A walk in the 'hood.

The Spawn and I had a fun walk the other day. We went about a block and a half (each way) and it took a good forty-five minutes. We walked to the end of the driveway, where there was a mud puddle. Stomp! In front of the neighbor's house, we stopped to watch someone collect their mail. Next stop, moss on the sidewalk, which needed to be prodded, stroked, and examined minutely. Then the Spawn wanted to pick some red berries. A little further on, there was a puddle with a bit of water still in it. It needed to be stomped in and to have pebbles thrown in it. There was a crack in the road leading from the puddle--perfect for walking along. Oooo, pine trees. The Spawn looked up at them and exclaimed that there must be THOUSANDS of pine cones up there. Then came the roots of some cottonwoods; she likes to pretend they are computers on which she and I can type to each other. Just a bit further along is the puddle by which we once found raccoon tracks. Only car tracks this time, I'm afraid, and some tracks of the Spawn. At the end of the street is a gate, where the Spawn deposited the red berries. She said she wanted to go back and get more for her "collection". But wait, is there a big mushroom in that yard? No, just a leaf, but there were other small mushrooms to be found. And we think they might be irises coming up under one of the trees. Back across the street and she had to check and see if some rocks were part of the street or loose and ready to be thrown in the puddle. They were part of the street. Short discussion of what a street is made of. Then she spotted some daffodils blooming across the street. She had to touch each one twice. Back over to the red berries. We started back down the street when she noticed some of the grass was different from the rest--much taller, for one thing. She put down the berries in order to pick some of the grass. Hmmm...time to go home, she says. First though, there are some small white flowers which also need to be picked. And one final stomp of the mud puddle and we made it home.

Young Disease Vectors

Yes, that's one of the things I hadn't really thought about before becoming a parent, at least not in any real and serious way. Having a child means adding to your household a little disease vector. The Spawn catches whatever's going around and, with great generosity, shares with us. The latest has been a particularly unpleasant GI bug of some sort. Lots of vomiting has been done. On Monday (thank goodness for holidays) there were ten loads of laundry needing to be done. On the plus side, ALL the sheets in the house are freshly washed, as are ALL the towels. Sunday night was not fun.

The other and related thing I wish I'd known was that if your child IS vomiting, they're going to be running for comfort right beforehand. That means Mom catches a lot of half digested food and drink. Probably wouldn't have changed my mind about the whole spawning thing, but it would have been nice to know. Daddy doesn't get nearly his share of precious bodily fluids, though he certainly does his share of cleaning up after these little incidents. Every twenty to thirty minutes in the early part of Sunday night, in fact.

How much land?

Argh! In some ways, life was a lot nicer when we just went to the store to buy our food. It was simpler, at least. The food wasn't as good, mind you, but it was simpler. We're renting a house at the moment, where we have a phenomenal/loopy landlord who's let us do chickens and goats and turkeys and tear up part of the yard for a garden. There are too many trees to make the whole thing really work though and it's TOO NOISY.

We'll probably be here another year though, barring some miracle. In the meantime, we've started trying to figure out how much land we really need. We have several scenarios, the simplest of which is to have sufficient garden space to grow most of our own veggies, plus a three plot rotation, plus some fruit trees, blueberry bushes, and laying hens on the fallow plots. That's still quite a bit of land we're looking at there.

Then there's the idea of attempting to raise/sell on Craigslist animals for meat. This dramatically increases the amount of land needed. The Better Half is actually taking a farming class at the moment in an attempt to determine if this is even feasible or if it's a pipe dream. I keep thinking pipe dream and yet...there are people doing this sort of thing. Maybe they aren't making any money but then again, even breaking even plus property taxes would be a good thing.

Meanwhile, we hold on, gardening in possibly three different places this year, having chickens in our woods, possibly way to many chickens for a brief while this summer, and scheming. How much land do we need...?

Yesterday's sunrise

DSC_0014.NEF, originally uploaded by Sue_Solberg.

We had a really lovely sunrise yesterday, thanks to a cold and mostly cloudless night.

Thank you, Santa!

Maybe you do exist. I didn't get everything on my list, but we did get to sleep in, I got to bathe in peace, and the Spawn actually ate some breakfast. I'll take what I can get.

It was otherwise a Christmas laid-back in the extreme. I, at least, didn't talk it up all that much, except to explain the whole "present" thing and to make Christmas stockings for myself and the Spawn. She got a new doll, which she'd actually asked for, a game which I hope won't break until she tires of it, and a bunch of little bits and bobs I found at a thrift store in her stocking. Those latter were the hit of the show, of course. And I made a warm, if not terribly stylish, hat for the Better Half. Unfortunately, he was too sick to appreciate anything except sleep. Coal in his stocking would have been preferable, Santa.

The Spawn and I went to dinner at a friend's house and a good time was had by all. She had great fun playing with all the cool toys there. Other kids' toys are always more fun, aren't they? Anyhow, it was nice to be sociable for a change, even if it wasn't all three of us.

Here's hoping I don't get that cold or whatever as my belated Christmas gift....

Dear Santa

I've been good this year. Not saintly, mind you, but good. My parenting hasn't messed up the Spawn too badly, I think. I've been kind to animals and little old ladies. I've been kind to my Better Half too, and he certainly deserves it. So this is my Christmas wish list.

On Christmas, I want to sleep until I wake up. I want to perform my morning ablutions in peace and with the door shut, just for fun. I want to walk to the kitchen without having to dodge random toys (which weren't there the night before!), articles of clothing, or piles of cat vomit. I want to cook a nice breakfast and have everyone eat it, not just me. There's more, but I'll stop there.

If you can manage all this, you might throw in cheap cold fusion too.

Thank you.

The new game!

The Spawn has a new game. She hands one of us a puppet and says, "Wear this sad (or mad) mousie." Obviously, the character changes, as we have way more than just mouse puppets.

Then we're supposed to say, "I so, so sad!"

This is the Spawn's cue to say, "What are you sad about? What are you sad about?" She always says it twice too.

Then we have to come up with something for the puppet to be sad about. She questions the circumstances until she's satisfied. Yesterday a rabbit finger puppet was sad because of having lost a piece to a puzzle. The Spawn wanted to know which puzzle and which piece. Then she wanted to put it together to make sure the piece wasn't missing any more.

The final step is for her to say, "You can be sad about something else now."

Repeat this for a very, very long time, cycling through sad and mad until you're tempted to start having the puppets be sad because of the meaninglessness of human existence or something equally non-concrete.