Halloween

Autumn blows in

Funny, isn't it, how the trees shed their clothing just as we start to bundle up?

Yesterday saw a brief but intense windstorm that whipped many of the remaining golden poplar leaves off the branches above us and sent them soaring far across the pasture.

Fall is an awfully good name.

I love the dentist!

That's what the boy who sobbed and squeezed mommy's hand with a amazing strength exclaimed to his sister when he was finished with his check-up.

It is so darn hard to make my little ones do things they don't want to. I'm reminded by the sequence of events at the dentist's office, though, that I'm supposed to push my baby birds to test those wings now and then.

Patrick's Blog

Patrick and I now have dueling kitten photographs. You'll have to look at his blog to see the superior shot.


www.patrickworksphotography.blogspot.com

Poem of the week

Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My piles of books are a mile high.
How I love them,
How I need them.
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.

By Arnold Lobel

Before Dawn

Our family wakes up early these days. At least for a week or two, Patrick is working a shift that begins at 4:15 AM. He and I have always watched each other suspiciously from opposite sides of the divide between cheerful morning people and night owls. Can you guess who's who?

For me this radical change has been a slightly uncomfortable pleasure. Getting up out of the warm bed is tough, but my reward is the quiet, still space of time ahead of me. I relish an hour of Internet addiction time, tidy up the house, get something of some sort rising or fermenting or stewing. Around the time the light begins to fill in the details of my view out the window I bundle up and head out with my milking bowl.

The world outside is really pretty raucous in the early morning. The hungry cows spot me as I step out the door. They don't moo so much as bellow. The roosters have been crowing for quite a while now, and when I open the coop they flap past my face in their hurry to get out to take care of chicken-business. The goats chime in next, saying good morning in three distinct voices. The geese and ducks splash and quarrel. As I milk, in the distance I hear cars taking children to the bus stop and dogs barking at those cars.

As I step in the door bearing milk and eggs Isidore is up and wants to know if we can get out the school books and get to work. He adores the math and reading books we began using a few weeks ago. Last week he began to really read, to sound out unfamiliar words. Though he enjoyed schoolwork already, this breakthrough energized him. After we do the brief lessons from the books he asks me to write down words for him to read. This game is still novel for both of us. After he tires of reading to me, I take my turn reading aloud. We dive into the workings of the human body, cowboy stories, and lots and lots of Halloween tales. Elizabeth joins us under the blanket on the couch, usually adding a poetry book to the pile. She has been rhyming words since she could speak, and loves to listen to poetry read aloud. I do wonder where that will take her. If Aliana is home we make room for her and let ourselves sink deep into the world of The Hobbit for awhile, our latest daily pleasure.

I am so glad they weren't in one of the cars bound for the bus stop this morning.

Introducing Phoebe

On All Hallows Eve we will have two black felines stalking the house. Aliana has chosen a black cat costume this year, and we have been enjoying the antics of an inky little kitten for the last few weeks. Dear Charlie, the friendly old guy who was living with Patrick when I met him, had to be buried on the hill this summer. That left the Works family very sad and catless.

Naturally Phoebe immediately became Elizabeth's favorite stuffed animal, and though she is often frustrated by this particular toy's self-will, most of the time Phoebe remains patiently curled up in Ellie's arms for quite some time.

The Trees on the Hill

It gives me a feeling of peace greater than I can describe to listen to my children tell me about the trees on the hill and share a glimpse of the sacred games they play there among the birds and leaves, rocks and moss.

In exchange I reveal a dusty page from my childhood, when those branches were a tiny bit smaller, those rocks a fraction younger.

Rhythm

We begin to feel a rhythm in our days and weeks. Living in an itsy-bitsy house forces us all to spend a great deal of time outdoors, and as a result we all seem to feel the change of seasons here in a way that we never did before. As a mother and homemaker I have always longed to mark the passage of time with something more than Thanksgiving turkey, Christmas cards and chocolate Easter bunnies. It seems like the things that show up on store shelves at the appropriate time of year represent little pieces of the rituals and traditions that guided our forebears through their lives. As I have been unpacking boxes and creating a home out of the things we brought with us I have been giving thought to making a dynamic space that echoes the tones and shades of the world outside our door. I want our den to be comfortable and to follow along with Mother Nature's decorating scheme.

We have been...

Baking rye bread, unpacking boxes, eating Grandma's banana cake and rescuing dinosaurs from tar pits.

Swerving

That screeching of tires and slamming of brakes you heard was the Works Family. We got a little off course, but we're back on track now. In lots of ways.

Stuck in Lodi

This blog is coming to you today from beautiful Lodi, California. Patrick is working on a national (!) advertising campaign for the KOA. We are staying in one of the darling little cabins they offer while he shoots all day. The kids will be modeling for some of his shots around the pool and playground later in the day, but for now they are enjoying a very large television and real cheerios. I am going to ignore the internet for the rest of the day and read the entire newspaper.

Cheers!

Mr. Misterio Speaks

This evening I paused in my work to cuddle with Isidore for a few minutes. Lying in my lap, he told me, "I wish I could live life over and over again." I asked him why he wanted to do that, to which he replied, "So I could be a baby again and nurse, and then grow up again and be like I am now, over and over again."

Okay.

and zee 'air cut

I have failed at my Buy Nothing Challenge. I got my hairs cut. And blow dried. It felt great. I haven't had a haircut in years. Here it is. I like it.

Mr. Misterio

When Isidore was born my darling Auntie Deedee crocheted him a beautiful soft blue blanket. He has slept with it just about every night since then. As a newborn we swaddled him in it and called him the blue burrito. A couple of years ago he started calling it his woopee. For several months now it has been doing double duty as a super-hero cape. Daily he ties it around his neck and leaps off the couch to assault his sisters, as any brother ought to. His super-powers are awesome.



But, incredibly, they just got much, much stronger.



On Friday at the farmers market we were in line for churros. Yum. They have become our Friday evening market treat of choice lately. I felt a little tug on my hand. Super-boy had spotted some capes for sale at a nearby stall. Mean old mom pointed out that he had a perfectly wonderful cape already. Didn't he love his blue cape? I went back to my churro purchase.



By time I was taking my first bite of deep-fried goodness Isidore had been transformed into Mr. Misterio.



Patrick confessed that as a little boy he had always wanted a real cape. Not a pillow case or a homemade cape, but the real deal. So when Isidore of the crocheted-blanket-tied-around-his neck-cape tugged on his hand, there was no hesitation.










That night Patrick's old friend Eric came up for a visit. When Mr. Misterio put on Jimi Hendrix, Eric brought out his guitar. Mr. Misterio gleefully whipped out his own ax, recruited Aliana for piano, Patrick on the harmonica and Elizabeth on the ukulele. They had quite a session.







Apologies to Rory for the foot on the piano, I swear we don't do that all the time. And yes, that is a lampshade on Aliana's head.

Zo, zee znailz.....

We ate 'em! First we starved them for a couple of days, then we plunked the lot in boiling water for a minute. Once out of the bath they slipped easily out of their shells. We sauteed them with homegrown garlic and butter and then...












Aliana chowed down! Isidore and Elizabeth decided not to partake, but Aliana loved them. She is a big fan of clams and mussels, and we all agreed they taste just like clams. We will be collecting more next week to make a main dish meal with pasta.

Long Days, Crappy Food

Last month I signed up for Path to Freedom's 100-foot diet challenge. We have had a lot of fun dreaming up homegrown meals. We've scoured our cookbooks for egg recipes, stayed up late talking about ideas for dishes, remembering things our relatives made. We've all greatly enjoyed planning our meals.

The problem has been finding the time to make them. The past few weeks the shop has opened its jaws wide and eaten us. Sometimes owning one's own business kinda sucks. I love spending my days working with my partner. I really appreciate being able to bring the kids to work instead of dropping them off at daycare. But I don't like it when everything breaks and people get mad at me. There are days when the idea of punching out at five o'clock and going home sounds delicious.

I know there are people who work long hours and fit cooking from scratch into their busy schedules. I would like to be one of them. Some days I wake up early and use the pressure cooker to whip up some variation of rice and beans and vegetables. It makes everyone's day better to eat a real meal instead of something that came out of a box. It's the logistics of it that kill me, though. I have to get up early enough to have enough time to cook it, then I have to have clean tupperware to use for transport. At the shop we have to have clean dishes and silverware. Then after the food is eaten dishes have to be done at the shop and the tupperware have to make it back home for the next day's meal. It all theoretically works fine, but the reality is that usually one of the pieces of the chain end up missing. I didn't wash the tupperware, or get up early enough, or maybe when we get to the shop we don't have clean dishes at lunchtime. The result is way too much expensive, salty processed food for our meals at the shop.

So, we have lots of homegrown menus up our sleeves for the weeks to come.

I am sure that things at the shop will get easier, and we will find more time to cook wholesome meals again. When Patrick and I met and were courting, as he likes to say, we cooked together all the time. It was a wonderful way to get to know each other. We long for the kind of days that allow time to chat as one of us chops the garlic and the other stirs the sauce. Cooking with the kids is also such wonderful time together. I love to watch little hands holding giant spoons.

So... stay tuned for more 100-foot diet meals. Such plans we have in store!

No picky eaters allowed!

My family is amazing. The bunch of us are all weirdos, but we either don't care or don't know, depending upon the individual in question. That's really why we're homeschooling, to avoid the embarassment of sending them out into public. Just kidding. I think.

This morning Isidore was complaining because we were having fried eggs and sliced oranges for breakfast again. Ever practical (see my post from March 26) Aliana pointed out that we have lots of homegrown eggs right now, so we should enjoy them. She explained that eggs are healthy protein filled food, and that oranges help our bodies fight colds and lower cholesterol. I simply stated, for the seven hundred twenty fifth time (so maybe I'm exagerating) that I will not tolerate picky eaters in my family.

Did either of these attempts sway dear Isidore? Nope. Breakfast was eaten under threat of force.

After he managed to finish his meal without dying of boredom from eating eggs and oranges for the third time this week he scampered outside with his sisters to collect snails from the garden for tomorrow's dinner.

Yes, the child who fights over consuming two of the most common items on an american grocery list thinks it's a great idea to eat a creature not many people on this continent would even consider food.

The kids are all very involved in what we eat. They eagerly peruse the seeds catalogues just as I do. They help to plan the garden, plant the seeds and as it grows they water, weed and harvest. Some of my very favorite memories of my time with my children are in the garden. When I signed us up for the 100 foot diet challenge they cheered me on. We have been brainstorming, and realized that in the spring the snail population explodes. In years past we fed buckets of them to the chickens. This year we're going to cook them with a little garlic and butter and eat them ourselves.

Yum.

King of the Clutter Busters

I'm a bad partner. Really. Here's the story. We have been rearranging and cleaning the shop this week. A lot of junk is gone and it's much easier to share our working space with three kids now. They have a nice chunk of floor space for drawing, legoes, school work, and watching movies. It's in a corner of the back room so we aren't trekking through their games on the way to the bathroom.

Naturally during the course of the super-fling-boogie we broke out the clutter-buster crowns. Yesterday we were still going full tilt when we had a family wander in asking about a portrait. I grabbed Patrick and they talked for awhile about locations, wardrobe and times. Eventually the family departed and only about ten minutes later did Patrick realize that, yep, he was still wearing the crown. If I were super-wife, the story wouldn't go like that. No, super-wife would have thought about a projecting a professional image and noticed the handmade paper crown on her husband's head. She would have in fact removed it before she asked him to talk to prospective clients. She would have done this even on a Friday afternoon at 5:17 after a very long day spent sneezing and dusting and telling the kids to stop fighting and then sneezing some more. She also probably wouldn't have tripped over a half-eaten bagel and a lego spaceship on the way to the backroom to summon Mr. Photographer Guy.

Yeah. So. I think we might not get that portrait job. But it was awfully fun to share a real-live belly laugh with King Clutter Buster. I'm pretty sure super-wife didn't have that in her appointment book.

I really do thank my lucky stars daily that I have the opportunity to spend my days at work with my family, even when it's really damned hard.

Song of the Week #2

This week's song was selected by Aliana. She spent years learning to tell good jokes, and is quite the aficionado of all things silly. So we have a pretty goofy one this week. The first three verses came from The World Treasury of Children's Literature, a book I've had since I was a kid (Any idea where it came from, Mom?). The next part was made up as we drove to work.

Alligator Pie

Alligator pie, alligator pie,
If I don't get some I think I'm gonna die.
Give away the green grass, give away the sky,
But don't give away my alligator pie


Alligator stew, alligator stew,
If I don't get some I don't know what I'll do.
Give away my furry hat, give away my shoe.
But don't give away my alligator stew.


Alligator soup, alligator soup,
If I don't get some I thinkI'm gonna droop.
Give away my hockey-stick, give away my hoop,
But don't give away my alligator soup.


Alligator cake, alligator cake,
If I don't get some I think I'll fall in a lake.
Take away my gecko, take away my snake,
But don't take away my alligator cake.


Alligator juice, alligator juice,
If I don't get some I'll be in a noose.
Take away my chickens, take away my goose,
But don't take away my alligator juice!


Anyone else have a verse?