Long anticipated time at the Mountain House ALONE!

Inserted into the timeframe covered in the last blog post was a glorious 2-day/3-night getaway for me and Jason to my parents' Mountain House of Hope in WV. It was on my wish list for my break from CJP work and we were so grateful to Mom, Dad and Tala for being willing to take care of the chickens, pigs, fish, kids and harvests in our absence! I don't think any of the things just mentioned, including the kids, missed us at all. Alida and Terah, anyway, were too busy transforming Grandma and Grandpa's living room and making paper foods. Or just enjoying time with them where they weren't listening for my footsteps on the stairs, at which time they have to run and hide with fear that I might extract them to return to their downstairs home. They were in fine spirits when we left Tuesday and when we returned Friday!

Probably the best way to sum up our time is to share something I said to Jason partway through our time there. I was reflecting on how much I look forward to things, anticipate upcoming events, and often build up expectations that I'm not even always consciously aware of. It often leads to disappointment, because the reality may not match my hopes and expectations. I noted that the one time that doesn't happen is with our times away. They always far exceed my expectations. I'm always reminded how much we love being together, how we enjoy many of the same things, how we actually can hold a conversation where we finish our sentences, that we do know how to play and have fun, and what a gift it is to have a lover and life companion who is also my best friend.

This trip felt like the "real start" to my work break. It was the first "slowing down" of the time without my CJP hat. And it came at a time when a lot was stirring within me. I can't underestimate the gift of having a few days where those stirrings could bubble up and out at any moment and into the space Jason and I were sharing together (with just our four ears!). 

We did an excellent job of balancing play, down time, and rest with some much needed conversations and discernment time. We kicked off our first evening, savoring lumpia that Tala had made that day and sent along with us and even risked a game of Upwords. I was intending to test my maturity and see if I had improved on being a good sport. That didn't pan out, since I won even with forgetting to record my score on one turn. So all was pleasant between us.

We spent a good part of our first day+ binge-watching a show on Hulu that had been recommended to me from multiple sources, but was decidedly not a "family show." Each episode of Shrill clearly informs the watcher that the show is only intended for mature audiences. I will recommend it sparingly due to the aspects of the show that might be stretching enough for some that they would not be able to benefit from the poignant and powerful themes woven throughout. For me, the show was perfect it its timing. I laughed and groaned and expanded my vocabulary. 

In short the show follows "Annie, described as a fat young woman who wants to change her life — but not her body. Annie is trying to make it as a journalist while juggling bad boyfriends, sick parents and a perfectionist boss, while the world around her deems her not good enough because of her weight." As I am finally coming to grips with the reality that I have experienced disordered eating for most of my life, am still in recovery from an eating disorder and am finally ready to "break up" with diet culture and grieve the body that I have dreamed of but will never have, the show made me angry and hopeful and sad and wistful. A comedy was the perfect way to dish out that content from my perspective, because laughter helped loosen us up to also take in the hard stuff.

It fit perfectly into the mix for me to finishing reading The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown and for Jason and I to continue making some headway in the incredible book by Akilah S. Richards, Raising Free People. So much more could be said, and as always I invite more in depth conversations about any of the deeper life journey happenings alluded to in this "virtual scrapbook."

Wednesday afternoon we enjoyed a little trek to Philippi, WV to visit my aunt and uncle. The hugs felt long overdue and it was lovely to sit and share together about our lives and learnings in their little gazebo. 

On the way home, we stopped off at Kroger in Elkins for a "forbidden foods" trip. This definitely gets into the more personal terrain again but it must be included. As I've started looking more intentionally at the treatment strategies for eating disorder recovery and rebuilding trust in one's own body and removing fear of certain foods, the following has been recommended multiple times: it is important to have "scary foods" and those that you say "I can't be trusted around" available to you all the time (if practical and accessible). I will not expound on all the ins and outs of this, but my resistance to this idea was enough for me to know it was probably a good one. I could couch my resistance in all sorts of noble reasons, but in the end I had to admit that some foods do indeed scare me.

So in we went feeling very strange, kinda glad for the face masks and glad that this first foray into purchasing "forbidden foods" would happen in Elkins, WV where we were not likely to run into anyone we knew. We laughed as we walked through the aisles filling our basket. Jason even had to do an ID check in a grocery store for the first time in our married life. As we walked to the car, I marveled at how sometimes healing doesn't look at all like what I expected it might look like. And that sometimes the path takes turns I would have never expected. We continued our conversations over ice cream, candy, pretzels, chips and hard cider. And I felt safe and grounded.

Thursday we really "got to work!" To kick things off briefly on Wednesday, we had spent time reflecting on our "gremlins" (those supposed-tos and what makes us afraid), especially around the theme of cultivating meaningful work, which I had just read out loud to Jason from Brene Brown's book. Then, Thursday, we took a hike up to my uncle's cabin and sat in the pavilion with our journals. We did a bunch of vent diagrams (my new favorite activity) around the theme of "our gardens." In short, a vent diagram is a diagram with two overlapping statements that appear both true and contradictory. It's a practice to help us recognize and reckon with contradictions, as well as imagine and act from those intersections and overlaps. Oh, there are just so many!!

Want a sampling? Here's just a few of my page-full:

• I feel most alive when working in our gardens--I feel demoralized and utterly overwhelmed in our gardens
• Our gardens are to put food on our table--Our gardens are for broader seed breeding and development
• I don't want to live anywhere else on the earth---I yearn to be free from the relentless pressures of the seasons

You get the picture... And, as we shared with each other there was increased understanding and compassion for the tensions we are trying to hold and live with. And some little "ah ha" moments that I'm holding on to in my memory and are also documented in my journal lest I forget. I went into our conversation about gardens and our future with a fair amount of trepidation since we have a history of those conversations being triggering and difficult for us. But give us 48 hours to play, rest and connect with each other first and we do pretty well!

So I'd love to end the story of our trip there BUT I think I must tell on myself AND do a service to the world and a disservice to the Q-tip industry by issuing a warning: if you are a fan of Q-tips, please use them for craft projects or to clean anything BUT your ears! 

I kinda knew it was a bad idea to clean your ears with Q-tips but everyone does it anyway right? And I did for years before we stopped buying them. So, while looking for floss at my parents', I happened upon a collection of Q-tips. I don't know why in that moment I felt inspired, but I think it was the fact that there was nothing I had to do and so I could indulge in the luxury of cleaning the earwax out of my ears. YES, you may laugh AT me (now that I've recovered)!!

Well, it had been awhile. I was not experiencing any trouble with my ears at all but there was plenty of wax there. A minute later the job was done and I went on my way not thinking another thing about it...for a spell anyway. I have a vague memory of feeling a few moments of odd sensations in my ear that evening but nothing striking. We went to bed and the next thing I knew it was about 4 a.m. and I could hardly hear anything with my left ear. Accompanied with my hearing loss was a tidal wave of anxiety and panic, necessitating my waking of Jason to help me get my emotions back in check. 

I confessed my earlier Q-tip usage, which gave Jason all he needed to know to reassure him of what was going on. That freed him to just focus on calming down his wife, taking a look at the website of home remedies of cleaning out one's ears, and to try a salt water solution. Nothing worked, but his hugs did enable me to calm enough to fall back to sleep until about 6:30 when I woke with the same ailment and accompanying discomfort. It made me feel a little unsteady on my feet and a tad nauseous. 

I was unable to imagine driving over four mountains, so made a desperate call to my parents. My dad was out doing chores (which might have been grace for me, as he would have reminded me to not put anything other than my elbow in my ear), but my mom (another guilty Q-tip user) reminded me of the local Harman Health Clinic. 

I am now one of their biggest fans. We called around 8:27 and they got me in with an 8:30 a.m. appt! While we waited in the waiting room, I was able to take in the large cabinet of old medical instruments which had been my grandfather's in the health clinic he had run for decades in Harman. Due to still not being able to hear in my one ear and feeling very odd, I didn't take in specifics but just a warm feeling looking at his photo and all the things his hands had touched and used.

I was called in and after some trouble finding the ear flushing equipment, they worked their magic. I know it sounds very extreme but in the moment when the wax/skin that was completely coating my eardrum released and my healing was restored 100%, I could not help but remember that moment of release when our babies did that final slip out of me. The relief was followed by euphoria. I think the care providers there were clear on the depth of my gratitude. And Jason got a kick out of my giddiness that followed. I kept effusing my love for my ears and apologizing to them for taking them for granted. 

And that's about the end of it! It started well and ended well, with just one kinda dramatic hiccup in the middle!!

Father's Day, visitors, blueberries and a snake doing its job well!

Here's the first of two posts, as there was too much to include in a reasonably-lengthed post this go round. This one will include all recent happenings other than Jason's and my long-anticipated time away ALONE in WV. That one deserves a post all to itself!

Kali missed being with her father on Father's Day this year and you can see how rough of a time she was having! We were happy that she got to enjoy another weeklong stint in Pittsburgh with Christie and Mark, with no two week quarantine needed this time around since all involved are now fully vaccinated! We did not hold back on having fun in her absence. Terah and Alida were keeping track of any activities that they could "rub in" that we did while she was gone. I do not think they were at all successful in having her second guess her choice to go - she had a lovely time and we also managed to have some good fun without her. I guess that's a good thing, since a week apart will be expanded to 2.5 months this fall when Kali takes off for the Philippines. I am very grateful for the good buds Terah and Alida are, but we will still miss her terribly!

But I'm getting ahead of myself! Backing up to June 20, Jason and I enjoyed a hike to Hensley's Pond to start off Father's Day and we ended the day with pizza pockets around the outdoor fire. I got to have my father with me physically and Jason got to feel close to his by doing something that felt like a familiar family activity of hanging out around an outdoor fire. In the middle of the day, we enjoyed a picnic outside where we drank out of rye straws (made from the stalks) and enjoyed fresh peas (whatever ones the chipmunks are not helping themselves to - Jason commented recently that he doesn't think chipmunks will be permitted into heaven as he will have to be able to grow peas there!)

In addition to peas, we are deep into berry season here. There are gooseberries, red currants, black currants, red raspberries, black raspberries (domesticated and while), the first white raspberry here and there, blackberries and blueberries. The limiting factor is picking time. I made our first (but not last) batch of cornstarch pudding this week for us to top with an abundance of fresh fruit. Yum! We've started in on harvest days 3x a week. The things coming in the door right now include hull peas, sugar snaps, lettuce, all the berries mentioned above, parsley, basil, collards, mint tea, and other herbs, onions and chives as needed. I used the very last garlic scapes today in hummus, and we're likely to pull garlic within the week. It's also grain harvest time, with the wheat and rye now cut and shocked (I did one shock "all by myself" this year for the first time!).

This past weekend we enjoyed visits from several friends of Jason's youth. On Saturday we enjoyed our first trek to the blueberry patch next door with J, a friend of Jason's from high school, and her family. We enjoyed a meal outside and the kids had so much fun playing soccer.

When they continued on their way, we transitioned to getting ready to camp out in our yard. Jason and I had used some wedding anniversary gift money from my parents to buy a little screened canopy for our yard. We have never all slept outside together so it seemed high time - and the screens would keep us from being eaten alive by mosquitos all night. The kids were excited and I was hoping I'd get some sleep. We had a family meeting out in the canopy as night fell. Then Jason told a Little Buddy story about him going blueberry picking and we settled down for the night. Or that was the plan anyway... Terah fell asleep pretty quickly and Alida was close behind. Kali and I made at least one trip outside together to pee and to take a look at the beautiful moon rising over the mountain. But sleep was not coming. I was itching all over. Terah was asleep but scratching most parts of her body. What about our screen keeping bugs away? I admit to having a pretty lousy attitude by the wee hours of the morning. I assumed Jason, who was most excited about sleeping outside, was sleeping peacefully (though I was perplexed as to why he wasn't snoring). I think it was nearly 2 a.m. when I saw him sit up. I asked if he also couldn't sleep. We were in the same boat. He was also being bitten by something and could not rest, but kept hoping for the night to get better as he had so wanted to enjoy camping out as a family. It was not to be. We bailed soon after and carted kids and pillows inside. We fell into our bed, by this point laughing at ourselves and our failed camping experience. Jason is pretty sure we were being visited by no-see-ums but who knows: we never saw-um!

The next day the canopy was redeemed as a perfect spot for putting the kiddie pool for great water play on a hot day! 

On Sunday afternoon we enjoyed some fascinating and educational Tangly Woods TV! (content warning: skip ahead if you don't want to see snake pictures!) Kali had gone down to the garden shed to get a tool and noticed a black snake who had just killed a rat and was starting the long task of consuming it. The chickens were very curious about what was going on, as were we. We spent the next half hour watching it swallow something about 3x its width. Incredible, truly! The rat had clearly put up a fight as the snake had some blood on it. We were thrilled the snake had chosen a rat over a chick; that's the kind of black snakes we are happy to have around. 

Later that evening, members of 3 families (of friends/distant relatives) came over for snacks and s'mores around the fire. It was a fun evening of visiting, even if we got rained on initially by some unexpected showers. The evening turned out beautiful with a double rainbow and a great firefly show.

And here we are at today! Kali's been busy in the kitchen this afternoon making a triple batch of black currant blueberry jam (Jason cashed in a "you choose" coupon!). That was after getting up at 6:45 a.m. for another hike with my parents - they should feel very special!! Terah and Alida are on "guard duty" for the chickens (listening for foxes) outside while chatting and/or listening to science podcasts. I've enjoyed making some progress in recent days on my birth doula certification requirements, including completing a required "doula business webinar" today.  Jason finished up a large digging project (yes, in this heat), threshed clover seed out and then headed off to donate platelets. So we'll see if I can crank out the second post before his return!!

Savoring a long awaited in person visit... and our third wedding (sorta) at T.W.!

It was Christmas of 2019 when the Benner family last gathered in Keezletown. And our family was all at various stages of a nasty bug such that our home wasn't a gathering spot even then. And then, well, Covid happened...So it was special to have Jason's parents arrive Sunday evening for a visit with us in our home. This trip is monumental for multiple reasons, as it came about in part to celebrate their upcoming 50th wedding anniversary. We were happy to be a stop along the way! We enjoyed a very low key day on Monday just being together. A few of the highlights include: lots of music time, a Rook competition, jumping rope, a spin around outside to see what's growing including savoring the first black raspberries, coffee & chatting, snoozing, eating, and just savoring being in the same physical space together.

It appears Kali got so tuckered out on our walk around outside that she needed to take a rest in the creeping thyme. :) 

Hopefully it will not be a year and a half until we visit together in person again! That said, Kali go literally around the world and back before our next time gathered. So even through less time will have lapsed, there will still be plenty to catch up on!!

The other thing that needs a spot in our scrapbook is that we had a very special small group gathering this week! In a former post I had mentioned attending the wedding of dear friends. As it turns out, their beautiful ceremony didn't check off the official legal marriage check box. And since our small group involves someone with the power to check that box, we had a lovely little ceremony on our lawn Tuesday! Other than our small group, the only additional attendees were some of our chickens! It was a gorgeous evening in which we also enjoyed our first meal all together (where we all ate the same thing and didn't bring food for our individual families). I got to brush off my "make a large pot of something" skills, and am glad to know I can still do it! Following our meal together and the ceremony, there was some fun on the basketball court to top off the evening!

We are all grateful for these times gathered with friends and family. Eating and playing together feels both familiar and strange, but also very welcome.