guilt trip

Sorry I haven't been writing in here more often. But I have excuses, really I do.

The first one was a car accident. Rear-ended, car totaled. Compressed disc(k?) at L5 and still having headaches. I suspect I had a very mild concussion, but the urgent care doc didn't think so.

The second one was my kids came home from three weeks in Massachusetts and I've been snuggling all over them. (In fact, I am also planning a little welcome home party for them tomorrow.)

The third excuse is actually taking up more mental and physical space than the other two. I've got the Willamette Writers Conference coming up next week and I'm pitching my non-fiction book: "Grief Shadows: Young, Pregnant and Widowed" to THREE different agent/editors. So I'm working on my outline, essays and most importantly -- my pitch.

I'm also trying to settle into my routine of having the children back.

It's harder than I thought.

I really just want to grab a bowl of refried beans with rice cheese melted over it and start writing my next essay that is plaguing my brain. It's buffeting around in there doing cartwheels trying to get my attention before I forget it and it melts away. I understand this and want to honor it, but ... (and, as my gramma used to say, "here's the BIG but(t) ...") instead I must: worry about Robert being on the xbox 360 too long and make lunch for the kids who are STARVING and starting to concoct weird things in the kitchen, and get to the store to buy water balloons for the gathering tomorrow and food. Get the back yard decent. (Read: pick up poop and mow.)

I guess that means no essay for now.

But how will I remember what I want to say for later, and still stay present for the kids and my other responsibilities, like ... oops. I forgot to feed the chickens this morning.

Best go check that now.

Staycation

I'm so torn about what I should be doing during this "vacation". 'Cuz that's what it really is. My kids are gone for three weeks to visit family in Massachusetts. I had great visions of:

reading voraciously
watching movies in the middle of the day
making soap
cleaning all rooms in the house until they shone
and writing every day.

So mostly none of those things have happened and they've been gone a week.
I did do some catch-up work the day after they left and did some extra sleeping here and there. And all weekend I was at a Sustainable Living Festival at Wise Acres farm (which was super cool and wouldn't have been able to do easily if the children were in my care).

Monday I did some errands and Tuesday I did a bunch of baking and made a weeks worth of dog food (and watched a movie in the middle of the day). And designed a chicken coop.

I have done a bit of writing. I hack-edited a chapter in my novel on Monday and yesterday I made a blog entry. So some writing is being done. But not quite like I thought.

Why am I so hard on myself? I seem to have far more expectations on myself than anyone else does. And that's fine, but when I feel bad because I don't reach those expectations ...

Maybe I should focus, as my mother-in-law says to do, on the things I DO accomplish every day. A "Look What I Did!" journal to be written in every night before bed.




I did some weeding in the garden this morning and went to a memorial "Celebration of Life" service for a woman I used to work with. Sad, but lovely.

And now I'm going to hang out with my man. He's got two days off and we've got no kids right now ... ;)

Cob building workshop

Last weekend I went to a Sustainable Living Festival at a nearby farm. In addition to about a dozen lectures that I listened to, I also took a cob building class. I've been super interested in cob for years and actually wanted to build out house out of cob ... before we found and bought the one we live in now.

So, now I'm thinking ... cob chicken house.




What's cool about cob is you use what you have. It's a great self-sufficiency skill to have. The most common materials are: clay, sand and straw. But again, you use what you have. Bailing twine, sawdust, the earth you dig up from your back yard.




First you lay down a tarp if you don't want the ground to get all icky. Also it helps for rolling logs, as you'll see later. Our instructor, Keiko, laid down sandy soil first. He got this from a river bed.




Then he added clay dug from the ground and dried in the sun.



We all started smooshing it together with our feet. Mine are the red toes.



You add water to get it nice and wet.



Keep stomping and squishing.



Then you do a ball test. Make a ball in your hands and pat it down real good ...



... then you drop it. This batch isn't quite done yet. Needs more sticky stuff. So we added more clay and water.



For this particular demonstration, Keiko was having us make a cob oven. It was a mini one.
First you've got a base (simulated by the milk crate and wood lathe thing), and then you lay down your fire brick.



Keiko interrupted his demonstration to show us some bricks. Instead of free forming with cob, you can also make bricks with a form like this.



This is a cob brick. (It is unfired and used to build in this form.)



You can also fire cob bricks in a kiln (like pottery, 'cuz -- duh -- it is pottery) and they end up looking like this. And they last a really long time.



So back to the oven. Once your cob is ready, you build a sand castle with wet sand. :) This is what you are going to put your cob on.



For this little oven, Keiko had us make the walls of the oven be two fingers thick. It's important to keep your measurements the same all the way up to the top, otherwise you end up with a really thin dome top. Push down on the clay, compressing it but not pushing into the sand.



If a crack happens. Oh well.



Just cut out the broken part and keep working.



Here's all the cob put over the sand form.



Use a piece of wood or a paddle to smack it around a bit to further compress the clay and work out any lumps or weird pooches in the walls.



And then the walls are all smooth.




Cut out a door.



And dig out the sand.



Keiko talked a bit about insulation next. On an oven, you want to keep the heat inside so it doesn't cool off too fast when you pull the fire out to cook in it. (I imagine you'd want insulation on your house, too.) You can actually go up to a foot's width of insulation. At least six inches. Here he's made an insular layer made of sawdust and pottery slip. ('Cuz that's what he had.)



Our next project was a quicker way to make cob that was nice and strong and could be used for walls and such.




Take your cob mixture: sand, clay and water; and add straw. This isn't so much mixed in, as stomped on. Think "squash the grapes." The idea is to keep adding straw and dancing on the whole pile until no mud squishing up between your toes. You don't want a sloppy cob to build with or your walls will smoosh over.



When it was dry enough, we rolled the tarp over and consolidated all the cob together into this log that was strong enough to stand on.



Now you can start building with it. Same as before, compress and integrate the layers together. Don't just lay them on top of each other.



Alternately, you can make coils. (Good for curved walls.)



Now make a giant coil pot!




I got lots of ideas and I'm so glad I went. Next step, dig a hole in my back yard and start drying my clay soil out.

Happy building!

Aprovecho field trip

This is the part of their forest that they sustainably harvest. Note what this side looks like compared to the wild forest that they leave alone and don't touch.

This is a cool building that they are finishing up construction on. You can see all the layers here. First there is straw, then a mud/cob layer, and then a lime wash plaster.

Sallal Berry Plant

Douglas Fir

Red Cedar

This is the wilderness part of their forest. This was my favorite part of the tour.

This is a legacy stump. One of the old-growth trees that originally inhabited this forest.

Jeremy, our guide/instructor, is showing Aubrey a "writer's conk". Named for the under surface of this fungus: you can carve messages for future travelers to read. Writer's conks only grow on dead trees.

This is the wilderness area where they don't touch anything. Nothing is removed (as in felled trees, etc.). Do you see the difference between this and the harvested area?

Native Columbine flower

Robert looking over a bridge at a creek.

Jeremy identifying a Big Leaf Maple. Maple leaves have five sections to them. (maple=5 letters) Another species version is the Vine Maple. There are nine sections to those leaves. (vinemaple=9 letters)

This is another legacy stump, but it's also a "nurse" log, because a new life form is growing out of it.

Miner's lettuce, an edible plant. The leaves taste sort-of like spinach.

This is not a nurse log. This tree fell over in the forest but did not die. Instead, the branches grew up and up to resemble trees. It was pretty neat-o to see.

This forest is fifty years old. Aprovecho purchased some land fifty years ago that had been pretty much clear cut and they planted all these trees. Except for three trees. One of them is to the left of the picture. It's a hundred years old. As they sustainably harvest the trees in this side of their land, they'll always leave those three old trees, and a few of the middle-agers. They use the lumber they cut down for building their houses on the property and for firewood.

They also leave dead trees, or snags, for the purposes of encouraging wild birds and mammals to live in them. They eat the larvae and beetles and termites that can sometimes bring a load of trees down.

Aubrey and Robert are using the metal ox to pull a downed tree to the bottom of the hill where it can be milled for use.

This was a super cool cob bench. You can't see in the picture, but there are a couple of "steps" for sitting on below the kids' feet. They used the clay from their own land to create the cob.

The day finished up with a rocket stove specialist sharing why rocket stoves (like the small one shown above) are more fuel efficient and also much healthier to use. His team has gone to neighboring countries that tend to cook over open flame in their homes, without proper ventilation, and showed them how to make rocket stoves themselves with the raw materials that they had and how to repair them when they broke. Helping others learn how to be self-sufficient is part of the educational curriculum at Aprovecho. Our guide also shared that respiratory disease is the number one cause of death in children under the age of five. So it was real important to cook away from the house, outside; or to have proper ventilation inside so as not to inhale the black sooty smoke day in and day out.

Aubrey and Robert's fire.

This is a rocket stove invented and designed by our stove guy for some folks in Brazil.

This one's made of clay.

Aprovecho is an educational center that teaches people about foresting sustainably, organic gardening, permaculture, burning fuel efficiently on rocket stoves, and the differences between a wild forest ecosystem and a sustainably logged ecosystem.

The people that teach on Aprovecho also live there. It is an intentional community.




Our "school", Homesource, is a place where my children take classes in stuff that interests them and they come up with some pretty awesome field trips from time to time. This was one of those times.

I haven't decided if Homesource is for us, because of course there are strings to everything and I don't particularly like these strings. But we'll try it for another year and see.

I'm real glad we went on this field trip. It was great to get the kids out in nature and do some hands on activities (like logging!) that they don't/won't get anywhere else.

Latest Harvest

Sugar Snap Peas, Strawberries and Chard



~not bad for a first time gardener.

Chicken Playpen

So I went out to change the chicks' water this morning and, well, let me tell you: the smell is getting to me. And everything in the garage is so dusty. And a couple of the chickens are getting restless and fighting with each other. They really need to be in a coop.

I've put in an email to a gentleman that makes chicken coops, but haven't heard back from him. I, myself, am getting antsy. The chicks are 6 and a half and three and a half weeks old. The littler ones could stand to be inside much longer, but the older ones, I think not. I can't separate them so they must all go outside.

So I go out this morning -- to the garage -- and the chicken box is just gross. And I just changed it a couple days ago. Sigh. Well, I asked for this.

And then I just decided I would do it. A couple of chicken owner friends said to me that they really needed to be outside right now during the day; I could put them in the garage at night. So I fish out some chicken wire and wrestle it into a corral of sorts. I duct tape the edges together (so classy) and prop up the sides with blocks of wood.





Voila.




Aubrey helps me bring the chicks outside. She's real good with the chickens -- any animal actually. Maybe it's the Libra in her. I've heard they are good with animals.




At first they just stood there frozen. "Where am I? This is an alien Mars world." In fact, they wouldn't even jump out of our hands when we lowered them into the pen, like they do when we put them into the box. They kinda clung on with their talons.




I posted Aubrey inside the pen after they started loosening up and pecking around. I want them to get used to human presence. She's just sitting there, reading, and minding her own business.

I hope the chicks find lots of juicy bugs and grubs to eat and enjoy the fresh air. I'll clean out their box and unfortunately, put them back in the safe house while me and the kids go to dodgeball after lunch. But they'll have a couple hours of outdoor time today. And maybe more tomorrow.

Radical Unschooling Be Damned

I'm having a Jonah Day. 

Actually more like a Jonah Ten Minutes.

It kinda started on Thursday. Paul has Thursdays off and I try (at his request) to keep those days empty so that we can spontaneously do things together as a family. But what often happens (and did on this Thursday past) is: everybody but me wants to camp on the computer. Paul was actually on the computer for seven hours straight before my stomping around the house and sighing persuaded him to get off.  But he was back on again a few hours later.

The kids see this and emulate it. Duh. It's a no-brainer. Easy. Brain-dead.

It affects everybody in the house. No one connects. Paul tunes out, Aubrey grunts (in her oh so lovely goatish cow rendition: "Mah!"), Robert has been asking for hugs every time he sees me, is weepy, and says he feels lonely. He's mad and has been throwing things and yelling. Today he even cried. But I'm getting ahead of myself perhaps.

So Thursday was a computer day (by default), though I did manage to drag them to the park for a couple of hours in the afternoon. And Friday was a product of my new Summer Schedule. 

I have Fridays alloted for detailed house cleaning in the morning and free choice in the afternoon. Well, the detailed cleaning was a bust because the kids had dentist appointments in the morning and then when free choice came around -- you can guess what they chose to do. (For the record, I chose to work on cleaning my room and watching Anne of Green Gables, with Meagan Follows, while going through boxes of papers and such that have cluttered my room for almost a year.) So another day of computer games.

And then Saturday mornings are always cartoons for the kids and a soak in the tub with a book for mama. Then we clean or do SpiralScouts or go on a field trip somewhere.  So this morning, Saturday, I do a few chores (vacuum my room, change the chicks bedding and feed the dog) and check Facebook and my email. I made coffee and got in the tub a little late (11 a.m.). I noticed on my way that Aubrey, who doesn't get into the cartoons as much anymore, was playing on the computer. Sigh.

I informed the kids that all screens would be turned off at noon and they could take baths and we'd go on a bike ride to the library to pick up a book we had on hold. They seemed fine with this, until it was actually noon and I asked them to get off.

Aubrey went to take a bath but Robert started in on his stomping, yelling and throwing. You see, it was time for him to take his laundry upstairs and put it away. (Sometimes I yell when I have to do that, too.) :)

Anyway, the morning just seemed to get away from me and I checked in on why that might be. And my answer seemed to be the computer gaming. Three days in a row of gaming has created mutiny. 

It's time to take some control back. I try to allow my kids the autonomy to make their own decisions about certain things and I want to have the patience and also the trust to know that they will follow their curiosities and lead themselves into a world of learning that excites them. If computer games actually do that for them, then I'm willing to take a back seat and allow them to learn through their games. But frankly, when their behavior changes and communication breaks down, I just can't take the back seat anymore. So much for radical unschooling.  I guess I'm not the radical I thought I was.

But I still unschool. ;)

It's time for lunch to be made, and a little boy to fish out of the bathtub, and then we are going on our bike ride. Then, I promised my housemate I'd help him in the garden this afternoon. I'm going to plant my apple tree finally and we have pumpkin plants and other starts to get in the ground. I also want to plant some flower seeds and get some color in the garden! (Oh yeah, I should probably weed, too.)

Just so you know, I failed to take a picture of yesterday's harvest. I had it all laid out on the kitchen counter super pretty, and then promptly forgot to find the camera and we ate it. The harvest, not the camera.

There was a head of lettuce, some chard, a bunch of sugar snap peas (slurp!) and a big bowl full of strawberries. Sorry you missed it!