Plain and Simple

Sometimes the simple things are the best things.  We've all heard that one before, right?  This is true for me in knitting.  Sure, I admire fancy knitting: the best new yarn, the great cable stitch that I haven't quite mastered...all of that looks great.  But what I find myself turning to again and again are the simplest patterns and the plainest stitches.  Maybe it's because this is a time in my life when knitting time is at a premium and often has to happen while I'm having a conversation or watching something on TV, times when my attention is divided.  But sometimes it's just because the very act of doing a basic stitch, over and over again as uniformly as possible is so satisfying that it is an end in itself.  I like to knit.  I like to knit beautiful things.  But I also like to knit plain things, things that will get used, that no one will put away in a closet because they are "too good" to be used.  Socks.  Wash cloths.  Baby blankets, the kind that can be thrown in the wash.  Good things.  Plain things.  Satisfying things.

Body Modification

Well, today all three of my daughters got their ears pierced. This was not such a big deal to me, I've had my ears pierced for years and don't feel strongly one way or the other about it. It was a bit of a big deal to my husband (who also had pierced ears, for a while anyway), for whom the whole body modification process seemed to imply an arrival at a certain maturity, which is dubious in the case of most if not all of our offspring. In other words, I said: "sure!" and he said: "uh--". This morning, after he got the treat of telling our seven year old that she was indeed allowed to go with her sisters and get her ears pierced (joy!) the female members of our family loaded ourselves into the van and headed for the local mall where a very frou-frou store (Claires) offers ear piercing services.

Nobody cried. Not even mom.

Christmas

Well, it's that time of year again. The time of year when I think I have everything ready for The Big Day but there is so much sneaky work left to do I end up feeling like I will never be ready. Special occasions are a lot of work, especially when you have four children depending on you to provide the lights and magic.

It is through the stress of the season that I discover the most grace however. Feeling overwhelmed reminds me that I have a family, a lot going on, volunteering responsibilities, food to get on the table, gifts to wrap...all the things that I have that are stressing me out are the things I would miss the most if they weren't there. So I'm taking this moment in between cleaning like a dervish, trying to keep up with the ordinary clutter and getting the kids finished with their semester to reflect briefly on all the wonderful mess in my life at this time of year. Maybe I'll get a load in the wash while I'm at it.

Waiting

Today is a big day in our house. Today we're going to take out a rock that we've been shrinking and measure it. Way back at the beginning of the school year, we took a one ounce piece of limestone and put it in some vinegar. Apparently over time, the acid in the vinegar will eat away at the soft limestone, and the rock will get smaller. It doesn't look smaller. I'm really hoping that when we weigh and measure it, we will see some difference, because waiting for this experiment to mature has been an exercise in patience over a couple of months. So why did we decide to do this today? The end time of the experiment is completely arbitrary, I have just been wanting to leave it in there nice and long so that we will be sure of seeing some sort of measurable difference. Today is the big day because taking it out and sparking the interest of the kids who have been waiting to see what happens is my way of coping with waiting for Matt to get home from his latest trip to the UK. He's been gone for several days on this trip, certainly long enough for me to see some measurable difference. Not having Matt around means no one constantly running the tea kettle, producing the countless cups of tea that prompt many enjoyable conversations around our house. Somehow it is so much nicer to sit and talk about things with a cuppa something hot in your hand. Not having Matt around means that I have been in charge of teaching all the kids during our sessions of doing school at home. It is very difficult to engage big kids and little kids at the same time, and usually involves letting one group wait while the others get attention. Not having Matt around means a constant feeling of being on duty every minute. I know that feeling of being in charge is multiplied by having kids home all the time, and that if I had them on a school bus to "away school" every day I would have some time to myself. But the way we do it here really depends on two parents being around for the sanity of everyone. So today, after months of waiting for a rock to shrink, we're going to take it out of the mason jar, rinse it off and measure it to see what happened. Meanwhile, I am discovering dimensions of my relationships while waiting for everything to get back to normal around here.

Bunny Love

We are a bunny family. Some families have dogs and cats for pets, we have dogs and cats and bunnies. At one point, after two unexpected (really?) litters of baby bunnies we had fifteen of them. Months and many craigslist ads later we are down to our four standby rabbit friends, Wolf, CT (Cottontail), Hop, and Buttercup.

I don't think often about why we are a bunny family, but lately I had reason to be reminded of all the bunny stories we have enjoyed through the years. First of all, when my eldest child was quite young she was given a green plush rabbit for a toy, which became named Eliezer. I used to make up bedtime stories for my young daughter about a little girl meeting a rabbit named Eliezer in the back yard, and the adventures they would have. Then, of course, there were all the Easter bunnies and Easter bunny stories: the rabbit series by Alan Barker which is now out of print, the book Bunny and Me, featuring a lovely baby in fabulous handknits playing with a lop (what could be better?) and Hop!, a board book featuring, you guessed it: rabbits.

In addition to all the picture books, of course, contributing to our bunny mania may be the tiny fact that as soon as my daughter could read I began shoving my beloved copy of Watership Down at her. She read through it twice before she was ten, and I'm sure she'll revisit it at some point later on down the road. She may not be as much into picture books as she once was, but we're still reading them out loud to her siblings. There's not much better than a good bunny story. Even if it does result in a houseful of rabbits.

Turning a Corner

I learned something new this year. I taught myself, with the help of some books and a youtube video or two, how to construct a mitered square out of yarn. To do this, one has to knit three sides "around a corner" and then finish by completing a square with the mitered section. I know, I know, this sounds like absolute gobbledy-gook--unless you yourself have knit mitered squares. Some of you have.

Another thing I taught myself this year, with the help of some books and a few key people, is that I could turn a corner in my life. I had been doing the same thing for a long time. But this year I decided to do something different. I quit my job; I went back to school. This felt really risky to me. I'm still not sure how everything is going to turn out. But I turned a corner, and I made a change. This is the point at which the mitered square starts to pull everything together and make it all look really good. So if you are one of those people who have been helping me take this risk and turn this corner, thank you.

Where are the balloons, mommy?

Today is my birthday. I am turning 36. It is the kind of age you might rather forget about, since it truly signals the short distance to 40 (but isn't 40 the new 20?). Just kidding. I would rather 40 be 40, since trying to be 20 for 2 decades sounds nothing less than hideous. But seriously, let's get back to talking about my birthday.

When I got up this morning I had breakfast with my family and opened a present, and a card and had "Happy Birthday" sung to me by a three-year-old. It was very sweet and went perfectly with my coffee, which I was drinking throughout. At some point, though, my six-year-old looked around and said, "But Mommy, where are the balloons? When is the party?"

It is with great happiness and contentment that I say I am not having a party for my birthday. At some point in life you realize that in order to have a party you have to either put out some serious effort yourself, or lay all that effort on to someone else. It is such a good feeling to enjoy a birthday without having to run out for balloons, bake a cake, have people over, you know the routine. I won't tell that to the kids just yet, because they are still in the lala-land of believing that all these things magically appear in the natural order of things on birthdays, and I don't want to spoil it for them just yet. But I am very much enjoying having a birthday where I am with all the people I love the most, having a good day (but no balloons).

Animal Planet

Somehow, the job description of "Mom" never seems to include the large and significant amount of time spent taking care of the non-human species in the family. And I don't just mean the obvious, like filling up the dog's water dish or alerting the child in charge when the litter box is getting a little ripe. I mean dealing with another child's anxiety over leaving several bunnies in their outside hutch during a mild thunderstorm, investigating another rabbit for a possible but unlikely pregnancy after discovering her diligence in making a nest in the indoor hutch, and needing to quick-a-minute rehouse tadpoles before heading off to Great-Grandma's for dinner because they might just be at a crucially sensitive point in their metamorphosis requiring access to dry land to prevent drowning. I have found that there is no "out" here other than being the kind of draconian, zero-pet-tolerance mother I never wanted to be. So here I sit, next to the happily swimming (and not drowning) tadpoles who like to hide behind the rock I found for them this afternoon, rather than sit upon it, breathing the same atmosphere as do I.

Cloth Napkins

We recently had a rummage sale at our church. I helped; so did two of our girls, one of whom was on one crutch doing a passable impression of Tiny Tim if Tiny Tim had ever voraciously bought and sold the entire contents of a used jewelry table. (Aside: I sure got a lot of jewelry this past Mother's Day). While my girls were busy with the accessories, I was over in Housewares, enjoying myself.

Now, I never thought I would have so much fun (or take home so much stuff) from the Rummage Sale, but I did. My enjoyment was centered around two things: aprons and cloth napkins. I surprised my husband into a raised eyebrow a couple of weeks ago by hanging the clothes out on the clothesline while wearing one of the aprons; the capacious pockets were too tempting as clothespins holders to pass up. And one of our goals this year was to become more sustainable as a family in terms of our paper product consumption, so the cloth napkins were irresistible as well.

I am a firm proponent of buying used products. Not only is it good to reuse things (remember your three "R"s) but it takes the guesswork out of whether something will survive the first washing. I have no idea whose home these napkins came from, but I like to imagine that it was a place where setting a gracious table and serving a good meal were a priority. So far, having the cloth napkins on the table at dinner time has been nothing but good. The kids like to pick which color we will be using on any given day and I like the virtuous glow I get from not throwing them away after the meal. Win, win.

Bonfire

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cpurrin1/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

We had a bonfire tonight. It smelled like a campfire, and looked like a campfire, except that it was burning inside our broken outdoor fireplace. The kids had done garden chores all day so that they were ready for a reward (AKA bribe, AKA positive reinforcement) for all the toil they put in. Fortunately, I had driven up to Community Supermarket to get graham crackers, marshmallows and Hershey's chocolate bars before supper so we were well supplied to make S'Mores.

I enjoyed making the treats. I always like toasting marshmallows. It's one of the things I think I happen to be good at. But at a certain point in the evening I realized that it wasn't really necessary to stand there by the fire, taking charge and making everything. The kids were doing just fine all by themselves. It was one of those moments you have now and then as a parent when you realize that you are in an entirely different phase of your family's life. So, I sat back, had a glass of wine and enjoyed watching the children have a wonderful evening.

Knitting for the Pens

Some of you may have heard of the tradition of "growing one for the team" as the Stanley Cup Playoffs progress. Well, as a woman, I don't have that option (fortunately...my husband might not be so pleased if I could participate). What I can do is knit socks.

Some people in Pittsburgh seem to have strong opinions against those who have the gall to knit during a hockey game, imagining that it implies a lack of attention, support, or complete devotion to the home hockey team. Those of us who do knit while watching hockey however, I believe, have a perfect combination of something to do which does not require a whole lot of attention (read: I can still watch the game while I knit) while still indulging our love of crafting AND spending quality time with the (ahem admittedly more devoted) hockey fan we live with.

My favorite knitting hockey fan is Michelle, who is so devoted she drives hours each way to attend games at the Igloo and won't even get up to go to the bathroom for the whole game. If that isn't sending a message to the bench, I don't know what is. And you know all those wool socks have to be great for hanging out in an arena all the time.

In honor of Michelle, and as my small contribution to hockey fandom, I'll be knitting tonight during the Penguin's game. I may have kids to get to bed, dishes to wash and other sundry things to do (laundry, for one) but you will find me parked in front of the TV this evening, watching the game, cheering on the Penguins and yes, knitting a sock.

Rain, Rain

I'm up too late, but the one good thing about that is that I got to hear the rain come up from the valley and across our hilltop. I was hoping that it would arrive at some point and soak my new plantings. So much easier than lugging the watering can around to the front of the house. One way you have to splash and drip down one set of steps, across a couple of rocks and up another set of steps before watering the plants; the other direction means avoiding the clinging fingers of the beech tree and stepping over the obstacle course of garden, old tree limbs, even older composter (old enough to contain a duck skeleton from back when we had duck friends in the yard) before arriving at your destination. This way the waxy, pathetic looking rose bushes-to-be get a nice soaking and I get to go to bed. Thinking about ducks.

Garden Update

I am still not sure whether I am happy to be able to do more work in the garden this year or dismayed at all the heavy labor that entails. Earlier this year I read (quite complacently, I admit) the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and smiled over her descriptions of working all day and falling down exhausted in the evening. I am finding myself falling-over-exhausted over doing just several hours of heavy gardening. By "heavy gardening" I mean, of course not the genteel and ladylike planting of seeds or watering with a hose or even a watering can, but the kind of digging and soil turning and slogging that leaves your muscles shaking and your head aching.

End result: between the efforts of myself and one helpful child I doubled the length of one bed (soil turned), started breaking the clods of soil with a hoe and raked some of the weeds out. I also planted seven rose bushes in the front of the house, and seeded the bare ground in the front that does get some sun with wildflower seeds. Our goal is to eliminate mowing in the front and have a plethora of decorative plants and flowers. Between the huge beech tree that dominates the front yard and the apple trees we put in a couple of years ago a lot of that is done. Hopefully these roses will help to beautify the front as well.

Rose Bushes

In my fantasy life, I am a great gardener. The kind that remembers to put bulbs in in the fall, deals competently with invasively multiplying perennials and deals out a kind organic death to weeds and pests. Up till now I have had an out in the form of several little people who call me "Mom" and needed constant supervision. Now that they are getting bigger, can swing for hours at a time (OK, minutes) without breaking out into a fight or falling down and getting hurt, or even better, like to "help," I am losing my excuses for why my yard isn't a thing of beauty and a joy forever. So what am I doing on this May morning? Putting off heading outside, drinking another cup of coffee...writing this post. Sigh.

Table Cloth

Since quitting my job at the public library I have been throwing myself into domestic work. Now don't get me wrong. I'm no Martha and while I love to bake, every day I wish someone else felt moved to cook dinner for the family. But the other day I put on an apron to hang out the laundry. I've been taking the kids to volunteer and even joined a month-long quilting class, where I produced half a pillow cover (oh all right, it isn't done yet) and a potholder. And I have started getting really excited about things like putting a cloth on the table and using linen napkins. Go figure. There may be cobwebs in every corner and cat hair on the couch, but at least the dining room table looks really fine.

Creativity with Kids

Somehow, reading bios of successful writers who made it big while raising their families makes it sound so easy. "I kept the typewriter in the kitchen," or "after the kids were asleep I churned out a chapter or two." Or from La Roberts, "I got bored while snowed in with little kids and no chocolate." The fact that they made it at all is amazing to me. I guess I can't walk and chew gum at the same time, but when the kids are up they all talk to me. Constantly. And I can't concentrate on writing one sentence and speaking another one at the same time. By the time they get in bed at night, I'm wiped out. It seems like the only time of day I am able to be productive in this solitary, self-centered business of creative writing is early in the morning before the first little person gets up. Which, considering we have some real morning people in the family, can be pretty early. I guess the other option is to ignore the kids, pass the chores on to everyone else and pamper my inner muse.

So here's hoping I manage to get to bed on time most nights and get up when the alarm goes off.

New Floor

We have been trying to put a new floor in our basement. Along the way, we have been trying to keep cats off the underlayment, trying to keep our dog from marking the floor as his territory, and trying to find time when someone is nearby to keep an eye on our kids while we do the time-consuming and definitely two-person task of laying a new floor.


Since we started, our one dog decided to eat a mourning dove and nearly die, throwing us into a tailspin. Then, our other dog ran on to the road in front of a speeding police car. The car hit her going nearly 50 mph. She's still alive, but very sore. Both dogs are now on a soft food diet which involves cooking them chicken. I'm starting to wonder if this was a big ploy on their part to get royally spoiled!


Needless to say, the floor is not done. All of it is finished with the exception of the last row of flooring which has to be cut to fit all the way down the room. Some day soon we'll have a moment of peace in which we can get it done.

Bunnies

We currently have a lot of rabbits living in our house. It all started with my daughter's awesome rabbit, C.T. (Cottontail). She inspired us to let our daughter try and breed Dutch rabbits, so we got a male Dutch (Wolf). A lovely litter of Dutch bunnies resulted.
However...
We have a Bad Bunny in our house. Notice the evil gleam in her eye and the splayed claws. Buttercup is one mean rabbit. She also snuck into Wolf's cage one night and got herself knocked up. So, we now have another litter of babies around. Two of them have gone to a new home, another one is leaving today, but two of them are still here. Here for your viewing pleasure are Lucky and Spot:

Lobby Dishcloth revealed!

Well, when I posted last about the Lobby Dishcloth I was trying from Mason-Dixon Knitting I promised a picture. Here it is!

First (real) day of school

While my kindergartner had nearly a full week of school last week, my two older school children spent the last week doing mandatory school testing and getting their supplies in order. Today is the first "real" day of school in which they have to do any work. Yes, we had some tears and yes, we pulled out all the stops of inspirational speeches, exhortations and directives to think of those less fortunate than ourselves. Such is the life of a PA Cyber Charter School parent.

Next on the agenda is watching the live televised address from the President to school children, the transcript of which can be found here.