a nap, which hopefully won't be interrupted prematurely by her cough.  While I do love fall (it is probably my favorite time of year) I don't like what seems like the resurgence of viruses floating around.  The girls both have colds, the kind that are just annoying not debilitating.  But enough so that we have gone forward with cancelling this evening's much anticipated fall party with two other families.  Bobbing for apples just didn't seem like the activity for today...  To ease the disappointment in the younger generation of our household (namely the 10 year old), we will go forward with making homemade donuts and I feel hopeful there will be some Tangly Woods members that will happily oblige filling in for some rounds of donut eating off strings!

So now I find myself sitting in our front room looking out at the colorful scene in front of me.  The light on the mountain today is striking (we must be at the peak of the oranges).  On Tuesday on my way in to the house from a nappy walk I felt almost a physical pull towards the hammock. It was the eve of Nora's birthday, right about the time they would have been starting the induction.  But my mind was just swirling with the many, many things I felt I "had" to get done yet that day.  Alida's nap times feel like this precious spot in the day where I sprint to do the things I can't do when she is awake.  I ended up spending most of that nap doing computer work that had to be done and that I felt annoyed about.  Hardly rejuvenating or reflective time, which was what I was craving.  I also felt frustrated with myself for not taking the opportunity as it presented itself to slow up for a bit and create a space in which my emotions could feel safe to emerge.  I never spent much time in our hammock before I went on bedrest with Nora and haven't spent much time there since. I remember watching the mountain change as fall approached and Kali making me "cakes" to eat out of pine needles, leaves, rocks, etc...  I wanted to allow myself a moment to travel back in time and be with who I was then and who our family was, just for a moment. 

In many ways I feel like I've been trying to make up for turning down that opportunity ever since then.  It's been a hard week.  I can never predict what I might want or need on the anniversaries of Nora's birthday and death.  And them sometimes when I finally figure it out, it's a bit late.  As soon as I got to work on Wednesday, I knew that I should have found a way to take a vacation day. I wanted so very much to be at home with my family.  Instead it, along with yesterday, was one of those crazy "work as fast as you can all day long and still feel horribly behind" days. 

The week hasn't been all bad. I treasure the memories from Tuesday evening when we enjoyed some family "huggy lovey" time in bed together before calling it a night. We all snuggled up and looked at and read through the book that Mom made about Nora.  It seems that the start and end of our days are sometimes challenging right now and so I have felt particularly grateful for some smooth and special family bedtimes lately.  May it continue!

Some of the "bumps in the road" have definitely been more challenging due to my own lack of extra reserves.  I don't feel very emotionally resilient and have found myself struggling with a higher amount of anxiety and tension.  While there are multiple factors (at least 16 based on the list I created last week in my one stint of journaling - the first in 4 months or so), but I haven't felt that my reaction to those stressors has been what I would like it to be.  So I finally took the step, thanks to a good friend's nudging, to get started on another round of counseling.  I've always found it helpful but it was feeling daunting to try to fit in yet another thing.  I'm glad that I fit it in - it's such a unique hour in my week to sit uninterrupted with someone whose only job is to listen to me talk, ask questions and offer an outside perspective when it seems appropriate. There are a number of things that have been sticking with me since but one in particular. 

I've felt, more at this stage of my life than any other, that many of the things that I love most about my life are also the things that can make me feel like I'm going completely crazy.  It's like two sides of the same coin.  I often feel like I need figure out what to let go of, but approaching it that way feels so unsatisfactory to me.  I was grateful for a new way to think about the stress that I carry, much of which related to things that energize me a great deal.  She shared the analogy of holding a cup of water.  If you hold a cup of water for a minute you probably won't even notice it, several minutes and you still probably won't think too much of it, an hour and your arm might start to feel very tired or even start to fall asleep, and if you tried to do it for a full day your arm would probably start to twitch and hurt or you may not be able to do it at all.  She talked about stress being like that - noting that it is important for all of us to find time to set that "cup" down and shake out our arm, do something else for a while and then pick it back up.  Same with the things that create stress. 

So I'm thinking about that a lot.  How do I take just a few moments here and there (like the break in the hammock) to truly set aside the busyness of the day, the relationships that I ponder and analyze and hope for changes in, my sense of inadequacy being a mom, etc... and be present to the moment, the world around me, the beauty within me...  I was grateful she didn't suggest any new routine that would take an hour or so daily.  She seemed to "get it" pretty quickly that I don't sit still very often, nor do I wish to.  But I feel ready to find and create little spaces in my day to be more in tune with what is happening inside of me and to also be open to observing what is happening around me.  On the nappy walk today my mind was churning as it often is.  All of a sudden I looked up and in the pasture right next to me was a whole herd of baby cows.  They were cute, but it wasn't their cuteness that struck me, it was the fact that I almost completely missed them.  How many things do I miss completely because I'm not paying attention (because I'm so absorbed in my racing thoughts or, in the case of a nappy walk, worrying that Alida won't fall asleep and then the rest of the day will be more challenging...).  I find that slowing my mind or altering my thoughts patterns is one of the biggest challenges in my life.  But I have a strong motivation to keep working at it!  I don't want to miss all the beauty around me.

If you have stayed with me on this post, congratulations!   I recognize this is a bit more of a "journal entry" than a blog post, but I think of this blog as mostly for us and if anyone out there wishes for a glimpse of the life we are creating here in our little part of the world, I'd like it to at least be a semi-accurate one. 

This past month was our month for lot of hosting and the upcoming month is one with more travel. We enjoyed visits with friends from PA and Canada and enjoyed a whole week with Jason's brother around, who was helping Emily and Jonas on their home renovation project (which we are happy to see moving along for their sakes, but are not ready to have them move out!).

Things on the home front keep plugging along with new and different projects as the seasons shift:  all the cover crops are in, the strawberries are weeded, thinned and mulched, the first big freeze came and so the main garden produce still growing is the carrots, beets, lettuce, spinach, dill and tea, Jason is working on various digging projects and chipping up brush piles created by the clearing the goats are motivating us to do (and helping with), and we got our next humanure composting outdoor station set up.  We also enjoyed some leaf raking together, both here and at a neighbor's who was happy to have us rake their leaves (and take them)!  It's fun to see us finally accumulating lots of mulch materials and extra organic matter.  I can't quite imagine how much food this little plot of land is going to produce if we continue to improve our soil at the current rate. Pretty exciting to think about, and a tad bit daunting!

There are some big things coming up.  Kali's last soccer game is tomorrow (she's very sad to see the season end, while I'm happy for a break and easing up of the weekly schedule).  We have a weekend of fun with family members on both sides of our family planned, and then the blood drive for Nora on Monday. Jason and I are both very much hoping that we are symptom free and can donate.  Kali heads to WV for the week with my folks and then we'll join her for a weekend with my parents and some friends.  Going to WV is definitely one of the "set the stress down" activities that I look forward to!

The one event of the upcoming week that has brought on some additional anticipatory grief is that, after much thought and deliberating, we will be reducing our goat flock from 3 to 2.  This is not even an easy thing for me to write about - but again I'm not interested in painting a picture of our lives without the angst and challenge that comes with trying to be intimately involved with our food.  Eating meat continues to be one of those things that I feel fits with the way I envision our lives here a and sometimes it is very hard for me!  I also continue to feel a compulsion within myself to be involved in butchering and processing meat, if I'm going to eat it.  It causes discomfort, but I want to allow myself the freedom to feel that discomfort and not shy away from it.  I know that I can be a vegetarian without too much trouble (I did it for years).  Many of my favorite meals are meatless and while we eat more meat now that I ever have in my life, it is still not a daily occurrence by any means.  But I know that I'd still be part of killing things if I only ate vegetables (my potato mulching experience where I unearthed a little mouse nest was clear proof of that).  So I feel more inclined to try to include animals into our farm (and diet) in respectful ways and to be grateful for the source of nourishment they provide.  But I haven't sorted out all my feelings about it, and there is no doubt in my mind that the challenge will be taken to a new level this week. Kali is feeling very sad but clearly adjusting slowly to the idea (or readjusting since this was always the plan from the beginning).  We don't fault her for any feelings she has about it - and are grateful when she is able to identify the source of her sadness (it has provided opportunities to process emotions a bit which I'm very glad about).  We've made the plan for butchering to be while she is in WV, as she feels that will be easier and we agree. 

We'll be keeping the twins (the smaller of the 3 goats) for the foreseeable future and my guess is that they will graduate to "pet" status.  We still need to all talk about it to make sure that is the shared expectation.  I think we'll learn some things from this stint of goat raising.  For one, it is harder not to get attached to mammals and in this case I feel a strong drive to meet their needs immediately (since these particular mammals have a baby-like cry - it's no wonder they call them "kids").  All of us probably need to think about how we approach our "farm animals."  What level of involvement works for each of us individually in instances where we know the final plan is that we will eat them? My learning curve on this one is quite steep and I haven't settled out at a comfortable place.  I'm not positive that I ever will, but I do feel good about the journey we are on together as a family.  The tears are okay and the conversations feel like important ones to have together.  I think we are learning more about each other and ourselves in the process.

...I now have a little gal on my lap, in the process of fully waking up from her nap.  Let me close with a few pictures of fun new things.  The captions will explain them:

Harvesting and drying saffron.

Saffron flowers

Opening up the mason bee tubes, what we will find?

Cocoons!  Here we are washing them - made of silk so water proof.

Using an old toothbrush to get the bee poop, mites, etc... off.

Here they are drying. The small ones are male the large female. They are now safely tucked in the crisper drawer of the fridge until spring.  I bought 10 and now have 70-80 cocoons.

We'll end with a picture from my hike to the lake with a good friend last weekend (and Alida sacked out in the jogger).  The hike followed an amazing picnic lunch that we all enjoyed together provided by the same friend - I was cashing in a half birthday coupon and I can honestly say without doubt that it was the best half birthday present I've ever received!