Quarantined for Alida's 9th Birthday

On Alida's birthday, I noted (with an over-exaggerated amount of sorrow) that we were leaving behind the cool number combo of having a 4 year old x 2 = an 8 year old x 2 = a 16 year old. Without missing a beat, Kali informed me that now we have 3 girls in ascending square numbers. 2x2=4; 3x3=9; 4x4=16. Ok, so that is even cooler! So, until August when Kali messes things up by turning 17, we are good!! 😉

For weeks leading up to Alida's birthday, Terah wanted to give her a present. Most days at some point she would ask Alida, "Can I give you your present now?" Finally on the eve of her birthday, Alida gave in to her younger sister's excitement and insistence. Terah had drawn a sweet rainbow and hearts picture and had wrapped up her little glow in the dark duckie for Alida. I didn't even know what she had been up to, but she had clearly caught on to the joy of giving. It was very sweet!

With all the birthday party plans cancelled, Alida was "stuck" with her parents and sisters for her birthday. Weeks and weeks before her birthday, when I introduced the idea that a large gathering may not be in the cards, she piped up that that was ok and that she had already thought of that. That gal doesn't miss a beat. And while I'm sure there were flickers of disappointment, my sense was that through and through she felt loved and celebrated on her birthday.  But here I am getting ahead of myself.

With so many fun things planned for her birthday, we had to get a head start the night before. One silver lining to not having 40 or so other people join us for her birthday dinner was that the very special cherry pie only needed to be divided by 5! Why so special you may wonder? As Alida's due date was approaching in 2011, we learned of a cold storage unit that was pitching pallets and pallets of sour cherries from a unit that someone had stopped paying for. Thanks to some personal connections, we got several boxes of pitted sour cherries. Too many for the freezer, so on March 26 my mom and I got into a sour cherry canning project and partway through labor started! We canned cherries while I labored and at 9:08 that evening (right on her due date), Alida arrived! We've been saving the very last jar of cherries for some special occasion: how about her 9th birthday!?

The other thing happening on the day before her birthday and spilling into her special day was the first chicks hatching! Most beat her, but a few lingered and hatched on her actual birthday. These fuzz balls were more a gift for Terah, as she would have just sat and held them all day. She had a large meltdown the night before Alida's birthday when she held a chick, washed up for bed and then noted that Kali and Alida were still holding them. This was right before Jason took a dishpan full out to stick under the broody hen who was hatching some at the same time. This was too much for our tired little gal and she grieved loudly for quite some time! At least she got it out of her system BEFORE Alida's birthday!

It was only about 7 a.m. on her birthday when I heard the first peep out of Alida. I invited her to snuggle with me in bed, but I could tell there was no chance of her going back to sleep. She was too excited for the day ahead. So the two of us got up and enjoyed a quiet game of Cribbage with some hot chocolate for sipping to kick of the day! The night before I had put my auto-responder on my work email so I was fully dedicated to celebrating with Alida for the day, and was looking forward to the break from screens too!

Terah must have worn herself out the night before as we finally had to wake her to all go out to do chores together. But before that we woke Kali to join us for giving Alida one of her presents. I had created a personal email account for her on the sly and emailed her party attendees, family and some other friends, encouraging them to send her messages. She had over 35 emails waiting for her when she opened up her email account!  Her response was all I had hoped for - she was thrilled! But even she needed a break after getting through about half of them. She got through all the emails that day but we didn't even get into the google photos folder that folks had dropped videos and pictures into - also for a surprise. We just started those last night and she felt asleep cuddled up to me before we got through them all. So the celebrating is being spread out (not to mention that the little present we ordered for her online has arrived but we've been quarantining our mail for a few days so she hasn't actually gotten that yet either)...

But I digress! Once we roused Terah, we all headed out to do chores together at Alida's request. I think it's sweet that she didn't ask that someone do her chores for her, but that we all go out together. I love that her "perfect" day is also a gift to all of us - as we all enjoy doing as much of our day's activities as we can TOGETHER! And getting outside for some fresh air and a little exercise before breakfast always makes it taste even better. We got to mixing up pancakes just as soon as we got in - she liked that we pulled out the recipe I always used to make pancakes for my daddy on Saturday mornings when I was young. They were a hit!

After brunch, she "zoomed" with my parents while she opened a present they had left at Tangly Woods for her. That was a new experience to be sure - but we are having a few of those these days. A bit later in the day, she had another zoom call with her aunt and uncle in Pittsburgh so they could watch her when she opened their emails, the one complete with a very entertaining dance to our 9 year old (she has been known to give out ballet lessons at family gatherings and so her uncle was showing off his skills from those lessons)!

With brunch dishes done and Jason in from doing the hiding, the next planned fun in the day was an Easter egg hunt! Alida and Terah had gone through all our plastic eggs and picked out 108 to hide. That was important because it was divisible by 3 but also take note that it just happens to be 9 dozen! Yes, I was indeed thrilled by yet another fun number coincidence! Alida had chosen for Jason to hide them along the lower part of the wood's trail that we just completed on Sunday. That may be a topic for a future post, but I'll just say that we LOVE it! It's a perfect short doable hike that I have a feeling we will be doing often. From the top we can see mountains in both directions. Oh, I should add that we found 107 of the 108 eggs - not too bad!

With another dose of fresh air in us, we settled in with the snacks from inside the eggs and the Farming Game. I really can't believe I used to like games like this or Monopoly. I really needed a knitting project as I was antsy from the beginning. But I was able to settle in enough to enjoy her enjoying so much having all of us (well, Terah was in and out doing her own thing) playing with her. It was well worth it, but I do consider it a birthday present to subject myself to several hours of the Farming Game. I'm glad that we were all ready to bring it to a close at about the same time!

It was time to work on the "fancy" birthday dinner, for which there was a dress code announced. Alida set up "shop" and folks lined up to get their "fancifying" accessories. We then sat down to enjoy a dinner of baked sweet potatoes with sausage gravy and sauteed green bean with garlic (just one more bag of green beans left!). Her choice of birthday meals was a hit with all of us. I can't say we maintained our "proper behavior" for the entirety of the meal, but we all enjoyed ourselves! Jason didn't seem quite ready to turn his "thneed" back in at the end of the meal. 

Jason was happy to give up his spot in the Dutch Blitz game after dinner, so he cleaned up while us gals played. We had just enough time to look through the rest of the 1000 or so pictures my parents had shared of Alida before she officially turned 9! Around 9 p.m., I decided that maybe I should double check in her baby book that she was indeed born at 9:18 p.m. Good I checked - she was 10 minutes old then as 9:08 was the actual birth moment. So we had to get the candle lit in her cherry pie fast and we were just a few minutes late singing!

Her party was to include a sleepover so sleepover we did - all in the living room. Alida picked a nature video on Netflix and we all bedded down (some of us falling asleep during the movie). I can't say that I slept wonderfully on the futon, but it wasn't too bad. Everyone was up earlier than normal but that was a good thing since their was one more birthday meal to enjoy together - her post-sleepover brunch of sausage quiche, funny cake pie and fruit salad. That officially ended the festivities but I see the birthday sign still up, there are Easter eggs all over the house, and we still have more photos and videos to look at that family and friends shared with Alida. Oh, and that quarantined present is in her future also, along with cashing in a variety of birthday coupons received.

Overall, it was an incredible day - she kept commenting throughout the day what a good birthday she was having. It was truly a gift for all of us. While the focus was on Alida, in many ways the focus was also on celebrating love and togetherness and I think we all were in need of a dose of that. We have been together a lot (more or less 24/7) and while we often spend days on end together, this day had the unique flavor of not having a lot of other "intrusions" into the sacred space of the day. I was so in need of a media and email break and in many ways the day was also more enjoyable and relaxing for me not prepping much of the day for a big party and hosting responsibilities. I felt more present with our special, spunky, creative, giggly, sweet, intelligent, and mischievous now 9 year old! The future feels really uncertain in so many ways, but for that one day our family celebrations felt like a really bright and beautiful burst in all the anxiety churning around.

p.s. For any consistent readers, it seems important to note that I also got the good news yesterday morning that my repeat blood work had my white count and platelets solidly back in the normal range. I'm relieved!

Welcome spring!

I'll just name right up front that this particular post is an entirely incomplete picture of life right now! It is not that it will be inaccurate or dishonest but just merely one sliver of the pie! It will not sum up so much of this past week - my work world turning upside down, the anxiety that comes in waves (larger at night when sleep will not come after our youngest gets me up from a long wished for deep sleep), learning how to still "be with" others without physically being together or with the proper amount of distance and outside, the worry about family near and far and those with COVID-19 tests outstanding, vast amounts of frustration and anger at the misinformation circulating and the disregard for others, personal concern over pending repeat blood work this week and wondering how those results will impact my future (or not), etc... Much feels rather dire and bleak right now. But there is also great care being shown all over the place and there is beauty and spring has come once again! And we are experimenting with new ways of doing things and have enjoyed a few family zoom times and I attended my first virtual memorial service yesterday that was quite beautiful and meaningful. And people are writing poetry and sharing music. So here's a little of the beauty from our world - maybe as much to remind me to pay attention than for anyone else!

We had a long planned gathering for St. Patrick's Day, complete with a very green meal. We deliberated and decided to go forward outside with many different precautions in place to make it as safe as possible for 10 of us to gather (we call ourselves the "Cub Runts" and gather on Tuesdays). Here's the green-themed menu: homemade green pesto pasta with homemade "parmesan," sauteed okra and garlic, fermented peppers and onions, fresh turnips with yogurt pesto dressing, hard boiled eggs with green paprika, dilly beans and pickles. The food, along with an outdoor fire, was welcome at the end of a pretty taxing day of multiple stressful/sad phone and zoom meetings. I was ready for a bit of time away from a screen and outside!

I'm trying to at least take mini-breaks from the computer. As soon as I finish this post, we are all going to go out and make a trail up through the woods. I've done morning chores a lot this week to at least assure myself an hour outside. The other day, I took a spin around the yard to take in the flowers. Take a spin with me:

Alida's flowering Nanking Cherry bushes in her garden

Kali's garden is ablaze of yellow as her forsythia does its thing

The quince and magnolia add some purple and reddish pink to the landscape

Ah, peach blossoms!

It's a welcome site walking up to our home from the garden shed.

Not to forget Nora's garden - full of daffodils!

And Terah's: her turtle shell play house has turned green.

The willows have come together with Jason's weaving and soon will be full of leaves to shade those playing underneath. Furniture is being added, with the newest addition being a little chair Terah made with Jason in the cleaned shop!

And a few more daffodils because, well, they are just strikingly beautiful this year.

So what about the gardens? Now more than ever, we are grateful for seeds and soil! This week, Jason has been getting back in shape! He got our spinach weeded, side dressed with compost and more seeded - no help from anyone other than me coming in at the end to do some watering! Yesterday was pea planting day and he once again did all the hard prep work. The girls and I joined for the fun of planting and watering. We also seeded dill, fennel and cilantro before calling it a day. We've just started in on some weeding of the strawberries, asparagus and red raspberries but it is that time of year where the weeds definitely feel like they are winning!

Weeds or no weeks, plants keep growing and gifting us with delicious food. We are into "spinach salad season" complete with Tangly Woods hard boiled eggs, bacon and dressing made with tomatoes and fresh perennial onions. Yum!

I have gotten up to Hensley's Pond more often recently as my meetings and gatherings are either by phone, zoom or on walks! I definitely prefer the latter. Jonathan and Christen joined us yesterday and the fresh air and human company (outside of those in our family) was welcome. We love each other dearly but it did crack me up the other day when Jonathan stopped by to pick up some things and Terah made a bee line to get within earshot of him and started jabbering a mile of minute. It seemed clear she was eager for a fresh set of ears to hear her stories!

I wish for all pockets of serenity that this scene fosters. And I wish for wisdom to know how we can be supportive (always but especially in this time) of so many who do not have access to the natural world or many other of their basic needs.

Jason's COVID-19 thoughts and Shop Shed Deep Clean - not for the faint of heart!

Hey, everyone, this is Jason writing! Theoretically this is a shared blog between myself and Janelle, but she does almost all the heavy lifting for it, so whenever I actually sit down to contribute it feels like a guest blog entry.

Before I jump in to the shop deep clean topic, I feel compelled to offer a few of my thoughts on the COVID-19 pandemic:

My heart goes out to all my human family. What, I wonder, will this look like in Kibara or Mumbai? And, as my brother mentioned last night on a family Zoom call (video conferencing), the mighty distraction that this coronavirus furnishes will be used as cover for all manner of atrocities and abuses. He wondered about the refugees of the Syrian war who were caught between at least three hostile powers, and about whose fate the news cycle has suddenly gone silent. Fearsome indeed!

But for my more immediate society-mates, there is still plenty of pathos to fill my thoughts. There is the isolation of quarantine for residents of elder-care facilities and others who contend with loneliness enough in normal times. There are alarmed and disappointed families leaving threadbare stores with less of what they needed than what they came for. And of course there is the dread of knowing each of us will probably lose someone we know to this virus, and many more may bear its literal scars for a long time, if not permanently.

For our part, we contend with some of the same anxiety and worry as most others are at present, but in practical terms we are fine. On that same Zoom call, a brother-in-law asked everyone what extra preparations we've each made for this crisis. Janelle and I both stayed silent and let others answer, and I suspect for the same reasons: It feels unseemly to point out at this moment that there is nothing additional we could think of that we had to prepare or stock up on; the land has provided for us, and we have cultivated a practice of the meeting of our own needs on location. Surely if this becomes the kind of crisis that begins to erode basic services such as electricity or other energy supplies we will have some unpleasant comeuppances, and if our neighbors become desperate in any way before we've felt the pinch, of course their suffering will be blended into our lives in real ways: we will share what we have.

But that's not exactly the kind of crisis I think this is. This is about trying to continue the remarkable achievement enjoyed by wealthy, modern humans of largely cheating disease and death out of their customary toll. This crisis implies serious economic consequences, and will exact a high price of personal loss. Flattening the curve, as they say, will (if we can work together to achieve it) go a long way towards minimizing the loss of life and the overburdening of our medical system which was already convulsing with the politicization of its inherent challenges.

I've been expecting a pandemic for many years. I have felt that we are living on borrowed time: the Ebola epidemic, which would have exacted a far more devastating scenario had it reached pandemic status, failed to materialize on the scale I thought it would. The same goes for SARS and one or two others. I can't shake the feeling that the COVID-19 is the practice run for the really big one (or ones). In the analysis that will be done after this episode has ramped back down to walking pace there will be lots to learn from various groups' responses and management schemes. South Korea, it looks like, will be a shining example of success. The United States of America will, to my view, be a cautionary tale of the power of hubris, apathy, ignorance, propaganda, greed, and polarization to cripple a society's ability to solve its own problems cooperatively.

In the midst of that snarl, we at Tangly Woods are enjoying and will enjoy solid relationships with neighbors, a well-stocked pantry and freezer, gardens that just today yielded a bucketful of sweet turnips (free of coronavirus-infested schmutz) and which will continue to yield abundantly, animals that support us with their bodies and products, and all of this from a homestead paid off in full and a home heated by wood cut from the land. Our life under quarantine would be rich and full, and in fact not much different from usual except for spending a lot more time together! Thinking on this situation is of course in part gratifying, or at least relieving. But it also pains me deeply: how many visitors of all races, ethnicities, and economic brackets have expressed the wish to be able to live this way? Too many to count and remember. In times like this, the practicalities behind these often wistful expressions suddenly seem urgent and raw, and I bear the dual moral shames of being a member of a society that utterly fails to value access to land and food sovereignty and the realization that it is in part my racial and economic privilege that has allowed this "gratifying" situation to develop successfully for us. The COVID-19 crisis will only deepen the fire in my belly to work on behalf of food and livelihood sovereignty and liberation for all, and especially for the most historically and currently disadvantaged categories of person among us.

Now for the shop shed story:

The shed that houses our wood shop is a prefab purchased by Janelle's parents to store their extra stuff while the in-law quarters was being built, with the notion that once their furnishings could be moved into the quarters we'd "re-tool" (pun welcomed) it as a wood shop for all of us to use. Everyone knew, of course, that I would be the main user of the space, at least until Mom and Dad moved here more like full-time. In practice this has meant that the gravity is constantly towards me being the organizer and decision-maker for the space, while others function as guests there. The time frame for Mom and Dad's permanent relocation is still in question; all we know is that it is getting inexorably closer all the time because that's the way time works. So as time goes along I get more and more uncomfortable with being the "boss" of a space that is intended to be shared.

Since a few years back when we discovered the abiding fruitfulness and joy of the "deep clean" concept, we've never managed, until this year, to extend its benefits to our more utilitarian spaces, such as the garage (that's one's not even technically mostly a "shared" space...they just graciously allow us to use it!), the laundry room, the garden shed, outdoor junk piles, under the shop shed and now the shop. The items found in these spaces can't always be evaluated using the residential-space criterion of whether it brings one joy. My bucket of reclaimed nails, for example, was not bringing me much in the way of joy. But it did reflect and embody lots of practical duty and has saved me countless trips to town. Is preventing annoyance the same thing as bringing joy? Hmm.

Anyway, the shop needed the treatment, and badly! Even I didn't work in there all too often, so it easily became the repository for things I didn't know where else to go with or which I saw potential in but didn't have time or a plan to use immediately. Also, since I didn't often need to share the space with others, my habitual preference for the provision of others' needs over my own ease and comfort influenced me to disrespect the order of that space. Especially as a space becomes cluttered and crowded, it's easy for me to procrastinate on putting things away. The demanding pace of homestead and family life doesn't help, either: dump and run has been a coping strategy and that space has been largely invisible to others day to day, so accountability has been low.

Given all that, Janelle is right, I think, to have remarked several times during the process on my ability to have used the space functionally over the years for project after project, and my ability to find just the right fastener or material scrap when needed. A neighbor, friend, former employer and mentor of mine with whom I shared many personality traits before his passing exhibited this same seeming miracle to an even more astounding degree. Their barn was full to the gills of bits of this and that from 3 or 4 decades of life on a hardworking farm. The stacks and shelves that constituted a dizzying and impenetrable array to the average person off the street had a nearly exact replica constructed in his mind; when I was completing some job or other and needed some little doohickey to finish the task, I would always check with him before running to town or pausing the job, and he could often direct me from the comfort of his living room to exactly the right spot where there resided a box with ten years of dust on it that contained just what I needed, or anyway something that could be made to work. This world is full of wonders!

In December we had decided to turn our winter's project attention not to building out yet another of our homestead development dreams but instead to the refreshing of the aforementioned utilitarian spaces. Knowing that, I think my brain went into full procrastination mode, since I knew we'd be getting to it soon, so I neglected even the minimal maintenance I usually performed. Resultingly, by the time the date for the shop deep clean came around, it had degenerated to a truly unusable space. Returning it to some usefulness would have meant no more than an hour of two of concentrated time, but this time that would NOT do!

We were determined to do this well, and I personally felt driven to make this a space that could truly invite others to use it practically and aesthetically. For Janelle's Dad, especially, I knew that his shop time was intended as relaxing time, and it would be hard for him to really relax in a chaotic physical space. This was not pressure he was putting on...it was my choice. The challenge is to maintain a supply of tools, fasteners, and materials that supplies our homestead needs, while occupying a limited space and allowing suitable room to work. And it should feel good to be in there, too! It's a matter of pride, practicality, and of reducing barriers to Mom and Dad's ability to feel this place as their true home. From a design standpoint, this is an exciting challenge! From a personal process standpoint, I had good reason to dread the majority of it.

Not sure this portrays how Jason felt starting this project but the picture needed to be included somewhere!!

The process was this:

1) Remove all removable contents of shop shed and place them in wood shed, garage and common room. I had wonderful help from Janelle and Dad on this part. We left in place only some of the lumber on the lumber racks that had already recently been sorted.

2) Clean shed. Once empty, this was not hard (nor did it need to be done well at this juncture because of what was coming next). Janelle did most of it.

3) Finish wiring shed. My job. I set boxes and ran wires, using all reclaimed or leftover wire scraps and boxes.

4) Tear apart a bunch of reclaimed (free) packing pallets to get the 1/2 in. thickness wood from the faces for covering the walls. Dad did probably most of this, starting before we dug into the rest of the work and working on it here and there over the course of numerous days!

5) Nail pallet wood onto walls. This was work Janelle and I did, but she did most of the nailing, I did all of the cutting. This was fun! I was in a good mood. We mostly reused nails from the pallets and used reclaimed nails and screws from my collection for the rest. Steps 5 and 6 were done more or less in tandem, as wood would be nailed partway up, then the cavity packed, then more wood nailed on until the last course of wood was screwed on after the cavity had been packed full to the top. Screws were used to allow the cavities to be accessed for refilling later if settling becomes an issue.

6) Fill wall cavities between studs with sawdust and joiner/planer shavings to created insulated walls. Janelle mostly did this, which she enjoyed. I'd been stockpiling material for years with this idea in mind. Often sawdust seems a fine compost ingredient or mulch for certain plants, but in many shops (including ours) clean wood shavings and dust are mixed with small amounts of plastics, composite wood waste, pressure treated material, etc., and ought not to be used that way. Also, if Black Walnut makes up a substantial portion of the material, it may be toxic to some plants. I hate to landfill usable stuff; if I can think of a use for it I often hang onto it. But I also try to be pretty scrupulous about what goes in or on the soil. The resulting heaps of bagged dust and shavings are visible in the foreground of our "before" photos below. We ran out before finishing, and gratefully went to a friend/neighbor's house and shoveled up a trailer load of sawdust from their nursery bed supply to finish out. Thanks Jonathan and Christen!! Another cleaning was needed at the end of this job!

7) Sort and organize the piles in the garage and common room and restock/arrange shed with shop tools, fasteners, and materials. This was the hard part and mostly all me except for some help with carrying, a screw-sorting project by my fine daughters, and a marathon nail-sorting session by Janelle's Mom.

I found much of the sorting work--which was where the lion's share of my time went--frustrating, irritating, unpleasant, vexing, and boring. At times I felt humiliated, anxious, sad, distracted, and confused. I felt trapped into the work, knowing it needed to be done and no one could really do most of it but me. I felt spring pushing out into the waking buds and shoots and could feel us falling behind. I knew all along it would be worth it.

This is the kind of thing that gets me distinctly in touch with a grief process. I think the grief is two-fold: I realize what a wasteful society I am a member of, because I know I hang onto all this stuff in the knowledge that despite much of it having usefulness and potential, I am one of the few people I know who will take trouble to make use of it. Handling it all and making decisions about it makes this literally palpable. It also can make me feel like sort of a weirdo (normal people don't waste their time with this junk). The other grief is associated with visions of my life, my sense of self, and the passage of time. Handling a whimsical or intriguing item I stashed away years ago thinking I might like to do something with it sometime brings home to me that I haven't done that project, in some cases that I might never use that thing after all--my mortal life will not include the implementing of that idea--and anyway there will never be time enough in all my life to do all the things I have thought I might like to. 'See?', the piles say to me, 'You can't do what you thought you could, and maybe you don't really want to anymore. You've got limits. You've changed.'

Whew! Who knew all that could be wrapped into a bunch of shop detritus? I did, and that's why I dreaded it. But look! Look what's to be gained: A shop space that is more attractive, useful, and comfortable. A space that can welcome the enacting of those ideas that I (and others) do find the time and wherewithal to endeavor (see below). Now let's see if I can keep it that way.

8) The project finished, just yesterday (almost two weeks from the start) with a trip to the Mercy House building materials thrift store, which opened within the last few years and has filled a welcome function in the community while raising money to fund care for families contending with housing insecurity in our area. In many cases, items I had squirreled away years ago, before the opening of the store, now had a place to go besides the landfill and which makes them available to people who like or need to use waste/discounted items. I took my supply there at the end of the job with some trepidation; I didn't want to burden them with my junk. I purposely stocked the trailer with landfill items first, donations on top so if they didn't want something I could just take it on to its final home. As it turns out, they LOVED the stuff I brought, declaring it great and me awesome. Maybe I feel like a weirdo because I'm hanging out with the wrong people!

In conclusion, here's some fun before and after visuals!

Oh, not to forget 9) DANCE PARTY!

Before (left side):

 After (left side):

 Before (straight on):

 After (straight on):

 Before (right side):

 After (right side):